Well, good afternoon everyone. Welcome to another episode of Dr. Jill Live on this Friday afternoon. I don't know where you are listening in the world. Please pop in the chat and say hello. If you are live with us, tell us where you're from. But today here in Boulder, Colorado, it is hot, hot, hot. It's dry and it's above 90 degrees. And I was just telling Gina full disclosure, I went on a hike this morning. It was amazing and I had a great time and I crashed. I think that he just totally took it out of me. I'm back up and ready to go and got a little tiny bit of coffee. Here's some good, clean coffee. Super excited. I did not want to miss this. And I just say that because I was literally lying flat an hour or two ago and here I am because I am so excited about this guest, Gina Takoni Moore. Hopefully I said that right, Gina? You did, you got it. Good, good, good. We met through mutual acquaintance that it's masterfully helps us with marketing and different things. But she said, you too have some things in common and you have to meet. So I was super excited and even in our conversation just the last few minutes we found all kinds of fun things that we have in common. Let me introduce her and then I'm gonna jump right in. So Gina's a pioneer in the world of manual therapy with knowledge that goes far beyond the four walls at how is your primary care position? She spends her time answering mystery pain and it's not magic, it's mobility is kind of one of the things that she goes with. You're gonna learn a lot about her and why she's so special and why she's so good at what she does. I can't wait for you to hear her story. She is an accomplished clinician, businesswoman running her own practice. And what's neat is the things that I can read all the great accolades that you have but the things that I think are really special are mutual acquaintance who introduced us said she's one of those people that doesn't even need advertising. Like it's word of mouth when someone gets helped by her, they tell people and it's you help some pretty influential people. So I hope it's okay that I don't read all of the bio that so many accolades to your name but she still pursues crossfit weight training literature into your design and we both decided we love going deep reading books. I was telling you before we started I was I'm like a secret closet librarian because we're like introvert extroverticide. So Gina, welcome, welcome, welcome. Tell us a little bit about your story. First of all, a lot of people are probably like what is this? What do you do? We'll get there but how did you get to where you are now? What's the story of how you landed here? Sure. So first, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. So the story begins with my shins. In a former life, I was a sprinter, short distances anything beyond 200 was just not my bailiwick but I had really, really nasty shin splints for about eight years or so. And then I got it in my mind that I wanted to run a Tough Mudder and knew that I was gonna need something a little bit more aggressive than the yoga that I was doing in order to prepare me for that. And so I found CrossFit and I had a very adept trainer who was really kind of on point with his recommendations and stuff very conservative as far as CrossFit goes but I was constantly subbing in anything else besides running because it just hurt.  So I said, okay, so I went and on his recommendation to this gentleman who did active release techniques. Oh yes. And so there's a lot of familiarity I think in this space with that technique and I gave him what was going on and three or four fairly uncomfortable sessions later I was about 80% resolved and that was the first time that that had happened because in high school they would stick me in a whirlpool bath and kind of tape up my shins like a racehorse and that was sort of the end of it. So like a litter bandaid on the problem. And the change was so profound with those visits that I was like, I have to figure out how to do this for other people. This is crazy. So I found out that I just needed a license to touch. So I pursued a course in massage therapy and as soon as I got myself accepted to the massage school, I started signing up for active release techniques seminars. And before I graduated with my license I was full body certified in ART. And it was great because you're like, this works I want to do this. I want to make sure that I'm licensed to be able to that's amazing, love it. Yeah. I mean, I just, it was I don't do well with waiting when I find something that I really want. Yes. So, it seemed like a natural progression to me. And I knew that I wanted to do something with a clinical focus that was going to be sort of under the umbrella of wanting to help specific issues. So, I give a lot of credit to folks who are in the space providing therapeutic massage for stress and reduction and that because that absolutely is required and it's really, really needed. But this, the stuff that I do is much more individual outcome focused. How much can we reduce your pain? How much can we improve your range of motion so that you can get out there on the 12.1 mile course and run the Tough Mudder or whatever it happens to be. So in the midst of that I was also opening my CrossFit gym, CrossFit Lowell, which I founded 10 years ago and has since, has moved on, but it's still in functioning. And so if you're in Massachusetts, check out CrossFit Lowell. And so I found that being a CrossFit coach and being a body worker, a manual therapist, whatever you want to call it was really complimentary because I could see biomechanically things working out on the gym floor and then see kind of consequentially what was happening in my clinic. And so I went about and did that for a while and had some wonderful mentors along the way, specifically Tom Myers who wrote Anatomy Trains and that was really where I got my foot in the door with the dissection work that I do. And so the approach now that I have developed which is called Interstructural Release is sort of a marriage between all of the work that I've done in the dissection lab, the work that I did as a CrossFit and Olympic weightlifting coach and just the work that I've done over the past 10 years on, I don't know, thousands of bodies at this point. And it's just, it's sort of a culmination of all of that learning in addition to, as we were talking about before sort of standing on the shoulders of giants in this brilliant borrowing thing. So that's what I'm trying to say. And clearly, I mean, I didn't mention but I kind of wanted to make sure people know, like you have been a renowned consultant with high-profile sports teams, NFL, MLB, PGA, other sports people, again, in this field that you are known and it's kind of what's neat is you've really taken kind of your own approach and pulled some things together. Like it's interesting to ART, I didn't realize that was one of the faces because probably 20 years ago when I first started running I didn't know anything about what I was doing. And I'm like, oh, this barefoot running sounds cool. So I got myself a pair of five fingers and I went out running. I had no idea, I totally was a heel striker. I got, you know, fracture, stress fracture in my companion, so clearly was not running right. And ART was the thing that actually helped me back then. And so I remember like a carpenter who did it nearby and it was one of the things like, okay, there's something really different here. So I totally know the power of that personally and that was decades ago. And to understand, again, I would have not been able to hardly walk for months were not for that technique at that time. So you kind of taken that, made it your own. And then you just briefly mentioned the dissection, but this is what's so unique about you. Tell us more about like you are like an expert. What do you even call that? And forgive me for not, like a... No, I mean, disector I guess is fine. So, you know, again, in studying with Tom, you know, I think that he really attempts to take a holistic look at the body. And in doing so, you know, I've likened my job, you know, the job of the manual therapist in general as, you know, hearing a terrible noise in your car, driving into the mechanic and saying, okay, I've got this terrible noise in my car and I need you to fix it, but I don't want you to put it up on the lift and you definitely can't look under the hood.  And so being able to get into the dissection lab was a way to look under the hood. And, you know, having those images that are not computer generated, that are not out of a textbook, that are just sort of behind my eyelids at any given moment has given me an atlas that I can utilize anytime I have a patient under my hands, which is really awesome. And really, I mean, particularly where the method that I've developed relies on separation of tissues, sort of at the borders and margins and things like that, having a really solid idea of what the topography of the inside of the body is, just makes the work that much easier, honestly. So that got parlayed. I did a bunch of labs with Tom I did a few labs independently as well. And then I was invited to be part of the dissection team at the Plastinarium that was creating the world's first facially focused Plastinet model. So she's in existence now. Her name is Freya. She's over at the Body Worlds exhibit in Berlin. And, you know, we had these major non-reality based dreams when we were starting, you know, everybody wanted to be able to essentially disarticulate the fascia from muscle mature and stuff like that completely. The Plastination process is a fairly brutal one just on tissue and things like that.  So, so it's not quite the full ghost body that we're hoping for yet, but give us, you know, seven to 10 years and we'll get there. So is this a model or is this actually a real preserved? Is it just a model like a man made model or is it actually a preserved tissue? It is preserved tissue. So it's a full body cadaver. Okay. Yep. And like I said, the process of Plastination is, you know, years long. So we started this process about four years ago now.  That's fascinating. I'm just like loving this so much. And I can see how that totally gives you the ability to see or feel. And you mentioned just before we started to like this movement and the smoothness.  So can you actually tell with the tissues on the exterior, like things are not moving like this should like little. And again, I don't know the vocabulary very well, but. Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, basically what I, what I've said to my students and what I've said to, you know, patients as well is that healthy, well-circulated solid tissue feels like a freshly set bowl of jello. That's the secret. Yeah. And anything that feels anything other than that is what I go after. So, and, you know, I'll say that and people are like, well, surely it can't be that simple. It is because otherwise, you know, you can really kind of get lost in the sauce in the, you know, analysis paralysis sort of realm of things. If you start thinking much more, you know, complicated than that. So, you know, the idea of this whole method is that somebody comes in with an initial complaint and it can be anything from carpal tunnel to plantar fasciitis to, you know, chronic lower back pain. All of that, I would kind of label that under the sort of more common things that I see to pelvic floor dysfunction and incontinence and temperament, gibular joint disorder and, you know, chronic headaches and things of that nature as well.  And so I'll start at that area, but rarely do I stay in that area. You know, one of the sort of guiding tenants of this is that it's the victim that cries out, not the perpetrator, right? So the thing that hurts is not necessarily always going to be the source of your problem. It's certainly the source of what's causing you to not sleep or have to change your posture or whatever, but what is maintaining that pain? And that ultimately is what my job is, is to find the source of that pain and attempt to resolve it.  So that's manual therapy, fascinating. And I love how you've combined that. And the thing that I hear too is, you've got obviously an incredible analytical mind and you love to go deep and study, but you've also clearly developed this tactile sense, right? That's like probably extraordinary compared to the average person because that's what you do. Like you use, and I always admire those people who take, because that's like the right brain, left brain stuff, right? Like you've got the tactile intuitive sense that you probably like trust that you, just like you said, if you think too hard, and I do that in medicine too, it's interesting because I used to be purely analytical, but over time with experience, often I'll have kind of a gut feeling and then I'll prove it with the science, but it feels like to me, feels like literally, like you're actually getting very good clues from your fingers, from your touch, from your tactile sense, and then kind of thinking through where it comes from. But that had to be developed over time.  So 10 years at this point, and there is a funny story related to the times actually. So as I said, I started in massage school and we really launch into things right away. So within the first week, we had hands on each other in the class. And because ultimately with a massage therapist, manual therapist, it's that haptic sense, that perception that is really what sets us apart as well from other folks who are doing good work in this field. In chiropractic school, in physical therapy school, places like that, there just isn't the emphasis that there is in massage school with develop phases, your primary tools of assessment. Because truly, we don't, in a traditional massage school setting, you aren't getting a huge amount of education about orthopedic tests or anything like that. So you really are taught to rely on these very portable tools that you have with you at all times. So it's the second week of my time at the massage school. And we're working on finding, it's sort of the point of physical innovation at the trap up here. Some people might call them trigger points. So I've got my partner down and I'm working and I'm working and working. And the teacher is saying that these are, they're pretty obvious, you're gonna find them no problem. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't find these anywhere. And so I wave her down, she just comes gliding across the room. She's talking to another student and literally just puts her hand out and lands directly on my partner's shoulder. And she goes, ow, that's it. I said, oh my gosh, I'm never gonna be that good. That is remarkable. But so that was a little bit of humble pie right out of the gate. But it's like anything over time when you get used to using a tool in a certain way, you become adept with it. And my tools just happen to occur at the end of my wrists. And it's funny because I was having a discussion with my husband not too long ago, just about perception and stuff of the hands. And I was like, he was working on me. That's what it was. He was working on me. And I was like, gosh, you're so pointy. I taught you better than that. Pull out and start again. He's like, well, but I can really only feel at the very tips of my fingers. And I was like, really? Because, I mean, my point of contact, and this is why I can't handle it, when I work with someone is right along the side of my finger or sort of right in through here. And I didn't even realize that that was the point of the most sensation in my hands until a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about it. So in college, I did a course in reflexology and for a short time I did that for just a little extra on the side. And so if I remember very clearly, we really targeted this little section of the thumb on the side where you can get more pressure but also feel again, I'm no expert, but I remember that little bit.  Yeah. So let's talk about patients. Tell us a story of someone that was, and it sounds like a lot of people come to you who've been, that's the commonality with us too. It's like, with our mutual acquaintances, like you both are like these mystery, medical mystery people who people have been everywhere tried everything and they haven't gotten the help they need. So I can totally relate, but tell us about a situation where maybe they've been places where they were getting ready for surgery or maybe they've been post-surgery and they felt like they were unhealable. And you remember the best. Yeah, I mean, that's really my bread and butter. So the one that comes to mind is I was working with a first responder and major city. And this person came to me on a Monday and said, okay, here's the deal. I've got surgery scheduled for Friday, same week. Yeah. You got two days. Yeah, absolutely. No pressure, this is great. And so what they were recommending was, because he had a chronic mobaccan. So what they were recommending was going to be a laminectomy, that's actually a double laminectomy, but on the same side, so it's lateral. And he was like, I really don't want to do that. I have young kids. I want to continue to be active in my work. So for him, it was his livelihood and also just his ability to have a good quality of life with his family. So again, there's- Like what decade, like 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, what kind of a- He was early 40s. Okay. Early 40s. And he had tried, according to him, fundamentally every conservative measure under the sun, been to chiropractors and physical therapy and he'd done all of the kind of like cryotreatments. And he's like anything holistic I could think of, I tried. And he had gone and he'd been to a neurologist and a pain specialist.  And so that was really what kind of prompted him, bullied him maybe in the surgery.  So, what can you do? So again, starting with the initial area of complaint which was on the left side of his back, I felt around and yeah, there was maybe like a little bit of tightness but certainly nothing I'd read home about, right? And so I just kind of followed the tissue down sciatic path kind of thing. So, I'm in through glute and piriformis and down through hamstrings and so forth. And I'm like, gosh, I really am not finding anything remarkable in here. Maybe I can't help him, you know? So I sent him home. I was like, look, you're gonna have some residual soreness just get in touch with me in 24 hours. Let me know a bit better and different how things are doing. So in the meantime, I went home and I'm now racking my brain because I don't like failure. And I'm like, I can't, I have to figure this out, right? And so I really just, I like to draw schematics of the patients I'm working with that I can't solve on my whiteboard to just draw out the structures that I think are involved and then look at what I might be missing with my trusty net or textbook or something like that. So at any rate, I went home, I thought about it and realized that I had fundamentally skipped over his entire adductor group. So I was like, okay, well, that's something that I can check. I've got a little breadcrumb now, right? So when he called me, he's like, yeah, I'm probably 20% better. I'm not sure, I'm like, none of that matters. I miss something. So come back in because we checked all the obvious stuff in that pass, but I missed the stuff that was maybe secondary or even tertiary. So he comes in, you know, checked out because I like to do just a subjective pain scale with folks before we start. And he's like, yeah, I'm probably at a six right now, which is, you know, that's better than moderate. So, and so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna just sort of look down into your adductors and see what we got here. Sure enough, there is a spot in the adductor magnus, which is the big one that's kind of like in the middle of your leg. It's called the adductor hiatus. It's there on purpose, it's basically just a hole that allows nerves and vascular structures to pass through. And so I look at that and I'm like, man, this thing feels like it's got a zip tie around it. So I'm like, okay, this is, you know, it's a bit of a crapshoot, but let's just see what we can do. So I worked through the hiatus and was, I mean, I felt the, the neurovascular bundle just do that, like travel all of a sudden.   And so cleaned up a little bit more, just, you know, kind of doing the diligence down into the lower compartment of the leg and all of that traced my steps back up to the lower back. And I was like, okay, get up off the table, see what you think. And he got up and he was like, it's gone. The pain is gone. He's like, and he's bending and moving. Exactly, because, you know, one of the things that I asked my patients to do most of the time is, you know, if I feel like I'm at a place where I've gotten to a certain resolution, I'll say, okay, try to make it hurt, right? Because that's sort of the limit. Exactly. Yes, they know what movements they can do to produce the symptoms that they're having.  And he's like, it's gone. It's absolutely gone. So I was like, okay, so let's just not jump the gun. Do me a favor, wait another 24 hours. Let's just see if this thing, you know, has settled in basically if the body has accepted our suggestion, right? And sure enough, a day later, he called me and he was like, I canceled my surgery. So, look at that. I love that so much. And it sounds like, again, with my familiarity there, it's like entrapments, isn't it? I mean, I'm sure it's way bigger than that, but at a core level, a lot of times these things just get trapped and you're releasing them from captivity. Exactly, yeah, it's just a stickiness thing that, you know, the body has thousands of gliding surfaces. And the key word there is gliding. They are intended to do this on each other. But, you know, if the body all of a sudden gets the message usually from a joint that there is some cause for alarm, like if there's a perception of instability as a, for instance, you know, then because the body is smart and adaptable sometimes to its own detriment, it'll step in and start laying down additional layers to web these things together so that now rather than multiple structures moving as multiple independent structures, you have more or less like four cased sausages wrapped up in saran wrap and nobody's going anywhere independently. Yeah, this one pulls this one with it and like, oh, that, yeah, okay. Yes. So I just think, again, as a physician, I know anatomy, but not like you do. And certainly not to the thought process and I'm not anywhere near anything what you do but I'm so fascinated because I understand the process behind why it works, why it makes sense and why you're so unique because of your background of the intense knowledge about dissection.  You've got to be the only person like this. They're really amazing. I love it. And I love that. And I'm sure you have many other stories you could tell us like that because that's what happens when you have that kind of unique base. How cool. Yeah. As you said in some of the stuff you gave me that you think there's three unique bodies, what does that mean? And tell us more about when you perceive that the unique bodies that a person that you see has are a patient or a client. Yeah, so, you know, this again is just sort of extracted from my own time and in the field and so forth.  So, you know, and those cross every conceivable system that we have because you really, you can't, you know when people say that they're like fascia specialists or something like that, well, yeah anybody who puts their hands on another human body for therapeutic purposes is a fascia specialist because you can't contact anything without contacting fascia like just by proxy. So that is, I mean, it's truly a ubiquitous structure in the human body. But then again, so is fluid, you know we've got all of these different highways and so forth, some of them with their own pump like our circulatory systems and some of them, you know do the brilliant part of the thing like lymph, right? So, and then, you know, the breath that's one of those things that, you know over the course of time I've just come to realize how critical good breathing techniques are and how bad most people are at this really, really basic very life-giving sort of thing.  So, so, you know that's sort of my first line of defense is the fascia body and the restoration of gliding surfaces. And sometimes that doesn't work. Sometimes that'll get somebody to 50% better or 60% better but not 100%. And so that's where I'll start to look at things in a more granular way. So more of, you know, like, okay well, let's check out your fluid exchange. You know, do you have like boggy tissue at your ankles that we need to look at? And, you know, that's a really good indicator that maybe your lymphatic flow is not necessarily where it should be. And then, you know after we've checked that box and if the person's still at like 50, 60, 70% then we'll look at the breath body. And it's like, okay so you are moving fundamentally everything certainly in your thoracic cavity when you breathe and, you know, a lot of other things sort of go along for that ride.  Let's feel how your organs are moving. You know, because organs articulate in a very certain way when you breathe. And your hands on them, you know as a breathing that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. And that's, I mean I tend to leave the breath for last because it really it's intimate as well. I mean, you know it's very, very rare that people are getting hands on sort of in that thoracic cavity. Yeah. Yeah. And typically it's because something very invasive is about to happen. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know just out of respect for the way that I feel that the treatments should unfold that's sort of the last thing so that we've already established a rapport and I'm not just like diving into your abdominal like uninvited basically so. I love that you say that though cause I have a massage therapist in my clinic is amazing and she does abdominal massage and but I've gone to hundreds maybe thousands of other massage therapists and rarely do they ever which is perfectly okay, I get why but it's one of the things like the psoas and some of the things you can't get to and through the you know through that cavity and I've always found it profoundly helpful to my love, you know so it is a really such an important place and it's pretty much ignored all this and again again it's like the dog you know if you put your belly up this is the most vulnerable part of ourselves, right? Right. So I still get why and I think that's super respectful of how you practice but it's also like if you're out there and your massage therapist has never touched your abdomen or you have a great relationship with them that's a really powerful place to get healing. Absolutely. And I mean, look if you're out there and you have a great massage therapist who you trust, just ask them. That's exactly what you know, right? You're trained in it.  The thought is coming to my mind as you're talking so here I am like in my clinic with these complex chronic it would be inflammation, infection, toxicity all those kinds of things but it's gonna manifest in the tissues and my expertise is using the mind and the testing to do that I'm not touching the patients as much but clearly you are and can you tell whether it's a post infection or some sort of inflammatory condition? I'm sure you can actually see and feel the tissue difference there too. So even if you weren't like looking at a lab value you would you be able to like say we were working together on the same patient would you be able to tell me yeah, there's a lot of inflammation or there's some because of the feel right? So I'm gonna say yes with an asterisk because I operate in shades of gray exclusively there is no black and white but yeah, so for the most part and you know look as you know markers of inflammation walk and lockstep with each other. So you know if somebody has you know uterine fibroids and IBS and swollen ankles and you know chronic lower back pain. Okay, well you know maybe we need to look at elevated factors of tumor necrosis factor alpha or something like that, right? Which by the way nobody's doing blood tests for those for people with lower back pain which is insane, but at any rate I'm gonna go with you. I totally agree because I think it's like the structural issue where there's a weak link, right? But then on top of that inflammation is what kind of takes people over the edge often and whether it's infection or toxin or poor posture or poor breathing or. Yeah, absolutely. So to answer your original question there are some cases that you know like the markers of inflammation in the body that are palpable are you know things like heat if things feel particularly boggy if things are especially stubborn also that's another one. You know an interesting thing that I've discovered over the time in this field is that you know working on people who are chronic smokers is very, very difficult for a number of reasons but not the least of which is that firstly their tissue globally muscle tissue tends to feel very much like beef jerky I guess. And you know with that also even when I do sort of restore some circulation to tissues like that it doesn't stick. So for people who are active well hydrated and good breathers. Yes. I see them maybe four or five times and then they're off my case load. But for people who have inflammation markers or are heavy users of intoxicants or nicotine or stuff like that what I found is like I said that the quality of the tissue is just that much worse and it won't take the same way that it would in a body that is otherwise well hydrated and not using intoxicants. So I love that you mentioned the smoking because my one experience in medical school of course we had cadaver lab for six months and we each had our own cadaver that we worked with the whole time that we held a hide not like the difference with you with the fresh you know it's very different tissue we were talking about too but the one I remember is we had a smoker and his 50s who died of a heart attack and I remember like compared to my colleagues cadavers the heart was just one big very, very thick not pliable muscle and there was no lungs were these chunks of black and our colleagues who had nonsmokers were still soft and viable very, very, very different. And then all the arteries we dissected like even it was so clear they were like plastic tubes. Yes. So that little bit that I remember I was like I remember so and I've never smoked a day in my life but it was so visual that I was like I will never ever be susceptible to cigarettes because I can see how big of deal and I think what you're describing too is the hypoxia that happens and we see that with other infections too but when you have tissues that aren't getting good oxygenation it's gonna absolutely affect all of these things and especially pain because the oxygen takes away delivers nutrients but also takes away debris and junk and garbage. That's right, absolutely. And one of the labs that I was at we were here so we didn't we're in this country what I mean. So we didn't get a medical history just based on the body donor program. But I mean that sort of became part of the intrigue of that particular lab because we had one cadaver who I mean I would put him probably I don't know mid to late sixties or so but we were all convinced that this was a COPD patient because he had the massive barrel chest. I mean the heart that like fill and then overflow both hands. Which as you know is not normal. And it's funny because I'll just mention that because even this for young men who are like using steroids or whatever I've seen a number of young thirties, forties where there's massive hypertrophy and people think oh these muscles are great right but you could have a heart and it can't pump anymore. That's right. The other thing that you know because you were asking about can I feel kind of the inflammation and it's interesting that you were steroid use because I can absolutely feel a steroid user because their muscle feels literally inflated. It's like squeezing a beach ball as opposed to squeezing somebody who has earned it the traditional way. So yeah I mean there's definitely people might be pulling the wool over eyes of folks at the beach but not when you get into it. One other thing I found really interesting in your bio and some of the info you gave me is some things that you wouldn't think for someone a manual therapist would be like erectile dysfunction in cotton and constipation and for my patient population small bowel overgrowth bacterial overgrowth SIBO or something with a mild obstructive kind of pattern where it's adhesions and stuff. Those cases and it sounds like those you can often get them in and out in a three, four, five sessions and have success. That's right, yeah. So right now I really love working on visceral stuff and you may find this too that in your practice there are kind of seasons of things that show up where you're like, okay it's raining like left wrists this week or something like that. And so in the past 18 months the focus has really been on pelvic floor dysfunction which would include, I'm gonna kind of umbrella that to include ED, include incontinence and then bowel issues like constipation as a for instance. So the easiest way to be able to sort of figure out what's going on with somebody with some sort of a gastrointestinal upset that is mechanical and not chemical or disease related in nature.  And so I'll start just by listening with a stethoscope to just hear what is going on at like the cecum for instance, which if you're listening and you're like, what the heck is that? That is sort of the gateway between the small and large intestine. And then I will look up sort of into the corner of ascending and transverse and then to the corner of all of that other stuff and just sort of see like, okay if I'm getting noise at the cecum, which I typically am then where am I not getting noise in response to pressure? And so that's typically where I'll start is just more or less like lifting the margins of the colon to just see, is it stuck to the greater momentum? Is it stuck to the peritoneal wall? Is it stuck to itself? Is there an adhesion somewhere internally? And generally speaking, I can find that through palpation and certainly through patient reporting, right? So I'm like, yes, exactly. I'm relying on the person who's under my hands to be able to help and guide me. And so the cool thing about that without kind of wandering into a two-graphic territory is that when I've got somebody in front of me who's constipated, I can feel where the blockage is residing. And we can really physically kind of like inspire some motility in the large intestine. And I mean, I've had people get up in the middle of sessions to be like, okay, it's right now. Yeah, no, totally. And makes someone, I mean, that's what our body, from a clinical perspective, what I see a ton of is small intestinal either bacterial overgrowth or fungal overgrowth. And it's all of that ileocecal region. Like you said, if that flap is stuck closed or there's an adhesion or there's no motility there, it's almost like that flow between meals and things where you should get cleansing and clearing out of the bacteria is not working. So you don't have them, what we call it migrating motor complex is not working. It's not clear between meals. But a lot of it is to do with this manual piece of there's old surgical adhesions or old stickiness from maybe a peritonitis or something going on there. And so when you manually actually kind of break up those adhesions and allow for movement, I find again, clinically, I can do all the medications or the herbs or those things, but I would say 50% of the time with the small bowel or the large bowel issues, it needs some manual therapy. So I see that too. And I think it's so powerful because that stuffness, no medication, no herb, nothing is gonna fix if there's an adhesion where two pieces of the bowel are stuck together and not moving well, right? That's right, exactly. And the piece that you look at is both mobility and motility. So it's kind of an inside outside sort of thing. So once again, we're back to the fascia body and to a lesser extent, the fluid body and to a lesser extent, the breath body because all of that is together. Absolutely, in healing that particular region. And so we have to make sure that not only are the exterior gliding surfaces of the structures not stuck to other gliding surfaces of other structures, but also that the smooth muscle inside is doing its job as well.  So, and then as far as the pelvic floor stuff goes that started, my curiosity developed really early with that and it goes back to my CrossFit gym. So, at that point in time, there were not a huge amount of female coaches and even fewer female owners. And so it was a unique experience to have one of my younger, I mean like early 20s not a childbearing person come to my door and say like, hey, so I just did a heavy deadlift out there and I peed a little, I don't know what that's about or it was box jumps or it was jump rope or it was- Now I love you to say that because I bet there is 50% of women listening out there that have had that experience and it's so, I mean nowadays you talk to your girlfriends or whatever but it's so common isn't it? Yes, yes, and that's exactly, but that's really the drum that I've been beating for so long is that it is super common but not normal. So let's fix it. Let's talk about it first off. Let's demystify it. And so, that really the fact that I had all of these very fit young women coming to me and saying like, I'm being myself on a regular basis led me just to look at some osteopathic journals to understand better what the pelvic floor was and all that stuff. And what came out of my research was that fundamentally the argument in this one paper there are like four conditions that the pelvic floor can be in. So you've got your kind of like high and tight you've got your low and loose which is what I think most people would associate with pelvic floor dysfunction or incontinence and that would be the case of women who have born children and particularly vaginal births and that kind of thing. And then you've also got sort of like the low and tight and high loose. So you've got all these different kind of conditions that the pelvic floor can be in. And by the way, since reading that article and since just doing my kind of anecdotal study there's way more than four. That was sort of a one size fits most model but it worked well enough for me to start with just a little kind of case study thing with the female athletes in my gym just knowing what I knew from dissection lab again. So again, if you're a manual therapist or a body worker or a yoga teacher or a gym teacher or a coach or anything like that and you can get yourself to a dissection lab please go and do it because it is going to be so edifying and so life changing for you. So that's my plug for dissection labs. But at any rate, what I learned in the dissection lab is that we've got muscles that are part of our deep six lateral rotator in the back of the hip that fundamentally are like the, if you picture it like your pelvic floor is a hammock these are sort of like the trees, right? And so if it's the obturator internist and so if they're really tight what will happen is that the trees will fold in and you've got kind of this like lower hanging pelvic floor at that point. It doesn't mean the pelvic floor is loose though at that stage because especially if you are bearing down a huge amount as in weightlifting or whatever or you're doing something percussive like running or jumping then you're going to be, you know you're clenching basically.  You can want to squeeze more but you're not gonna be able to do it. Why? Because you've already maximized that muscular potential. And so the same is true of pelvic floor and continents and people who are otherwise not childbearing and very fit. Yeah. Those muscles are in contracture and they need to be released. Yeah. It's the opposite of what you think it's not more kegels. It's... It's not. Because that really and particularly at that point in time you know, we're going on, I don't know eight or seven or eight years ago at this point that's what was available literature-wise was just one size fits all, right? That's right. Yeah. So I said that clinically too and I'm not the expert. I always send them to someone like you or a physical therapist but it's very true. It's not a one size fits all. And a lot of women are real frustrated because they're like, well, I really do my kegels. I know how to hold the pelvic floor and I still can't protect from loss of urine with desertion or whatever. So... Yeah, exactly. Wow. Oh my gosh, this is so amazing. I love love. I could talk to you all day. I'm like, this is... Any last bit of wisdom.  First of all, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening here are going to want to get a hold of you and you were telling me your website and stuff is being built. So that's coming, you know, all the data and stuff that will make sure people can still find you. And no matter when that happens, we'll make sure that that is wherever you listen to this we'll link that up. And it's your name, right? Which give us your name and spell it for us really quick so that... Sure. The audio, look it up. It'll be GinaTakoniMore.com G-I-N-A-T-A-C-C-O-N-I-M-O-O-R-E.com And yeah, so that'll be where, you know, you can find out what I'm doing and book a consult with me and just generally kind of step into this very nerdy anatomical world. I love this nerdy anatomical world. I love that you encouraged anybody listening doctors, physical therapists, carpenters, anyone to think about dissection and anatomy because I, again, mine, my experience is 20 years ago and it's pretty rusty. And it's so funny because most, you know, people assume that doctors are, you know, but even for me sometimes the muscle, I'm like, what muscle is that again? That's muscles, not nerves and all the other. And of course I do all that at one time. So you are encouraging me to go back to that too and make sure that it's all fresh. Any last bits of, you know, just giving someone hope or parting words of wisdom or any last little bit of pearls that you want to leave that people with.  I would just say, you know, think outside the box a little bit. Think from an anatomical perspective to practitioners. Please think about things from an anatomical perspective. You know, Oliver Sachs was beating this drum way back in the day and all he did with case studies.   And if you're smart enough, they will teach you how to treat and cure them. Oh, I couldn't have said it better myself. That is so beautiful.  And I can hear that.  You're like, I'm going to figure this out. Good for you. I know that you're already so successful. You're just going to continue to catapult. And what I hope is you get a chance to continue to teach people and really spread this method and the things you've done. So thank you so much for your time today, Gina. It has been a pleasure. Yes, definitely. This has been great.


Okay. So, let me welcome you back. I will be talking about the course called basic 3D animation, which is titled the nomenclature used is SKANI 101X. Now, this there was a question about why this SKANI and what is this significance of this short form. So, that just to explain you this is a skill development course. Therefore, we have started a series under the acronym SK for that and ANI meaning animation. Therefore, SKANI 101X. Whenever we offer course on advanced animation and other things, we will have SKANI 102 or 202 or 302 or now since so on and so forth. We also offered another course in the same series of skill development, but it was based on architecture. Therefore, we titled it SKARC and that was SKARC 101 and that was about architectural visualization. Nowadays, lots of architects get the request to create a walkthrough of their drawings and not necessarily it is good always that architects spend their time in doing those walkthroughs. They are good at doing their drawings, but there should be some operator to convert those drawings into walkthrough because that does not require much of architectural knowledge. So, I had designed this course specifically with the target audience of non-architects who are good in computers and visualization. So, we have found out that almost 30 percent of the audience the participants who took my course were able to get out of the course which is a huge number compared to the standard practice of 10 to 8 to 10 percent. But most importantly, I have seen that they are already assisting some architects in converting their drawings to architectural visualization. So, that was one of the very nice outcome of that. Okay, I started off with that acronym point. So, we have SKANI which is Skill Development in Animation, we have SKARC which is Skill Development in Architecture and next semester onwards we are coming up with Skill Development in Gaming. So, it will be called SKGAM. Not to repeat, but for gaming it would be prerequisite to have the animation course, the basics of blender in place. Although I hate to call a course with the name of the software, it goes against my ethics of my own ethics also, that it should not be the software which should be taught, it should be the concept which would be taught. So, we only had this nomenclature for our first course because we wanted to popularize blender as a name. Now, we have removed that. So, all other courses now are called 3D Architectural Visualization or Computer Gaming. So, that would be the name of the course. It is incidental that we will be teaching gaming using a open source tool called Blender. So, and the reason is that because we have open source software in our hand, after the course is done or during the course whenever students want to practice their concepts, it would be essential for them to have access to a software and with Maya or 3D Max that is not possible. Although you have academic licenses, they are not possible to be carried home. So, you have to do it only in the colleges. Therefore, we chose Blender and that allows each and every participant to practice in their own space at home free of cost. So, that's the whole logic behind this thread of skill development courses at IIT Bombay. What I am showing right now on screen is some of the output of these students in the past who have completed the course. The reason I am showing you and you can keep going with the slides now without waiting for my signal because you can see the diversity of different objects. For example, we tell them to do a chair. We never tell them that it should have only three rods at the back and two armrests and all other things and students are going in their own way of experimenting with modeling, texturing, lighting, trying various materials and various textures, lighting conditions. Even in the form, they are experimenting a lot. That is the reason. So, for example, the Crown Assignment has been explored by various people in various ways and the beauty of the whole course is that because we have these open-ended assignments, it is possible for participants to express in their own ways. So, just pause here. So, the assignment was pretty simple that you have to get a donut as a basic shape in 3D and just pull some of the faces to make a crown. So, that was what I had told in my lecture and then I left the lecture with a sentence that here is assignment to create a crown.  But people went ahead, explored various options available on the web, searched for videos, found out how to create the gold effect, how to create shining jewels and all other things and started doing these things. It didn't stop there. What happened is that when somebody posted this, the persons who were looking at the discussion forum submissions, they started asking that person, how did you do that? And I told, I requested that person. In fact, that person is a teacher himself. So, I didn't know, for me it was just a name, Atec. So, I said, okay, dear Atec, can you explain? And that person said, okay, let me know how to do that. And I pointed him to Professor Kandan's project of spoken tutorials, how to create a spoken tutorial. So, that link I pasted on my discussion forum, saying that here is a process of how to create a spoken tutorial. If you are interested, please do a small spoken tutorial about how you did this assignment and post it back onto the discussion forum for the benefit of others. Within seven days, that person did a wonderful job of a video of explaining all the nuances required for doing this and actually copied all the strategies of creating a spoken tutorial. For example, present the outline upfront in the video, like what is the learning objective of this video? What is the software version I am using? So, what are the stages? All that he did without actually me telling him, it was only taken up from the documentation of spoken tutorial, of course, first thing. And also the videos which were already available for him from my course. So, put together, that came up. This triggered a series of submissions in that direction. So, suddenly people started exploring metals now because metals were not taught to them and they started exploring metals and they created some smooth effects. Somebody was trying to show sharper effects and things like that. Even up to this point where they combined metal with cloth and velvet and matte finish pearls with the glittering diamond. So, all those things. I am amazed at the fact that participants are capable of so much and we just need to have that trigger in them. So, that was what I realized that if you do provide that much of trigger, the output is amazing and that is what we want to do at the end of the day. Everyone of us wants to do that. So, in a nutshell, go next, what is it? Is there any other thing? Okay, there are some. So, assignment was create a chess piece of your choice. And people created entire chess board and with various styles of, I think, yeah, they added emotions to the chess board. All these things, why I'm showing is that this has gone beyond the course. And this is what I think is the biggest achievement of the course called SKNI-101X. That has gone beyond it. Look at this. This is piece of art, actually. The person has not only created a model of the chess piece, but has added other dimensions like reflections, the cuts. You can actually feel the material, that how shiny it is, how soft it is or other things. So, this is, I think, according to the person here, Anish from Calicut. So, Anish is actually a content creator in the EMRC. So, he is an educational media research center Calicut. So, he is an employee of EMRC. And he just kept on doing certain things, amazing me with various inputs he had. Not only that, so when I wanted to scale up and there was a request from NIT Calicut to have a course for them, I requested Anish that maybe you can go and talk to them. And he obliged, went there, he gave a talk there and he had been providing constant support. So, the model which has evolved over a period of time is that Sabir can't be a sufficient person to cater to the huge demand coming up every now and then. So, this is another submission from the architecture course where they have tried to actually touch base all possible options within the architecture requirement like carpets and leather and a TV which is actually emitting video. Such kind of things also they have tried to do. Go ahead. Yeah, so this is another one, some basic ones. The point I wanted to make was at three levels. So, one is that, that is also very much what I have received in the box here. Although there are only three papers here, but I think if I narrate these questions, probably everyone agrees to that question. So, I'll just take it in the order which I feel is right. So, this is a course on 3D animation. So, can you just show the course? We have started this course around two months back. I'm re-offering this course, but the important point to note here is that this course is offered right now in a self pace mode, which means that the day you register on the course, you will see all the eight chapters in one go. So, there is no timeline based delivery that every week after week we will be delivering some content. So, all the chapters will be available on the first day itself. All the assignments will be available on the first day and also the quizzes which are the assessment options also will be available on the first day itself. So, when you register for the course and start looking at it, it is up to you how you want to finish it. You can take a call to finish it in two days, weeks or months. It's up to you. And as I keep telling the students whenever I meet them, it is just matter of not watching one movie in a week and watching these videos instead and you should be able to finish this course in four weeks. Because typically a chapter consists of 40 to 50 minutes of video content. I expect another 40 to 50 minutes of hands-on work, which is told in those videos. And another 40 to 50 minutes of actually solving assignment or a quiz, whichever is associated in that particular chapter. So, that's all it takes for a chapter to be complete and you can avoid in that direction. Also, because MOOCs are open-ended, you can take two questions in the quiz today and then take the rest of the quiz later on. It doesn't matter. It is open. So, the first question here is that if this is the course, then what is the prerequisite for this course? Who can take this course? The answer to that is anybody who is well versed with computers and has a passion to learn a new thing is a potential candidate for this course. Absolutely no prerequisite as such. People actually ask me, can my child take this? She is very much fond of animation. And I don't know, who is not fond of animation? That's a big question.  And in fact, whenever I ask this question, a lot of people associate animation with cartoon. Right? And the moment I say cartoon, a lot of people associate that with Tom and Jerry. But there are also other aspects of animation, which we are trying to explore here. Unfortunately, one of our important website is not working right now. But you can just write down the address of that, which is called oscar.itb.ac.in. That Oscar has nothing to do with the awards. This is about open source courseware animations repository. So, this website has a bunch of various animations in engineering, which are freely downloadable and you can use them in your own education systems. But moreover, it also has a repository of blender models required for physics and chemistry laboratories. So, it has vernier caliper and it also has test tubes and beakers and all sorts of things. In addition, it also has a process of how you can download these models, how you can modify these models and how you can create animation of your own using these models. So, entire process is explained there. But in order to actually do that, you will need some background of blender. Therefore, use this course. So, that's how I put it. You can just use this website. So, about prerequisite, no minimum age criteria. I just leave it to you. What you feel is a minimum age for people to handle computers is the only thing you can think of. Otherwise, there is no such thing. Now, the second question is can every discipline, students from any discipline learn animation, there are people who have used animation in various formats and various types. And I'm going to show you two examples of that. Then second question is mostly hands-on training will be effective in this course. Are you supporting that? Yes, we are supporting that. That is why there are hands-on assignment in every chapter and you saw some results here. Of course, there is a discussion forum where people post something which is not there in assignment also. Sometimes I have received something which is we had not asked for. And people just out of their own curiosity or experimentation have been doing that and they just keep posting it. Now, the trend has become that they challenge each other. So, they say, okay, can you do this? And just two days back, there was a post from a student saying that can someone do a goodie in 3D? So, the goodie part was happening. So, they said, okay, can we try fluttering of the cloth with the goodie thing shown in 3D? So, yeah, such things are happening. What are the major application areas of this 3D animation where it can be applied or used? Yes, I'm going to show some of them. There is one more question, how to attend tomorrow's session? Okay, so I just skipped a couple of slides ahead. By the way, for people who are already enrolled and there are 2,700 students right now who are enrolled for this course and some of the remote center coordinators who are here are aware of it. There are many remote center coordinators who are not aware that there are students in their own remote center who have enrolled and obviously because they don't know that this such a course is running and students are interested. So, we have organized a view session tomorrow at 2 o'clock, 2 to 3, to answer some of the queries of the students who are already enrolled and for students who want to join and have some queries in their mind or for faculty members who are who need some more queries to be answered. So, all of you can make a note and that answers the second question here. I request you to conduct the session before 3.30 p.m. probably 2.30 to 3.30. Well taken care of. So, we will be conducting this session tomorrow. Now, I have two small agenda items here. One of the agenda items is from the audience where I wanted to talk to three people here. One is Professor Anand Murthy. Where is he? If you carefully look at him, it doesn't come across in in you can't think of that but in some sense of scanning one over next, he's the student and I was the teacher unfortunately or fortunately and he met me saying that I took your course and I enjoyed it. So, I just wanted him to yeah. I took your course the earlier time not now. Can you one over next? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I was just interested in blender. Okay. And I used blender on Slackware. Okay. So, I thought of experimenting on that. Yes. So, Professor Murthy is very much interested in open source and he was trying to see how we can add blender to various things. So, when we are discussing about gaming, he just mentioned that I would be utilizing it in his own way. I have Professor Nagapan here. Yeah. So, maybe you can. So, his college also had a lot of registrations for this course and I used to pester him a lot asking what is happening with the students. Thanks sir. Of course, I took the blender course first time when you launched it and because it was instructor led, I was not able to take a few quizzes in between and because of that anyway. I got the certificate at last submitting few assignments but I couldn't do up to the maximum but I suggested that to my students and when I took up elective game programming last year, I made all the students to register in your courses and I would like to mention about many of them have got the certificates and good grades and I would like to mention about one particular student who was Yugeshwar and that student had lot of areas in all the subjects but he got interest in this. He took up this course and one day he came and told me, sir, I have cleared game programming as well and in the first attempt and I have got blender certificate as well as this 3D architectural visualization certificate. Yeah, yeah and similar student actually I met him and I maintain a blog on my website where I've posted a document about him so his name was Roby and same thing happened, he called me one day saying that, sir, I have areas in other courses but I'm interested in animation, can I take it? I'm happy to report that now he has cleared all his backlogs and not only that he's one of the better speakers in the college now he's from Loyola College, Chennai and now he's one who goes out of the college and propagates about blender and talks and he has in fact gone into the mentoring stage so he was my teaching assistant, he's right now teaching assistant when I'm teaching this course the fourth time now so yeah so there are some kind of so you can show the second success story maybe. Yeah, so Suryash, Suryajwar, go down and just go down there is a video this guy made so yeah play that this person also learned blender from the course and then later on started using it for creating small videos and when I met him last I said what are you using this for so he said sir I'm very happy now because this supports my weekend pocket money now I'm not dependent on my parents anymore I just create some small videos like this and which are required for the gaming industry and I make my pocket money out of this so people are using it for various things just stop this and just show math amazing last one so that you guys were told we have showed him life we have given him life and one day he said I met Sameer sir and I have got my things so clear thank you so much sir right this is one of the projects which was done by a couple of students who completed the blender course and what they did was creating a game for school children play that and you see this maze which is created in blender and the entire game logic is also built in blender where the students have to stand in front of the particular computer are you playing it yeah yeah if you stand in front of the computer and computer has a connect associated with it so after the t-pose is scanned you can see that barley type of drawing there in the corner and now if you bend down the the android character will start moving on the track and you want to turn right so take the left hand out and after you do that the connect will recognize that convert it into signal go to blender a game engine blender game engine will tell blender and what you see on the screen will be this kind of animation and finally you'll be able to play the game we saw that this works very nice in fact some of the village schools are using this for as an attraction item for people to come back after the lunch hour because most of the time because of the lunch hour people don't turn back so i have some friends who are using this escape yeah so in a in short i wanted to share that there are multiple avenues where blender can be used and there are people who are using it for different things blender has been also very popular in commercial filmmaking nowadays couple of advertisement makers are preferring blender over maya and max simply because of the cost factor and very soon i can see even commercial filmmaking converting into this but the biggest industry currently which can employ engineers with the background of graphics and animation is the gaming industry and therefore we are coming up this with this basic course in gaming and since this course is mandatory or a prerequisite for that i would request all of you to keep that document which i have given i hope everyone has a copy of that if someone doesn't have it you can ask me or amit who is around yeah he's in that corner and i'm in this corner so if you have if you need a copy of that you can just take it and put it up on the notice board for students and we would be having this regular practice of having the aviu sessions so in case you miss tomorrows doesn't matter we'll have it every week and we have tried to encourage participation in in these courses by using other mediums such as we have a facebook page of our course and we have a whatsapp group of the coordinators who are doing it across so these measures have helped me actually push the passing percentage from what was nine percent when i offered it first to almost 30 percent when i offered it third time so this is how things are gradually changing and like i said more than that i'm more happy to see some kind of submissions which you just saw right now so thank you very much i hope i have answered most of the questions and i also kept on time for presah kandan to start his very interesting session on plickers we had our team had a question about gaming mainly they wanted they're teaching some virtual reality also would that be i want to know if that's part of gaming from your perspective and they want to know if blender can be used to build some simple the simple virtual reality kind of you know walkthroughs or interactions yeah or both yes i have used one of the teams here has been working with nid bangalore where we were working on the temples of i'm not getting that name but i think temples in south india where so we have blender being a open source thing and based on python that makes it makes the life easy of lot of people so we had we are included in that we had augmented reality with blender so in fact one of the series of my summer internship wish list used to be tracking with various hardware things or software things so virtual reality with this so we also so we had a virtual reality walkthrough of that temple created using blender where the model was blender and then we exported the 3d vertices for the walkthrough and we had good results of that so we have that we have already done that yeah that's possible thank you okay thank you


So, here are some examples. I am going to take various details of three examples. First example is that company created that cotton picking, cotton productivity enhancement tool. The idea is that people will go to a piece pot of cotton, lint I think it is called and then they will get this device and the device will suck the cotton into it and there is a conduit through which the cotton will directly go to a pack at the bottom and eventually you know once this person has finished the work there is already a bag full of good quality cotton sitting there all you need to do is wrap it and send it across. So Nitin Gupta became the CEO and the founder of it and it was done under the guidance of professor Divakar Sen at CPDM when it started. So, he didn't follow physical laws as you have understood. So they tried many things and it worked reasonably well but many times during when the prototype it failed miserably.  So, getting right material properties like strength, surface finish and so on was a major challenge. They were using rapid prototyping because they wanted to do it quickly. So they went through the cotton pod so they tried the idea and then they worked through that and here is the device that finally seemed to work. The idea is that I can use the fluid mechanics close to a surface. It creates a small amount of sucking and it can take that out. The problem was that they had a very limited time window in which they have to go and do all these exercises right because if they miss it one year they have to wait and if there is a modification to be done what is the time to do that?  The second thing is that tomorrow may not be the same as today. Today is hot, tomorrow is dewy. Once it is dewy there is more moisture in the cotton. Its ability to be sucked becomes very different. So again your design must be robust that it works across multiple threads of input. So they had to keep modifying, they had to go and do the piloting that is nothing standing there. In the production level when they wanted to now produce in large quantities plastic parts were a bigger challenge and of course it was investment dewy. Why? Because if you use injection molding which is a manufacturing process you have to have molds. Molds are expensive. If you have to change your design every once in a while you have to have every once in a while in different mold and that makes it very investment heavy. So they had to therefore compromise quality both design and features so that it was more or less like that but not quite and that can make a difference. And then there are parts that weren't faster than those that were anticipated or during testing in real field conditions and I said you know dewy was there that would change the overall performance. So there are many challenges that will come from the field. So the earlier you are in the field don't wait for finishing your design, your magnum opus before going to the field. Go to the field first, get connected with the people and then finally it came to business. Please remember this is one of those three pillars. Okay. Society, technology, business. So the product did everything that they thought they should do.  It happened. But despite that it did not create success in the market. What happened? It was not a win-win situation. All the stakeholders must be happy and they were not. It turned out that this machine that they created that picked cotton from the plant and directly packed into bag that was going directly to gaining mills where they will then get the the thread out of the cotton. So while they initially thought they are going to empower the person picking the cotton, they ended up empowering the company that is selling cotton. The middle people, middle men, they actually made all the money and not the person at the end. So because the supply chain was not financially benefiting or the main parts of the supply chain, it did not become market viable and the product thing. So it's important to remember that the equation for business is win-win-win-win-win. Everybody must be winning otherwise it's not going to win. So this is their business part, you know, they are they actually tried it. These bags are from the fields and this is the team. So you see the final product there you see this being picked up here. This shoot that is taking it to the bag at the bottom and then those bags are coming out. What is interesting is that yes, it failed. But what is success? Success is that the company survived. How did they survive? They moved and started looking at picking other things. So they have mango picking, they have apple picking and there they became a picking business, right? And the mango picking and apple picking is doing exceedingly well and they are getting, you know, left, right, center, all kinds of prizes. But also more importantly, they are making money. This is the team that's knitting that is winner ready. They are the main two sort of business and technology end of it. These are some of the other products that they've created. So they have all kinds of picking devices and they use some of the AI and machine learning now in order to see whether the apple is worth picking now, whether the mango is ready for picking now. Okay, so they have a camera up there and so on and they have a wire cutter that can be heated up from here. So you don't have to do this to cut it. So that's the ISBA Innovative Company that is 2018, then Pharmatic Startup 2018, then Fiki Business Award. That's Modiji there picking Nitin as one of the top 35 startups. Second example is that of Puraq, that prosthetic arm that I talked about. In design, their challenge was this high end function with affordable solution. And as I shared with you, the challenge was, can I minimize the number of actuators? Because if I can minimize number of actuators, I'll also minimize number of sensors. I'll also minimize number of controllers. So basically the whole thing is minimized. And second challenge was in the prototyping, getting the right manufacturing processes. The same manufacturing process may be brilliant for making 200 parts, but terrible for making one. Remember, injection molding is a classic example. So actually one problem that you should look at or some of you should look at is, how do I create a mold that can be changed into another mold and that can be changed into another mold? Molding is a major challenge where the cost is involved. The third one is in the production, how can we create low volume, low cost production process? See the problem is not everything is like a PCB or a computer chip and so on, which is coming out in millions. Your market is small in size. You will sell probably 20 in one month if you're doing well. And then the question is, how do I create a low volume high quality numbers at very competitive cost? So therefore, low volume, low cost production process becomes a challenge and that is the case for them. Not everybody is a lower arm and beauty. So you get small volume. And the fourth point is, how do I price my product? If I make it too expensive, nobody buys, if I make it too low, I don't make enough profit. So what is that sweet spot? And how do I penetrate the rural market? So this is a large number of people who can benefit that can be done. So those are the challenges that they are facing right now. Third example is going back to that mobile arms support project, where I want to spend a particular amount of time on only one part of the production level. So the detail design, I want to show how complex it is and therefore, how important it is to pay attention to detail. What did they do? We went through two different cycles. First, we created a proof of concept or design or prototype. We call it mass one. That was focused on only a certain group of people that you could find who would be agreeable to testing the device so that they could perform activities such as eating and drinking for which they are currently dependent on others. And then what did you come up with? We essentially came up with a four bar linkage. You know, when you have a four bar linkage, what happens is that the two bars remain parallel to each other. So if I have a four bar linkage, imagine this is a four bar linkage, right? One, two, three, four. If I take this line and if I rotate this line, these two bars still remain parallel to each other. So I can use that principle in order to move something up and down while retaining the orientation. And that's the advantage of using four bar mechanics. So you can use multiple four bar mechanisms. And so that you can give the degree of freedom here, I can use one four bar mechanism and connect another four bar mechanism with a rotational joint and then I can keep them in parallel to each other. It's not optimized with respect to cost, weight and aesthetic. Therefore, we went from the pilot into a mass two, a second prototype, second design where improved functionality, it can cover larger area and cost and weight are more optimized. So this new design had a more sculptured surface. It has a polar coordinate oriented motion. And it also had all kinds of other things. So that the arm is more comfortably possible to be used. I want to focus on only one part. Now that part is very interesting. When you go from pilot to production, what happens? Your volume increases. Now, when you want to increase the volume, you have to have more of these mobile dystopy sufferers to be brought into the realm of your product. Now, the more the number of people, the more the number of wheelchairs. And therefore, the more the variety of wheelchairs. All the designers have put all their creativity and created very different wheelchairs. What is it that you do so that it becomes universally fitable? So therefore, I'm only focusing on that part. I'm not talking about the mobile arms support at all. Only how to connect that to different kinds of wheelchairs. So you have the wheelchair. This is just one wheelchair. And it happens to have a rod there and that's at an angle. And I have to fix it to that rod, let's say. But my actuator must remain vertical because if it's at an angle, it's not going to work properly. So therefore, it might be adjustable. And how do I do that? Another wheelchair may have the rod somewhere here. It may have a slightly different size. So we have to deal with those. What the team decided is that we are going to have an intermediate bracket.  So we therefore created one design for everybody. Now we have to create a design. It may still be one design only, but it must now be applicable to multiple types of wheelchairs. So it has to connect to the wheelchair and to the actuator. This is the actuator, the arm support, and this is the wheelchair. So then the team decided we are going to have a bracket and then the actuator will connect to that bracket. Wheelchair will connect to the bracket, actuator will connect to the bracket. The bracket becomes an intermediary element. This study was published in one of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Design, Engineering, Technical, and Conferences. A very good student of mine, Burkhardul from University of Darmstadt, was the student who actually did the study. So therefore I have a very detailed report on this and I thought this would be brilliant to share with you. There is a leads to actuator powered by a DC motor gearbox and that connects and provides this power to the vertical motion. And then there is an attachment that attaches the actuator, arm support, assembly to the wheelchair. We need to have a way of holding the actuator arm support in vertical position. It must remain vertical. Attachment to a range of wheelchairs which can have different you know orientation and so on and a means of connecting the two. So we looked at a bunch of wheelchairs. What did we find? We found that there are no common attachment points. Only commonality is that their tubular frames are the only common elements. But these tubular frames have at least one vertical side that we can use. So we decided on a vertical bracket. Therefore the problem became changed now of how to connect a vertical bracket to the actuator mechanism. Now with respect to that component, we are now designing components because we are in the detailed design stage. The component must cost low. It must be easy to dismantle without loss of adjustment. And its angle of actuator axis should be possible to adjust. The number of parts should be low. Why? Because it is roughly proportional to the cost. Design should be discrete. It should merge into the rest of the design. And it should be fitting to many wheelchairs. Easy to install, cheap, pleasing aesthetics and so on. So back to that diagram again. Bracket is already there. We are trying to connect these assembly to that bracket. So we have on the vertical plane and we are connecting the tube. So this is what comes from mass one. The hole for the wheelchair tube. Where the wheelchair tube will be there. And the hole for the tube that holds the actuator assembly. So basically what you do is you open these two pieces. You get into the wheelchair tube. It wraps around that here. That's the wheelchair tube. And then you get the other mount support, hold it. Somebody else takes a screw and puts it there and tightens it. That's it. Done. But for a very specific support. Now we are going to have to attach it to a plane. Which means we need to have screws on that plane. So you can connect it to the bracket. You have two screw lines. So you get the bracket. You put that there. You put two screws there and it's attached to the bracket. Here is the arm support assembly. And you put another screw and tighten it and it's ready. This is the top view of the arm support. This is where the bracket is. If I tighten here what happens? It forks. These two elements here. And here where there are two screws. They should form a plane. They are no longer a plane. So it's not going to work over a period of time. The whole thing is going to collapse. So then you can think of another solution. Instead of putting one screw to tighten it. You have two screws. One on this side and one on that side. And you adjust that. Such that these two planes remain on a single plane. That's going to be a nightmare for adjustment. But assuming that you are so good at adjusting. That you can do it. The problem is that there are also other two screws coming from the side. That is holding it against the bracket. These two are going to interfere with each other. Or make the part sufficiently weak. That over a period of time your robustness and reliability is going to go out of the window. So what I want you to appreciate is the interplay between cost, manufacturing, number of parts, functionality. It's not one or the other. It's one and the other. And that's an interesting challenge for you. And one way to deal with this is that we are going to have this whole thing as a single part. The problem is happening because there are two parts. And we have to keep these two planes on the same plane. Can I make the whole thing a single plane? Because it's a single part. I can attach the actuator assembly to that. And the plane. And I can use the part can. The assembly can come from one side. It's a continuous slot. So I can push it in. And it's slightly bigger in size. And then I can have the screw to tighten it. But the bad news here is that this part is going to have a lot of bending. And that's not good.  And the screw has to go through a lot of stress. And that's bad news. So over a period of time, this is not going to remain a robust and reliable design. Then the team actually looked at what is inspired by another design that was a dental attachment. But the dental attachment seems close enough that we could use it. So we started looking at it. Imagine this is your arm support. You're looking at top view again. This is the plane on which you're going to attach. That's for the bracket. The difference between the earlier design and this is the following. That here your pivot is not a single point. Your pivot is a plane. So if your pivot is a plane, there is a brass pivot. So if I open that, I see that there is a plane here. Then what I can do is I can put two screws here and I can attach that to the bracket. And I can use this screw to tighten it. The only thing that you have to ensure is that this is not a full circle. So if I take a block and make a through hole and if I cut it into two and if I put it together, then I'm not going to clamp anything. It's going to support each other. So therefore I have to take a thin portion out of it so that it can do this. And then I can tighten and it goes and clamps the object. Now look at the manufacturing. How are you going to do that?  Let's say that you are using something like a CNC milling. So how does CNC milling happen? Does anybody know? So basically you have a cutter like that, a cylinder that goes around like that. It rotates like that, like that. So when it does that, it takes the material out at the bottom. So and I can take a portion of this and leave a little bit of this at the end. And then those two points can become your plane pivot. I can have two element pivot, one and here, one. It will still sit together and provide me a nice stable plane on this side. Right?  And here the attachment mechanism will come and using this screw I can tighten it. So now I have these two attaching to this plane, attaching to the bracket. And this plane where I can put this screw and tighten it to clamp it. But then these are rectangle. Originally we put the two screws here because that it was a circular object. And in that circular object that was the only plane available. The end of the cylinder was the only plane. But it's a rectangular object. I have more planes. I can put my bracket here. Therefore, this whole struggle that we are going through of making sure that these two planes have to be on the same plane can now be dispelled with. If I do that, I don't need these two screws. I can put the screws on this side and therefore those screws can do double functions. One is they can attach to the bracket. And two, they can clamp the mechanism. So in other words, my number of parts goes down. Good news. So this becomes your design. So you have this plane where the bracket is fixed. These two screws with which tight. And both these screws are Allen screws, let's say. Which means that it has a hexagonal head in the middle. So I can then operate with a single tool which is good rather than multiple tools because then my cost of tooling is less. My cost of training somebody to use the tool is less. One problem is that it's a big chunk of metal. Why should I waste so much material? So can I reduce the weight of this project? The team said, okay, what we can do now is that can I potentially use a tube and then cut the tube into two. And of course, cut a little bit more. Remember, you have to do this. But that's still a lot of cutting. I have to take a whole tube. I have to put it in a jig. I have to make sure it is parallel. And I have to cut it properly, right? Can I not use standard parts? So they said, yes, we can. We have channel sections. We can buy sections that look like this. So can I take two of those and put back to back, hold it properly, take a thin material out in the middle, and then make the hole. And now it's ready for working, right? And now I have reduced the number of parts and also standardized. The more you standardize, the better. Because if I am producing that part in millions, my quality is going to be better than if you are making three. So therefore we should take advantage wherever possible. Finally, that's the design. You have one channel section, one channel section, and that can come from the same material, right? So I can take a single stock and keep cutting and then turn it around, make the cut and I'm ready. And then you connect with two screws. So your number of parts has dramatically come down, your weight has come down, your reliability and robustness has gone up. And that's the final design. What is it that we learned from this study of a single part? It's effectively just one very simple case study. One is that we actually apply, we look at the problem one at a time. We say, okay, how do I reduce part? How do I reduce the weight? How do I make sure that it gets clamped? And when you do that, you create new problems. The process is very simple. It is actually identifying the problem and solving the problem. And to do that, you have to go through four stages, okay? You do that almost unconsciously, but I want to make it explicit. You identify problem. You come up with ways to resolve the problem. You model and evaluate the problem. And this process goes on until you are satisfied or you are completely dissatisfied that you give up. And this requires knowledge from functional, behavioral, structural, operational, manufacturing, assembly. It's kind of a complete package. So I want you to therefore learn all of them in an integrated manner. That is important. And remember the importance of standard parts. Remember that there are certain things that are considered common sense. Common sense is the most uncommon sense actually. And therefore you should look at those principles and guidelines of a monument, okay? Simplicity, safety, reduction of material, elimination of redundant or unnecessary parts. Individually, very easy to say, yeah, everybody understands. But collectively, you need to ensure that you apply them. When you are evaluating, you don't evaluate one with respect to one criterion and another alternative with respect to another criterion and say, therefore, this one is better. You have not used the same standard for both, right? You are saying this looks better and that was functions better. Therefore, I am going to choose this one because it looks better. Make sure that you use the same set of criteria for evaluating, okay? Selection, interestingly enough, when you are operating at that microscopic level, is very much dependent on your level of satisfaction. And if your level of satisfaction is low, you are going to come up with a low quality product. But it is also dependent on your knowledge and your deadline, okay? Given a lot of time, you can do better, but there is always deadline. So you have to ensure that your satisfaction level is high enough and still commensurate with the amount of time that is available. Remember that every time you make modification, only that particular problems solution is becoming better, not necessarily other ones. You have probably already designed well, now you have modified it for some other purpose. The earlier design became worse. So keep an eye on whether your earlier modifications are getting affected. Finally, I want to again emphasize the importance of the business angle, okay? Ultimately, you want it to go out to the society. It is not just an exercise in intellectual adventure. As I said, only this became possible when somebody was ready to pay for it. So make sure that you bring it right at front of the design process. At the time of task life in itself, you talk, you discuss, you think about business. And then at the end, you validate that. At the beginning, you make sure you take into account. At the end, you validate that. Our vision is to, of course, excel in design and manufacturing. Why? Because you want to have people who can go out and develop systemically complex, technologically intensive, socially impactful solutions that are functional, aesthetic, usable and accessible. Now, I deliberately use the word systemically complex. Now, when you are thinking about a problem, you normally are focused on that point. Here is something that I want to reduce the weight. You should not create new problems. Overall, your number of problems should go down. Or the overall intensity of problems should go down. And that is what is called systemically complex. For example, I can make a car very cheap at the time of buying at the cost of making it very expensive in the rest of his lives. That is shifting cost. It's not really reducing cost. We have two programs. One is a masters in design program. About 25 students per year, two years. Engineers and architects as and of course, leaders. And then we train them in technical, aesthetic, ergonomics and so on. Aspects where we expect that in their final year project, they are able to create working prototypes with visual aesthetic appeal. And about 30 to 50 percent of them get patents. The other part is of course, PhD and MSc program. In design and manufacturing research, we have labs like labs on creativity, sustainability and so on. We have, of course, we have pioneered the formal PhD program in the country. But also, we have started an intake in smart manufacturing from this year. Professor Chakravarty and we are very strongly connected. Is that both of us have one of the first innovation, design innovation centers, DICs that is funded by MHRD's Government of India. Also the NDI and the National Design Innovation Network which we lead, like the Open Design School is led by IDC. We are again very strongly connected. And there is this Indo-US Center of Excellence Sustainable Manufacturing, the Berkeley and so on. This is by the way, one of my labs. It's called Ideas Lab. So it's the first design observatory in India where we basically have cameras and other devices with which we actually see people, how they design. And we try to learn the way they design, whether that is good or bad or where we can improve, where we can learn from them because they do it well, where we can maybe teach them later on and develop tools and methods with which to improve their performance. And that's it. Thank you. You have tremendous power. To change people's lives, use it. That's my most important message. Yeah. Forget everything I have said, but change people's lives. All right.


Hi guys, so let's learn this popular song, Zarurat and this is on basically an E minor scale. So let's go through the E minor scale, right? So E minor is basically a derivative of G major, G major. So a quick trick to build a minor scale is on start from the sixth note. So G major sixth, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Sare Gamma Padha, this is your sixth. From the sixth you play the same notes and you get what we call in western music as a natural minor scale. So in this song what makes it rather interesting is sometimes the seven or the knee is a flat one or a flat seven and in some cases it becomes a sharp or a normal major seventh. So that allows us to go into two scales, which is natural minor, which is the harmonic minor which definitely gives it a very eastern vibe. So sometimes the vocalist and the chord arranger and the composer will hover around this between the D and the D sharp. So that's one interesting aspect of the song. The other interesting aspect of the song is how we can count a nice pattern for the piano. And I think this is pretty much a standard in a lot of the modern day pop songs. So I've marked out a groove which you can see here on the right in our note section. You basically have an eighth note pattern.   So if I clap that out for you 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and so that's basically going to be all your hits or accents or strike points if you will on the piano or pretty much on any instrument if you're playing chords. Now guitar players do an interesting thing wherein they'll play these accents but they'll also sort of create a ghost note where they don't actually play the chord. They just mute the guitar. So you'll get a sound like 2 but even they could be focusing on those accents. On the piano you can't really do ghost notes that effectively. So what you do is just focus on the hits. So I'm going to take the first chord of the verse and the chorus and the verse 2 and the bridge which is E minor. So remember E minor it's there for the most part.  So one thing we'll do unlike some of our earlier videos where we do it from the beginning till the end is let's try and start with the chorus since the chorus is the most important and the most popular part of the song and it also repeats a hell of a lot. So let's try and take the chorus and show this pattern. First we'll do it with Navin singing and then after which I'll break it down for you. So stay tuned. Okay this is my rhythm 1, 2, 3. So you see all the strike points are at that 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and pretty much the same pattern used in a lot of pop songs even if you take like an Ed Sheeran song. It's pretty much at the same accent points right. A lot of western artists, Indian artists well the whole world pretty much seems to believe that 1, 2 and 4 is going to make something really groovy which it does. So let's do the chorus now a little slower and I'll call out the chords as I'm playing. 1, 2, 3, 1, E minor, C major, E minor, 4 times, C major, D major, Okay let me try doing it by pointing out the chords on the note sheet as well. 1, 2, start, E minor, C, E minor, E minor, oh yeah it repeats again right. Now coming to the verse again you can stick with the same groove. Another way to count this groove is 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2. If you're finding it difficult to catch the ends that's a nice thing you can try. And we've done a lesson also on this it's called the 3, 3, 2 pop chord progression which is used in a lot of songs whether it's Bollywood songs or whether it's the top Billboard chart songs as well right. So in the description there's that video do go ahead and watch that not now finish this and then watch that. Okay so moving forward let's do the verse the first verse is on the darker side so he plays E minor and then C major but what's interesting about that is it's C major with an E bass. E minor, C major, you stick to the E bass so that creates a very dark vibe and all the pre-chorus of the song basically have the same common ending that's A minor, G major, B major again but you stop the rhythm just hold it there and then back to the chorus. So the pre-chorus I repeat is always A minor in that same 3, 3, 2 rhythm G, B. If you like you can even play the B sus the B suspended chord since there are two B's hold it and then do the chorus right. So let's try and take up verse one there are two unique verses in this song and there's a bridge so it's good to learn all the sections and in the bridge the rhythm slightly changes so do stick around this is quite a detailed tutorial we're trying to cover pretty much all the parts of this song right so verse one that's E minor with C and E bass four times is the fourth time of the pre-sus so that's your entire verse section perhaps let's try this again maybe a little slower so you guys can get the chord changes and if you can you know try playing along with me as well okay whenever you're ready then going to the chorus the verse one and chorus one is over then we go to like a nice instrumental section which is on the E minor and the C major chords guitar instrumental part which maybe we can cover in a later video and then coming back to verse two right so in verse two the chords are slightly different please look at the note sheet for the different chords and the chord changes are basically quite simple it's not very difficult there's an E minor and a minor D major okay so that's a quick change and the second time you don't do the quick change you just do E minor a minor D major G stay on G and then our usual pre-chorus comes comes back a minor G if you want play Bsus and resolve it to B and back to the chorus okay however I think in the pre-chorus is the melody of the vocalist changes a bit that's not going to affect you much on the chord instrument right okay let's do the verse two please now A minor A minor back to the same chorus right so I think that's quite easy so then it goes to a bridge part where the guitar is actually playing power chords so that's like jjjjj so he's doing pretty much the same 3 3 2 pattern but it sounds a bit more heavier because it's played as power chords which is the root the 5th and the octave so this is the E power chord. So the guitar sets it up and then we come in with the bridge. The only different thing which I added was in my left hand I made it a bit heavier with power chords. However the right hand accents were pretty much the same and there's also a very interesting chord which is the B over D sharp which I'd like to just show you. You have B major in the right hand and you have a D sharp in the left hand. So that adds a little bit more tension to the to the bridge section and generally a bridge in any song which you hear whether it's a film song or a pop song. Generally in the bridge you try to do something out of the box and that's what's going on clearly in this song. So it sort of breaks that monotony from the chorus which you know you you all want to hear again and again but then it still can get a bit boring right. So yeah it's quite a nice song rhythmically and chordily also some very interesting chords as I said at the beginning it uses the natural minor scale as well as the harmonic minor scale. So a lot to learn from this song and it can definitely help you grow forward as a musician. So all the best and have fun playing this. Cheers. Don't forget to like, subscribe, hit that bell icon for notifications, leave us a comment for any other video you'd like us to do next and don't forget to share the video with all your musician friends. Cheers.