Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Stretching is Officially Cancelled

Transcript

Stretching is Officially Cancelled · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

0:03
This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about the game of living in
0:07
and with chronic pain and trauma, get into the heart of how to heal.
0:12
I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan
0:18
on discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, ballistic practitioners, loved ones,
0:23
and anybody that is interested in having their voice heard in the chronic pain and
0:27
trauma world that we live in. The first weekend of May of this year,
0:41
I finished my second five K in my wheelchair. It was harder than
0:46
the first one, and the first one was like fifty percent uphill, so
0:49
I don't know what the deal was, but my god, it was so
0:52
empowering again to push through the pain that I am always in. But it
0:57
also pushing through the pain I was feeling as I was getting really really tired,
1:02
because it is a lot of work to pull your body as tiny as
1:04
mine is, you know, my little one hundred and eight pounder here eight
1:07
ten. You know, after I drink a bottle of wine, it's hard
1:11
to do that, and like parts of parts of the road, we're pulling
1:15
the left, so I was having to like just one side of my body
1:19
was hurting more than the other side. And it just as a reminder to
1:22
myself when I do things like this, the power of your mindset and the
1:27
power that you have over focusing on something that you want to get to that
1:32
end of that racetrack, that end of that destination, whatever it is that
1:34
you're looking for and shooting for, and feeling empowered at the end of it.
1:38
And I did, however, I did want to collapse and lay down
1:42
on my yoga mat and stretch, like really stretch. But then I realized
1:51
back in my head, I had an episode coming up that I was going
1:53
to be recording, and his whole entire thing is about watch how your stretch
2:00
or don't stress, and we're going to talk about it like at Infainum today.
2:04
He is so amazing. And you know, I've missed the days of
2:07
me standing strong on my legs on my yoga mat, feeling the ground beneath
2:12
me, walking in grass, being able to walk in sand. I miss
2:15
those days. I am temporarily in this situation. I refuse to believe anything
2:20
but that right, And that's one of the reasons that we're here today and
2:23
on every episode, is that I wake up every day giving my pain purpose,
2:27
and I know that my guest agrees as well on his side too,
2:30
So thank you so much for being part of our pain journey together. My
2:34
little VIPs would be nothing without my listeners. So anyways, so here I
2:38
am, and I'm ready to talk to my new pal who is going to
2:44
talk about this whole stretching thing. And it sounds like whatever. It is
2:47
so not whatever, guys, this is like insane, so let's talk about
2:52
it. So, without further Ado, I'd like to introduce you to my
2:54
guests today, Yogi Aaron, thanks for being here, Bay, Thank you
2:59
so much. Lindsay, you look so darling today, not that you didn't
3:02
look darling on our mute and Greek. Oh my gosh, I'm just like
3:05
I got the vapors for you. Yogi. Aaron is one of the most
3:12
thought out yoga teachers today and he's been trailblazing a new path in the world
3:15
of yoga. And he's a little bit different from most yoga teachers, which
3:20
we're going to get down into the nitty goody about. And one of the
3:23
things that you'll just love about him is his unorthodox perspectives on stretching and flexibility
3:28
and how both of those can cause more harm than good, And of course
3:30
I love anything that's unorthodox. Right. Just wait, guys, this is
3:35
gonna be fun. So his teachings aim to help as many people as possible
3:38
live a pain free life so they can realize yoga's true intentions, tapping into
3:44
our limitless potential. Another wonderful guests here for you, guys, with a
3:46
message of hope as well. He is the creator of the revolutionary approach to
3:52
yoga it's called Applied Yoga, Anatomy and Muscle Activation a YAMA, and has
3:57
an online platform called The Yogi Club. He is also the host of the
4:00
yoga podcast Stop Stretching, and is the author of two books, The Autobiography
4:05
of a Naked Yogi which sounds very sexy, and also has a brand new
4:10
book out called Stop Stretching, a new yogic approach to master your body and
4:14
live pain free. And he also is the co owner of Blue Osa.
4:17
It's a yoga retreat and spot and coast to frickin Rica, where he leads
4:23
yoga seats are training immersions year round. I'm out of breath, Holy moly,
4:29
And he doesn't look exhausted for one second. Over here so I am
4:32
rolling out the red carpet for you. I kind of want to start today
4:36
with starting with about how you started your journey in relation to chronic pain,
4:41
and then we're going to take it from there. Well, I thank you
4:45
by the way to that great introduction. I was like, as you were
4:47
talking, I was like, who is this person? I want to right,
4:50
It's a lot, it's a lot, And I was putting together your
4:54
little profile on what I had to cut stuff out. Guys, the instro
5:00
would have been like twenty minutes. I swear you're quite amazing. Thank you,
5:04
thank you. I have a philosophy that I want to live life as
5:11
much as I possibly can, and I am able to stop. I'm not
5:15
one of those people that feel anxious in my skin like a lot of people
5:19
have a lot of anxious energy. I don't have that anxious energy. I
5:24
just I just have bomo and fear of missing out. And so I'm like
5:30
always, yeah, trying to get in as much experience, do as much
5:34
you know, shit as possible. Because it's tied TikTok. You know that's
5:40
right. We're not getting younger guys. You're Yogi's on the go. We
5:44
thought a go Go got your little go go jus. So my pain journey
5:51
really started at the moment I started yoga. And when I say yoga right
5:56
now, I'm really talking about stretching. So I don't want to confuse it
6:00
like as the practice, because my paradigm or my thought about yoga back then
6:04
was it was about stretching, it was about flexibility. And as I started
6:09
to do more of it, that started to shift from me a bit.
6:13
But really, I would say, even right up until my pain journey sort
6:17
of culminated about five years ago when I ended up in a surgeon's office,
6:23
even up until that point, I think in the back of my mind,
6:26
I still thought yoga was about stretching. So I got into yoga, I
6:30
hurt myself, and I didn't put the two and two together, like I
6:34
didn't realize like, oh, maybe I'm actually doing something not good for my
6:40
body. And what happened was is my back sea stuff on me. I
6:44
bent over to pick something up at eighteen, it seased up and kind of
6:48
an interesting thing that happened simultaneously as I started developing like an ego around I
6:55
am a person with a bad back, and so that became my sort of
6:59
person, you know, gratus or whatever they call it. And then I
7:04
would go into your classes and I would say the teachers like, oh,
7:08
I have a bet. You know, I've developed back issues. I have
7:11
to make adjustments in certain poses. And well, over time the problem just
7:16
got worse and worse. Like you think you're getting better and then all of
7:19
a sudden again you just bend over and pick something up, or you do
7:24
something like just like standing over the bathroom sync brushing your teeth. And I
7:29
remember there was a few times when I had to like brace myself to like
7:34
because I was like, is my back going to go out? Like I'm
7:36
just not sure. And then other things started happening as well, like my
7:42
knees just really started crapping out. One of the worst things that happened to
7:46
me was that I started developing this searing neck pain that was sort of like
7:51
right at the top of my scapula and then would shoot pain down my arm.
7:57
And I went to several quote unquote kellers. Nobody you know told me
8:01
what to do. And when I say healers, I'm talking about people in
8:05
the woo woo sciences. And I didn't really ever go to a doctor to
8:09
find out what was going on. But I did go to someone who I
8:13
sort of knew, and he did good neck work, but I didn't realize
8:18
how educated he was. And as soon as he saw me, he said,
8:22
this is exactly what's going on with your nick. This is exactly what
8:24
we need to do with it. And he also did something with me which
8:28
was called muscle activation technique, and that was sort of the beginning of me
8:35
getting introduced to the power of what happens when you get your muscles working properly,
8:41
so you know, then Eric would give me some homework, some things
8:46
to do. Of course I never did it and went back and I stretched
8:50
because that's what I thought healed things. And then, like I said,
8:56
I kind of culminated when I ended up in a surgeon's off this an orthopedic
9:01
surgeon who wanted to do a spinal fusion on my lower back. Of course
9:05
he did because that's what you do do surgeons do, they do surgery.
9:13
So yes, he wanted to cut in, but he was saying, there's
9:16
a very good chance because if this pain doesn't get better, this is exactly
9:20
what's going on in your back, and this is not good. And so
9:24
we're going to just see. So they ended up doing a cortisone shot,
9:28
which helped because my back was in such an inflammatory process from all the stretching
9:33
I was doing, which was making it worse. And then I decided to
9:37
get into muscle activation technique and that was kind of like a turning point for
9:41
me where I was like, something else has to be the answer, because
9:46
what I know about the human body is not correct because it's not working for
9:50
me, and if it's not working for me, it's probably not working for
9:54
a lot of other people. And then so that's kind of it in a
9:56
nutshell, my pain journey. You're a little nut pain journey. Yeah,
10:01
And I've and we talked about this before, the muscle activation technique, and
10:03
it's it's really interesting. I'd like you to talk about it a bit.
10:05
Obviously we're going to. But basically, when you go in with whoever's working
10:09
on your body, whoever is the certified therapist or whatever, goes in and
10:13
finds week weekles, yes that is weak muscles, finds weakles and then kind
10:20
of like turns them on, like gives them fire again. Is that is
10:24
that a good like quick nutshell of what that is? Yeah. I was
10:28
actually gonna say, don't confuse keiggles with weekles. I might start doing my
10:33
keiggles right now. I was gonna say, I'm joining mine. I don't
10:39
I love you now, I don't know. There's all kinds of random things
10:46
going on with our bodies these days. Oh my god. Okay, so
10:52
weakles is not keigles, and it's not also not weakles. Yeah, so
10:58
you're so you kind of hit the nail on the head like an m AT
11:03
therapist. Well, there's kind of two routes that they can go, but
11:05
the basic one is they Greg Roscoff, who's the creator of muscle activation technique,
11:13
has created a way for people too quickly, for therapists to quickly identify
11:20
muscle weakness like where is their weakness? Where is there asymmetrical imbalance in the
11:26
body? And as an m AT therapist, now I'm in my lane,
11:31
I go in, I find the weakness and then so like if, for
11:33
example, if I find that the weakness is hip flexor's right side, I
11:39
go in and I turn on all those hip flexors. And then you might
11:41
say, well, Aaron, I mean burnt muscles always turned on. And
11:46
that's the problem is that due to stress, trauma and overuse, these muscles
11:52
will shut down. And when I say shut down, you can imagine like
11:54
a telephone line between the brain or the central nervousness and the muscles, and
12:01
that line, that telephone line becomes a little bit frayed at the edges.
12:05
Like especially if you travel around Costa Rica, you'll look up and go those
12:09
telephone lines don't look healthy and so and change them to improve communication systems.
12:16
Right, So that's kind of what happens me as an m AT therapist.
12:22
I get the muscles talking to the brain again basically so that when the brain
12:26
senses instability, it now has the communication pathway corrected, so it can tell
12:33
those muscles to start working, to tell those muscles to contract and contract on
12:37
demand, I would say, And this is I'm not being glip or hyperbolic.
12:43
I'm actually being very serious. But in my estimation, most people are
12:46
walking around with fifty percent muscular capacity, meaning that most people walking around or
12:52
walking around with fifty percent of their muscles not contracting and contracting on demand properly,
12:58
which is why the number of people who are living with pain in their
13:03
body is so high. And I think, of course, there's a lot
13:05
of exacerbating issues, like you know, sitting a lot, eating unhealthy.
13:11
You know, there's a lot of exacerbating issues. But the fact is that
13:15
most people are walking around with debilitated neuromuscular systems. Well you're looking at one
13:20
and and I've fifty percent sounds high for me right now, honestly, because
13:26
yes, I sit a lot. I used to be crazy active. You
13:30
know, I was hiper, biker, skier, you know, jumper,
13:31
rower, blah blah blah. Whatever I could do, I would do and
13:35
extreme sports, fun sports, the easy sports, yoga, all of it.
13:39
And so now I'm in this place where I sit far more than I
13:41
used to. But you know, a lot of my friends, in my
13:43
sweetie and my family members in such stories like oh no, no, don't
13:46
get up, I'll get it for you. And I'm like, no,
13:46
i gotta get up, and i gotta move right now. I've got to
13:50
move or else I'm going to lose them, you know, move them or
13:52
lose them, baby, and so, and I've acturo feed so much.
13:54
And I also like my marathon pictures came in and don't know my marathon,
13:58
my five kick came in from the Os Marathon that we did here, and
14:03
I'm just the pictures of my legs and my wheelchair, I'm just like,
14:07
what the hell they're they're so atropheed from slowly, but surely not only me.
14:13
When I do walk, which is is a lot, I walk a
14:16
lot, so that's but I just can't go long distances right. So but
14:20
when I'm walking, I'm walking on the outside of my feet now instead of
14:24
putting, instead of like pronating forward and walking like through the balls of my
14:28
feet because the balls of my feet, the bones hurt so bad. It
14:33
hurts to put like I can't walk bear feet. That's just absolutely never going
14:35
to happen in the next, you know, span of time. But I
14:39
can tell that things are kind of withering away. I almost feel like I
14:43
am walking on my bones, and I just don't have as much plumpness to
14:48
my body. I don't have the fat in my body that I used to,
14:50
you know, all of these things like you were talking about, there's
14:52
all these other things that can be involved. But hands down, my muscles
14:56
are weak, and the places that are getting strong aren't in the right places
15:01
because they're like they're making up for these things that I'm faking. Yeah,
15:05
that's exactly right. I am totally over compensation. So my knees feel thrashed,
15:09
especially my right one. And you when you were talking about like you
15:13
know, balance and stability and all of that, I feel like I don't
15:16
want to use a cane. I don't want to use a can when I'm
15:18
standing like a you know, human. And but I'm like getting nervous now
15:22
because every now and again my right knee just goes goop and just goes out
15:26
on me, or my ankle rolls or whatever. It's just it's really really
15:28
sad. But you gave me so much hope and talking about this mat because
15:33
to me, it's like almost like I've got little little helpers that are going
15:37
to be activated that are going to help like strengthen my muscles, and they're
15:39
like with the Pulley system or something like I've got a visual of like what
15:43
I wanted to, like these little functioning people helping me in my legs and
15:46
in my arms and stuff. My arms are much better than they because I've
15:50
been working on my wheelchair stuff. Sure my upper body's rocking. My lower
15:54
body is like what the hell? What are the things about? When we
15:58
get the muscular system are king properly, Like, so, what is causing
16:03
a lot of pain in most people's bodies? And I'm talking physical pain obviously,
16:07
and so much of pain is directed or directly related to inflammation. You
16:12
know, there's inflammation, and that was why I ended up in the surgeon's
16:15
office because I had an inflammatory response in my lower back. So, but
16:21
what we know or what I've experienced directly, I'm not just saying this by
16:26
rote, but I've actually experienced it and help other people to experiences. When
16:30
we get the muscular system working, the body then feels stable, and then
16:34
the inflammatory system immediately goes, you know, dissipates, and then community other
16:41
communication pathways start to improve. So it's kind of amazing. That's why I
16:47
was like saying to you when we initially talked, like if you could get
16:51
into an m AT therapist and it would be a game changer, and it
16:55
would be I would be so fascinated to see what would happen, because I
16:59
think you're in an exceptional you know story, and that I just I really
17:04
believe it, what because I've experienced I've gone in to see Eric. Eric
17:08
is my guy, and he's the guy in LA that I was telling you,
17:11
and I came upon his heir email while I was prepping for I'm like,
17:15
oh my god, that's right. I have his contact information. I
17:18
thought somewhere LA line I forgot to get it from me. So that was
17:19
my bad head. But the thing about Eric is I would go in with
17:23
my lower back seized up. You know, normally that would take me a
17:26
few weeks to heal. I would go in to see Eric with my neck
17:30
like tight as a rock, and then within an hour and a half he
17:36
could completely change all of that. So I'd be if I walked into his
17:38
office like eight out of ten in pain, I would leave like one or
17:42
two maybe out of whoa god, I haven't felt a one or out two
17:47
in very a long time. And that was what happened when I ended up
17:49
in the surgeon's office. I called Eric after and I said, I think
17:53
I should learn HMAT and he goes, I think that would be a fantastic
17:57
idea because it would give you more information. And Eric has done like all
18:03
kinds of different modalities. He's a chiropractor or wall for you know, deep
18:07
tissue expert. Out of all the modalities and spending you know, five years
18:12
in chiropractic school. He says, m AT is the one thing that works
18:17
the best out of all of them. So it's amazing. It is so
18:21
from from within your applied yoga and your eye yama applied to practice the like
18:27
seventeen times before Yama. Yeah, now, I won't shut up about it.
18:32
But when you created this yoga approach, you did this applied yoga anatomy
18:36
plus this m AT part of that. What makes that approach so incredibly unique?
18:41
And where does this don't stretch fall into this conversation? Because that is
18:47
how we open And that is so because I'm just like on pins and needles
18:51
trying to figure out because we all think, oh, just go stretch,
18:53
Go stretch your hammies. Obviously that's my sweetie. Don't forget to stretch your
18:56
hammies. And I'm like, great, I've been telling them to do the
18:59
wrong thing the whole not that he listened to me anyway, Hopefully he didn't,
19:06
this particular kid, I guarantee he didn't. So first of all,
19:11
when I got into m AT, it's a very specific therapeutic style, and
19:18
what I gradually wanted to do was translated into yoga, And so what I
19:22
do is when I do in my yoga classes in a yama, it's not
19:26
m AT Like m AT is a very specific lane and I'm not certified to
19:30
teach people that as well. And it's also more of a therapeutic one on
19:34
one approach, which is not applicable for yoga class of like twenty thirty four
19:41
fifty people. So then I was like, Okay, well how do I
19:44
fit this into a class. And that has been sort of the creative process
19:48
between you know, when I got into it. To me writing the book
19:52
was understanding like where do we fit this in? And what I realized first
19:56
and foremost is how many yoga teachers just do not understand the body. They
20:02
say a lot of very fantastic kind of like things which don't make any sense.
20:07
And like one of them, which is my biggest pet peeve these days,
20:11
is opening the hips. Like you always see workshops, oh my god,
20:15
everywhere open your hips, And if you think about that bio mechanically,
20:22
it doesn't make sense. Like if you if your hips are open, they're
20:25
dislocated. And I don't think we want to walk around in life with dislocated
20:29
hips. So why are we telling people to open their hips and then and
20:33
then what's wrong with having closed tips? I would rather have closed tips because
20:37
then my hips are stable and all the muscles are working and holding my hips
20:41
in place. But anyways, aside from that, I wanted to start like
20:45
challenging some of these ideas. So that's how the ayama came in. There's
20:48
kind of two parts to a yama, the applied yoga anatomy, which is
20:52
like yoga teachers are so deficient in basic anatomy. And then I also wanted
21:00
to empower like the regular person, like you to be able to understand the
21:04
body, Like if you understood basic functions, you go, oh, that's
21:10
where I'm weak. I need to fix that, or I need to get
21:12
stronger there, Like my hip flexers, Oh, who know that they're supporting
21:17
my spine, Okay, So I need to get my hip flexer strong.
21:19
So there's just little things like that. And then the muscle activation, of
21:23
course, is a big part of it, because the opposite a muscle activation
21:29
is stretching, and so stretching is one of the biggest culprits to disrupting that
21:34
communication system between the brain and the muscle. I always say, remember how
21:40
I was using that telephone line and analogy before. Well, stretching is like
21:45
taking a pair of gardening shears, big gardening shears and just chopping in half
21:51
that telephone line. It's like you're in Costa Rica and the bandits come and
21:55
steal the fiber optic cables. Literally, they could literally come in with their
22:00
gardening shears and cut it and then they do. I'm not making that up.
22:04
And I have this picture in my head of the hamblerg or do you
22:07
remember that McDonald's constels in the black and white. That's literally what visual came
22:15
into my head that word bandits in a while. Yeah. So it's like
22:23
cutting your basically, like almost cutting that communication off, not cutting your muscle
22:27
per se. But it's really the connection between our central nervous system and our
22:32
brain and our muscles. Is that? What is that? How I understand
22:34
that. I'm just trying to dumb it down and just for the anybody who's
22:38
a little bit more scientific. Basically, what it does is it starts to
22:44
desensitize the intrafusal muscle fibers. So the intrafusal muscle fibers are basically sensing when
22:51
they need to lengthen and shorten, they start to send messages to the central
22:57
nervous system in the form of gamma motor neurons. So what stretching does,
23:03
to make a long story short, is it desensitizes those intrafusal muscle fibers,
23:07
so they no longer work and do their job properly. Now do they start
23:12
to become sensitive again, it depends with someone like you who is a little
23:18
bit more unique. You have more stress, you have more trauma in your
23:22
body. There's probably we can almost guarantee there's more inflammation. So there's a
23:27
lot of things that are breaking your system down. We need to start building
23:32
that your system up, and I want to be very specific at a neuromuscular
23:37
level. So at a neuromuscular level, we're improving that communication system. And
23:41
what we often find is that once that communication systems improved, we start to
23:47
get better. When we stretch, it does the opposite, It debilitates it.
23:52
So if you get a young person, like you know, an Olympic
23:53
athlete at the age of sixteen eighteen years old, probably they can withhandle the
24:00
stress of stretching because they can stretch and then they can go back out although
24:04
they do get harmed a lot because we can see that because over time they
24:08
have to wear as bandages, they have to wear arches, they have to
24:11
wear back braces. They're constantly icing themselves the more they get older. So
24:17
we can actually see visually like like as you know bystanders, we can see
24:22
them getting debilitated and and then they end up having to quit the sport or
24:29
you know, get surgery. Yeah, jeez, Well, it's just so
24:33
interesting because like you know, before before the five K, for example,
24:37
I was like, God, you know, I didn't even stretch my arms
24:41
or open up my chest or do anything to kind of get me prep for
24:44
all of that. When this this shift has to happen within us in regards
24:48
to what stretching actually is and what is what what part of it is bad?
24:53
And are you going to say every single thing about it is bad?
24:57
Well I think that, you know, there's a lot of people but like
25:00
get bent out of shape because then they're like, wow, there's different kinds
25:03
of stretching. So I kind of lump all stretching almost into a category.
25:07
There is one kind of stretching, but that's actually good, and it's called
25:11
dynamic stretching, but a lot of people don't really understand the mechanics of that.
25:17
I prefer to say dynamic movement. So instead of like you, for
25:22
example, stretching your arms and some of the terms, you know, things
25:26
might get confused because if I say, bring your arms up to the sky
25:30
and then kind of don't move your spine but just bring the arms back.
25:34
Are you stretching the shoulders, are you stretching the chest, or are you
25:40
activating the back muscles? So it's kind of like terms kind of get a
25:44
little wonky here because so many people, if they feel like opening, then
25:49
they kind of immediately assume that stretching. But if the opposite muscle is actually
25:53
engaging, that's dynamic movement. Oh that's a very good way of explaining.
26:00
Thank you all beside me. You can see it, but your listeners can't.
26:03
If I bring my hand up to the wall and then push away from
26:06
it, now I'm passively stretching tissue in my chest. But if I bring
26:11
my arms back, yes, I am creating a bit of a stretch in
26:15
the front chest. But what I'm really join is activating my trap psis muscles,
26:21
which is going to your point about preparing for your race, being you
26:25
know, using your upper body so much, you would want to do things
26:29
to start activating all of those muscles in your upper body as much as possible.
26:33
Okay, that was really good. That was really good because for me,
26:37
I'm super visual anyway, But because people can't see us, I do
26:41
like that because like all I wanted to do is just like lay open on
26:45
my belt, you know, on my exercise ball, and just lay there
26:48
and open up. And I'm gone, oh god, don't do it.
26:49
I know it. I knew you were gonna say it. But that sounds
26:52
like it's gonna feel so good. So why does that feel good when it's
26:59
actually doing as harm? Because that's that's an interesting question. Yeah. But
27:04
before I answer your question, I want to really emphasize a point which needs
27:08
to be clarified. And you said something very poignant, which is it feels
27:14
good, and so you know, doing a line of poke feels good.
27:18
Oh God, the good old day. I just for the record, I
27:22
do not know. Because I have a very addictive personality. I've stayed away
27:26
from that. Stop. That's why Linda had to stop doing that. If
27:30
I do one line, I know I won't stop but well, and that's
27:33
also the problem with the pain and opiate community too, Like I won't take
27:37
pain pills because I know my personality type for sure. Yeah, I mean,
27:40
so those pain pills, I mean, is it good or bad?
27:41
Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Another thing I want to just
27:45
kind of add is drinking a bottle of wine feels good. I love wine,
27:51
and but if I drink a bottle next morning, I feel like crap.
27:55
So just because something feels good doesn't mean that it's necessarily for you.
28:00
And in the words of my sister Karina, just because you can doesn't mean
28:03
you should. We said good, good, damnag. But I'm saying that
28:11
because stretching does feel good even if it's painful in the moment, Like afterwards,
28:15
there is a parasympathetic release. Your body goes into rest and die jazz.
28:19
You do feel peaceful because you have started to tamp into that part of
28:25
your nervous system that is clenching. But in terms of stretching itself, it
28:30
just leaves you more debilitated at the end. And again you're just cutting off
28:36
those those neuro communications. And why you say, well, Yogi, Aaron,
28:40
Like, why is that important well, you know, if you're going
28:42
to leave the yoga class. And this literally has happened to me a few
28:45
times. I go home feel good. I'm like you know in it.
28:49
I start doing stuff in my kitchen. I go take a shower, you
28:52
know. I jump in the shower and I reach up and grab the shampoo
28:56
bottle. And this has literally happened to me. I'm not being glipped,
28:59
and I grabbed the shampoo bottle. My whole back seizes up because my body
29:04
was left in a compromised state, Like my muscles were not contracting properly.
29:11
So when I reached up to grab the shampoo bottle, which was very heavy
29:14
by the way, and and so my brain is saying to the muscles contract,
29:21
but none of the muscles were, so my shoulder would go through a
29:25
range of motion that wasn't being supported by muscles. So muscles have two jobs.
29:30
Basically. They am more than that, I know, but they basically
29:33
have two big jobs. One is to move bones. So you think about
29:37
like you're in your wheelchair and you're turning the wheels and you've got to use
29:41
your shoulders. Can you imagine what would happen like if you're only going at
29:47
fifty percent capacity with the amount of muscles that are being used. Maybe your
29:51
upper traps aren't firing properly, so then another muscle has to start compensating.
29:56
But what if that muscle is not working, then another muscle has to compensate.
30:00
And so you see this a lot with athletes who have to use their
30:03
shoulders, and one of the biggest things that athletes have to deal with is
30:08
rotator cup terrors. Well, I can tell you that a lot of that
30:12
rotator cuff stuff is happening because the major muscles are not working to begin with,
30:18
and so the rotator cup muscles are being way overused and having to compensate
30:23
for managing a lot of range of motion that they're not supposed to be dealing
30:29
with. That's so interesting. Well, this whole thing is just kind of
30:33
mind boggling to me, honestly, because it is boggling. It is.
30:37
It is. It's like flexibility and stretching madness in my mind right now,
30:40
because we've always been taught to stretch, We've always been taught these things,
30:45
and I've spoken to so many people that are about stretching, and so I'm
30:51
like, I'm gonna be reaching out to a couple and being like, you
30:52
guys are gonna have to listen to this episode, and I want to report
30:55
back because because I mean, obviously we all have our different our viewpoint and
31:00
perspectives and things of yours and eyes particularly we're more in the unorthodox group of
31:03
people. But it is based on science. It's not based on you just
31:07
being like, you know what, guys, I think. I'm just going
31:10
to throw this out there and we'll just see how it works out for you.
31:12
I want to just kind of comment on that because you know, sometimes
31:17
especially in the conversation, we get into my truth and I don't believe in
31:21
my truth, your truth. I just believe are there's just facts and what
31:25
I do as a yogi, and this is the kind of interesting thing for
31:27
yoga. It's really about what is reality, Like, let's get to what
31:33
is reality? One of the number one this is a site conversation, but
31:37
one of the practices in yoga is just watching a flame, like staring at
31:41
a flame, and the question is do you really see the flame? And
31:45
so that's for us, like it's always about getting to the source. But
31:48
coming back to stretching, I can test you and I can test your force
31:53
output, Like if I get a muscle, your muscle strong before I stretch
31:57
you, and then I come in and stretch you, there's going to be
32:01
like a huge difference, Like and you will feel as if when you stretch,
32:07
you will feel as if like someone just turn the light out in your
32:10
off in your office in your muscles because that appropriate reception, that connection between
32:17
the brain and the muscles, it's gone. It's like literally like turning off
32:22
a light switch and the brain. So when we talk about science, like
32:27
we can actually test it when we can test force outputs of muscles and see
32:32
like what happens to a muscle when we stretch it, and and the end,
32:37
there has been a lot of studies done, you know by like lenox
32:40
Hill Hospital out of New York found that when athletes stretched for thirty minutes afterwards,
32:46
their muscles were not working properly thirty minutes, which the moment was that's
32:52
not how you want to begin, like your sports. You know, whatever
32:57
you're doing with your sports, if it's going for a run or something,
33:00
you need all of those muscles working. You don't want them debilitate it.
33:04
So I'm sitting there at the five k and I'm watching seventy five thousand people
33:08
pulling their pulling their knees back and their ankles back, stretching their stretching their
33:14
quads and stretching their calves and doing the whole thing, and all of them
33:16
are doing are hurting themselves. Wow, that's nuts, man. I mean,
33:22
if you look at how many runners deal with shin splints, deal with
33:25
ankle issues, deal with knees, you know how many of those people stretching
33:30
had knee braces, how many of them have hip problems, how many of
33:32
them have lower back issues, and so so many of them are dealing with
33:37
issues. Stretching just makes it worse and they just don't know it. God,
33:40
I am just flabbergasted. It's literally just having It's like having this shift
33:50
of forty five years of my life of hearing. And I'll tell you a
33:54
different perspective. And if what I've said to Pete your listeners hasn't registered,
34:00
then go back to the function. So I said, muscles move bones,
34:05
and then muscles stabilize the joints. And how do they do that? A
34:08
muscle does that. Muscle moves bones, and a muscle stabilizes joints. By
34:14
shortening, they have to contract. Contract means too shorten. And so what
34:19
is stretching doing while stretching is pulling it longer? And so why would we
34:23
want to encourage a muscle to become longer when its function is actually too shortened.
34:30
So that's another perspective. Oh, you're so good at this. You're
34:35
so good because it's it's a hard one to explain. I was like trying
34:37
to wrap my noodle around it before we were talking today. And that is
34:40
such a good visual about the muscles getting longer because I can see that almost
34:45
like melted cheese, like pulling away from our bones and our joints and actually
34:50
destabilizing us for our movement. That is insane. Well, there's a lot
34:55
of people that I know that are going to be happy with this news,
34:58
and one of them is my sweetie. He's like, yes, when you
35:02
passively move people, all those stretched a lot of people are doing is destroying
35:07
people's sense of stability because they're opening up a lot of range emotion. And
35:12
I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, not even a
35:15
lot of range emotion, an extreme amount of range emotion that is going to
35:20
leave people more vulnerable and open to injuries in their regular life. And so
35:24
it may feel good, but it's not serving people, and it's going to
35:30
make you know, any kind of existing problems even worsened. And that's exactly
35:35
what happened to me. Is like I never dealt with the real causes of
35:38
my body's tightness. I just tried to slap a band aid on it and
35:44
try to stretch it out, but that, you know, didn't work.
35:47
This stuff is so important and even just hearing the word pain free or eliminate
35:53
pain, I mean, those are words, especially in the chronic pain community.
35:57
That's all we want to hear is pain free, pain free, pain
36:00
free. Well okay, but they always said the thing no pain, no
36:02
gain, right, Well yeah, that whole pain no gain that needs to
36:07
you know, like pain from an MT and a Yama perspective is like the
36:13
check engine light of the body coming on and saying, you know, something
36:16
is wrong and we need to address it. And so pain again is the
36:21
an inflammatory response. And the thing is that we have to ask a question,
36:25
well, why why is there inflammation there? Well, something is not
36:29
stable, and so we need to address the instability. And that's why I
36:34
like when I would go into yoga classes and tell teachers like I have back
36:37
problems, not one of them ever said to me, we need to get
36:39
your back stronger, like we need to get it stronger, and you need
36:44
to stop stretching. You need to start activating your glutes and activating your lower
36:50
back. And not one yoga teacher ever said that. And all of those
36:53
kind of people at these stretch labs, I guarantee you not one of them
36:57
is properly educated on how to move people's bodies proper light and and even more
37:04
like the biomechanics, Like if you talk to them about hip flexers or back
37:07
extensors, like they're probably just like, what, yeah, back extensors.
37:12
Sure, let's open those backs up, you know, let's open it all
37:15
up. Let's just open it all up. Baby. In some cases that's
37:20
a good thing, but in this case it is not. So Oh my
37:27
god, I want to keep talking to you, but we're running out of
37:29
time. So what can we leave our listeners with before we jam out of
37:31
here? Well, first of all, go to Amazon search stop Stretching,
37:37
get my book, Yeah, because that will It is just such a great
37:39
education for people to have, and it's told in a fun way, and
37:44
there's tons of cute like drawings. I had an artists do all these filings
37:47
my dog. So but the second thing is go to my website. I
37:52
have some freebies. There of lots of freebies actually, and one of them
37:57
is the which I think you're going to put in your show notes, the
37:59
seven Days to Becoming Pain Free. I will. It's basically just it's a
38:04
free ba. It just starts to educate people. Like I was just talking
38:07
about trunk extensors. Most people don't know what their trunk extensors are, so
38:10
let's learn a little bit about them, and what is the number one muscle
38:15
that is in our trunk you know, of our trunk extensors that we need
38:17
to get activate it so that way we can start to live a more pain
38:22
free life. Well, I love it because I think learning and educating ourselves,
38:25
and that's one of the reasons that we're here is to do just that,
38:29
is to educate not only your host here, but all the listeners.
38:31
Because I learned something, if not twenty five thousand things every episode that I
38:36
do with you people, because you guys are just amazing and I find myself,
38:40
you know, in the morning when i know I've got the show to
38:43
do, and I'm very passionate about what I do, not unlike yourself.
38:45
It is so important that we're getting out this information and that I'm I am
38:50
presenting it in the most eloquent and fun and you know, disparaging and you
38:52
know, vulnerable way that I possibly can. But it's just it. It's
38:57
so nice to meet people like you and the spirit that you brought to this
39:00
today. I really appreciate it. And it's been fun listening to your podcast
39:02
and reading about you and watching you on social. So all of this social
39:06
stuff will be in show notes and as well as in social. Thank you
39:09
so much again for spending time with us today. Yo ye eron, I
39:12
appreciate it so much. Thanks Lindsey for having me here. You are exclusively
39:19
invited to share this. Don't ever stretch again VIP pain Journey together. Let's
39:23
get to the heart of how to heal with you by my side. Do
39:28
you know anyone that is living in and with chronic pain? If you do,
39:30
send them our way here to the Pain Game podcast, I would love
39:34
to connect with them and hear their heartfelt stories of strength and wisdom and utter
39:37
share awesomeness and oh reviews. Stop what you're doing and hop on Spotify and
39:43
Apple and give the show review or two. I would love to have my
39:45
community of listeners help drive traffic to the show so that we can continue to
39:50
help others on their journeys through trauma and pain together. Please follow the Pain
39:53
Game Podcast wherever you digest your podcast content, we will be there. Visit
39:59
us at the Pain podcast dot com, and follow us on all the socials.
40:02
Thanks for listening my little VIPs. Catch you on the other side.