How to Fix Pain (Like a Killer Whale)

hey everybody it's Matt Shu from upright health and today we are back with a podcast episode where we're going to be talking about a book move your DNA by Katie Bowman that's the textbook for today's lesson and we're going to be talking about a question that I get asked a lot and we're going to be talking about the answer to that question and how you need to reframe how you think about your body to really effectively answer the question for yourself and for your specific context okay so um I apologize it's taken me so long to do another podcast episode I've just been cranking out videos and focusing on all kinds of different things working on my own health issues getting stronger for surfing and climbing and trying to raise a kid and doing all kinds of family things so I apologize none of that is your fault let's get into today's episode so the question that I hear a lot I see a lot in the comments is basically um what can I do to stay out of pain or suffering while still doing all the things that I've been doing that unfortunately led to my pain and suffering and so it's this very broad question of like for example I you know you get back pain you get out of back pain or you start seeing that exercise can get you out of back pain and then you ask well how do I how do I avoid getting back pain ever again I I want to be working at the desk you know 18 hours a day without hip pain how do I do that I need to see patients and sit in my little rolling stool for 12 hours a day and I don't want any hip knee or back pain or shoulder pain or neck pain how do I avoid that while still doing this for dentists I've had this conversation and seen dentists complain about this many many many times you know how do I hunch over my patients for you know 10 12 hours a day and not end up with Hunchback posture okay and so this question comes up in many forms for you it might be how do I drive for 14 hours at a time and not feeling hip pain or back pain or whatever it is okay there is a real shift in thinking that needs to happen in order to answer that question fully because the answer you're probably looking for and the answer I know I've always been looking for when it came to all kinds of aches and pains was um well yeah you just do these couple exercises you know three times a day and you'll be fine right for me it came up as like how do I keep typing how do I keep sitting at the computer and working without feeling hand and wrist pain without my shoulder feeling really loose and you know upset all the time and and unstable how do I um basically just sit on my butt without my hips feeling really weak and without my legs and ankles feeling really weak I want to be able to do what everybody else does which is just sit all day but I also want to feel good after I'm done doing that so that when I go sit on the couch I feel good right so um this is the nature of the question that we all ask it's very natural because we look around our our environment and we say everybody else is doing this and nobody else is you know in the moment complaining about how much pain they're experiencing but uh so so why can't I do this same thing without pain Okay so okay and so that brings me to the book move your DNA this is the expanded dish Expanded Edition by Katie Bowman highly recommend this book if you haven't already read this book I highly highly recommend it because it can really help you shift your thinking on what your body needs to feel good what your body is evolved to actually do I don't really love the title it sounds like it's really um I don't know pseudo-scientific or whatever but I will tell you it's well worth the read it's not pseudoscientific it's not hippie dippy it's not Airy fairy it's not woo-woo it's nitty-gritty nuts and bolts physiology and biology so highly recommend this book I'm just going to read a little snippet to you to help you understand what I'm getting at when we're talking about these questions Okay so um there's a part here on page 22 where you see a drawing of a whale and um there's something special that happens with whales that are in captivity um so Katie Bowman mentions here you might have noticed the collapsed dorsal fin of the killer whale when it's in captivity so when the killer whale is swimming around in its big fishbowl that whatever aquarium or animal park it's being held captive that dorsal fin that fin on the top gets flaccid Okay so she calls it flaccid fin syndrome and um or folded fin syndrome this is super common for these these orcas and the question is why is that happening and so some marine biologists were thinking about this question and they were like well what are they doing different um in captivity versus when they're out in the wild and there are a couple things one is in captivity they swim only in a counterclockwise Circle two they're kept in Shallow tanks so they miss out on moving through higher static fluid pressure environments created by ocean ionic and depth so meaning they don't get to go deep so they don't feel the pressures of more water on them the diet of an orca in captivity is different the food has lower water content than in nature so their diet changes they're no longer eating the stuff they would normally eat and the amount of time an orca spends at the surface is greater when in captivity so that it's kind of like number two also all right but it's kind of the extreme end of that if the fin is up near the surface of the water it can just be like flapping around in the air rather than resisting and working with forces of the water that are pushing against it so with um with this we need to think about how we are living Our Lives somewhat as orcas okay so you think about what your human body um used to do or what a human body used to have to do on a regular basis and you know some human bodies in less I don't know less industrialized nations still have to do some of these things you have to walk to go find food and water or you might have to just walk a couple miles to gather water every day for everybody in your family or in your village you might have to wander around Gathering sticks you might have to wander around Gathering food you mean you might need to wander crawl climb hike Sprint whatever it is to get your food on a regular basis if not daily then a couple times a week you might have to do all kinds of physical things that challenge your muscles and your bones on a regular basis to stay strong and ready for a wide variety of activities now when we look at our lives we can see the parallels to what's going on with an orca right the Orca is swimming around deep deep water feeling water pressure feeling the the weight so to speak of the water against its fin that fin is constantly exposed to all kinds of forces on it and that fin stays strong it stays healthy it doesn't fold it doesn't get flaccid for humans we used to be exposed to all those forces we used to be exposed to all those challenges of all those daily physical tasks now pretty much all of those within a modern industrial society have been removed so then you're sitting on a chair for the vast majority of your day and then the rest of the time you're sitting the couch or in your car seat or you are lying down in bed on Tick Tock or whatever it is you use right so we've removed a whole lot of movements which then results in flaccid human right just total flaccid human syndrome now you can fight that of course you could do other things like lifting weights you can do resistance training all things that are good as long as they're done in a way that provides a variety for the body right because if you overdo and consistently repetitively do just one thing over and over again you're not really recreating the conditions that would have otherwise kept your whole body mobile and reasonably strong and reasonably resilient instead you're going to just strengthen the same pattern over and over and over again and that is going to cause its own set of issues right so if you think about your body and you think about oh man like I don't understand why it's hurting I don't understand why I don't have any muscle I don't understand why my hips feel so weak why does it feel like I can't move my hips the way they're supposed to move think about the killer whale think about the Orca why is its fin not staying straight when it's in captivity it's lost all of the natural challenges that it would normally face and so fin flops right now could the Orca find a trainer to help it do fin exercises or could these marine biologists perhaps set up a system where they spray the fin on a regular basis maybe every day 20 minutes a day they do a unilateral dorsal fin pressure therapy right and spray the fin from One Direction for 20 minutes or for 10 minutes and then 10 minutes from the other direction and then when there's a weaker floppier Direction then they they do this asymmetrically to try to strengthen the ligamentous tissue and get that fin used to being more erect yeah that's possible I I wouldn't be surprised if somebody's thought of that right so you could you know narrow your focus in and say okay well the fin is the problem let's fix the fin by dealing with or or recreating the forces that would keep that fin straight right that's not a terrible solution but I think you can see how that's a little bit narrow in focus and so when you are trying to say restore this orcas overall health if you want this Orca to actually feel really good you know if Free Willy which is I realize a very old reference that maybe some people don't I won't even get um free will he could talk and tell us like hey here's how I'm feeling today do you think Free Willy it's a movie by the way it's an old movie uh if Free Willy could tell us you know hey I don't feel so good today I want to feel better do you think he would tell us um you know what my fin feels really floppy and I just like I would just like a couple exercises or if you could do some massage or like do you have like a special you know theragon that could like keep my fin straight I don't think he would say that right in order to feel physically great you have to change a whole lot of things you have to change the whole environment that Finn is just one symptom of a larger problem which is that the whale is stuck in a tiny Fishbowl rather than living out in the wide open water so what does that mean for you and me as human beings well if we have something like oh a flaccid hip a flaccid knee a flaccid ankle flaccid shoulder you know weak whatever weak back muscles weak shoulder muscles weak hips blah blah blah or overused or repetitively used and imbalanced and used in an imbalanced way we have to realize that the solution in the short term could be and probably should be corrective activities corrective exercises things that restore that really clearly restore the balance and the long-term bigger picture should be to figure out how to change our daily environment and daily challenges so that we are getting more physical challenges in a variety of ways so that our body becomes better in a variety of positions so our body becomes acclimated to a variety of positions in a variety of Demands because we spend so much time in our chairs and in seats you know many many people in in modern Western Society can't even sit cross-legged let alone sit in a position that in the past would have been completely easy and obvious and and would be an unquestionably necessary position because how else would you poo except for doing it in a deep squat so you know you have to you have to look at the way Human Society Western human Western Human Society works right now the technological technologically driven industrially obsessed Society works is to consistently distance ourselves from what from motions that used to be required for survival because it you know in the short term it feels like yeah it makes life easier because you know I don't have to get all the way to the ground I can just sit on the toilet right and that's fine but over over time the cost is you're not able to actually get to the ground anymore because you've removed that repetition from your daily life and you remove the Necessities so your muscles and your brain have basically all decided Well we don't use that circuitry anymore and we don't use those pieces so we don't need to do it right so if you ask Free Willy well how do I you know if you ask freely what do you want to do right what's what what do you think is going to help you feel the best Free Willy is going to tell you he wants to be free so he can go do the stuff his body really wants to do is that is Bonnie frankly probably needs to do and so when you have a flaccid fin wherever that is on your body then you know you have to ask what's going to actually make the big difference for me in a larger context yes do the corrective exercise obviously do things that let that are going to restore function and strength and flexibility and also ask yourself on a daily basis is there something more is there something about your life that needs to change so that it doesn't feel like you're just layering extra work on top of whatever your Modern Life looks like right so if you're you're already spending 12 hours sitting and giving yourself a terrible case of flaccid fin syndrome then are you gonna feel good having to do an hour a day of exercise just so you can do 12 hours a day of sitting probably not it's just gonna feel like you are treading water so to speak um right it's going to feel like you're spinning your wheels it's like oh I'm sort of fighting an uphill battle because you're you're basically putting yourself into a tiny fishbowl and then trying to do corrective exercises for the fin whereas if you said okay what if what if my fishbowl were bigger what if I weren't always stuck there what if I thought about what my body really needs and tried to change something about my overall life that made it more full of movements that allowed my body to do different things throughout the day obviously we live in a modern world you probably no probably feel like you don't have the time to you know walk down to whatever location to go get food and water or whatever and maybe it's not affordable for most people to go you know walk down to actually I know this is a perfect example okay so you could walk to go get coffee probably right you might see it as like a like I don't I don't personally drink coffee so I'm not telling you to go do this but I know a lot of people out there drink coffee and like to have their moaning cup of coffee what if your morning coffee morning coffee required you to walk what if you walked even two blocks or a quarter mile to go get your coffee right what if something in your daily routine required you to walk you know if you go camping you know you have to get up and do a whole bunch of physical things that changes the whole rhythm of your day and it changes how your body feels you wake up you gotta do stuff get prepared walk to walk to wherever to go poo or pee then start making food throughout the day you're doing different physical activities to you know prepare all those things change how your body feels if you don't like camping that's fine I'm not I'm not a huge camper but like I do it occasionally and it definitely changes things right it makes me have to move more might make me stiffer because I'm sleeping and sleeping more or less on the ground with a little bit of cushion but you know that means I have to move some more walk some more stretch out a little bit more or let my body loosen up whereas on a regular basis maybe in my day I just sit at the desk but if you're sitting at a desk what about at lunch what about every hour can you get up can you move can you squat can you do the splits can you think about going into an awkward stretched position can you find something some way that's going to challenge your body do you have a bar somewhere that you can hold on to can you do some movement that requires some muscular effort that requires your brain to coordinate something differently can you go dancing for five minutes somewhere in a closet or in a separate bedroom if you work from home or in a conference room at your Law Firm probably not but well you probably could but I don't know how long you'd be there at the firm anyway you know it's it's important for you to find places where you can work this in and find Opportunities to change the daily rhythm or even the weekly rhythm of your life I guarantee it'll also change the way you think about things too like you might find oh I didn't realize the solution to some of my problems was so easy and not just physical problems I mean all kinds of different problems right like if you just started walking more and if you were gardening more if you were using your body in funky positions more it will trigger I guarantee it won't trigger more creative thinking to help you see parallels to help you see patterns and help you think and address problems in a more flexible way I I have seen that for myself time and again um every everybody I know who engages in a physical practice reports the same thing I'm pretty sure I've even seen research on this but uh don't quote me on that but I believe on huberman lab which is another podcast slash it's like a science podcast and and also on YouTube show thing with a Stanford scientist who just Dives deep into neuroscience and stuff and anyway he's talked about ways to get your brain to be more malleable to increase neuroplasticity and one of the methods is actually to get yourself into situations where you're kind of off balance literally physically off balance so that your brain is primed to actually start laying down new wiring to figure out how to solve problems if I can find the link to that episode I will drop it in the show notes Okay so to recap we think about how do I stay out of pain how do I deal with my own flaccid fin syndrome the answer is do the corrective work do the stuff that's going to help it obviously in the short term figure out what muscle balance means and what muscle imbalance means for your body and how that's affecting you and bigger picture is figure out how you can make changes to your life that allow your body to stay stronger and healthier and more resilient right the way to do that is by making yourself more physically active on a regular basis as a regular part of your day capiche Okay so if you don't know what the heck of muscle imbalance is or how to figure out if you have them I'm going to drop notes there are links in the show notes about muscle imbalances I have some resources there that'll help you big time if you already know and you're like hey I really need help with corrective exercise I just need somebody to kind of lay it out for me I can do that for you as well you can go to my my playlists which I will link with free follow along videos on YouTube you can go to uprighthealth.com DIY for my do-it-yourself programs those are all video based that you can do at home you can work on your back pain which is like a full body program you can work on your shoulder pain which is basically the upper half of your body Plus a bunch of shoulder stuff which is really focused on getting your shoulders moving well and getting strong and flexible within reason right it's not going to make you an acrobat but it's going to get you to be a functioning normal primate okay you know I got hip programs healthy hips one the Fai fix both of those can be really helpful for restoring hip mobility check out whatever makes sense to you whatever feels right to you use the free resources on uprighthealth.com to really educate yourself so that you can think right move right and feel right I hope you enjoyed this episode I hope this was helpful for you if you did like this drop me a comment wherever you are listening to or even watching this subscribe on YouTube on Spotify Wherever You Are and if you can write a review I'd also really appreciate it it helps bump the show up uh in the rankings which like sort of matters to me but it matters in the sense that if I know people are listening and are benefiting from this content then I'll make more of it um because you know this is also a nice way to do things where I don't have to edit too darn much so I appreciate it go to my website uprighthealth.com click the like buttons all those things and as always I hope you remember that pain sucks life shouldn't foreign [Music]

Channel: Upright Health

Views: 46,232

Keywords: pain relief, chronic pain relief, how to fix chronic pain, how to fix pain, how to get pain relief, how to fix joint pain, killer whales, orca in captivity, killer whale in captivity, free willy, how to stay out of back pain, how to fix back pain, upright health podcast, podcast, how to relieve pain, fix pain for good, upright health, how to fix joint pain in knees

Id: Bx6qlKmr1WM

Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022