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okay we are recording okay welcome to the show Dr Novotny

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thank you so much for being with me today how are you what is going well I'm doing well Simon I really appreciate

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you reaching out to me and inviting me on it's it's an honor to be here and it's great having a good day and ready

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to talk and share wonderful talking sharing is what is what this is all about so that's great

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you're in a good space I love it um why don't you just introduce yourself to myself and the audience let us know

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who you are and what it is that you do please sure absolutely so

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I did that for a few years and then switched out of that to helping people in kind of a unique way so some people

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ask well what is it you do and I usually say well for some people I help them out

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of surgeries they alleviate pain that would necessitate a joint replacement back surgery neck surgery rotator cuff

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surgery ACL surgery for other people it's alleviating their stress their anxiety their Panic for others it's

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insomnia helping them sleep better at night and even others it's chronic pain but the common thread for all of that is

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this nervous system the fight-or-flight nervous system that ramps us up and puts us on high alert as we learn to calm

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that down and get into a parasympathetic relaxation starts to free up the body so

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we free up the body the joints start to move normally again your muscles start to work normally again your body can

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feel calm so you're less emotionally reactive you are less

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um you know in that frantic State and so that's kind of what I do cool love that did you

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did you learn about what you so some of the methodology in which you use to help

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those people whether recovering from an injury or they have stress in their lives did you learn about that during

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your doctorate or is it something that you kind of um had a keen interest in a connection

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to maybe personally and that's kind of like what led you down that route yeah it's the kind of the latter so I

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didn't learn about this in the in the doctoral program at all and it was quite interesting because when I was in that

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program I you know we learned ways to help people in various you know joint pains

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but it didn't feel like the answer to me I'd see people with chronic pain and

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like okay I'm addressing what I was supposed to looking at all the body parts but they're still having issues

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and so at the same time I was training for the Boston Marathon qualifying for

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it and I was running on a treadmill eight miles in less than an hour three times a week

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and if you're a marathoner and I had already run I don't know five six seven marathons or whatever you it's very

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common to have some type of pain that's associated with the running that kind of lingers usually for a few days a few

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weeks or whatever and at the time I started experimenting with my own body changing the nervous system by changing

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how I positioned myself in the mechanics of my diaphragm and when I did that all

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of a sudden like pain went away just like that like literally just like that and I got off that Mill and it didn't

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feel like I just ran eight miles in 50 minutes and I was like oh this is interesting

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really interesting and so I started experimenting with it more and more I stopped stretching I stopped foam

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rolling I stopped scraping all the different tools that I was telling people you had to do and that's how I started developing this

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technique and I at first it was to help people with pain and then people would

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tell me my stress is less like I'm not having the panic attacks

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I'm not having anxiety attacks I can sleep again and so that's when I realized okay I'm

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not just doing something on a superficial level I'm helping people change something

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about their mental health as well their emotional health their ability to calm and that's when I started diving

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into okay what am I really impacting is it and it's not me and when I say me I

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shouldn't say me what is a person really impacting it's it's their nervous system they're learning how to change their

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nervous system and it took several years of putting pieces together and thinking okay you know John here he walked in

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bent over he couldn't stand up and then when he left he's you know kicking his

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leg up in the air or dancing around all fine and then you know his whole mentality

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was different too and so it took some time to figure that out and then especially when I shift shifted to all

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virtual in 2020 and started working with people more for Stress and Anxiety and

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Trauma that's when I realized okay there's more to it than just meet CI

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that's super interesting and a question that's just come up for me in my mind right now is like how do you because you

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determine the beginning you work with people who like have had a surgery or an injury and then also people who maybe

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have like depression or anxiety and who want to like you know get get through that or heal it you know

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how do you connect the two of those because if I was you know because at the end of the day like say if you go to a doctor

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with the the injury or the pain you're going to get referred like somewhere completely different and if you go to a

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doctor and you say you're depressed and you've got these other symptoms fatigue and you're going to go and see someone

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completely different so like how is it that you are like bringing both of those in into the same practice how do you

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explain to people like the engagement of the nervous system like that's kind of like in the middle of that yeah so in

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both of those cases the body is is holding on to something from the past or

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even the present so whether it's it's stress that leads to muscles Contracting that pulls the

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joints out of position and now leads to butting up against each other and causing pain

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or with like anxiety a person's had some stress that's developed into some worry

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that's developed into chemical brain changes and body changes that has led to this spiral so that they

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then have tension and pressure in their body that leads to a change in their

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body and even more problems so that's another way both of them they're they

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lead to different results based on a person their body and what their how they react to stress

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but they both have this commonality that when you help someone get out of a fight

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or flight mode it can release them physically but it can really some mentally and emotionally

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and we talk about this it's called your autonomic nervous system and how it plays a role in your body and there's

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there's a breakdown of that nervous system and how that affects people and so often someone who is is suffering

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from maybe anxiety or depression they often have a psychologist or psychiatrist that they're talking to to

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get mental strategies and then working with me on the body releasing the stored

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Trauma from their past that has led them to down the road of anxiety panic and depression

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is that a tough thing to explain to people because you talk I feel like you're talking about like stored energy

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or stored something or when you you use the word holding on to something I think a lot of people you know if we can't use

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our senses to experience something then it's very very difficult for us to understand like what that actually means so when you say holding on to something

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like what does that mean and how do you explain to somebody that like that experience that they have be that like

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psychological or a physical accident how that's like still physically manifested within the

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body and whether that's like in a specific tissue or something it's just

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like I find it very difficult to explain like how energy and frequency Works

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within like our human body to people who've got no experience with that and also like really just understand their

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reality through like their senses and if we can't see it or touch it or smell it or feel it then it's not it's not right

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really there and I just wonder how do you explain that to people because I I feel like to to get on that road to recovery they have to be on the same

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understanding as you right because if their knowledge is not in it there's no way they're going to be able to like do the work outside of your office that's

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going to get to the results that they want to get yeah and so a lot of times I'll use kind

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of vivid examples so for instance I'll say okay if I lift a pail of water with my arm I can see the bicep muscle in my

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upper arm contract and I can relax it that's a voluntary control if I can see it work I can get it to stop now if I'm

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just sitting here talking to you and all of a sudden I hear a loud bang go outside and to me it sounds like a

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gunshot and I jump and I tense all up now if I was still holding that bucket of water and I put

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the bucket down not all of that bicep muscle would go away some of it would still be

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contracted and the rest of my body would feel contracted too and most people can

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visualize that when I heard that bang it developed a fear in me and that caused

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my whole body to contract and I feel like I tightened up I may be in a ready position to run or flee or jump out a

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window or you know hide for dear life if if I look outside and I see oh dang

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it it was just a car backfiring it was nothing for me to fear now when I did

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that I just looked out and I cleared myself mentally emotionally and intellectually

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but if I don't pause a second and clear myself physically

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my nervous system is going to keep all of those muscles in my body Contracting

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and when it keeps them all Contracting my physical state is storing up that

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response from that sound that I that I equated with fear

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and so this is what happens to us on a daily basis we have little tiny stressors that may not be so big as that

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emotional stressor but we have little tiny stressors that happen all day long where our body reacts and contracts and

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gets a little bit tighter you hear some bad news from your boss or you have an employee that's not behaving that the

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way you like and you just kind of tense up a little bit and you're just like on edge you're sitting on the edge of your chair now that might resolve but if you didn't

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stop and clear your body and say okay let go let go of that tension and go through a

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process of releasing it if you don't do that your nervous system is going to think that it needs to continue doing

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that and that's where people get in trouble is they don't release that tension in that extra tone in their body

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on a daily basis and I usually say I recommend releasing it a couple times a day because you

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don't want to want it to build up and that's why people get stiff tight they

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can't bend over their hamstrings are tight they feel like they can't breathe they can't sleep at night because their

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body can't calm down they're emotionally reactive um the list goes on and on

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so if we can get the body to clear on a daily basis you'll you can see your your

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emotional reactivity is not so great your ability to focus improves you are mobile more flexible Stronger All I mean

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you can just keep naming all the benefits yeah but we see so much so many examples

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of that like nervous system shifting clearing recalibration whatever you want to call it within the Animal Kingdom

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right and um whether it's because we've got like a little bit more complex brains and we

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have this like wild ability to be able to um experience

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the same kind of like minor stresses quite unconsciously every single day and

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we're not quite aware of them actually coming in and causing those like you know

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the blocking of energy or the tightness within your body or just the continuous engagement of your sympathetic nervous

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system be it like tiny fragmented times like a thousand times a day we're not

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like super aware of that but like what's the difference between um like clearing your body in the moment

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of something happening say like you're super experienced at doing this and something happens and you you know you

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get that fright you get that shock and then you recognize that you know um it's not a great threat to you right now and

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then you can clear that experience from you what's the difference between that process and then what most people do

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which is like it just gets stored up and stays in the body and we don't ever like take steps to recalibrate yeah so when

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you release you know after a big event or on a daily it's

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the easiest way to say it is your body feels free you don't feel restricted you feel like a little kid again where you

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can just sit on the floor you can crawl on the floor you can sit however you want you can roll around you can climb

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stairs you can get in and out of bed you're not careful because you're not afraid you're gonna injure yourself

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because things just flow and you don't feel pressure in your body

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breathing is easy movement is easy things just work and flow and so I call

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it body Freedom your body's freed up but when you don't take those steps and

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you don't learn how to release your body or the muscles and the systems every day

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what happens is the muscles start to pull abnormally and each day there could be a little bit

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of shift and a little bit of shift a little bit of shift and they're pulling on bones and joints and Joints come to

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two bones come together to create a joint sometimes more than one more than two bones but the two bones just make it

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simple come together create a joint and there's space usually between those bones to allow you to move and slide and

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stuff like that what happens when muscles start to pull abnormally they start to pull the bones just slightly

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out of position and you can decrease space and then you get rubbing and wear and A Tear and that's when people

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develop chronic pain and you often see it where someone's hasn't had an injury

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at all and they go to bed after a really stressful event they wake up the next

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morning they have some type of pain and they're like where did that come from like I literally wasn't doing anything

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and then they'll say oh it must have been because 20 years ago I got into that skiing accident

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and they just continue and the pain gets worse pain gets worse they go and they'll get a x-ray and they're like oh yeah it's arthritis you have arthritis

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now and so they'll blame it on that or bursitis or you have tendonitis and they'll blame it on those different

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things and then like okay what if we get you to release some of

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that tension in your body that was derived from various stressors whether it's a physical stress or mental

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emotional spiritual whatever your stressor is or combination of what if we start to

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get your body to release the muscles are not told to contract like that

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anymore because a nervous system calms down the muscles start to release the joints now the bones go back into their normal

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position and you slide and glide and you move the way that you were designed and the thing is then the pain stops because

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the impingement and the wear and tear stops now have you stopped the arthritis

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well arthritis is really a you know a wear and tear of the cartilage on your bone but people equate

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arthritis with pain it's not really the same thing but it's

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if you get rid of the pain that doesn't mean your your arthritis went away just your cartilage could still be gone but

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you're not having the pain because the tissues are not butting up against each other and so I prefer people avoid all of that

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sequela so I encourage people to learn to release their body on a daily basis it's

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preferably as young as possible to learn it because it's not that old age equals

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pain which most people think it does it's older age equals a lot of stresses

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that have built up and the potential that they weren't released

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some people are very good at releasing their stressors and that's why they don't have pain

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others not so much and that's why they need guidance and help to be able to

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teach themselves how to do that would you say that a lot of like disease like that we you know pathologize

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is a big build up of this you know lack of clearing

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I would say so on many different levels um one is the nervous system level so

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yes from there um from a mental and emotional level as well because your hormones and chemicals

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change based on how well you handle stress manage stress how well you perceive yourself

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negativity versus positivity of thoughts that determine stuff as well as even

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what you put in your body so much of disease is related to the foods and

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Foods we eat and the you know the drinks we intake so that as well as how well

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you sleep so those are all of it's kind of combined but the nervous system does definitely plays a major role

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does if I if I the further back the trauma is is that harder to clear or is

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it like the more recent it is like how how do you like go about that because obviously a lot of people's

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pain trauma emotional experience mostly negative is that is it harder

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like as you go back because of the you know because there's there's maybe decades in between like you doing the

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work with them and then the actual thing kind of happening to them I mean obviously yeah It's Tricky like

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is it harder to treat when it's like happened so further back in the past um I would say there's a definite

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element when it happens when you're a young child um there's a definite element of

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of a permanence because our first seven years were going through life and were developing a

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lot of subconscious programming so if you're traumatized as a little child

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you're definitely going to develop some protective mechanisms and subconscious programming that will impact your

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decision making as an adult the same time a lot of it depends on a person's experience in their

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interpretation of what happened to them and there can be people who

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who get through that trauma based on the way they interpret the event and that

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how their body responds and that might be a little bit faster of a progression as they moved through the processing of

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that trauma and then some people go into like a fighter free state where it just

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it stays with them or they dissociate from their body and connect can't connect to their body and so that's

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going to be a longer process to be able to move through it and

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and not necessarily forget the trauma but be able to coexist with the past of

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what happens and learning to change or at least

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be able to mentally go through what happened to them but not have that same live in body experience at the moment

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they're thinking about it yeah it sounds like we could serve our children and you know when they turn

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into adults so much better with just like simple education around like what the nervous system is what it does how

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it impacts you on a day-to-day basis autonomically um it would just be quite I've just had

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a few I've had a few clients in my nutrition practice like adults and I and I ask them like no what do you know

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about like your nervous system and like your fight or flight or something and then like nobody knows like really the difference between what's going on and

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then when you explain it even just a little bit I have this like very simple YouTube kind of like cartoony video that

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I share to people and it blows their mind in a few minutes because they they can recognize that I'm just I'm just

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constantly in this stress State there's no wonder like my digestion's all over the place regard and I eat all the great

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Foods in the world and I exercise like insane amounts and I still can't lose weight and do all these things and then

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people are recognizing like what the nervous system is what it does how it like continuously fluctuates and it kind

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of goes back to the point I was saying like if we can't like see it or like touch it then it you know it's very very

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difficult for people to kind of wrap their heads around but obviously the nervous system very much is like as

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we're kids is viciously involved and it ends up you know teaching us how to think how to respond how to feel or how

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to like be so it's uh we're clearly like doing a disservice in regards to the miseducation or just like an education

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of of the nervous system I'd love to talk to you about breathing because you said something really cool about um when

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you're on the treadmill and you know you were working with your diaphragm I love it can you just tell us like what the

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diaphragm is um and what is it that we misunderstand about breathing because we obviously all

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breathe but we don't maybe all do it well or enough or I don't know you

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explain please yeah [Music]

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to it and then walls so if you imagine a barn Silo maybe maybe a short squatty

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one not really a really tall one but a short squatty one there's some walls and then there's a dome that sits that's on

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top of it now ideally that muscle is designed for us to

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use to take in air into our lungs so we can get oxygen into our bloodstream and

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and therefore and go forward with that now the problem is we're often used to

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using our rib cage to breathe instead of the diaphragm so how many times have you gone to a doctor and the doctor says

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okay take a deep breath in and they'll go and they lift up their shoulders their

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ribs and chest and arch their back and we see that all the time we're taught

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take a deep breath in just puff up your chest take that deep breath in and so I say well that's teaching you to

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use your ribs if you're sitting here right now and you initiate an inhalation

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and your lower ribs down by the kind of the front lower ribs on the side if you

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feel them lift up you're using your rib cage to breathe those ribs ideally we want them to be

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still because those ribs being down and being held down by the side abdominal

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muscles that's what supports the diaphragm so the diaphragm Dome can drop down to allow you to inhale

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so basically when we breathe in air the way that we get air into the lungs

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is through creating a space inside us that has negative pressure so air Flows In

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okay that is the purpose of the diaphragm the diaphragm Dome contracts down which

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creates almost like this empty space or negative pressure so air Flows In Like a vacuum anything what a vacuum does

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things get sucked into the vacuum or diaphragm is kind of like our vacuum it's trying to pull air into our lungs

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the problem is if the diaphragm is not supported and the Dome can't drop down

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then you have to do something else to create a negative pressure situation or like a vacuum situation

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and since most people aren't supporting their diaphragm they're lifting up their ribs to create that same effect

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so if you breathe and you feel yourself lifting up your rib cage going up or out

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or your arch in your back your shoulders lifting up your heads going back you know you're not really using your

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diaphragm to its full potential you're using a lot of accessory aspects of your body to try to get air

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in and some people like well who cares like I'm getting there and all that doesn't that isn't that what's important well

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not really the diaphragm also it there's a nerve

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that goes through it called the vagus nerve that goes from your brain stem it goes down and it's what tells a lot of

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your organs to work when the diaphragm is going up and down that Dome is going up and down it stimulates that nerve and

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that nerve calms you down you're down so those organs can work

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better so you want to use your diaphragm you really do

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but real quick too yes sir the other reason you don't want to use your neck

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back shoulders and ribs to breathe is because the more you do that the more those muscles get used and develop knots

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and tightness and that's another driving force of why people get a lot of neck pain back pain shoulder pain all of

25:20

those pains it's because they're using these muscles to breathe and they're not supposed to be breathing with those

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muscles would I be right in saying that most people breathe with like the rib cage in their upper body

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a lot of people breathe by they call it belly breathing or the rib cage so belly

25:38

breathing is not diaphragmatic breathing belly breathing is just shoving your belly out and causing your back to contract or or you know distending your

25:45

abdomen so a lot of people will do that or they lift up the rib cage and just you know try to get air into their chest

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why do most people like I mean that's obviously breathing incorrectly I suppose but why are most people doing

25:58

that like what I mean I presume we were designed pretty well um through Evolution and at some point

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we stopped doing it properly like what's what's what cultural evolution is is caused this usually it's when people are

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kids they listen to their parents who say sit up straight chest out shoulders back suck up your gut as soon as you

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listen to someone and do that you you change your breathing mechanics and now you're going to start to go towards a

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path of tightness breathing problems or pain or something like that when you

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look at little toddlers and kids before they're cognizant and before they can listen to us their ribs are down their

26:37

bellies are out which is what we want so when I tell

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someone to Exhale I say let your belly come out let your ribs drop down you want to get back to being free in

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your body roly-poly like a little kid do exact opposite of what you've been told to do by well-intentioned parents

26:57

teachers military Performing Arts athletic coaches I mean the list goes on

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and if you can let go of what you were taught and you get back to way that you were as

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a little kid before you stopped started listening guess what your body starts to return that way too and obviously it

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does if there's a process to it because most people have so many patterns that they've learned I mean I have a

27:23

gentleman right now he's like I purposely was trying to suck up my my

27:28

chest or suck out my gut hold my chest and I was perfectly trying to breathe up

27:34

as far as I can into my brain and I'm like you're supposed to breathe down not up

27:40

you want to breathe in and down you want to breathe in horizontally and go down he was doing the exact opposite and and

27:48

you can see it in his body and all the pains and stuff and and it it saddens me

27:53

but I'm glad he reached out to me and we've been working through it and he can feel the difference it's really neat to

27:59

see the difference well you said the diaphragm is a muscle right so obviously if we're not

28:04

breathing correctly we're not going to be engaging that muscle enough it's not going to be like tone it's not going to be like trained enough like as you would

28:11

like you know if you're going to work out other muscles in the gym or whatever does like we love to sit a lot in our

28:17

culture you know we lie in bed all night and then we go and sit down and have our coffee and then we sit in our desks and

28:23

we come over and we sit and watch the TV does that have an effect because I know we're obviously not supposed to be like sitting like we would be like squatting

28:30

if we were going to be engaging closer to the floor but like does that play a role in like that lack of muscle tone

28:38

yeah so a diaphragm is different from like skeletal muscles like your legs and arms

28:45

um it's different because it just it works automatically but the problem comes from how you position your rib

28:50

cage on whether and how you use the side abdominals to support the diamond so that's where you develop the tone so

28:57

sitting itself isn't necessarily like destroying the diaphragm it's how you're studying how are you positioning your

29:05

rib cage and what muscles are you using to hold the rib cage in position that

29:10

will determine whether or not you're shifting to a use of your diaphragm or not a lot of people the way they sit can

29:18

encourage the diaphragm not to be used so that would be a problem but also you can stand a certain way that does the

29:24

same thing too but obviously in terms of health and fitness and I'm one where I'm yes I want

29:31

people healthy as possible I wouldn't recommend sitting for you know more than 15 minutes at a time without getting up

29:37

and moving around and then alternating between sitting and standing those types of things what type of muscle tissue is

29:44

the diaphragm made of we obviously have like the cardiac muscle we have smooth muscle we have skeletal muscle like what muscle

29:50

was it is it made of it's still part of we would say skeletal muscle it's not like a smooth muscle

29:57

like an organ okay because it has innervation it can contract and relax it's not like that there is the nerve

30:04

that does that stimulates it but it's not under like a voluntarily control like we would say like a biceps would be

30:12

are there any like if you know I want to like go and find out like the quality of my diaphragm like is there tests out

30:19

there can you do because can you look at an MRI would that give you any idea of just like how it looks

30:24

um well you could do probably an MRI test um to see what it looks like or maybe

30:30

something like a CAT scan okay so it looks like it's not really like most people

30:36

um are not going to get a doctor that would say I'm gonna prescribe this and you get this covered on insurance or

30:43

whatever to go radiate yourself to look at your diaphragm not sure unless of

30:48

course your diaphragm wasn't working and you're dying or you know something like that so it's not really a let's say a

30:55

common test to go and or Diagnostic Imaging to go look at it unless you're

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having a severe problem are there any like disease states that can that can be

31:06

created from you know having just like a really weak or really like poor or non-engaged diaphragm

31:13

um I mean there's all different type anytime you're limiting your oxygen you're going to have various

31:20

various um problems in your body so um I mean a whole slew of everything can

31:27

happen if if you're not circulating oxygen in your body you can you know hurt your organs you can develop pain

31:34

cyanosis there's like all these different types of things I mean eventually it could be you know

31:41

detrimental I mean that's why sleep apnea is such a big problem right now um you know different changes in weight

31:48

and how we hold ourselves can lead to sleep apnea which then people feel foggy

31:53

and have trouble sleeping and just the brain processes are are you know down as

31:58

well yeah that makes a lot of sense obviously if you were to be like a very very large individual and you had that

32:04

increased pressure on those internal organs obviously your diaphragm is going to be involved in that so a little bit

32:10

as well would you would you mind taking us through like five ten breaths of

32:15

diaphragmatic breathing because I I I've totally heard of the phrase I think I think I breathe pretty well I'm not sure

32:22

but like can you you take us through a few breaths is that is that possible

32:34

when we go through this you may not feel an effect because I'm not teaching you

32:40

everything you need to know to actually create an effect but I can just give you the four basic steps that will help you

32:47

out just to kind of get you on the right path but there's just keep in mind

32:52

there's probably a hundred different steps that need to be implemented so and

32:57

it's not really the format for doing that because it usually takes several hours

33:02

but basically what I tell people is before you practice any type of breathing you need to be in the correct

33:09

position so that position whether you're sitting or standing or lying down that needs to

33:16

be worked on First and that involves a variety of things to work on to do that

33:21

so but I'm just putting that out there you need to be in the correct position your rib cage needs to be in the correct position because if you practice

33:28

breathing and you're not in the correct position you're just instilling further habits that are detrimental to you so

33:34

just want to put that out there that's why I'm cautious about just telling people go start breathing like this

33:40

because if you're breathing in the wrong position you start breathing like this you're basically telling your nervous

33:46

system hey keep doing this and keep feeling bad so um but the basic steps beyond that are

33:53

breathing in the nose pausing for a second and then blowing out through the mouth

33:58

and then pausing and holding your breath for two to three seconds and that sounds really simplistic in that but there's a

34:05

lot more to it about what to do with your rib cage and your belly button and your shoulders and all of that but when

34:11

you're going through the process you may not be able to hold your breath initially for two to three seconds and

34:18

that's an indication you're in fight or flight mode and as you practice and you start to

34:25

change your position that allows you to support your diaphragm and that becomes stronger you may be able to hold your

34:32

breath for five seconds ten seconds and so it's this process of going

34:38

through that and learning once you relax your body how do you stabilize in that

34:43

new position that's the key is we want to get you to be able to stabilize and hold yourself

34:50

in this new position so the body can let go and it can

34:55

release does that make sense oh totally no I think that's very very interesting because obviously if you're going to do

35:01

good quality breath work you know with a practitioner like yourself your physical body is going to become

35:06

different it's going to stand different it's going to sit different and it's very important to obviously be aware of those changes because they could be

35:13

quite significant for somebody who's got like a lot of pain a lot of tension or like you know whatever going on for them

35:18

so it's obviously a very responsible way of doing it on um on breathing out is there a

35:24

difference between being out of your nose or being out of your mouth there is and I tell people to start

35:30

practicing breathing out through their mouth because that starts to encourage the side abdominal muscles to help pull

35:36

your ribs back down if you can learn how to have your ribs down in neutral and you don't have a

35:43

drop off of your lower ribs because they're not flared up once you have that and you can do that then you can start

35:49

to look at oh okay maybe I can blow out through my nose now and then but every

35:55

day I still recommend practicing blowing out through your mouth just to make sure you have the muscles are working

36:02

cool have you seen those those people who like that they want to learn how to like nose breathe exclusively and then

36:07

they like tape their mouths up like when they sleep and stuff have you ever seen that is that just like absurd

36:13

um not necessarily so a lot of times they tape their mouth up actually because it helps them not have to

36:19

urinate as much at night um and have to get up so there's other there's other reasons why they do that

36:25

so they're really trying to focus breathing in and out of the nose at night because there is there's studies

36:31

that show that um when you're breathing in and out of your mouth it turns on a process that

36:38

eventually gets you to urinate and have to get up in the middle of the night several times and so it's if you can

36:43

just train yourself to close your mouth and you don't have to feel the Restriction of tape over your mouth

36:49

that's very interesting I had no idea about about that that's obviously you want to try and disrupt so you want to

36:56

reduce the disruption disruption of your sleep as much as you possibly can but that's that's very very interesting cool

37:02

um I want to talk a bit a little bit more about about pain and um what pain is in regards to you know

37:10

you as the particular type of practitioner that you are if someone comes to you with pain like

37:15

how would you recommend that they like approach it not

37:21

in regards to like going to see like a doctor or a physio but like how would they like I start I wake up one morning

37:27

I've got shoulder pain how would I like begin to like internalize that because like you know I believe pain to be like

37:34

this message coming from the nervous system from the body like trying to tell us something but we love to like use

37:40

creams or take drugs to just like avoid that message so can you tell us a little

37:46

about like what what pain is and like what we can do as maybe like a more of a thought process when it comes up for us

37:52

yeah so I tell people it's like let's say you wake up and like you you have the example of shoulder pain not like

37:58

we're talking about a liver pain and organ stuff like that but like an orthopedic problem I tell them it's a

38:04

signal from your body to your brain and nervous system that something's out of position

38:09

okay so something happened you had a stressful event muscles tightened that

38:16

had already been trained to tighten you go to bed they tighten up enough the

38:22

bones shift you wake up now you have pinching of tissues so a lot of people like you said will

38:28

try to do something to mask the pain just to get rid of it but don't really change their position and do the work to

38:36

to solve the issue and that's okay and sometimes sometimes those pain pills or

38:42

the injection or something it reduces enough inflammation that creates a little bit of space so

38:48

that the bones go back they can still move again it doesn't mean they go back into position but they can move enough

38:54

and there's enough cleared space that they don't have the pinching and maybe in time in a few days that

39:01

they start to relax because they're not on guard because the pain and so maybe they stop having pain and their bones

39:07

kind of relax back into a neutral position so that would be the ideal situation but a lot of times it's not

39:13

that easy so that's why we need to work on the body position and calming down

39:19

the nervous system so the muscles stop behaving abnormally on the bones

39:25

yeah I think it's interesting that whenever we do have some sort of like pain that kind of like comes up for us

39:31

um that we immediately go to that area and it as individuals and also in like

39:37

you're going to see a doctor you've got shoulder pain you're going to see a shoulder specialist you've got ankle pain you're going to go and see you know

39:43

you're going to see someone specific for that but um just from my experience with like when I when I had my first like kid

39:50

after a year after that like carrying that baby and doing all these like new things with my body was like brand new

39:56

to my body and I was definitely like holding the baby on one side rather than the other or mixing it up and I would

40:02

like wake up with the most ridiculous like lower back pain on my right hand side and my immediately like oh my God

40:09

my lower back I've got problems though I need to go and see someone about my right there where the pain is but after

40:15

like seeing some awesome practitioners and working through a lot of stuff it's not actually

40:21

my back that's my problem like I have tight a tight left glute and I have a tight hamstring on my other side and

40:28

that just twists my pelvis and causes the pain and when I take care of both of those muscles with very simple stretching exercises the pain just

40:35

doesn't exist anymore so it's just interesting that we experience pain and we just like Zone in onto that

40:42

particular area rather than like stepping back and being like okay like let's look at kind of the rest of my

40:49

body can we check in with that but we just go straight to that that zone and then we kind of like go quickly how can

40:54

I get rid of this pain as quick as we can and um it doesn't end up like serving Us in the long term yeah and I

41:02

think part of that is if you think about it when you're a kid you fall down you scrape up your knee the pain is right there where they're out yeah

41:09

um and a lot of people haven't done a lot of studies on the nervous system and understand that how the nervous system

41:16

works and impacts muscles and how things can be referred and that and so we just

41:21

think okay pain there that's the problem and that's understandable because we just see a cause cause

41:28

um affect relationship and just connect the dots and don't realize that the body's a lot more complicated than that

41:35

but it's not until you get exposed to these different types of ideas then you can say wait a second okay

41:41

maybe I do need to look at other things and maybe my hip pain is really related

41:46

to how I hold my neck and my toe pain could be because of this shoulder

41:52

um I just had just yesterday a lady who came to work with me everything is to

41:57

resume and she felt like a rib had popped out in her breastbone and she had

42:02

severe low back pain and we did some work um virtually had her do it and all of a

42:08

sudden her back pain went away so it's just it can be all over like that

42:14

yeah that's it's super fascinating um I'm just I'm just being conscious of the time now I've got so many questions I

42:20

want to ask you I'm gonna have to get you back on the show because it's such an interesting topic um but is

42:26

so many people so many people end up just like living with their pain on dealing with it and it's quite

42:32

remarkable like what the human body can literally suffer through on a for a long

42:37

period of time and um yeah people just end up just living with their pain in

42:43

many many cases it ends up defying them as a personality you know I'm that person with pain you know this is who I

42:49

am which is obviously a very limiting place to be but when it comes to like

42:54

aging and getting old like is is like weakness and pain and getting

43:00

hurt are these just like normal parts of Aging or like do we or should we

43:06

hold ourselves to like something better or something higher like do we have the we see where we see these amazing people

43:13

on on um like social media who are like you know 60 70 years old who just looks

43:18

look at the look in great shape and they look happy they look healthy and then I look at the 70 year olds in my life and

43:24

they don't really look like that I'm obviously aware of the nonsense of social media but still there are amazing

43:30

like old people out there who have just like maybe in their 30s 40s and 50s decided that they want to live their

43:36

marginal decade really really well so like is is that pain is that is that

43:42

like a normal process of our society like to just like get on and live with that and we should all just be on like drugs and just get through the last 30

43:49

years of Our Lives no absolutely not it's sad that we equate rate that too

43:55

like it's sad that we just think pain oh that's true I'm just getting older and I

44:00

hear that all the time I tell people no just because your aging does not equate

44:07

pain doesn't mean your pain is from that um I know plenty of people who don't

44:13

have aches and pains who are running 40 miles you know on the weekends and and

44:18

living life fully it's just a matter of what do you want to do to address it and

44:24

do you want to guide yourself into freeing up your body that's the true question is how much work do you want to

44:31

do and I say if you're retired why not go on that Journey why not go on the

44:37

journey to free your body up because you have the time and then when you feel better your energy source you get

44:44

involved in more activities you go travel whatever it is that interests you you participated in it more and people

44:50

around you can feel the love yeah I find it interesting when I speak

44:56

with the the kids of people who are in their like 60s and 70s and they they're

45:02

telling their parents that they need to like slow down and stop doing these exercises

45:08

because they don't want them to like fall break your hip and you know become like super become like super injured and

45:15

then a lot of these old older people like they do that they like stop like doing all the things that they would to

45:20

move their bodies and they're like you know they don't want to get like a hip fracture they don't want to look they don't want to suffer any of these things

45:26

and that's literally the last thing that they should be doing if they want to avoid those things going forward especially when it comes to like you

45:31

know like literally lifting weights even in your 50s 60s and 70s is such an incredible way to keep your bone

45:37

strength up so yeah it's just an interesting thing that we have in our society that we get old we should just like slow down and get gray and you know

45:46

deal with it that's unfortunate we have to get people to change their mind on that one yeah I think there are a lot of

45:52

people out there who are who are helping facilitate that that for sure and you know it's uh there's so much we can do

45:58

like now like my motivation for um like eating well and like moving my body and you know having a good relationship with

46:05

with my stress is the fact that I you know I want to be a very Physically Active 80 90 year old I'm like back

46:11

casting it rather than just thinking like in a short-term framework of like what do I want to look like or do next

46:16

year I'm like no no I'm thinking 40 50 years out and there's so much I can do like now to do it and it's such a strong

46:23

motivator to get through because like people find it very difficult to find that motivation to keep those things up

46:29

for long periods of time that we took like the New Year in January for example that lasts two three weeks for people if

46:35

your motivation is like 50 years and you're thinking about your grandkids and your great grandkids that's the true

46:41

like a heart emotional deep rooted motivation that's going to like really Propel you to really experience the

46:48

capability and potential what your body can do yeah sorry I just got I think my coffee

46:56

just kicked in there I got all g'd up um bro yeah that's cool I'm sure you'll agree with all of that so that's

47:02

wonderful your your silence speaks what speaks volumes um can you tell us please how can people

47:08

connect with you we didn't get to talk about your Institute and some of your some of your other methods and you've got some awesome live online courses

47:15

maybe we can get you back on the show to talk about that but can you just tell us about how people can connect with you please

47:21

absolutely they can go to my website it's pabrinstitute.com so pabr stands for

47:28

pain awareness breathing relief and so they can go on there there's you can set

47:33

up a free 15-minute consultation um that's pretty much the way I work with people is there's is an interview

47:40

process just to make sure it's the correct fit and you know what you're getting yourself into just since this is

47:45

a little bit of a different process I want to make sure it's successful and you're ready to go so

47:50

um you can work with me one-on-one and also we have the live group courses as well

47:55

um those are we have a couple different levels for that too based on a person and everyone has to go through the

48:01

fundamentals before they can get to the advanced very cool just just another question

48:06

it's just a personal question do you do like couples like I think that if my wife and I were going to learn how to

48:11

breathe better and help us um influence that on our kids that would just I think

48:17

that'd be super valuable for me I do yep I do do a couple so especially because it's not

48:29

tonight all right wonderful well we might be having a consultation pretty soon so that's wonderful sounds great wonderful cool well thank you so much

48:35

for taking the time to chat with me today I thought this was awesome I learned so much and I know this is gonna be super valuable for a lot of people

48:41

because we all engage in breathing one way or the other but to connect that with our pain and even like past trauma

48:48

I thought you explained that so well and there are methods and institutes out there that can really support us through

48:54

it yeah absolutely well thank you for having me on Simon it was a pleasure wonderful cool well I'll make sure that

49:00

um everything that you need to have in order to get connected with Amy is in the show notes that is it for this

49:07

episode don't forget to subscribe if you wish to you can leave us a review on iTunes if you feel compelled to but

49:13

that's it for this week of true Hope cast the official podcast for True hope Canada we'll see you next week foreign

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