When I'm working with people that I really want to change in their minds is the shape of their habits. So what is it that they're doing now that if they keep doing and there's no intervention, what health concerns is it going to lead? 10 years from now. And that very much works with the channel health.

I'm Michael max. And this is qiological the podcast that allows acupuncturist and east Asian medical practitioners to listen to the diverse voices of. I am constantly amazed at how a few words can work. Like a needle can dramatically open a person up or close them down. A couple of years ago, I heard an interview with a guy named Chris Voss and it led me to buying his book. Never split the difference. It's a book on negotiate. And Chris knows a thing or two about this as he's an ex FBI hostage negotiator. If your first thought about FBI negotiators is that they're hard ball, tough and aggressive. You'd be completely wrong. They are focused, empathetic and brilliant communicators who draw more on the psychological perspective of Carl Rogers than Vinnie. The enforcer, this book, and the skills in it are obviously necessary to anyone running a business. But even if you don't work for yourself, much of the give and take in human life is a kind of negotiation. And it's not about being aggressive or manipulate. It's about finding out what the other side needs, so you can help them to get it not so different. Really from the work we do in clinic with her patients. Recently, I caught a short video of Chris talking about how to make a good first impression. Really? This is something that anyone working with others would do well to cultivate. It's an important skill that will help us in our practices. Even if we're not dealing with kidnappers or bankrupt. Chris says you have seven seconds to make a good impression. What do you need to do in that seven seconds? You need to provide an answer to the questions. Do you see what I see? And do you understand what I'm facing before we jump to any conclusions, promises, tactics, or story of our own? Can you let the person in front of, you know, that you understand what they face? What they fear and what they hope for. How often do you skip this step? I do it all the time, but I've noticed that things usually go better when I don't skip it. This is a simple practice seeking first to let the person you'd like to help, not just know, but feel that you understand what they're up against to be able to suss out the meaning it has for them. You don't have to agree with it. Just recognize is true. You could think of this as a airports or business skill, but really it's a human skill. One that leans on a curious intent of heart and a head sharp enough to realize that without a feeling of trust, not much happens. Do you see what I see? Do you understand what I'm facing? Next time someone asks you about acupuncture rather than launching into your, how it works or how it helps elevator speech. See if you can use the first moments of an encounter to answer one of those questions for the person you're talking to see what happens.

I've

got Renee Klarman with me today. Renee and I are sitting down for a little conversation about something near and dear to the heart of all us Chinese medicine practitioner. That would be cultivation practices. Now, usually when we think about movement and cultivation practices, we're thinking of Tigie and Xi, gong and Bagua, and, you know, I mean, all this stuff that we do that. Down from the tradition of Chinese medicine, Renee is an acupuncturist and she also has gone deeply, deeply into movement, but it comes from a slightly different stream than our Chinese medicine stream of cultivating of movements. And that's what we're here to talk about today. Renee, welcome to qiological. Thank you so much. You know, I can't even remember how we connected up, but, but somehow we did. I was

kicking out about your podcast. What do you like about the pocket? Well, as I've said, I love that you pay so much attention to sound. I really appreciate the way you ask questions and approach each guest. I like that you have, you know, decades of experience and can really bring that into each interview. Yeah, you're just adding something really wonderful to our profession.

Well, I'm glad you like it. As far as decades of experience goes, I find often decades of experience is not helpful because it, it keeps me limited to the stuff that I already know. Often I'll be thinking, yeah, I know how to handle that. Or yeah, I have a handle on this or I know that, and the truth is, is I don't. So one of the reasons I love doing this podcast is it's this wonderful opportunity to sit down with people like you learn something new.

Yeah. Well, I'm certainly ready to shake things up. I mean, I'm only six years in to my work, so I know that I have a newbie perspective still. All right.

We're going to take a tangent. You just touched on something that I hear people say this all the time. It's like, oh, I'm a newbie. I'm just a second year student. I've only been practicing five years, six years, 12 years, whatever, you know, we have this incredible veneration of I'm going to use air quotes here, the masters, but the truth is very few of us are going to be masters. I think we got a good solid shot at being. Really competent, creative, helpful journey, women and journeymen. We can be in that journey and we can be deep in our craft and never make it to master and do really good work for an entire lifetime. I don't know. I've just kind of got this thing these days about not putting ourselves down because we don't have 20 years of experience or 30 years, or we can recite the Ling Shu backwards and forwards in Chinese.

When you find something you're really passionate about and you do it for a long time, I guess that's why I say I'm only a newbie because I love my work so much. And six years feels like nothing. And I know that each time I circle back to the same idea, I'm going to go a little deeper, you know? So in 15 years from now, come back to the same conversation about this work I'm doing now. Who knows, you know, how many layers I'll have reveal?

Yeah. It's so true. I mean, we really do. We circle down, we circle in, sometimes it feels like we get dizzy because, oh God, great this again. But you know, if we're coming at it a little deeper, a little more understanding, a slightly different perspective, then it's new again. Right. And just the idea of going slow and just the idea of going slow. Wow. In our internet connected world, that's grown at, you know, a hundred megabits. How luscious is it to go slow and appreciate that tempo and rhythm of the journey. So you may be a newbie, but you somehow cotton to this other movement practice, which is what we're going to get into today. I'm curious to know. What drew you to it? What got you into this stuff? Tell us a bit about it.

I'm going to answer that question, but I'd really like to know how you found out about Katy Bowman and what excited you that I was doing this work, right.

Okay. Uh, turning the microphone around on the host, huh? Okay, fine. I can not remember how I came across Katie. I listened to podcasts. I read books. I listen to what other people have to say. I'm constantly open to different influences. I might've heard her on a podcast somewhere, but honestly, I can't remember, but I can tell you this. She sounded flipping brilliant in the way that she talks about movement as nutrition, in a sense it's, it's a different kind of nutrition for physicality. It really got my attention. So I got a couple of her books. I got the book about being barefoot, getting into like barefoot type shoes. And then there's a book on. I hate the title, but it's something like, you know, has to do with aging, dynamic aging, dynamic aging, uh, Gorod publishers and their titles sometimes drives me crazy. But the content in that book is fantastic, especially for people like me actually, who are aging, and they're looking to stay vital. They're looking to stay strong, balanced all this stuff, and the way she goes about it, I think is just delicious. And so when I found out that you do this. That's when you got the invitation to come to qiological. So tell us about it.

Nutritious movement is a whole body program, essentially that uses exercises and alignment markers to help people understand where their sedentary parts are and really to identify movement patterns that keep people in pain or inhibit their physical activity. And or are affecting physiological health in my work as a Chinese medicine practitioner, I'm always considering the physical, emotional, and spiritual shape the person is when they come to see me, you know, as practitioners from a five element perspective, we know that people are all of those things all of the time, but develop patterns. Carved these deeper grooves and create imbalances that become pathological. Um, movement is no exception. And biomechanics Katy Bowman has spent 20 years refining and studying human movement to develop exercises that are accessible, but also really complex because when you break them down into alignment points and she has 25 that she takes. Her teachers it's about, you know, how to move better and how to move more of yourself. And so far, this material, I've spent four years integrating this material into my clinical work, and it's significantly changed how I see the human body and human health. And it's so complimentary to our work is Chinese medicine practices.

Okay. I want to get into some of these movements. We're going to do that in a little bit, but you just said something about it's really changed how you see things and how you work with people. How has it changed you?

When I was a student, you want to be able to get everything at once. You want to be able to see the way that, you know, Hong Kong sees people, they like walk in the room and he's already got them pegged. And that's really hard. This work has refined my observation skills. It's refined my palpation skills. It has changed the way I ask questions. And each of those pieces combined over the years, I've just gotten a lot better at pinpointing what's going on or quickly seeing a problem and knowing which path to take might help patients skills have dramatically improved. From understanding how the body is out of alignment, how it's twisted and being able to use to analyze like what's going on with certain patterns and then know how to ask questions based on what I'm feeling.

Wow. Okay. So you kind of have one of those Chinese medicine superpowers that we hear about. It's funny, we're circling around or this, you know, we hear about the masters there's long, long, right? My teacher in Taiwan, Dr. John, you know, people would walk in, you'd be like, oh yeah, right. You know, why, how could he do that? Well, he was 93 years old. He'd been doing it forever. Right. Six years in are developing some skills that allow you to palpate. It allow you to look, have somehow changed your sensorium and the way that you observe that you're getting new information. Am I hearing

that correctly? Yeah. Yeah. I like that. The sensorium. Yeah. It's it's through using this really crude tool. I mean, guash OD is so it's so crude. It's so effective for

reading. I know you could use like a jelly jar for the damn stuff

I use. I use a copper tool. The part that started the whole journey is I gave a talk to a runners club and I offered a free country. And there were probably 15 people in the room. I think every one of them book the free consult and then almost every one of them came to see me as a patient.

Okay. That's, that's crazy. There's a lot of new practitioners that would love to be able to pull that off and fail at it. Miserably. What is it that you did that got them to go? I'm coming in? Oh, in fact, I'm not just coming in and I'm signing up for some actual true. I

have no idea. Yeah. I really have no idea. I think I was just excited. I was excited to work with a group of people and the benefit of it, because this was about three, I think three to four years ago, they came in so quickly within a three month period. They all came in to see me. And because they're runners, I thought, well, I'll work on their feet. I would wash their feet. And then from that, I was doing the Katy Bowman work. And I could, I didn't quite know how to assess what was going on. So I just asked them questions. You know, I feel that you have more tissue build up on the lateral foot, you know, are you doing this? And seeing so many of them and because they were all training together, I could really get an idea of how they were moving. And then I just started guash on everybody's feet and then it became more like reading a pulse where I can now. Are they hiking their hip out because I can feel the tissues, you know, on that lateral edge. But it goes down into the fourth and fifth toe, or are they always pelvic thrusting where they're leaning forward because maybe they're wearing heels or maybe they've done it for so long. They don't even realize they lean against the counter all the time. And all the tissue has really built up in the toe section. You know, the calves are really tight on one side, but not so much on the other, you know, are you left-handed or right-handed. After hundreds of questions, I just got a lot better at it. So now I can use it for all kinds of.

Yeah, of course you see enough cases and things come together, you are using to treat them. And then what you discovered is it was diagnostic as well as therapeutic and it was giving you lots of information, correct? Oh, wow. Yeah. It's really amazing what you can feel through a gloss shot. I mean, you can put your hands on, you know, impress and palpate and all that stuff, but somehow running a tool over the tissue, the way that it vibrates things or doesn't vibrate things, it's like a stethoscope, except it's for feeling more than for sound.

Yeah. And it does have that vibrating feel to it because I can feel with my hand or I can use a different instrument than it's not the same. And I definitely use my hands then to think more in general. What is the channel saying, but with the alignment, the wash on, and sometimes cupping, cause I go wash all over, I'll go wash out the ribs and then I can tell how they're twisting their body or not breathing at all, or possibly what vertebra are getting really sticky. And that could be because of a hyper kyphosis, which all of us have some degree of hypertension. We'll just hide it really well. I

mean, I love hearing about how you, you take one technique that you've been learning. You've been learning this stuff from Katie Bowman. You put it together with your Chinese medicine. You start doing the Crawshaw. It's amazing how these pieces can fit together. And I love the theoretical stuff, but I also know that I can really like run myself into a place of, uh, deep thinking without much clinical knowing, walk us through a case, walk us through somebody coming into your office. And how you work with them. I mean, like from the moment they walk in the door, you're probably looking at how they move, take us to her case. Yeah. Take us through a case that demonstrates this

stuff. So I have a long hallway that goes back to my, from the waiting room, back to my clinic space and, you know, I'll walk out and then I'll have them walk in front of me and just watch them walk down the hallway. And so then I can see. You know, are they leaning to one side? Are they, is one foot walking out more? It's not in its tracks. So it's laterally rotated. And then they come into the space and they sit down in the chair. And so then I'm looking at, you know, how they're sitting, are they, are they slouching immediately in the chair? Are they folding their legs? Are they talking their pelvis? And then as I ask them questions, so if someone comes in to see me for neck pain, for. I might throw a few master dong needles in, because I, I used that along with, um, longs, you use point combinations, mostly as acupuncture. And then I asked him to stand up and we talked for a while. So I'm listening and I'm watching the move. I'm listening to how they talk about their pain. Is their pain,

listening to how they talk about their pain. What are you listening for?

A lot of people who I see who are over 50. They associate their deterioration, their physical deterioration with age. And Katie Bowman really emphasizes that because we aren't moving enough of ourselves. That's why we deteriorate. Not because we're getting older in years. I try to detangle the two when I'm talking to somebody, but first I want to hear how they think about their bodies to. So that listening skill has really shifted. And I, I do my best to reframe if somebody is saying, oh, I I'm just getting old. My knees hurt my back hurts. I try to reframe it for them by asking them other questions. Like, what are the things that you would like to do that you feel that your body is not allowing you to do? And when do you remember? Because often people have this idea of their bodies being of a certain capability and then. 20 years ago, we talk about those aspects and then, you know, if their neck pain quickly shifts from the moving around with the needles, and then I take those out and I step out and they get on the table and if they can lay on their bellies. So we're back to the neck pain, you know, I, I put some cups on and then I am still asking them the questions. What are they doing? How do they spend their day? How are they moving? And then I'm asking you other things and I'm going through digestion and sleep and stress, and just trying to put the whole picture together, but I'm also working on their calves. So I start washing the cats for neck pain immediately because the fascial line goes through a bunch of fascial lines on the body. But one goes from the bottom of the feet all the way up the back to the forehead and I can get a sense of, wow. The tissue on the calf is. Developed on your left side, you know, and maybe their headache is on their left side. Or I noticed that you are leaning more on your right side. What are you doing all day that you're doing that to get a sense of how they're spending their day. And from that, that's how I use the Katy Bowman material to teach them ways to think about movement that will shift these. Sticky movement patterns that they've created over decades and educating them about osteoporosis. And you know that this is an inherited cause some people will say, oh, my mom had neck pain. So I have neck pain or my mom had Funyuns and I have Funyuns and maybe. They're inherited through being around the person that you saw, move your entire life. You move like the people you're around. Once I unwind the pattern that brings me all the way back up to their neck, you know, that I'll come back up to the neck because I already have an idea of what spiral is. You know, what, what they're doing, that's causing from the feet all the way up to the neck that's causing this chain reaction that then I might, you know, look at the. The relationship of the intercostals, you know, what kind of sticky points are happening there, or is the neck pain coming from hand tightness? Because they're doing specific movements all day long and it's only one kind of movement. So their hands are really tight, which means that our forearms, their biceps, their shoulders up

into their neck or tight, right. They may not even associate their carpal tunnel with. With their headaches. Yeah.

And it's not even carpal tunnel. It's like if you put your hands out in front of you and create, try to create a 90 degree angle with your first finger and your thumb, and then you might be able to do it in the air. But as soon as you put your hand on the floor, when you're on all fours, try to put your hand in a 90 degree angle, your thumb probably will not do it. And that's forearm tightness. And if it does do it, you might have. Cheating a bit by allowing the, the elbow pit, which you want facing forward. It might rotate, um, internally in order to compensate for the tightness in that forearm to force your thumb into the 90 degree position. So that unravels all the way

up to. It sounds like this Katy Bowman material is very I'm thinking channel dynamic oriented. You know, we often think about there's a problem at one end, we go to the opposite end to go work on it because they're connected. Somehow. It sounds like you are finding through this work, the actual ways it's connected beyond it runs along the channel. And so therefore it's connected. Yes.

When I'm working with people that I really want to change in their minds is the shape of their habits. So what is it that they're doing now that if they keep doing, and there's no intervention, what health concerns is it going to lead to 10 years from now? And that very much works with the channel health. I mean, I think about how tight people's feet are and if they get migraines, if you're using master dogs occupied, You go to the feet to treat a lot of these problems. You might do some bloodletting. You might throw in some acupuncture needles. So one example would be a medial knee pain. I've had people come in and say, oh, my foot really hurts right at this point. And they're pointing to the tuberosity at the fifth metatarsal. And if I guash all that, it just feels super. And part of that starts with a rotation that's causing that will cause me pain. It might be in their foot right now, but it will wind back up to their knee pretty quickly. If I give people these markers, they start to have a better relationship with what their body is that there actually is a body I think, to worry about or

think about you used a really interesting phrase, the shape of people's habits. That kind of gets my attention. What other kinds of interventions do you do with people? I mean, beyond the acupuncture in the cupping and what kinds of things do you send people home with in terms of things they can do for themselves or places where they can place their attention, that helps them to help themselves? The movement

tips that I give in the beginning might be. What do you notice about how you're standing there? Are you meaning, can you lean back into your heels without losing your balance? When you're being back into your heels, can you wiggle your toes around? How much time do you spend sitting? Uh, if you ask someone, if they're sedentary, they will probably say no, but if you ask someone, if they repeat patterns all the time, I go to work. I get in my car, I come home and make dinner. I sit on the couch, then you can start to piece together a more sedentary lifestyle that they might not even be aware of. So I challenged someone to sit on the floor if they're going to watch television, or if they're working at the computer and if they can't sit on the floor, then that's where we start. How do I get you safely to the floor and back up without hurting them? I might ask people to take an inventory of their shoe collection. You know, how many of their shoes are squeezing their toe box? How many of their shoes have a heel very or carry is another one. If I see people walk in and they have this huge bag, they're telling me I have neck pain, I have a migraine. And then they carry this huge bag on their. I pointed the bag and I'm like, stop doing that. Sometimes I'm more gentle, but sometimes they just need you to see, to be told, like that's causing a problem. Part of the problem.

It's like that old joke, right? Dr. Hertz, when I do this, the answer is, well, don't do that sometimes. Actually that, yeah. You know, one of the things that I just heard you saying, and this is one of the things that really got me going with reading Katie's work and becoming, you know, at least passingly interested in it, the way that she talks about movements and micro movements and repetitive moments, things that we do every day, it's like we use a certain amount of vocabulary, movement vocabulary. And then there's a ton of movement vocabulary that we don't use. I mean, this is why I think certain things like tide G and you know, some of the old Chinese practices are helpful because they're actually asking us to use all kinds of other movements that we wouldn't usually. And

what you said earlier, how she relates it to nutrition in her book, move your DNA. And for listeners, that would be the first book that I would start with. If this stuff appeals

to you. Oh, you know what? That was it. That was how I discovered it. Her, I remember getting an audio book of move your DNA. That's where it came from.

It's laying out this idea of the subset of kinesiology, which is biomechanics and biomechanics studies, the structure and function. The mechanical aspects of biological whole biological systems, including ourselves. And then it's down the cells. That's the name of your DNA? So she, in that lays out movement is like food. It's not optional. She says that we're receiving these signals of movement, starvation that we've just ignored. And the entire book is an argument that we can no longer ignore that because so many of our 21st century health concerns are about being sedentary. My point is it's will again, I hope you're enjoying the podcast. Sorry. I think the secret of success and treating the majority of digestive problems is to focus on the key dynamic. That is the incentives planche and the descent of stomach Chi. If the cheer dynamic is robust and working properly, then the system tends to naturally move towards homeostasis. Now, the way to achieve this is to use herbs with opposing characteristics. For example, combining bitter cold herbs with accurate hot, hot. Peter cold. Herb's tend to draw cheat, inwards, and downwards, whereas accurate hot herbs cause cheetah rise and expand. When you put them together, the combination drives a dynamo and stimulates CIM movement. A classic example is bitter cold, one Leanne with accurate hot. Would you, you, this combination powerfully drives. And it's used specifically for the treatment of gastroesophageal reflux. The same principle is at the heart of some of our most effective and beloved formulas. For example, bitter called one Leanne and one chin, uh, combined with in the wonderful bunchy. She has tongue. Similarly, the rising nature of Geogen is combined with the descending nature of new sheet to drive the Chan blood movement in Geogen combines with bitter Shinran to drive the lung cheat dynamic, to treat cough more information on all of this can be found in the new second edition of my clinical handbook of internal medicine, which is available from Eastland press back to the podcast.

You know, as we're having this conversation, I'm thinking about the way that the brain processes. Signals through the nervous system. And if we're just moving certain muscles, if we're just using certain neurons, certain patterns, it seems like there's whole areas of the brain that would kind of go to sleep or atrophy a bit. Whereas if we're moving more fully, if we're moving in a more embodied way, if we're using more of our physiology, I'm wondering if our brain might be more healthy. Has she looked into that at all? Is that, is that part of what she talks about?

There's absolutely a brain and body connection. You know, I go back to the feet, the hands and the feet have there's so many sensory, you know, brain sensory stimulation. I can't think of the right parts right now. And we use them for our hands, but we don't use them for our feet and the feet. You know, are there this complex structure of 26 bones and 33

joints, right. That holds us up that holds us straight up. It's amazing.

It's not only how you move. It's what you're moving on. So are you spending your entire day repeating a concrete to. Office, you know, carpet, like what kind of textures are you touching? How much time do you spend barefoot? Because that's giving the brain all kinds of information about what to focus on, you know, oh, this person needs to balance in this certain way. This is the sensory I'm feeling. This is how I need to respond to the way this person is moving. Learning to walk over rocks, learn to stretch out your feet with a ball, spending some time walking over. Grass and dirt and wood and, you know, just giving it's like a child. Like you want to keep your feet as much information as possible in order to help the rest of the Connecticut. First

of all. I love her sense of humor. She's hilarious. And I love her riff on shoes or as she calls them sensory deprivation. Chambers. Yeah. So often I see people wearing these like foamy, squishy shoes. I go, oh, these are good shoes. They support me. And I look at them and go, how could you feel anything in there? Right. Or there's the people who come in, I've got this issue. My, you know, XYZ practitioner recommended these orthotics. Orthotics is a big thing here in the Midwest. I don't, I don't know about where you're at, but you know, here everyone's like, oh, I gotta have my orthotics. And I'm thinking to myself, especially after reading Katie's work. I think great. You've got this dysfunctional movement pattern and now you're locking it into place with this thing that holds it in. Stacy's basically, I'm so

glad you brought up orthotics. They're helping one part of the problem. You know, someone has foot pain, but they have foot pain because they have a weakness in their ankle, knee hips, and the orthotics. Them not feel that weakness, so it's great. They can go about their day and I'm happy that someone's comfortable, but ideally he wants you focus on the alignment element that is causing pain somewhere in the, in the process. You know, that, is it ankle pain? Is it that they there's no such thing as high arches. It's just muscular. Arches is a, not an anatomical. But it's something that people use. Oh, I have fallen arches. What that really is. If they have an internal rotation of their tibia, fibia, and their feet are collapsing in. So, you know, how do you teach someone to externally to even recognize what this means, but to externally rotate the femur and then help relax the quads. So the knees have more space to move around because most people's. Most of their gay, uh, locked, their quads are so locked that it pulls the kneecap back into the bone and then they start to have knee pain or are they leaning up against things? Are they pelvic thrusting? And that changes the entire alignment. So all of these pieces are affected and that's why they ended up in orthotics potentially.

Yeah. We'd like to look at treatments and Chinese medicine, there's branch and there's root. So orthotics is kind of a branch treatment that actually is. Causing problems to the root.

Yeah, I think about that with other ailments and Chinese medicine. What if this person had more hand flexibility, would they get less headaches? You know, a lot of the master Don points, foot and hand, there are so many points on the hand and I, you know, what their knees hurt last, you know, what they, if they move differently and it just started with hand flexibility, that would also lead to. You know, less tension in the forearm or less tension in the bicep. And the same as at the feet, if they started with this simple challenge of when I get home, I don't go right into my slippers. I challenged myself to walk on the floor for awhile, or I drink my coffee and listen to my podcast or watch the morning news and roll up. Um, it was just micro changes. When

you say roll on a ball, are you talking in a golf ball, a tennis ball. Uh, w w w what are you

talking about here? I guess it depends on the person. Initially, they are starting out with a softball. The texture of a yoga tuneup ball is really ideal in the beginning, because it's about the size of a racquetball, but it's a little squishier and it's not, it allows the foot to stand up. And move around and not be painful. Some balls are just too hard for people in the beginning, or even just getting to know your feet, you know, spending time looking at it and figuring out where the calluses are. Where are you spending the most time walking? You know, if you have a callus on your toe, are you gripping your toe as you walk? Or are you leaning in to that path of the first. More. So wherever we have callouses is where the most, the most circulation is. It's actually a good sign. And so it's a great way to recognize where you're not moving.

So these would be the areas of stagnation,

not the callus. The other areas would be the areas of

stagnation. So the calluses where you have more

motion. Yeah. The callus is where you're spending almost all of your time.

What about things like Bunyan's?

Hmm. Yeah. Vines are a it's the first metatarsal. The phalynx is the big toe is curving in and it's because the first metatarsal is adjusting to a tight shoe that somebody has been wearing. What causes a Bunyan is wearing a narrow toe box, your feet, especially your toes. Don't have any room to move around. So they're being deformed over many, many years of wearing shoes that holds your feet. Almost like a cast. In fact, exactly like a cast. So women, you see bunions on women because the shoe box, the toe box is so narrow. You know, in our culture, that's seen as a more feminine look, but it's destabilizing the entire kinetic chain of alignment. If you put your hands in gloves and you try to do things throughout your day, that's what your feet have been doing and they have to carry your entire body.

Right. Or mittens. What have you, what, what if you put your hands in mittens?

Yeah. So shoes or shoes or the mittens of feet. It's not only a narrow toe box, but it's also a heel and it's only in the last, you know, probably seven, eight years that there are more and more shoes that have a negative heel, which has no heel at all. But they're really hard to find it's a, it's a niche industry. So often you have to order them online. You know, you have to look for them and it's not, they don't make it easy because it's not, there's not a demand for it. But between heel and narrow toe,

I'm thinking of, well, a number of women I've treated over the years who have been cramming their feet into some sort of heels with narrow toe boxes. They usually come in from migraines. They're addicted to these damn shoes. They usually have to wear them because of the business that they're in. I know that that when I've palpated their feet and especially if I'm like trying to slide a needle into gallbladder 41, There are, there are some people it's like gallbladder 41. I can't even get the bones to open up enough to really get a needle in there.

is really helpful for that. If the person is willing, not everybody, I offer a compelling argument for doing it. And if someone isn't ticklish, I can generally hold their foot in such a way that it's not uncomfortable. Once I start doing it, people fall in love with it. The same. The rheumatoid arthritis patients that I have, like wash all their hands and it really changes the defamation of their fingers in relationship to their hand and the same with the feet. So one or two guash all treatments. And that, that space between the, the metatarsal spoken.

Okay. So you're looking for these areas of tightness, these areas where there's lack of movement and you just, you doing your basic wash out technique on it, or is there something special that you're doing

here? I don't think there's anything special. The tool I have, which I really like, it was made by an acupuncturist in Portland. His company is called Acue artistry and he makes Japanese tools. And one of them is a copper washer tool and it has a really lovely shape to it that it works for my hand. It doesn't work for other, some other people's hands, but there's one edge of it. That's a little more narrow, so I can really get into the group. Of each metatarsal, which helps with Morton's neuroma as well. Um, that often happens between the, you know, the third and fourth toe.

Yeah, I have. So unsuccessfully treated people with Morton's neuroma. Tell us about how to help these folks

really guash eyeing the feet and the calves. And then, you know, thinking about it is guaranteed. Like you're saying that these women who come in. Their favorite shoes and they have migraines and they're not willing to give up their shoes. There is inevitably shoulder, neck tension, and a weakness, you know, possibly a rotation, you know, kyphosis, a hyper kyphosis that the upper body. So in working with Morton's neuroma, I would make sure that I always cut the back to start loosening those muscles and then go down and squash all the cat. And I do the front and the back. I work on the tibialis anterior because I'm heals the tibialis. Anterior will be quite tight and shortened. I don't remember the exact percentage, but anyone wearing heels it's, it's shortening the muscles by a significant percentage. So learning to lengthen those muscles. So in working with the metatarsal and working in between the metatarsal, depending on the severity, it could be. One treatment or I could take three treatments, but often by the third treatment, then Morton's neuroma. Doesn't put them anymore.

That's astonishing. And, and I'm thinking about a patient I have, who's got a Morton's neuroma. I've been phenomenally unsuccessful at helping her. And she's also got this hip pain on the same side.

It can go two ways. Like I said, if you hold the heel going to gentle with guash. Aw. It might tickle them. I was started the lateral edge so they can get used to the feeling of it. And you have to apply a certain amount of pressure, but in holding the heel, it kind of offers an anchor. So they don't, it doesn't hurt as much. And you always want them on their belly, you know, with pillow support underneath their feet. And then as you begin, just ask them to give you feedback. Let me know if this is too much and there'll be, there'll be areas. So generally someone with a Morton's neuroma. They will not be able to handle a lot of pressure between the second, between the second and fourth toe, wherever the, if it's between the second and third or the third and fourth. Um, usually it's between the second and third. So you want to go in a little bit gentle I've used moxa, um, after doing wash off and that will help soothe the area. So they don't feel too inflamed. Um, I always tell them to go home and soak in some absences. And not just a little Epsom salts, like if they're not, if they have no heart condition and they're not taking heart medications. And I say like two cups of Epsom salts in a bath up to your ankle and just soak for 20 minutes and that, that will bring down the inflammation and then mostly be the next week and they'll report, you know, 50% difference. And then you can just slowly whittled.

I'm just being quiet here for a moment and thinking about a number of patients I've had over the years that I could have helped. Had I known this sooner when you're doing the GWAS Shaw on the calf. You know, often we see guash hour, it's done on the upper back shoulders. You know, you get, you get a lot of shots, very, um, colorful and dramatic GWAS shine. These other parts of the body. I mean, I'm suspecting as your in the sole of the foot or the top of the foot you're are you seeing much Shaw or is it more that you're going in and breaking up these adhesions? No,

you're not seeing the same kind of dramatic. Shall response that you might see on the back, it gets a little red, and then you can kind of see this whiteness. And that's the crunchy when you're working on somebody's foot or an area where there is a lot of connective tissue adhesions, it will have this crunchy feeling to it. And that's, that's sort of the diagnostic response, but you're not going to get any color.

You're looking to see that, that crunchy stuff eventually smooth out and not be by corrugator carb.

Yeah. In working on the, the calves around gallbladder 34, you will feel that tendon smooth out over time as they learn how to doing the, doing the work with the ball on the foot and learning how to massage the foot and, you know, going from toe to heel, heel to toe that's one way, or just draping the foot over a ball and doing a more of a fascial release where they're just holding it there. You know, a minute, um, or doing calf stretches, you will feel the perennials change. And it's a different sensation with a wash out tool. And then palpating, you know, sometimes you get those little nodules that you'll feel when you're palpating, that doesn't come across as much with the It's more what you're talking about. The corrugated

feeling. One of the things that I've noticed in reading Katie's stuff is a lot of the movements they're really small. I mean, it's not big dramatic stuff. This is not, it probably wouldn't be good for the internet. Right. Cause it's, it's not this big dramatic thing. It's these really small movements. And I mean, it's not just using intention. I mean, obviously you've got to use some, you got to have some ability to pay attention to what your body is doing, but it seems to me a lot of her stuff and correct me if I'm wrong. It's small. It's subtle. It's not big and dramatic.

Yes. And that is why it is hard to compel people of its importance because we're so used to, in a culture of convenience where used to big flashy things, we're used to these instant gratification. And it's not, it's not that at all. Some, some parts of it are, but it could be weeks. It could be. These are slow habit modifications through corrective exercises, and that's where the success happens. It looks simple, but from experience being taught in person versus trying to learn through a book, it's very different because the, a teacher part of the two year training that I did to become a restorative exercise specialist as a learner. How the exercises feel in my body and to learn, to be really patient with doing, like you're saying these small slow, subtle shifts. One of the ways that I feel it's changed my practice on how I look at the human body and observe is it really is a present moment experience because once you get excited about it and you want to see these changes in your body, everything you do. Becomes the playing field. Every movement you make is trying to see how your body moves in alignment and what's causing you to feel pain and what you were doing before that that was possibly out of alignment or what corrective exercises you need to do. But yeah, it could be as simple as a calf stretch or a head hang or, you know, one is head ramping when people are driving or on the computer, they'll jump their headphones. And teaching someone to recognize that and then how to she calls it head ramping. So it's not quite pulling your chin back to get your ear over your shoulder. It's, it's more like backing into a carport or walking backwards with your chin and bringing it up into a, um, an angle as if you're driving up into an uphill garage or something. It's hard to accept. I haven't found a good way to explain that one verbally.

I'm just playing around here with my own chin and neck, as you're talking about it. I don't know if I'm doing it right or not. You're not in front of me, but I can tell you this. I feel my cervical spine just kind of opened up and lengthened.

Yeah. So that's how you would know. You know, if you just push your chin back over your, to get your ear out, try to get your ear over your shoulder. It's going to crunch the. It's going to compress the cervical spine. So yeah, if you're doing it correctly, you will feel this lengthening and then most likely the tight muscles of your shoulder coming along for the ride. And when you do that, you probably raised your chest a little bit to compensate. So then you have to learn how to drop your ribs. Um, which is another one that's hard to do over and over without seeing a person. But what you're looking for. The bonus part of the bottom of the ribs that you might feel. If you're lifting your chest, you try to drop that down and have that lineup with the ASI of the pelvis. And what that will do is it will push your head forward again, and it will make you feel like you're slouching over. So you just Teeter between those two things as often as possible. And it will happen. You'll do it a thousand times.

So there's some real Moto neuro repatterning that has to happen here. This is not a one and done, and it's not just like, oh, I'm going to be mindful of this. It's you have to be really engaged with it. It sounds like.

Yeah. I think that's where it fits so nicely into what we do, you know, as an east Asian medicine practitioner, because we are looking at. Everything, how someone does. One thing is how they do everything. Right. And I love that, you know, you're, you're trying to like unwind that for them and get them excited about feeling different, you know, what is it, what is their internal motivation for coming to see you and really trying to tap into that. And movement is a fantastic way because people feel it. You feel the difference pretty quick.

Yeah. And, and you sidestep a lot of the stories as well in our, like we were saying earlier, people go, oh, it's because I'm aging or it's because I play tennis or it's because I do X or Y or Z. There's always a story for why something is a certain way. And it sounds like with the work that you're doing and these subtle small corrections that you're asking people to be attentive to it, it kind of sidesteps the story and just. People to pay attention. Well, what is my body doing? Or what's even more interesting not doing at this moment and

there'll be sore. I think I was sore for six months and they're so subtle. You can imagine. And I would wake up sore every single day. It really shows you how little of yourself you're moving. If you've just been doing the same thing for decades, you know, sitting in a car. Slouching working at a computer. And I really worry about the people who grew up now, young people who don't even know a life without a computer or a cell phone. And I look at them and they're hunched over and that's just going to get

worse. Well, to keep us in business,

don't keep us in business. Yeah.

For folks that are interested and I can put this on the website as well, but just real quickly, if somebody wanted to dig a little more into Katie's work, whereas a couple of places to begin

her website, nutritious movement.com is a great place to start. She had, she has 10 years of blogging, so I think 300 articles. And she also has some YouTube videos. Again, move your DNA is the book that I would suggest beginning with if this work exciting. Unfortunately, she closed the certification. Um, she wants to focus on the people who are already certified. And so that is not going to be an option, but you can definitely get, find restorative exercise specialists in your area. And there's a search on her website. So you can find the closest person there, videos that you can get she's prolific. So there'll be a lot of reasons.

Well, I thank you so much for your time today. This has been a real pleasure to sit down with you and get a little deeper into Katie's work. You know, again, I was exposed to it a little bit and I've got some better ideas now about how I might be able to incorporate this in my work. I can't wait to see. Morton's neuroma patient who I know is coming in here again in two weeks.

I'm so glad. Thank you so much for having