First, do you know what an RSS feed is, in the technology sense? It’s an acronym that’s defined a couple of different ways but the one I like best is Real Simple Syndication. This is the term for automatic updates of information that are compatible with many types of users. 

So, for example, this is the way your podcasts are kept up to date in Apple or Spotify or Stitcher or Podcast Addict or whatever platform you use- each podcast has an RSS feed that all the players can access, so each time a podcast episode is published, it automatically becomes available on all the podcast players out there. The podcaster doesn’t have to manually go in and update every single platform that plays podcasts.

This is an automatic process, and it’s a simultaneous process. New information becomes available, and poof! It’s shared everywhere, all at once.

This is a SUPER metaphor for what’s happening in your body when you learn something new! One of the first lessons you’ll always get from me is how to set up truly parallel feet. But when you practice this, it’s not just about your feet. The practice of this position is automatically and simultaneously updating information all over your body- muscles are engaging and disengaging. Nerves are activating, proprioception is being built, balance is changing, even internal systems are being affected like breathing and digesting and circulating blood. 

So my own, physical, holistic version of this RSS feed stands for Release, Stretch, and Strengthen. When these 3 things are practiced consistently and together, they create the environment your body needs to establish the movement patterns that release the tension, build the structures, and relieve the discomfort that we don’t want to live with anymore!

RELEASE refers to holding tension in your muscles. I focus on muscles with this RSS feed idea because they're the parts in your body that you have the most control over. When you improve how they work, you’ll automatically and simultaneously improve how all the other structures work too, like the tendons and ligaments and bones and nerves and blood vessels… all the stuff.

So, release. This is a passive practice, and that can be hard to wrap your head around since we’re usually taught that everything that’s good for us is active. But we often hold active and inappropriate tension in muscles when they’re at rest, that impacts how we move and how we feel, so it takes time and inhibition training to let that tension go. 

The line I use here all the time is that “Sensation is not the best indicator of success!” So when we’re doing a release move in my PF personal training program, you might not feel the “stretch” in the body part that the move is named for. You’re releasing tension in a body part that is potentially so used to being tense, you don’t have the sensory nerves there anymore from training yourself to ignore it. 

Try this- can you lay on your back without: 

1. Your knees bending
2. Your low back arching up, or
3. Your neck arching and tilting your head back?

If not, maybe your psoas needs some releasing!

This is the same principle that’s in play when you wear toe spacers- you’re passively releasing the muscle tension that’s created by wearing narrow shoes, with a heel, that pitch you forward. Basically your feet clench to try and prevent you from falling on your face, and that’s become a totally normal state of affairs. Toe spaces are passive tools that help you regain a natural foot shape and mobility level.

STRETCH is the second part of my holistic RSS feed. When you stretch your muscles, you feed information back to your brain about your available range of motion- not just in that muscle, but throughout your whole body. Stretching your feet loosens your hips. Stretching your core improves your neck. Stretching your hamstrings impacts your shoulders. 

The thing to know here is that muscles have 2 parts. The “belly” of the muscle is the classic, all-red-on-the-anatomy-pictures, part of the muscles. It’s all muscle fibers, which kinda move like a combination of velcro and tug of war. So a good stretch backs up those velcro hooks, and gives more space for the tug of war to happen. 

The other part is the “ends” of the muscles. Muscles connect to your body though connective tissue, but there’s no hard and fast boundary where red muscle fibers become white connective tissue. They overlap, with fewer and fewer muscle fibers closer to the bone and fewer and fewer connective tissue fibers closer to the belly of the muscle. 

This is important because these ends can stretch too, and worse- they can tear. So stretching with good form, slowly without bouncing, and with resistance, will not only give you more range of motion in the belly of the muscles, but also more elasticity in the ends of the muscles. This is helpful for when we have to use the ends of the muscles, like in emergency situations, so that you don’t tear things we don’t want tearing.

Finally, STRENGTHEN is the final piece of our holistic RSS feed. My thing here is functional strength. I don’t care how many pull ups you can do, if you can’t pull a suitcase or pick strawberries without throwing out your back. It doesn't matter how many miles you can run or how many pounds you can leg press, if you can’t safely pick up and put down your child dozens of times a day. Strength isn’t an aesthetic thing, it’s a functional thing. 

At the end of the day, the point of exercise (at least according to me, anyway) is to be stronger than your average day, so that your average day is super easy for you to get through. Practicing these RSS steps benefits not only the parts of your body you’re working, be it limb strength line hamstrings or biceps, or core strength like your breathing muscles or pelvic floor, but it also benefits your whole self to work together in a more complete, functional way- automatically and simultaneously. 

Listen to the Episode Here

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We know it can be really helpful to talk about who exactly needs pelvic floor support, because there's classic pelvic floor dysfunction issues. But there's also less obvious, or less common things that come up with less optimal pelvic floor positioning and support as well. So, while you might not actually have full blown pelvic floor dysfunction, a lot of things, including the last year of the pandemic, has been pushing people over the edge into less common pelvic floor issues. So that's are going to talk about today so you can figure out whether or not that means you.

So who needs pelvic floor support beyond people with classic pelvic floor dysfunction issues?

My argument is going to be almost everybody, but that doesn't mean that it has to be intense, or overwhelming to fix some of these patterns and these habits that we have that are causing some of our problems.

First, a classic pelvic floor dysfunction is going to look like some of these things: It's going to be stuff like sneeze pee or exercise pee or laugh pee. These are examples of what's called stress incontinence. It's when you can't hold your urine when your bladder is under stress, like when you sneeze, like when you jump on a trampoline, you’re doing jumping jacks, or when you run.

There's also urge incontinence, which is when you feel like or maybe you actually can't hold it. When you suddenly have to go and there's no option insight, but to get yourself to a bathroom. Stress incontinence and urgent condoms are classic pelvic floor dysfunction symptoms.

Some people experience pressure or a heavy, dragging feeling in the pelvic bowl. You might be experiencing prolapse.  Prolapse is when organs, start to fall down. In the very worst stages of prolapse, things are actually starting to fall out. But that initial stage where things start to sag and start to fall is also a pelvic floor dysfunction symptom.

Things like abdominal separation. This is called “die-ah-STAY-sis” or “die-ASS-tah-sis,” depending on how it's pronounced by the people talking to you. So Diastasis Recti is an abdominal separation that happens most often in childbirth. 

But you don't have to be bearing a child to put enough pressure on your abdomen for separation to happen. So that separation can happen through lots of other stressful strenuous means.

And also hiatal or abdominal hernias or classic pelvic floor dysfunction symptoms. Now, you might not be experiencing any of those or you might think, well maybe but it's not enough to really be going on with.

There's also less obvious, and less commonly talked about symptoms that you can experience that ultimately lead back to a misaligned or an unsupported pelvis. 

• Things like low back pain
• Things like heartburn, or indigestion
• Hip, knee, and feet problems
• The classic tech neck, from sitting in front of a screen for too long and reaching for with your chin, or headaches or TMJ, can also be less common symptoms of a slight pelvic floor dysfunction
• Respiratory function or volume reductions is also another thing that can come from your whole pelvis and up the spine
• And also something that people call Flat Butt Syndrome, which I am calling Panny Fanny- when you're losing muscle mass in your rear end

These are things that definitely can cause a lot of discomfort, even pain, and lack of quality of life that can have lots of reasons for them- lots of root causes- but a pelvic floor fix is often a majorly necessary first step to repairing any of them.

So people who might want to be on the lookout for having some pelvic floor support work happening in their lives include people who sit a lot. When you sit there's a bunch of things that can happen.

You might be not sitting on your sits bones, sitting on your tailbone instead. And that's going to cause all sorts of misalignments in both the muscles and the bones. 

Also when you sit, your front of the hip muscles get really short and then when you stand up, now your pelvis gets pulled out of alignment because those muscles don't link, and as long as they need to.

People who stand a lot also need to be on the lookout for these types of pelvic floor issues because usually when we stand still, we're throwing out a hip, we've got feet crossed and one in front of the other- we don't tend to stand in a perfectly aligned parallel position. And that builds up a habit of having the pelvis out of alignment.

People who run are also going to want to make sure that their pelvis positioning is nice and square, because otherwise you're going to be leading to asymmetries in your muscles and your bones, and also a potential for things like low back pain if stuff is tucked in a direction it shouldn't be. 

People who hike a lot as well, because as you're going up and down hills, up and down rocks around trees, the ability to maneuver and be nimble on your feet is coming from your center of balance, which is in and around the pelvis. 

And also people who play sports like golf and tennis, because they tend to be inherently a symmetrical sports. You're always lining up your golf swing and twisting in the same direction, try hitting it from the other side it's going to be really difficult. Same thing with tennis players- you have a dominant arm, and that's the one that's going to be using all of the force. So, that tends to build asymmetries, through the rest of your body and that impacts your pelvis as well.

So these are just some samples of what are classic pelvic floor issues, less obvious pelvic floor issues, and the activities that people might be doing that could lead to some different types of pelvic floor issues.

Yes, I do teach pelvic floor support work. But I’m also launching a patron account so people can become members at a low cost per month, to my additional content. So I'm going to be extending the discussion from this podcast into more specifics about what is causing some of these less obvious problems and how you can start to adjust for that, inside of my membership.

It's not a good idea for me to be sort of generally giving advice like that open on a podcast, on a blog post, because people can do very inappropriate things with that type of information, but on the inside of a membership, that's where we can start to get more direct and more specific.

So head on over to my website paulasherbals.com. Check out how to become a patron, and what the two different tiers of my membership look like. And if you'd like to have some more information about what's going on and how to adjust your life habits to prevent and reverse some of these issues, you'll be able to do that right there.

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​There seems to be a spectrum of hypermobility. At one end are people who are particularly flexible in one direction- something always stretches markedly better than the rest of them. This is the kind of thing that is often noticed in a yoga or pilates class, and it’s something that I’ve seen a lot over the years teaching reformer pilates.

At the other end of the spectrum is a connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, or EDS. This is a fairly serious condition where your connective tissue, which is what holds you together, is weakened. This can cause all sorts of problems, and EDS is not the main focus of today’s episode, although what I’m going to talk about can help. 
 
For me, my hypermobility meant that I was actually very weak, muscularly. I’ll never forget, in my first reformer pilates instructor training over 15 years ago, our master trainer was excellent at encouraging us to adjust the resistance on our reformers during training because it was so exhausting over several days! 

So I was doing an upper body exercise on the absolute lightest spring our machines have, and she called the rest of the class over and asked me to continue. First she pointed out the little bitty spring that I was using, and then the obvious muscle strain happening around my shoulder joints (I was wearing a tank top so you could see everything). It was a lesson to not simply assume springloads for people, to actually observe them and make changes based on their form and effort. Because even though I was there to be an instructor, so I presumably should have been able to do everything at what’s considered a ‘normal springload’, my shoulders couldn’t handle it. So making that assumption for me would have been dangerous for my shoulders.

For me, the whole experience showed me that while, for example, my shoulders could come out of their sockets on demand, I could also use the muscles around my joints to help hold them together if I had some more muscles around my joints! ​

Hypermobility is seen from the outside as being extra flexible, but really it’s not about the muscles- it’s about the connective tissue (CT) being extra stretchy and/or weak. This is a problem because CT doesn’t heal well. When you look at an anatomy picture you’ll see the muscles in red, and you’ll also see white stuff which is the connective tissue. The best image for this is a picture of the back muscles, there’s a triangle of CT over the low back. It’s there to support your low back.

The CT is white both on pictures and in person because it doesn’t get much blood flow. Therefore, it’s slow to heal and easy to re-damage. One of the types of CT are tendons, ligaments are another CT type, so when you do things like sprain an ankle you’re more likely to re-injure that ankle because it’s really hard to fully heal that.

The other thing about hypermobility is that while you’re stretchy and loosey-goosey at your joints, SOMETHING has to hold you together! A lot of times, that something is the CT line that runs from the front of your pelvis up the front of your body to your neck and throat. 

This line can get really tense. A lot of hypermobile people have really strong pelvic floors, because that contraction of th epelvic floor muscles has always been part of keeping themselves vertical. It’s not necessarily supposed to be, but that’s how we’ve compensated. There's also sometimes intense tension in the jaw and front of the neck, which can be actual TMJ, or can share some of its symptoms.

Personally, I have a depression, like a channel or an upside down ridge, between the 2 halves of my sternum, the breastbone, and now I think that was caused by this CT tension up the midline of my body while still having extra flexibility- that extra mobility- around my ribcage as a child. ​

OK, but here’s why this matters. You might not have known you were hypermobile, or you thought you were but outside of party tricks like when I can dislocate my shoulders on demand you didn’t care much about it. 

But it does matter, because over time your movement patterns are affecting things like your joints, and how your bones get built, and even things like how your digestion and immune systems can function, because they are’ really made of a lot of CT. 

So there’s 2 main things you can do for yourself if you are hypermobile- you can strengthen around your joints, and you can align your movement patterns so the demands of moving through your day are evenly and safely distributed along those joints.

When I say “strengthen around your joints” I mean something specific. Most of the time, when people say “strength training” they’re talking about the big muscle groups- biceps, quads and hamstrings, calves- those sorts of muscles that stick out from your skin and are aesthetically desirable and don’t have much to do with actually stabilizing your joints- they’re more ‘power’ muscles. They’re important, but they’re not the stabilizing muscles that I’m talking about.

Your smaller muscles are the ones that are more responsible for your actual joint stability, and being small there’s 2 things that help them the most:

1. Moving slowly, because the faster you go the more the power muscles are going to take over and,
2. Moving often, because since they’re smaller, they tend to ebb away very easily

These are both good, because that makes it very easy to make strengthening your joints part of your normal day! This takes consistency though.

The second thing you can do takes awareness as well as consistency. Learning properly aligned movement patterns, ways to sit and stand and walk and hold yourself- takes some practice, but really what you’re doing is resetting your habits. These aligned patterns actually feel very comfortable and stable, so it’s not hard to learn them and to practice them and for them to become your new habits. 

But that is a different way to move than the usual “exercise” we’ve all experienced.

All this to say that if you recognize hypermobility in yourself, there’s 2 ways I can help you. For one thing, you can keep following me. You’ll learn little bits, from these podcasts and from my freebies like the challenges that I run, and also from the First Steps mini courses I offer, and you can slowly incorporate into your life. Or you can directly work with me. I do take 1:1 clients, and right now as this episode is published the doors are open for my Foot to Forehead Fix, a small group version of my private coaching. Check out PaulasHerbals.com to learn more and to get started!

​Listen to the Episode Here

Today I'm going to teach you how to breathe with your rib cage. Here's what we're going to do:

• All I want you to do is sit up nice and tall, or stand up nice and tall, if you're standing, and just take a few breaths
•  Arms are at your sides
•  Just breathe, in whatever is a normal position for you

• Now, place one of your hands on your chest, on your breastbone, and take some more breaths. Do you feel that chest rising and falling? Do you feel it, lifting up do you feel your upper back rounding, arching forward to help that chest lift?

• ​Now what I want you to do is take both hands,
  • or you can use something like a belt, a yoga strap or even an ace bandage
• Hands, or some type of strap, around your rib cage
• Now if you've got your hands around your rib cage,
  • you might have your thumbs in back,
  • or you might flip your hands around so your thumbs are in front, and your other eight fingers are around the back of your rib cage

It really doesn't matter which you use in order to feel this, but what I want you to feel is that the shoulders are not all shrugged up into your ears. Whatever position your hands are at, the shoulders are down.
 
And if they're not comfortable, if the shoulders can't be down, then grab yourself a belt, or maybe the belt off your robe, or that Ace bandage or yoga strap or something, and wrap that around your rib cage instead.
 
If you've got a strap around your ribs, I want you to hold it snug against your ribs but not overly tight, not restrictive.

• And now I want you to try to take a breath, or three or four
• And can you feel movement, with your hands or under that strap, of expansion in the ribs​

Now, the ribs go all the way around. So you might feel the V that is in front of your rib cage, where it comes to a point right up against your breastbone. You might feel that V, expanding and contracting.

• You might feel the ribs on the sides of your torso, moving
• You might or might not feel ribs at your back, engaging expanding

So this first set of breaths is all about finding out what's moving: chest, belly and ribcage. Now, if you've got a strap, put it aside for a second.

• ​And all I want you to do is stretch your arms up, way overhead, and take a nice big yawn
• Stretching arms, stretching fingers, big breath in, and just let it all out at once in a great, big Whoosh. Let all your air out.

And now, notice where your rib cage is. It's down. It's relaxed. The side effect, the after effect, of good yawn is to relax your ribs.
 
We tend to walk around with the rib cage thrust out forward, I talked about that in last week's episode about that “boobs out belly in” position.
 
A yawn is one of the simplest ways to relax your rib cage back down into alignment, so that your ears, your shoulders, your ribs, and your hips are all stacked on top of each other, instead of that rib cage being thrust forward, of that line.
 
So if you need to you on a couple of times, take a couple of big breaths and just let them out, and the ribs drop and the shoulders drop.

• ​And now, take your strap or take your hands back around your rib cage, and take that inhale/exhale again
  • And now that the ribs are not reaching forward, can you get more movement, 360 degrees all the way around your rib cage?
  • At the V of your ribs, in the sides of your ribs, sort of under your armpits and down towards the waist.
  • And also, behind you, where those ribs bones wrap around and join at the spine.

Everywhere bones come together, are joints. Not all of the joints in our bodies hinge. So the joint of your fingers move back and forth. The joints of your ribs at your spine don't, but they are still connected there with cartilage, which has some flexibility.
 
So, when those ribs come back down and stop straining forward, the rib cage gets some flexibility, right there at your spine, which can feel really yummy, but it also might feel really weird in the beginning.
 
So don't go too strong into this. We're not trying to force anything. We're just trying to take nice even breaths, feeling the rib cage, expand.
 
This is a thoracic breath.

​It's going to help take pressure out of your pelvic floor. It's going to help you take a nice deep breath, which leads into all the things you want breath work for: stress, anxiety, mindfulness, lifestyle.
 
If you speak if you play an instrument, if you sing, if you have any manual hobbies, like gardening, like even exercising, being able to take a full breath, super helpful, I promise!
 
This is going to be the breath that we are trying to create, this thoracic breathing, this movement in your rib cage, in the breathing challenge, it's going to start next week.
 
So look out for that on my website, get on my email list if you're not so that you can join the challenge.
 
It is free. It's just a five day challenge teeny tiny steps, couple of minutes every day to just watch a video and listen to me and then practice when you can.
 
It's not going to be a gigantic investment of your time, but it is going to require some concentration and little practices throughout the day, so that at the end of the week, you are breathing better.
 
All of this is going to be super helpful, super important, and it should feel really good. I hope to see you in the challenge!

Sign Up Here
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​Most shallow breaths come from lifting your chest instead of breathing with the whole rest of your body. You've probably heard that before, about shallow breathing. But another way that you can trigger this is by driving when you're upset. A lot of people, myself included, have the tendency to push off of the steering wheel into your seat.
 
I think it has something to do with when you're frustrated there's not much physical that you can do about it that is socially acceptable. But when you're driving and you're upset, you can push, you can engage all of those muscles, without it being at all socially unacceptable. And that can feel satisfying!
 
But the pressure of your arms, pushing your upper back into the seat of your car, can have the exact same effect on those spinal nerves that go into the lungs, get too tense, and tell the brain, “I can't breathe”, and you can actually induce anxiety or even a panic attack while you're driving. Point is, please relax your grip and take a deep breath!

Right now, aesthetically, our culture thinks having a flat stomach, having a sucked in stomach, is appropriate.

Functionally, that's not appropriate.

​Functionally your belly needs to move in and out, it needs to have enough space in it as a container to hold all of your internal organs, to allow for things like digestion and elimination- the size of which then is going to fluctuate throughout the day.
 
And your belly is a supplement to your breathing, so it does need to move out and in. And most people that practice belly breathing, the first couple of times they try it (like for example a yoga class if you're sitting up and you try to belly breathe) people find they actually have to push their bellies out in order to expand that, because we have spent our lifetimes sucking in. When you suck in you're creating pressure, you're squeezing the balloon that is your abdominal cavity, and that pressure has to go somewhere- up or down.
 
Once we start breathing with your rib cage, once we let the ribs expand and contract the way that they're supposed to, we can take a lot of pressure off of the belly-

• On the one hand, because now the belly is not solely responsible for taking a deep breath.
• And on the other hand because in order to breathe with the ribs, we can't walk around with the chest thrown out. We need to actually relax the ribs a little bit, which also does feel really good, I'll tell you what!

 
And in relaxing the ribs and moving through the breath through the rib cage itself, we take pressure and work out of the belly.
 
So, breathing well becomes a structural, a postural kind of thing that requires less tension, less concentration, less exertion than what we've taught ourselves to do over the course of our lifetimes.
 
That “boobs out belly in” position is hard to maintain, and it's hard on our bodies! Coming back into all of that alignment so that the ribs can actually move- it’s a relaxed place, it's kind of nice to hang out there.
 
So next week I’m going to teach you how to take a thoracic breath, how to feel your ribcage actually move when you breathe. And we’re going to play around with that in our next episode.

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But if you do anything like sing, or do a podcast, or any kind of public speaking, or presenting on a stage or in front of the zoom screen, if you play a musical instrument, if you have a manual hobby, like gardening or anything that requires some exertion a little bit more than knitting (both gardening and knitting, our hobbies of mine, I'm not knocking that!) but the manual exertion type hobbies- the breath is going to be something that is very important for your stamina, for your endurance, for your longevity in those as well.
 
So next week we’re going to get into a little bit more about how to breathe better. For today, I want you to just think about where does your breathing actually happen.

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​Resources:
Make Peace With Stress
Expanding Resilience
Herbs and Stress
A Holistic Perspective on Stress
 Exercise Your Systems: Vagus Nerve

Recently I was asked, "Are there particular herbs or remedies that you’d suggest for clients with pelvic floor dysfunction?"

Well, yes and no. This is a classic answer, I know!

One of the things I’m on a mission to teach is that plants weren’t invented for our illnesses, so having that expectation of “what’s a good herb for…” doesn't really translate into actual improvements in our health. 

Because as a general rule plants don’t really care what our problems are! Right?! They're out there, living their lives, making chemical compounds to attract pollinators and defend against pests and foragers, and generally not too concerned with the bipeds sharing their planet. They're not trying to help us, regardless of how much we want to use them to our ends.

Having said that, there are some herbs that can help us in some more specific ways. It turns out that lots and lots of plants do interact with us chemically in ways that are beneficial to our health! Just not always, or in expected ways, or precise amounts, so take your time trying out plants as medicine. 

There are also some other plants that can help with PFD symptoms-

If you're experiencing irritation, like maybe cystitis, soothing things can help, like:

• Oats
• old fashioned Barley water
• Cinnamon
• or even Corn silk, leftover after shucking fresh corn

Astringent aka toning things might help too, like:

• Raspberry leaf
• Rose petals
• Hibiscus

Choosing between them is often a matter of self-knowledge and trusting intuition. Does it feel dry, like it needs soothing? Or feel boggy, like there's too much fluid and it needs toning? 

These herbs are great as teas, especially since these kinds of internal PFD conditions are often helped with more fluid diluting urine. ​

Curious about the soothing suggestion? Yes, you can add Oats to tea! You can also just eat them, well cooked and thick. Also, here's a SUPER tasty and really easy experiment: 
​

1. Put a couple Cinnamon sticks into 2 jars
2. Fill one with hot water, loosely cover, and leave on the counter overnight 
3. Next day, fill the second with hot water, loosely cover and wrap in a kitchen towel, and leave for about an hour
   1. While you wait, what do you think they'll taste like? What do you expect to feel, smell, taste?
4. Now, taste both the cold, overnight tea and the warm, freshly made tea
   1. What did you actually experience?
   2. Objectively- how did they taste, what did you feel, how do they compare?
   3. Subjectively- did you enjoy it? What emotions came up with the tastings?

Remember, though, plants weren't invented for us and so it doesn't work to just "use" them for our benefit.

For example, before just walking into a health food store and announcing to the confused staff, "An herbalist on the internet says I need Solomon's Seal for my prolapse!," or buying a case of Raspberry leaf tea and starting a quart-a-day discipline, I might suggest a gentler course of action.

Avail yourself of the internet and do a local search for herbalists. Reach out to them and say you're interested in learning more about [enter plant here] and do they grow/sell it, or know anyone who does? Try to talk to an herbal practitioner face to face (or zoom to zoom, as the case may be) (yes I do consultations). Learn what the plant looks like, and try to recognize it if you walk in parks or gardens. 

Order some dried plant from a bigger supplier like Herbiary or Mountain Rose if you can't find it locally. Chew on a few pieces for a while. Make it into tea (roots need to steep overnight or simmer at least an hour). Drink some tea, then add the rest to a bath.

Pay attention to how it feels, comparing it to plants you're used to feeling like Coffee, Peppermint, Chamomile, Onions, Strawberries... you get the picture. You're learning if you and this plant get along, and this isn't anything like watching out for side effects from medications, is it? 

No one person- friend, therapist, chef, author, actor, boss, etc- is perfect for everyone. No one herb is either. So give it a little time, get to know it, before you decided if it "works for you."

Have you ever spent time trying to get to know a plant? 



​

Can you lift your big toe- without using your hands? Why should you care?

This is important because tension in your feet is a good indicator of also having tension in your pelvic floor, neither of which is good for us.

In my experience, almost all of the aches and pains we deal with are somehow connected to the hips and pelvis. A healthy pelvic region requires a balance of strength and mobility, and VERY often the clients I see don’t have either of these. 

Simply put, your pelvic floor is the very foundation of how you move- and how you feel when you move. Not having good strength and mobility makes for a messy chain reaction up and down the body, and this is why I’m always working with clients on the feet from day 1, regardless of what else we’re also working on.

P.S.- You’ll probably also see some other improvements up and down the chain too. Everything’s connected, after all.

P.P.S.- Want some extra help? I can do that! Sign up for a private session with me.