Decompressing Fascia: The Missing Link In Healing

Introduction to Deanna Hansen and fascia 0:00

Today I have Deanna Hansen. She is the author of Unblock Your Body: How Decompressing Your Fascia Is the Missing Link in Healing. And Deanna, this is going to be so cool because Fascia is such a fascinating subject. It sure is. It's probably my favorite thing to talk about. I'm curious, how did you get into it? I mean, it's not like when you're sitting there, you're you're young girl growing up and you're thinking, I want to work with Fascia. You know what I how did you get into it? In my 20s, I was studying to be a certified athletic therapist, so I certified it at the age of 24.

And as soon as my practice began, I was always focused on deep tissue work, and I had really strong hands. So I was really good at sensing other people's scar tissue in the backs of their bodies, in their legs. But my personal body was not doing well. I was 50 pounds overweight, struggling with anxiety, depression, chronic pain and the harder that I worked based on what I was trained to do, the more compressed, the more congested I became. So it was a very frustrating number of years for me because even though my practice was thriving, my own personal body wasn't.

And as an athletic therapist, of course, I'm working with a lot of professional athletes. So there's this whole world of shame around that. When you're not looking as though you're fit and yet you're working with these people. And I was working hard. I was doing the work. I was dieting, I was 400 setups a day running, aerobics, Tai bo, I mean, you name it, I was I was doing weights in the gym. And so the failure added to that, you know, that whole feeling of like, I'm doing the work, why are the laws of weight loss not working for me?

Personal health crisis and discovery of fascia work 1:58

And it wasn't just about the size and shape. It was really about the mental aspect of all of that. So when I was 30 years old, I made some significant changes in my life, and as a result of these changes, I started having these really severe anxiety attacks. But this one anxiety attack in particular was the seed of everything to come. Because in that moment I actually thought I was going to die. I was frozen, locked away from my breath. So for some reason I dove my hand into my abdomen. Now, I never touched this part of my body because this is where I stored the majority of my weight.

I was very ashamed of it, didn't want myself or anyone else ever touching that. So here I am diving into this space and the first thing that I encountered was pain. But the pain took me out of my crazy thinking. It brought me to the ground. And then I let out this exhalation. So now I'm breathing. I was shocked, I have to say, at how much pain was in there because again, I just always avoided it. So now I start intuitively searching with my hands in this tissue. And then what? I recognized that it felt marbled with scar tissue, even though I hadn't had any injury or surgery there.

And suddenly I had this moment like, no wonder when I'm coming home from a five mile run dripping wet with sweat, my belly would still feel cold. So that first evening I spent 30 45 minutes working in the tissue, and what was really obvious in that moment was how calm I felt. And that was very foreign to me, because normally I was just an anxiety mess. I woke up the next day still feeling really calm, a little tender. I went and I worked on my patients all day, but I came home that night excited to explore again.

And after that second night of doing that similar work, when I stood up, I felt taller and I went and I looked at myself in the mirror, and I literally began to cry because my belly was flatter than it had looked in years, years of all that hard work within two days. Now things are changing. So this became my daily routine, and around the same time I also had started the practice of yoga. And I had a great instructor the first time because about every 30 to 45 seconds she would remind us to breathe, and every time she would prompt us to breathe, I recognized I was holding my breath.

So all of this information became foundational for what I continue to uncover over time. So after a couple weeks of me working on myself, my chronic low back pain was going away. I was getting excited about life, and I started slipping my patients on their back and working in a similar way in their tissue. And it wasn't long started before I started attracting other therapists to learn what I was doing, because word was getting out that change was happening with this. So that was my initiation into this self-care practice, and it probably wasn't until a couple of years in that I recognized that I was even working in the Fascia system.

So. So tell me a little bit about Fascia. I mean, what what is that? I mean, it's not, you know, you know, when when you learn anatomy and school is like so brushed over, it's so quick. I mean, we know the skin and then we know all the organs underneath, you know, bones and, you know, maybe ligaments if you're lucky. But Fascia itself is not really talked a lot about, but it's it's like an organ and system in itself. It's like an intelligence communicating system. You know, it's it's just fascinating.

It really is. It's literally the surface membrane of every cell interconnecting every other cell. It's the skin of the cell. So yes, as you mentioned, it's the communication system. It also creates the stability and the mobility for the body with the goal of keeping all cells in correct alignment. Because if we have cells positioned where they're supposed to be, we have optimal space in and around the cell that allows for ease of absorption of nutrients in, as well as the removal of the toxins and the negative stuff out of the way with ease.

As soon as we lose that space inside the body now, flow is compromised, and that is when the body starts to really become loaded with pain, with dis ease, with other challenge is and whether it's trauma, whether it's physical, emotional, mental, the Fascia stores all of it, and it locks us out of this alignment. So from the perspective of what we want to do with the Fascia is we want to understand proper postural foundations to maintain this correct cellular alignment. But most people aren't aware of them.

And we are under this influence of gravity. Gravity is constantly pulling us down, but it's not a linear compression. We're dominant on one side of the body, so we literally spiral down over time. And what happens? The Fascia is primarily made of collagen and elastin. So the collagen are the building blocks. And the collagen starts to migrate to areas of collapse to create structure so that we don't literally tip over and fall flat on our face. And it does so in a spiral Fascia though. So it literally it's like a spider spinning its web.

As I start tipping off balance, these adhesions get created and the adhesions

What fascia is and how compression affects the body 6:54

that collagen will grip and adhere to bone and everything else in its pathway. With a force of up to 2,000 pounds per square inch, it's a magnetic seal holding the body out of alignment. So this is what we're dealing with. And when somebody says to you, like, sit up straight and you find that there's very quickly this pull that's pulling you in this forward alignment, that's the force that we're dealing with, a 2,000 pound per square inch seal, which is again on the bone. So that's really where the root of the issues are in the body.

So because you're talking about the cells and when we deal with cancer I mean obviously we have cancer cells, you know, so with this taking place where you have kind of the the compression of an area where, you know, nutrients are not able to get in their toxins, they're not able to get out and, and, and then so that that cell then becomes kind of goes into that survival state in a way, which is what a cancer cell is. This one is kind of shifting how it's functioning, because it's not getting the nutrients that it needs and is dealing with a toxic environment.

That's more than what the normal cellular function can handle. So, you know, so this I'm into that decompression, you know, that you're talking about becomes obviously crucial to change that environment to, you know, not have a cancer cell or if there is a cancer cell to change that kind of tumor microenvironment into more hospital environment. Yes. And so there's three parts to the Fascia decompression. The first part is the melting through those adhesions to create the space that we've lost over time.

The second part in my view is truly the most important. It's accessing proper diaphragmatic breathing. So the diaphragm is the foundation of the rib, the core and the rib cage, or sorry, the foundation of the rib cage. When it is strong, it supports everything up the chain. But if we're not conscious diaphragmatic breathers now, the weight of the rib cage and everything above comes crashing down into the core of the body. And the challenge is pain, fear and stress causes to reactively hold the breath.

So even if we were born breathing diagrammatically, as at least babies in our generation were not so much anymore because of the changes that's going on in the world. But if we were born that way over time, pain, fear, and stress make this muscle weaker. Trauma makes it weaker because that's the trauma response to go into that freeze mode. So if you witness a deer surviving an attack, they shake. Where we as humans we tend to stay frozen. So now as we freeze, if we don't release that now, we are aging from that point in time with an impact, the diaphragm.

And when we breathe diaphragmatic. What makes this such a powerful muscle is we're pulling the air deeply into the lungs. Where at the base where the majority of the alveoli reside, the oxygen receptor sites. And in, Stephen Cope's book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, I first read here, we can feed the body up to 600% more oxygen when we breathe diagrammatically. So when we're breathing through the muscles of the upper chest, we might be feeding 1,020% of our cells appropriately. So to change that concept of the breath is really the game changer.

And then in 2014, they did a study proving that 84% of weight loss comes through proper exhalation because of the detoxification as. So when you really understand what a cell needs to be healthy and to thrive, it is that breathwork. But because we collapse, the rib cage gets sealed out of alignment with the fascia gripping onto those ribs, impacting the diaphragms ability to function. So even if you're doing breathwork, you'll be able to keep strong what you have access to. But most people have a frozen diaphragm, at least to some degree, kind of like a frozen shoulder.

So we want to first and foremost release the rib cage so we can access that full beautiful diaphragm so that we can have that increase in oxygen absorption, as well as that detoxification for the cells. So hardest one is is it fear is a trauma or is it just poor posture. I mean where where did these kind of like you're talking about the adhesions, the scars. I mean you're, you're noticing all these little nodules things on yourself, you know, like like scar, even though you hadn't been injured, you haven't had any surgery there, you know, probably didn't have a, you know, blow of any, you know, physical trauma to it.

So how does it how is it created in the first place? It's the cooling down of the body. So I live here in Winnipeg and it can be -35 in the winter. And so like, you know, if you see frost moving on glass, that's kind of the vision of what it is. But I live right above a river and I'm 13 storeys high. So over the years of 16 years being here, I've seen the river freeze and thaw on freeze and thaw, and it always follows the same patterns. So basically when our body is heated to correct temperature, there's ease of flow just like the river, so debris can get pulled away.

And and there's ease with that. However, when it starts to freeze up now, the ice starts to form on the edges, and then you start to see the ice moving down the river, and then eventually it gets backed up and then flow becomes compromised. So the diaphragm is like the body's engine or the furnace. Breathing through the muscles of the upper chest is like using a space heater to heat your whole body. So in the 30 storey building that I live in, if I only have a space heater in the winter, I can only heat one room.

If you turn on the building's furnace, I can heat the entire building. So when we connect to that beautiful breath, what we're doing is we're giving the core of the body a continual massage from the action of the inhalation, where the diaphragm moves down toward the feet, and then with the exhalation, it moves up toward the head. That continual action creates a massaging

Breathing, detoxification, and cellular health 13:03

for the organs, for the heart, for the lungs, the aorta. Right. Leaving the heart. If we aren't breathing properly, we're literally collapsing into that tube and squishing it. So now the heart has to work harder. So adhesions develop when the body becomes cooler and as a function of not properly breathing. That's ultimately what happens as we're driving our bodies with the space heater. And there's just not enough heat and energy in the body to reach all of the cells. So the body and its ingenious design, it's going to feed what is necessary for survival aside from necessary for thriving.

So most people are walking around with a body that is colder in internal temperature than what it should be. And again, I mean, they say that we're only feeding or that we only use about 10% of our brain. I believe it's because we're only breathing 10% of our capacity. That's fascinating. Yeah, that's fascinating as so. Yeah. Because looking at cancer, when we talked about it being a survival mechanism, but also metabolic disorder. So so here you're you're saying exactly that, you know by us not breathing appropriately, we are then shutting down the energy production within the cells.

and here you have in your scenario, you know, you were you were doing all these activities, you exercising, right. You were eating right and you had all the knowledge, but you had that frozen energy sort of say. And, and so your, your furnaces weren't running at its optimum, you know, level. And so you're metabolically then going to be challenged and then you put yourself more at risk for more chronic diseases and obviously cancer, cancer being, you know, a kind of a further down the line, you know, chronic disease.

but then when you're dealing with cancer, I mean, I, I would assume that this would be crucial then in order to be able to turn on healing for the body. I fully agree. And we have a beautiful community of many people who utilize this approach in any stages. And no matter what application of healing they're going through. In fact, I was I'm in communication with a woman right now. I'll be doing, a discussion with her when she's on the other side. She's actually going through chemo, so she's following a program I've given her, and she said she has zero side effects, which she attributes to what we're doing here because it's helping her detoxify so much more efficiently.

And the thing with the liver, I mean, you know, fatty liver disease is on the rise. And, I mean, you think about this organ that is so crucial to clean the blood and break down the poisons in the body. And yet if we're not breathing properly, it becomes cold as well. So now if it's trying to break down fats, butter at room temperature is a solid. Heat it up, it becomes a liquid. So this cold liver has all these frozen dirty fats like clogging this filter. So not only are we not getting the oxygen, we're also not able to get rid of the toxins.

So our body is just becoming overloaded with with debris, dirt, all the, all the bad things. And then we're attracting other stuff which we don't want, of course. Yeah. And I always called cancer frozen energy. I mean that's, that's just to me. Yeah. When you get stagnated, frozen energy, you know, that's where, the things, you know, start to grow. Yeah. So to be able to get all that moving, becomes so important. I'm curious. So you've been working and we've talked a little bit about trauma, and you have, you know, people go through things in life and then you even have generational trauma that sometimes we store from prior generations just to kind of help them carry the load, sort of say.

So we're we're thinking we're so helpful because we're doing that. I would assume by working then on the body, you'd be able then to unlock some of these emotional trauma that may, you know, you may be protecting, you know, through a fiscal structure. I mean, have you seen anything like that take place? Yes, actually, a year ago, we launched our 90 day trauma program, and it was fascinating to watch. We focused for three weeks, first on the physical trauma, then the emotional, mental and spiritual.

So over this 90 day journey of connecting weekly with the community, going through this, it was fascinating to see the changes and the connections that people were making within themselves. One that was just so direct and a parent was a woman said, you know, when I was ten years old, I sprained my ankle and I recognized that was when I stopped being able to stand up for myself. So all of these really amazing connections were coming out. But what I love in yoga, they share that we're born with a signature posture, and the goal of this lifetime is to break through that signature posture.

The way I understand that from the fashion perspective is we're born with our mother's breath. So if we had a mother that was stressed, if we had a mother that was really healthy and calm and open, I mean, like, you know, those would be very different scenarios of how we're coming out into the world. And then we get slugged with life. So to be able to change the breathing pattern is the way that we can change that signature posture, because that's how the outward expression of the body is shared through the breath.

Because if we're locked over on one side than the other, then there's going to be a certain cells in the body, not properly fed and clean and vice versa. So when we can understand how to start feeding everything and get out those old past memories, past emotions, the physical stuff, all of it, then again, we can really reset our body back to balance and direct where we're headed as we age, as opposed to gravity and unconscious living. Directing how we age. Yeah, that's that's that's incredible. And and yeah, there's so much there's so much to unpack in there.

So how do people, when they start this journey I mean, what what does that look like for them? Let's, let's say somebody, you know, they, I mean, because there's so many places that they can start this or certain process that they go through. Yes. So my, my basic starter program, the process is we always start in the core in the ribs because even if you come to this practice because you have a bad foot, we want to get your breath open and strong because that's the magic sauce is the breath. So we always start core ribs.

Then we go back down to the foundation because the pelvis, legs and feet and then the head, neck and arm. So we cycle through the body in that initial starter program to ensure that your breath is working, that you understand the process. Because we teach people to become pain seekers. So this is what's really important to understand

Trauma, emotional release, and body memory 19:48

because most people are caught in the pain fear cycle. And again, each pain, if you if you're afraid of it, you hold your breath further. And then the more you hold your breath, the more pain you have. So then you're locked in this crazy cycle that if we could just remove the fear. Pain is simply the baby crying. It's your cell giving you information. So if we can look at pain and have a process to move through it, then we are given all of these gifts. And it's a beautiful process. So what we do first is we we have tools.

They're called the block buddy in the block baby. They're made out of either wood or bamboo. And the reason they're made of this material is because they are similar in density to bone. And because we want to get to the bone, which is where, again, that fashion will grip with that crazy force. We need something similar in density to be able to create that equal pressure, to squeeze and heat all of those adhesions between the two. And then we teach you how to very slowly maneuver through those layers so we don't move on the surface of the body.

I use the analogy. It's like the difference between being on a boat and going on the ocean, as opposed to deep sea diving. So we're going to go deep sea diving. So everything is very slow, very regenerative. So you lie in a position and we always start in the belly because of course we want to activate that proper diaphragmatic breath. But you lie in position always for a minimum of three minutes. And we connect to your proper diaphragmatic breath. So first we teach you where that breath should come from.

And then once you start, you automatically start pulling in more oxygen. And then the body starts becoming lighter. You activate the vagus nerve. So now you're in that rest and digest phase. And then as you're tapping into those layers, we have you searching for pain, because pain is where the adhesion is. Because basically it's the cell saying, hey, mom or dad, you're asking me to do this fantastic job of allowing you to live and create and do life, but you're starving us or you're dehydrating us or you're exhausting us.

So we're giving you some information. So we fell out of balance because of pain. So now we're going to use pain as that roadmap back to balance. And it's fascinating because pressure overrides pain. So as soon as you tap in and you connect to the breath, it doesn't take long for that initial pain sensation to become a good pain. And we also teach you you're in control of the pain. So nobody's doing this to you. You are choosing to do this for yourself. And the rule is as long as you're breathing, you're feeding and healing the area.

If something hurts so much that it takes that relaxed breath away, then we say, that's too much for your body. Let's back off and let's do something different. So you can do this on a floor, which is how we initially teach you lying down. But you can also do it on a bed. You can prop yourself up with cushions and pillows. And we also have two sizes of blocks so that you can interchange one or the other depending on your comfort level. And then we stay a minimum of three minutes because you can't rush melting.

So it's a lovely, regenerative persuasive process. So there's nothing forceful. Now, having said that, the healing crises are real, though, so as, as they should be, because, you know, that's the indicator that your body has that energy enough to push out the bad so that we can start creating space for the good. Yeah. And that's the thing is that when you have first, you know, pain that the body only has so many ways it can communicate, you know, as to what's going on. Yeah. So and pain is just one of them. Yeah.

Like like you're saying it's, you know, hey, it's a little alerts, signals saying, look, look at me. Look here. Yeah. This is where you need to focus. So by instead of avoiding that communication or shutting it down with, you know, pain medication, you know, the key is then to listen to it and then address it and, yeah. So, so that, that that's a key, to, to do and in regards to. Yeah, the healing crisis. Yeah. So when you are opening up more energy. Yeah. Which, which you are because you're the body's using all that energy to protect an area.

And when you release, you know that the need for protecting that area, then that energy can be used elsewhere. And so then you can start to then repair tissue. You can start to detoxify, fight pathogens, whatever it may be. and then also in frozen, frozen tissue, you tend to then because it's not circulating, you're just like in a river, obviously that stops flowing very well. There's going to be toxic water. So as you're then flushing that that river out, you know, that toxic water, those toxins gotta go somewhere.

so, so just kind of knowing, you know, that that that's what you're dealing with, right? Yeah, yeah. And I always let people know, like, it's such a blessing. Like, whether you're having a, a skin rash or a change in pain, diarrhea, flu like symptoms, mucus production, emotional moments where suddenly, like, you're crying for no reason or you're angry, whatever that is. Nightmares, memories coming to the surface.

How Block Therapy works and where to begin 24:58

All of these things, these are these are a blessing. Because as soon as it comes to the surface, we can acknowledge it and say goodbye and create that space for health in that space. And then we keep going deeper and deeper and deeper and and it's just such a beautiful process because, in, Greg Braden's book, The God Code, he and he goes into the detail and I'm not very good with detail, but he shares how on the surface membrane of every cell is the message and scribe God lies within. So the more cells that we connect to the more we actually learn what our creative potentials are.

Are these gifts that we were brought to this planet to share? We can start pulling them up and and use our life for all of the good that we're here to do. Yeah. And you, you also have this, other book. The whole look, it was it was see the holographic universe. No, no, that was another one. That was Michael Talbot that wrote the holographic universe. But yeah, each cell, you know, each piece of your body contains the message of the whole, and obviously, you know, the more of these cells that communicate in relationship with each other, the stronger the picture are, the clearer the picture is in regards to who you truly are.

and, and obviously with, you know, dealing something with a serious disease, then frequently you, you lose your purpose, you lose your identity, and then the cells in themselves lose their identity as well and start to behave, separate from the, the whole. And so that that's why it becomes so important to create that connection. So you can create, you know, that every all pieces of the body works in conjunction with each other. And that's the beauty of the fascia that that connects everything together.

Yes. And that's why, I mean, we're so adaptable and that's a blessing and a curse because, you know, if I'm a golfer and I wake up and I want to go have my golf game and I tweak my shoulder when I'm sleeping, but not enough to stop me from playing the game, I'm going to go and I might. I'm unconsciously going to shift my alignment just to play that game. And if I don't get that reset now, that's my new alignment. And I'm going to keep, you know, the body's going to keep shifting and moving collagen to create these false walls to again, stop me from tipping.

And then we become so out of balance and again, it's those collagen stacks that create those barriers to blood and oxygen flow. So whether from an injury or a surgery or from unconscious posture over time, I mean, basically, you know, we're getting riddled with barricades and that's going to be the issue. So the more we can stay connected to the cells and keep them in their home, their rightful position. I mean, basically disease can't exist in optimal flow. No. Absolutely not. That is absolutely true.

so how where would be the best place that people can go to, to get going on this and to learn more? I mean, obviously they they should get your book Unblock Your Body, which is amazing. and, do you have like, courses, trainings, you know, something that people can do from afar? you know, because obviously it's challenging for everyone, especially wintertime, to fly to Canada. You know, you you rather not if you're in Bahamas, that may be different. But Canada actually have, instructors in the Bahamas, we have instructors all over the world.

But, we basically first of all, we have a free gift. So anybody and everybody can start this immediately. We have a free gift teaching you to use a rolled up towel. It's a nine part series, and using a rolled up towel while following the instructions is pretty darn effective. Like, because again, you're going to spend that three minutes, you're going to melt through those adhesions and really learn to optimize your breath. We do cover the full body. We also talk about the postural foundations, which are key to support that correct cellular alignment.

and we also have the tools and our program. You can just order. My website is block therapy.com and it's a starter program. So we want everybody to start with the starter program. If they're wanting to go to that step and you get nine instructional classes plus a whole bunch of other, videos, you also get a two week free trial into my membership where I have daily guided programs. And this is where it gets really fun because what we really want to do is we want to release and rebuild and release and rebuild.

We want to take those steps so that we keep letting go of that old patterning, and then we can pull the cells back, but we have to go through steps through the whole body because the fascia connects you head to toe. In fact, the calves in the feet, they're going to be I would say, for 100% of all people, the most important areas to release after we get that breath going because they're the furthest from the engine. So you can have a frozen shoulder and go for all the treatments you want. And as soon as you start walking, you're going to get pulled back into that negative pattern of your fascia and it's going to pull you into that negative postural alignment that's causing the issue in the first place.

So these guided programs ensure that you're not missing some of the major cause sites that you don't necessarily feel as pain because they're different. They're in a distant place from the pain site or the issue site. So we look at the full body and that's how we navigate, people through the journey, so that they are very efficient at getting to the root of their issues so they can heal. And yeah, and I'm the membership side, if I correct me if I'm wrong, don't you have, you know, for somebody that's filled with such and such disease, then then there's, you know, certain programs that that they can go, you know, with, with that, you know, so it becomes very specific for each individual.

and you have training courses so that they can kind of go in different directions. Yeah. And on your membership site we do. And we have an absolutely beautiful Facebook community. It's free for anybody. block therapy community. if you just type that into Facebook, we have over 10,000 members. And what's lovely about that is you have people with anything and everything that has brought them to block therapy, so you can ask questions and you're going to have people giving their personal experience.

So it's not just me saying, oh, hey, this is what's going on. It's people that have gone through that journey, to share their experiences and to support you along the way. And it's just such a beautiful place. Two of my black therapists, they're manning the group. and then I get on calls once a month, with everybody and then people in our membership. I'm on weekly calls with them. So there's a ton of support, and that's the nice thing because it can get overwhelming, especially if you're overwhelmed with your body.

Like, where do I start? So you ask the questions and it's like, you know, 24 over seven. Basically, people are giving answers and responses too. So it's, it's, a very supportive, giving community where you'll always have answers and direction. And I, as you were talking about, kind of going through the cycle of decompressing and then rebuild. But what what does a rebuild look like? So there's three basic foundations that we teach in the body. The first one is roofing. So we're like a building. If you look at most people standing, people often shift their weight to the opposite side to which they're dominant, so that they can keep that dominant side free for action.

Rebuilding posture and full-body alignment 32:18

So I'm right handed, and when I'm not conscious, I'll shift to my left. And that's just how, you know, typically how we are, so we teach you how to support your lower body, incorrect alignment to support everything up the chain. Your feet should literally be underneath your hip joints. And most people will have a foot that splays out. So I always look which one is the flat tire, because there's going to be a flat tire and then an anchor. So the foot that's tends to externally rotate, might have a bigger bunion, is further away from midline.

That's going to be pulling the body away. And then you've got the other side that anchors. So then your hip joints, they get all twisted inside the pelvis and then it causes a ballooning lower belly. It also causes the rib cage to get pulled forward and down and twisted. So we teach you how to support that lower body posture. And one of the options is squeezing the anus. It's that rooting action that helps you align the pelvis so that we can keep 60% of our weight on our heels. The average person and I actually read this 30 years ago, so it might be way different than this.

But they say the average person has 80% on the balls of their feet. And then you imagine a woman wearing a high heel shoe and how that just completely plays off with the foundation. The next foundation is the diaphragm. So just the act of being a conscious diaphragmatic breather is going to keep that muscle strong and support the rib cage. And then the tongue muscle. The tongue muscle is not only just for chewing and talking. It's also in part designed to support the weight of the head. If you notice that the roof of the mouth about a pinky nail distance from your teeth, there's a ridge.

So the tongue perfectly docks in that ridge. So the surface of the tongue should support the roof of the mouth. When I'm not conscious of my tongue, it will just jut forward into the right and I'll end up clenching more on my left. So we need to pull that tongue back and down and that helps to keep the vertebrae in correct alignment. Otherwise, as the rib cage gets pulled forward, then the head and the neck get pulled forward, and then we block the carotid arteries, the thyroid, the major lymphatic drainage sites.

Everything gets congested and compressed in through this space. And then lastly, the, anatomical position. We look at a skeleton properly made palms are forward. Everyone's walking around with their palms facing the back of their body. So that's creating an internal rotation of the arms, pulling that ribcage forward and down. So just to be aware of these things and how to use our body the way it was designed to be driven as opposed to just going unconscious to relief through life, letting gravity dictate how you age.

it's not going to be as fun a journey if you are in control of your breath and your body's movements. That's that's that's awesome. Well, Deanna, this is incredible what you're doing. It's incredible. I'm another thing else I was thinking about. I'm sorry. It's always another thing. you know, like sleep apnea. I mean, that that's that's a big issue. I mean, like, we're you're talking about the tongue and the whole structure in the neck. so I, I would assume that this would kind of be really helpful in that because sleep apnea is, is also a way where you're not getting the oxygen while you're, you're breathing, while you're sleeping.

So that creates in cardiovascular. And again, yeah, another, you know, talking with a cancer if it's not getting the oxygen and not the energy metabolically suppressed, then that promotes cancer. So, you know, that's that's another reason I would assume, you know, to to do. Yeah, to do this work. Well, and just interestingly, I just last month finished a 21 day

Sleep apnea, concussion recovery, and closing remarks 35:48

concussion protocol with 13 people from my community. I wanted to add in some work in the eyes. One of those 13 people got off her CPAp machine as incredible. Yeah, because I mean, the impact of that, you know, not just cancer but dementia. yeah. Cardiovascular Alzheimer. I mean, all of these things are, you know, lowering of hormones. so it I mean, it's just that cascading effect because you're not addressing the fundamentals so well. Deanna, this just been incredible. Thank you so much for the work you're doing for all the people you're helping.

And and yeah, I, I, I've done a little bit of this myself. I remember laying on the floor with, with those blocks and yes, it was not the most comfortable initial feeling, but it felt so great after. It was amazing. well, thank you so much, Dr. Michael. It has been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today. Thank you so much.