Breathe Life into Your Thyroid: Diaphragmatic Breathing

Introduction to Fascia, Breathing, and Thyroid Health 0:00

Hello. It's Dr. Jen. Welcome back to the Heal Your Thyroid and Reversing Hashimoto's summit. So this is a really cool topic we're going to talk about today. I'm really excited to have Deanna Hansen here. She is a Fascia expert. She's a bestselling author and also a speaker. So today we're going to talk about how to use your diaphragm and how diaphragmatic breathing is key for thyroid health. And also talk a little bit about posture in your thyroid and how strengthening your tongue will support your thyroid.

So these topics are really unconventionally unconventional and very, very cool. And I, being a D.O., a doctor of osteopathic medicine and using manipulation medicine in my practice, I have always been so into this topic, so. Deanna welcome. And tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into Fascia, Fascia work. Thank you so much, Jenny, for having me. It is an absolute pleasure to be here. I am so excited to talk about the thyroid and the tongue and how impactful all of this is. So I started my journey back when I was 30 years old.

Prior to that, in my twenties, I was really struggling. I was training to be an athletic therapist and certified at the age of 25 and always focused on deep tissue work. And I worked really hard to attempt to get my body in proper alignment and working properly. And the harder that I worked, the worse I became, which led to me having some really severe anxiety attacks at the age of 30. This one anxiety attack in particular was the seed of everything to come because in that moment I actually couldn't catch my breath.

I was so frozen in fear. In that moment, though, I dove my hand into my abdomen unconsciously. Something just drew me in there, and the first thing I encountered was pain. And I let out a gasp, an exhalation. But it brought me out of my crazy thinking. It brought me back to my center. And what was really fascinating was I continued to intuitively explore with my hands in my in my abdomen. And what I was encountering was a marbling sensation that felt like scar tissue. And being a body worker for that number of years and always focusing on deep tissue work, I was very aware of scar tissue in other people's bodies, but I had never had any injury or surgery in this area and now I'm feeling it literally marbled throughout.

And suddenly I had all of these aha moments like no wonder when I'm coming home from a five mile run dripping wet with sweat my belly still felt cold. At the same time. I also started the practice of yoga and my very, very first class. I had this fantastic teacher and about every 30 to 45 seconds she would prompt us to breathe. And every single time she told us to breathe, I recognized that I wasn't breathing. So this became, again, a very foundational understanding for me that if I'm not breathing, likely the majority of people are also breathing to some degree, but not properly breathing.

The majority of people aren't. So this became really the foundation of my understanding as I continued to work through my own body. After the first night of working in my abdomen, I felt really calm and at peace, which was a big thing for me because I really struggled with anxiety at the time. Woke up the next day still feeling calm and I was really excited to get back home that night and continue the exploration. And after the second night of doing that, I felt taller when I stood up and I went and I looked at myself in the mirror and my belly was flatter than it had looked in years.

So this became my daily practice and within a couple of weeks my chronic low back pain was going away. My whole outlook on life was improving. I was really getting a grip on the anxiety that basically riddled my life through my entire twenties. And then I started working on my patients in a similar Fascia, and that was 23 years ago. That was the beginning of this whole journey. And so that was how it all began for me. And initially I was attracting therapists to learn my technique, but my real passion was to teach people to self care.

So that has been my journey for the last 12 or 13 years, is teaching people how to dove into their own bodies, using pressure and breath to effectively treat the fascist system in a way that supports health to all of the cells that make up the body. That is awesome. And what a great story. And and I think it's a common it's a common thing that those of us that have had an actual illness that has not gotten better with conventional means or conventional medicine were the ones that are so passionate and go out and and teach others how to actually work with the body and let the body heal and breathe, like you said.

So for those listening that don't that they don't really know what Sasha is, could you explain a little bit more exactly about what Sasha is?

Deanna Hansenu2019s Fascia Journey and What Fascia Is 5:00

Absolutely. That's a great question, Jenny. And I feel I have a pretty unique perspective on what Sasha is. So we have trillions of cells that make up the body. So even this thyroid gland in here, literally, Sasha innovates every one of those cells. It's like this interconnection. It was funny, actually, because I had a fantastic editor when I was doing my book, and as he is helping me with the wording of how to describe things that I'm sensing through my fingers and trying to put into words, he said, Well, the flash is really the skin of the cell.

And I thought, Wow, like what a great way to put it, because we've got this layer of skin to contain the whole body. And the flash is really the layering of each and every cell that interconnects every other cell. So it becomes the communication system between all cells in the body. It also provides stability and mobility, and there needs to be a balance in the body for all of the cells to be able to really be in their correct position or alignment. So of the trillions of cells that we have, each one has a home.

It's when that cell gets drawn away from its natural resting place that we start to really see challenges within the Fascia, because what the Fascia will do, it's here to support and protect us. So as we are dominant on one side of the body, you know what I mean? I'm right handed. 70% of the population are. So as soon as I lift my right arm up, what happens to my body? Is it collapse over to the left? So if this becomes my chronic use of my body all the time, eventually I end up becoming this as a outward expression of my posture.

So the cells are literally getting compressed in this matrix of the fascia and magnetic becomes sealed together with a force up to £2,000 per square inch. So that's a pretty interesting fact that if we've been sitting, for example, in front of the computer for 20, 30, 40 years in a slumped position, we are literally magnetically sealed in that alignment. And it's adhesions that develop between the cells to create stability. And they do that essentially to stop the body from tipping over. So imagine walking a dog, for example, and you have a really well-trained dog, you're holding the leash, but the dog is walking beside you and there's no tugging on your body.

You're both walking in sync and it's wonderful. Now imagine a really large dog that is out of control and it's constantly whipping your body and you're using the one arm to hold it all the time. The opposite side of the body is going to create a whole bunch of buildup, a bunch of tension to counter that pull, because we want to maintain our upright oddness. So if this becomes the chronic condition of our Sasha, we literally shift and we build up these big huge walls on one side of the body as the other side of the body collapses.

And we fall into this internal space. And then those adhesions that develop essentially block blood and oxygen flow to and from cells. So now we have cells not being properly fed and cleaned, and we also have areas of cells that are not being that that become acidic from the congestion. So the goal of the Sasha of taking care of our fascia is to support proper cell alignment so that we can make sure that there's optimal space around each and every cell. And providing their space, there's an ease, a flow of nutrients into the cell and waste away from the cell.

It's when the cells become compromised that we start seeing issues with whatever tissue we're dealing with. Yeah, the fascia is so, so important and in medical school we did learn myofascial release and it's really cool because you can feel the fascia unwinding when you are working with it and it's it's ignored a lot. So that's why this is such a cool topic because it's so important and it's important in drainage and you know, we keep our emotions in our fascia and it's so, so cool. So what what about the thyroid?

Like, what sites have you seen the fascia are causing problems or can lead to an imbalance thyroid. So whenever I'm looking at a full body and this is really what we need to understand with Sasha when we look at the full body, we need to look at the cause of what's pulling us out of alignment. And I just want to talk a little bit about the diaphragm, because this is really the key here. So I'm just going to bring my computer down just for a second here. So the diaphragm is this plane of muscle. When we inhale, the muscle moves down into the body.

When we exhale, it lifts. So it's this pump that's constantly moving. If we're breathing consciously, pain, fear and stress, though, cause us to reactively hold the breath. And then we end up breathing through the muscles of the upper chest. So if we're not consciously breathing this plate of muscle that is supporting the rib cage and everything above it becomes weak, and then we fall in. So as soon as we fall in to the core of the body, that's also pulling the head forward. And now we've got this beautiful butterfly thyroid right here that is getting compressed and we're also dominant on one side.

So we don't just compress linearly, we spiral down in one direction or another, largely dependent on what side of the body that we're dominant on. So if here's our little thyroid gland, for example, if we're coming forward, we're getting this ballooning here, and then if we twist over to one side, we're getting all of this compression on one side and ballooning. And where there's compression, again, there's a blockage of flow to and from the cells. So the real thing to understand is how the breath affects the stache.

And it comes down to tissue temperature, the extremities, the Cavs in the feet, the arms in the hands, the top of the head. All of these areas are the furthest away from the engine, so they become the most frozen. And that is where the Fascia will griffin it here. The body in incorrect alignment, sealing us in that negative alignment. A lot of people think that the core and the ribs are the key. Really, when we're looking at the Fascia, we have to understand what's holding us and it's those limbs that are holding us.

So looking at the body as a whole is important to bring postural awareness back into play. When it comes down to proper diaphragmatic breathing, though, this is key because when we are breathing properly, we are effectively supporting the alignment of the rib cage. And the rib cage is the foundation for the head and the neck. So if the rib cage is out of alignment, so is that and that's going to have a direct impact on the flow to and from that thyroid gland also when we're breathing diaphragmatic lee, this is really phenomenal to think that we can feed the body up to six times the oxygen through breathing with that muscle compared to breathing through the muscles of the upper chest.

And the reason is, is because when we're breathing through the belly, we are literally pulling the air to the base of the lungs, which is where the majority of the oxygen receptor sites reside. When we're breathing through the muscles of the upper chest, which occurs because pain, fear and stress all cause us to reactively hold the breath, then we're not bringing the air deeply enough. So we're missing that bed of abundance of receptor sites and we're basically not absorbing the oxygen into the body.

We're also not with the full exhalation, able to remove the toxins, the byproducts of functioning, the carbon dioxide from the body as effectively if we're breathing through the muscles of the upper chest as well. So that breath becomes paramount in our ability to feed all of the cells and clean all of the cells as effectively as possible. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm sitting here and I'm like breathing in the into the belly because we do that, like you said, fear. We breathe up, you know, and sometimes even when I'm talking about the four, seven, eight breath and I'm like, okay, everyone breathe in.

And I just like to make it more obvious. Like, I move my shoulders. But we should all be practicing putting our hands in our belly and really breathing because you're bringing that diaphragm down and up. And I love that analogy of bringing everything in and then coming back up. And gosh, I think breathing and breath work during the pandemic, I have had to cancel so many people on. Make sure you're taking deep breaths and I would have them get an incentive barometer, you know, to make sure we're taking deep breaths, because a lot of the times we're not and we're not doing it correctly.

So, I mean, what about unconscious breathing? So I think that is where, you know, right now we're talking about it's we're all going to breathe really perfect. But what about this unconscious breath, breathe, that breathing? And how does that affect our thyroid in a negative way? It's it's really huge, actually, because when we're breathing unconsciously, what you're going to see. I'm just going to take a couple of incorrect breaths and you can see my ribcage and what it's doing compared to when I'm breathing through my belly.

You don't see any action through here. So these muscles, which aren't designed to breathe 24 seven, they develop big and they actually create a lot of tension in through this area. And that is going to, again, directly affect what's happening in through the neck here. We also have the carotid arteries coming through here, the major lymphatic drainage sites right through here. So when we're breathing up through here, we become very hard and thick, intense up here. And again, that's going to limit the flow of blood and oxygen to the thyroid.

So that in itself is a huge component. Another component, though, is the fact that partly the thyroid is designed

How Diaphragmatic Breathing Supports the Thyroid 15:00

to support metabolism and really the breath is here to support our metabolism because when we're breathing diaphragmatic, it's like we're turning on the body's internal furnace. Breathing through the muscles of the upper chest is like having a space heater. I live in a 30 storey building, so and I have literally two rooms in my space. If I have only one space heater, I'm only going to be able to heat one room. If it's really cold. But if you turn on the building's furnace, you can keep the entire building.

So that's the difference when it comes down to flow. And we need to have a certain tissue temperature for optimal flow. Living in Winnipeg, I'm very aware of what winters are like here and when it freezes, everything gets sluggish and slow and congested because it takes a while to heat things up when your body is always heated to its correct temperature. Slow is simple, and as long as there's ease of flow, your body's working properly. It's when there's a lack of flow in your body and certain parts of those of your body aren't being properly fed and clean.

That's when we really start to see disruption. So that upper chest breath has a very, very direct effect on the thyroid, but it's really because of the metabolism we want to make sure that all of the cells are getting that energy so that that battery inside can make sure that they have enough energy to do their job for us. Absolutely. It makes so much sense. And in a clinical sense, when I have patients and they maybe they have a lot of congestion up in their sinuses, their ears are draining. So I put my my hands on their neck and on their stern, a cloud.

I mastoid they're scaling. And in all of that facial tissue around the muscle and I tell them, you know, you're very congested here. It's it's stagnant and that you need to open all of that up so then you can drain your body can function properly. But but yeah, definitely those intercostal muscles, they are not meant to work over time and with such fear to so many of us just do not breathe correctly. I know my massage therapist. She does facial work too. She gets mad at me and she's like, You are holding your breath.

And I'm like, Yeah, because she feels it in my Skillings she's like that in there going down to that first rib. So when we look at Sasha and how it attaches to our bones and all throughout our body, if if it's stagnant or something is not flowing properly, it can kind of messed everything up, right? It really does. And that's where so what basically happens is over time, we have gravity constantly pulling us down. And again, we we wind down one direction or another, depending on what side is dominant as well as depending on I mean, have you played a sport and you overused one side or an instrument stress?

I mean, so many things are Fascia basically is this beautiful absorber of everything that we've encountered in life. And now it's projecting that the real goal when we have that really strong breath, is to be able to pull life in, keep what serves us and release what doesn't serve us so we can keep our system balanced and aligned. But because we weren't really trained in how to do that, we've allowed gravity to compress the Fascia. So what the key for Fascia health is, is to decompress the Fascia.

So again, if I've been sitting in front of my computer, leaning over to my left because I'm right side dominant, and this is my typical posture, I have all of these adhesions that are locking my alignment out and it's really gripping on to bone. So when we learn how to decompress Fascia and it's really simple to do, we can literally melt that low those adhesions from the bone to create a release. And as soon as we start to focus on diaphragmatic breathing, which becomes a whole lot simpler once we create that release, then we start pumping more oxygen in and then it's like you're blowing up the balloons to be nice and full.

So think of a balloon fully blown up. Unlike this little guy here that's lost most of its air, a fully blown up balloon almost defies gravity. It's round, it glows. When you have a balloon that has a lot of air taken out of it, it's no longer nice and round. If I blew it up a whole bunch of times, I would see stress fractures in the lining. That's ultimately what's happening to the cell linings as they're becoming weak because of all of that pressure from the compression and the ballooning in the body.

And again, the thyroid right here, this beautiful butterfly thing, that's what's happening is we compressed this way, we get a ballooning one side or the other, and then that compression that's really blocking that flow to feed those cells properly and when it comes down to postural alignment, again, even the alignment of your arms and hands play a big role. Anatomical position is with our palms facing forward. That's actually how we should naturally be standing. But because of the collapse of the rib cage, it ends up pulling the humerus bones into internal rotation.

And now that alignment is going to create a clogging up of what's going on in through here. So understanding the body in its totality for how it should be positioned and how it should function is really the focus of what we do. And it really comes down to understanding how to decompress that facet and activate the breath as well as support proper postural foundations. And the tongue is one of the three main foundations that we focus on. Yes, the tongue. So I am really excited to hear about this because I don't I didn't learn a lot about the tongue and the focus of the tongue, you know, in medical school.

So this is really cool. So let's talk about proper tongue placement, you know, for a healthy thyroid. And what does that mean and why does it even matter? That's such a great question. And it's really fun because I've basically used my body as my subject to learn from over the number of years and years ago. I finally was taking a holiday in the summertime and I was on the deck doing some yoga. And at that time I was working on clients on a massage table. Now I work on the floor, so I was bent over all the time and I had a lot of chronic neck pain as a result of that posture.

So now I'm in my forward bend as I'm on my relaxing holiday, and as soon as I go forward I have that very typical neck pain surface. For some reason I shifted the alignment of my tongue and my neck pain stopped and I thought, Oh, this is neat. So I played with that and that became one of the foundational pieces that I've really come to understand. So if you take your tongue to the roof of the mouth, notice about a pinky nail distance from your teeth. There's a ridge. Now notice how your tongue naturally docks into that ridge.

So the surface of the tongue should be supporting the roof of the mouth, but the tongue should be pulled back and down. If I'm not conscious of my tongue alignment, my tongue will shoot forward and go to the right and then I'll clench more on the left. So we want to pull the tongue back and down so that it's literally supporting the roof of the mouth and then that supports proper alignment of the neck. Also, if the tongue is not strong, often when people have a double chin, it's not often when people have a double chin, it's not really a double chin.

It's a displaced and weak tongue. So if I'm collapsed like this and my head's jutting forward and I've got a bunch of buildup in through here, it's because the tongue has become weak and now it's putting excessive pressure and stress on that thyroid gland. And again, we're going to be tilting one way or another because we're not symmetrical. So to bring the body into balance and to pull the neck back and support the head with the alignment of the tongue lifts that muscle off of the thyroid. So it's not getting burdened with the weight.

And I remember watching a Dr. Oz episode probably, I don't know, 15, 18 years ago, and he was saying that the head weighs about 8 to £10, but when you have that head fall out of alignment, it puts up to £100 of force of pressure on the upper back and neck muscles. And consequently, to what does that doing to this gland when this head becomes weighted forward and it puts all that pressure and tension on your thyroid, it's really blocking its ability to function optimally. So you're saying that we just need to strengthen our tongue and we should get rid of double chins?

This is amazing. I mean I mean, I perked up a little bit at that. I'm like, it makes sense, though. I mean, I see what you're saying because the tongue is it's attached back. So having so what would someone do from day to day for the thyroid with their tongue? Just keep bringing it back to its place where it should be. We have actually a whole number of exercises, but one of the really great things we can do is understand that the tongue is a muscle. So one thing we'll have people do and I'll have them grab a cloth or a towel because we have that the tongue again, it gets caught in through this area with adhesion and often people are chewing more on one side than the others.

So again, it creates a bit of a twisting of the tongue. So it will end up twisting down through here and it will pull that thyroid in with it. So I'll stick the tongue out and I'll put my thumb on the underside, my fingers on the top. This is where you want to cloth, because otherwise it's slippery and then draw the tongue out nice and gently, but hold for 3 minutes and you'll likely start to feel the connections, the attachments end through here.

Tongue Position, Neck Alignment, and Thyroid Support 25:00

And then you can, even as you're drawing it out and holding it, you can even broaden it a little bit. This is a muscle. So wherever there's asymmetries and pain in that muscle, that's an indicator that there's adhesion there. So that's one really good way to create a release down through here. And then another thing we can do is hold the tongue out. So if you try to hold the tongue out for ten breaths, you're going to feel that fatiguing in through here because we don't work the muscle that way.

But like any other muscle, the more we work it, the more we strengthen it, the stronger it becomes. So you can get it out and hold. You can take it over to one side and hold. I'll do this driving when I'm hoping nobody can see me or if I'm just, you know, watching TV or something or reading a book. I mean, there's tons of opportunities, but if you literally hold it out there and to make it actually even a little more challenging, look straight up. And then not like while driving, though. No, no.

Fair enough. Right. This is why I'm glad no one can see me when you're talking, because I'm there. Like, I don't know. You weren't laughing. I was trying those exercises. It's interesting because my children, my husband and I passed on a little bit of empty. Jeff Argent snips to my kids and my one son. He got his tongue tied at least. And, you know, we tried to stretch it out and do exercises and that kind of stuff. But really in northwest Ohio, there aren't a lot of practitioners that work and do a lot of the myofascial tongue exercises.

So there definitely is a need for this, but I love those actionable steps that we can take because yeah, we don't really work our tongue muscles or even think about it. And with yeah, we're all hunched over on our phones, on our computers, commuting, driving in the car, hunched on our steering wheel. So I love these tongue exercises. I'm going to make my whole family do them now. Be like, Well, yeah, well, it's so important. Like you said, it's a muscle. And you know how many people have the double chins and sleep apnea?

So have you clinically like the patients, clients that you've worked with, have you seen improvement just but just by doing those exercises like with thyroid and with their appearance and everything. Yeah. And it's, it's more than just the exercise. So there's, there's three parts to the system. The first thing is, is we want to release those adhesions and I refer to them as melting through those adhesions because when we're not breathing properly, our system overall becomes colder and then those adhesions are sealing us or freezing us out of alignment.

So with the work, when we're working in the tissue, we don't ever rub. It's all about going in and creating heat. So pressure over time creates heat, blood flow, combining that with proper diaphragmatic breathing. Then we're hitting the body from the inside as well as the outside. So our whole system is about melting through adhesions while we are strengthening that proper diaphragmatic breath. So now you're getting a heating on both both ends. And then the third component is that postural foundation piece.

So once we release the pattern that we're currently in, we can pump out blood and oxygen into that new space, and then we can own that new space through understanding proper postural foundations. So let me just quickly review the three, because the three are important and they work in concert. So again, when we talk about the lower body, if I work on my upper body and I stay focused there because I've got a frozen shoulder or I want to heal my thyroid and I start walking and really my foundation is off as soon as I take a step because the Cavs and the feet are the most frozen, it's going to wrap me back up into that negative alignment and it's going to keep pulling me forward.

So we want to address the full body. The foundation is called rooting. We're like a building essentially. Even as we're sitting here, we can be very conscious of how we can make a shift to our overall alignment to support our fascia. Because again, if we're sitting like this, that's going to negatively impact this gland. If we're sitting properly, we want to have our knees at 90 degrees and we want to have our feet firmly planted on the floor. If you pull your feet under the chair, like a lot of people do, that actually pulls your pelvis out of alignment and now you're going to be twisted while you're sitting down.

So if you just do a little bit of a left and right wiggle, you can feel those sit bones on the chair. You want equal weight on those sit bones. We also want to have the knees. Often people their knees will splay out. And as soon as you do that, this is what happens. I fall into myself as soon as my knees come out. So we also want to have the knees in nice alignment. So whether we're sitting or standing, this, this applies to the whole thing. And then I want to give you one additional action here, squeezing the anus.

So if you were going to attempt to stop a bowel movement, that action is going to help lift the body up a little higher, even activate the glutes a little bit. Notice how your body becomes drawn back slightly. So most people, when they're standing, have about 80% of their body weight on the balls of the feet. We should have 60% of our body weight on the heels. And if that's the case, then we are balancing the body. We're supposed doing ourselves in proper alignment. So again, they've got that optimal space.

As soon as we start stepping forward and twisting, now we're losing that space and we're letting gravity pull us inside ourselves. And then we're getting this displacement. We compress and we balloon. So as we're sitting here, that is one thing that we can do to simply make sure that our lower body is properly aligned. And the most important benefit to that, in my opinion, is now we have room for the diaphragm to work fully and optimally in the core, because as soon as we twist now that muscle becomes twisted and folded and that's going to force that upper chest breath.

So simply being balanced while you're sitting is another thing we can do right away. And a good trick is put a book behind your back as you're sitting on a chair, and then you might have to bring a table closer to you. So instead of leaning forward, you bring everything back to you so you can stay upright. And then that's just a really, really simple hack to make sure that you're not falling away. I'll also put that when I'm driving, I'll put it behind my back so that I just again, it's it's a little bit of a recognition that this is where you want to be.

And then the diaphragm is the next foundation. So it supports the ribs. So as we're working that breath and again, you can simply place your hand on your belly. The belly should become nice and big with the inhalation and we want to squeeze the belly small with the exhalation. This can be challenging if people are really twisted in their ribcage to begin with because again, it's kind of like a frozen shoulder. We have a frozen diaphragm. So decompressing the rib cage as we teach is a very, very simple way to free up the rib cage so that we can access that second foundation.

And then once that foundation is aligned, then we address the tongue so that we can also support the weight of the head and not allow this to happen. So, so good. I'm sure everyone will be like, I'm going to listen to this later, go through my posture again, such great tips and information. And I like how you said like cold, like the fascist cold because think of cold and like stagnant. So, you know, a lot of chronic diseases are, we think, warm and inflammation, but cold can also cause problems and stagnation.

So I love that you brought that up. And I, I really like zero drop shoes. You know, I try not to wear a lot of heels and if anything, I'll just special occasions or just wear like a little bit, but even like an inch is still negatively impacting your posture. So do you wear like zero drop or barefoot shoes? I wear zero shoes. Yes, I do. I don't even own a pair of heels. In fact, very, very quickly, I'll feel that sensation in my calves as they begin to tighten as a result. So I'm all for comfort. I'm a barefoot girl.

I mean, if I could go barefoot all the time, I would. But when I go out, I am either in like a very flat shoe or I have these zero shoes. Yeah, and I think that's important. You know, we all want to look cute. And I remember in medical school, we had to dress up and I wore heels every single day, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that's terrible. And now you should look at the shoes I wear every day. You know, they're flat or or barefoot. But I will if I'm going out to dinner, I'll wear some heels and maybe some platforms, but.

But not not every day. I love that. I love that you don't even own heels. You would probably get looks, though, if people know you and you know you're an author. Yeah, I know what you do. They probably be like, What are you doing? Well, I'd probably be falling. First of all, I'm not very good at balancing. I was I was never good at that. So I learned quickly that that's not for me. Because, oh, my gosh, I love that. That would be like if someone saw me like out eating, they would be like, what happened?

They would be like you animals. They'd be like, What happened to you? Yeah, you. It's a. Body double. Take it to the dark side. Yes, yes. Right now, getting back to Fascia. So what do adhesions when why do adhesions develop? In fact, and how do these adhesions affect our thyroid health? So adhesions develop because again, it's a protective means of the body. So as I start falling away out of alignment, adhesions are going to develop because the Fascia is going to grip and adhere to everything in its path to attempt to create stability.

So I call them false walls and false floors, and you can really see it, especially in the use today in the lines of the neck,

Posture, Adhesions, and Practical Self-Care Tips 35:00

because the used today are growing up in front of technology. So they're starting from a different place than I did. I didn't have computers in schools when I was growing up. So and we hung outside on trees like it was such a different world back then, where now kids are growing up in this compressed alignment. Their head is forward. They're, you know, on their phones all the time and you can see in girls a lot younger these false walls building up in their neck. And those are adhesions. Wrinkles are a showing outward expression of adhesions, asymmetry in the body.

So Fascia will do this because it's here to support and protect us. So as again, if I'm walking that dog on the right side and I'm constantly getting whipped over to the right side because this dog is tugging on me, I'm going to be falling into this space and then there's going to be a displacement of to the equal and opposite side to counterbalance those forces. And the adhesions are created to lock us into those alignments so that if it's a one off, a one time, like if you go in, you wear high heels once in a while, that is not going to be an issue.

But if this becomes your daily posture, your body literally will become frozen and magnetically sealed in that alignment because those adhesions develop and build up. And and the longer they're there, the stronger those connections become. Yeah. And you know, they call it technique, right. But the girls that have all of those the wrinkles there and like it, he's so young that they're having that. So you're saying if they can correct their posture or if they're going to be bent over there? Because I'm sure a lot of parents are listening and they're like, yeah, that's just that's how they're going to be.

Can they do anything to help with combat that for their kids? And the thyroid is connected there. And I am seeing a lot younger and younger people with thyroid problems. Absolutely. And it really just comes down to that decompression that our whole my whole system is based on decompressing the fascia from head to toe. And the nice thing is you can even apply it, like even if you just, you know, took your fingers and spent 3 minutes putting direct pressure in, you're going to start to feel a change in the tissue because initially it's it's frozen and it's cold.

And again, pressure over time, it starts to melt. So if I had like a little pound of butter here and was room temperature and it's a slab of butter, I love butter, too. And that's the thing like, you know, okay, I know. So both of you go to a different thing, but if you start putting butter in your palm, you know, butter is going to start to melt because it's becoming warmer. So pressure over time creates heating. So I don't do anything where we're rubbing everything. Is pressure intentional? And then as you start to feel the tissue change, it becomes more liquid.

Now, you know, you're actually affecting that tissue. We've got a whole program, though, covering the body from head to toe to ensure that people can use this as a lifestyle. Well, because really, I mean, gravity is constantly pulling us down. Stress is constantly around us. So we need to learn how to manage life and really treat our Fascia system as the most important organ that we focus on. Because, again, it communicates with every system, every cell in the body. So if we look after the Fascia, we're literally looking after every system and every cell in the body.

And it's very, very simple when you understand what to do, because it really just comes down to melting adhesions, breathing life into it, and then owning that space through applying some basic postural changes and turning them into habits. And initially, you know, habits take a little bit of time to create, but if you put a little bit of intention in the beginning, then your body wants to be healthy, it wants to be aligned, our body wants to breathe diaphragmatic early. We've just lost and forgotten how to do that because we haven't given the body the intention to do that.

But it comes back really fast. That's the fun part. I love it so much. Great information. And you gave a lot of great tips that, you know, everyone listening can start today. You know, just do those tongue exercises when you're driving. So if our listeners want to find out more, learn about your programs deep dove more into Fascia. How can they find you? What social media is? Do you hang out at and all of that. Thank you so much, Jenny. blocktherapy.com is our Website and there's tons of information.

We also have access to our YouTube channel. We have so much free information on our YouTube channel giving people pretty much almost a full body program, just a free information on our YouTube channel. And we are on Facebook, on Instagram, on LinkedIn. I'm not techie. I've got a team that does a lot of that. So I think those are the basic ones that we're on. But again, if you you can access everything that we have from our website. And again, there's just so much information on there that people can dove into right away.

We even teach people how to use a rolled up towel so you can start to do that facial decompression right away in the comfort of your own home through the videos that we share. Deanna, thank you so much for sharing your wealth of knowledge and your passion. I really appreciate you being on the summit. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jenny. It's been an absolute pleasure.