How to Get a Bounce in Your Step and a Sparkle in Your Eye

​How would you describe the fundamentals of your health?

✔Like the structure of a house, the load bearing walls and ceiling joists, aka your bones?
✔Like the basement walls that hold everything up, aka your feet?
✔Is it it your ability to take in fresh and get rid of waste, like plumbing, aka lymph and circulation and respiration?
✔Is it the ability for your body to electrically communicate all its needs and responses, aka the nervous system?
✔Or is it ALL of these?

If you’re focused on any one of these systems, I’d say you’re massively missing out. The real key to a strong foundation isn’t specializing and microfocusing on one aspect, it’s being a good General Contractor and overseeing the coordination of all of your foundations.

We are holistic, complex beings. Look at those words-

✔Holistic means all of you, at the same time, intermingled
✔Complex means like the difference between a lean-to and a house
✔Beings, as in NOT machines. Not logically or rationally organized, but organically and naturally

Herbalist Tammi Sweet has shared (I’m paraphrasing here) that a researcher at a conference she attended dismissed plant medicines as “messy and chaotic”. Yep, she teaches, just like us.

Herbalist David Winston put it this way when I heard him speak in June 2019: “Show me a standardized human and I’ll consider giving them a standardized remedy.”

---

THIS is why there’s no such thing as a Magic Pill. THIS is why there are so, so, so many types of practitioners- physical, herbal, etc- since there’s no one, single, perfect solution for what you need at this moment.

If you tried something and didn’t get the results you wanted, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. That means it wasn’t the right answer for you right now. It wasn’t your Goldilocks answer, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work for you at another time.

My answer to this uncertainty is to have a holistic approach to your holistic self. I don’t believe there is one single foundation; I believe they’re all important. They’re interconnected, intertwined, and interdependent.

How you move, and how you hold still, directly causes (or prevents) circulation, drainage, and communication in your body. Calming your nervous system only helps so much if your ribs or a hip joint is putting a major nerve in danger. Adjusting your posture won’t last long if gut inflammation tightens muscles that tilt your pelvis. Stretching your neck will only last till your next 45 minute trip into an internet rabbit hole.

So we look at all of it. How you move your skeleton changes how your organs move and function. How your internal systems operate impacts how your bones and muscles hold you upright.

Notice I said we “Look at it”. Not “We change everything in the first session”.

For one thing, we’re people still living our lives, with responsibilities like jobs and families and everything else. We don’t have the extra capacity to go in and change absolutely everything about how we are moving and living. That’s not sustainable, and in fact that would be a recipe for frustration and failure.

For another thing, big huge changes aren’t usually the most effective anyway. Chiropractor and movement specialist Dr Perry Nickelston put it this way, “Complex systems are non-linear, meaning their behavior is irregular. That means little tiny actions can produce tremendous transformations.” In other words, our culture’s emphasis on MOREBIGGERFASTER can actually be counterproductive!

This is my whole rationale, my philosophy. Changing how your outsides work (with movement) and how your insides work (with herbs) is truly holistic healing. And focusing on our foundations means I can help you build up strength and healthy patterns inside of your currently normal life.

​Yes, ultimately we want to build a new normal, one that’s got things like good sleep and manageable stress and strong hips and deep breathing. But when you first learned to ride a bike, or write, or even walk, you were pretty terrible at that for a while, too. This will also take practice.

But as you practice foundational work, you'll find the most amazing things. Tiny things, that you didn't even notice you'd lost, will transform. I've heard all sorts of things:

• I got in my car after work and automatically adjusted my mirror but then I couldn't see- because I wasn't slumping anymore
• I slipped on the ice but I felt my core catch me and I didn't fall down
• All my coworkers shared a cold but I didn't
• I turned my ankle in a fancy shoe but my foot muscles saved me from a sprain
• I can't remember the last time I had a tension headache 
• My regular laxative remedy went out of date and I never noticed
• A stranger complimented me on my posture 

​That'll put a bounce in your step and a sparkle in your eye for sure!

Yes yes Paula, but how?? How do I learn this stuff, to practice it? 

Never fear, dear reader! You can start right now, for free, with the Relieve Your Aches & Pains Online Workshop. You've got 2 ways to access it:

1. When you join my Free Resources hub the first thing you'll see is the video and downloadable workbook. Voila! In addition to the Aches & Pains Workshop, you'll also be able to explore all the  other resources available to you as well
2. Just want the workshop for now? Click here to sign up for it directly 

​