Reducing Pain & Fatigue With Pilates

Introduction and Summit Welcome 0:00

Hi. Welcome. I'm doctor Roger Murphree, and I'm the host of freedom from Fibromyalgia Summit. And I have Jana Danielson here today. She's a Pilates expert. And, this is something I've recommended to my patients for, I guess two decades, ever since I've been treating fibromyalgia. I think it's the perfect exercise, the perfect activity for those with fibromyalgia. And Jen is going to share with you some, some things about a lot of maybe you don't know what that is. But we're going to go into some details about that and then things that you can, you know, you can do at home to start the process at home without, triggering some of these fibro flares that we see in some of these exercises that people try.

So, Jana, in Mexico, I understand, and I'm envious, down in the sunny weather. So nice to have you be on the summit. To tell me a little bit about your background, because it's it's an interesting background. I know you were the founder of of, of lead places and lead integrated health therapies. You're the author of, the international bestselling book on Amazon. So you got quite an interesting wellness background. Well, Doctor Rogers, thank you so much for having me here. Anytime I can educate and inspire on movement as medicine for, you know, whatever ailment or situation a body and a beating heart might be living with, I, gladly accept the invitation.

So I'm excited to be here.

Jana's Pain Journey and Discovery of Pilates 1:35

And yeah, my story, is it starts with my own pain journey, actually. I mean, I grew up on, farm. I was the eldest of three kids. We grew up with lots of wide open space and big, huge gardens and, you know, where you played every sport in high school or yours or your town didn't have a team and really believe that when you weren't feeling good, you would go to the doctor, get your medication, and you would heal. And part of my pain was digestive in nature. And my dad, as a farmer, would always drive around in his half ton truck with rolls of Tums, antacids, and he would eat them like candy.

And I just thought, well, that's you know, my dad has a stomach like that. So when it would come time for a big test or a big game or waiting for a call from a boy, I would get this nervous stomach and I would, you know, eat my Tums, or I would have people say, oh, there's Jana, you know, the high achiever. And I just bought into that mindset that because I was a high achiever that my body would respond this way sometimes, and then this sometimes became more often and the more often became daily.

And I moved away to college and, was started a two year journey to try and figure out what was going on with me, because I thought if I could just get the diagnosis, that I could get the medication, or I could get the, you know, the prescription to fix me. And then I was going with my life. And that never came. After all the tests and specialists and poking and being prodded and drinking, all the things I was told by my medical team one day that they believe that the pain was in my head and I was seeking attention, and they wished me a nice life.

And it was one of those moments where it felt like the rug was being pulled out from underneath me, because I believed that my ability to heal was blocked like that. I was going to live a life. Would I be able to be a mom? Would you know, I was newly engaged to my high school sweetheart? Should I even marry this guy? There were days I couldn't get out of bed, and, I just didn't know. And one day I was in line at the grocery store, and I looked over at the magazine rack that is by every checkout counter, and I saw Madonna, who I'm still a huge fan of The Material Girl, and she was on the cover of a fitness magazine, and I didn't even know the word was Pilates.

It was. I thought it was pilots, and I was like, what is Madonna doing? So I bought the magazine and I went home and I was teaching fitness at that time to pay for my tuition in college. So I was I was moving despite my pain. I was teaching movement to spite my pain. So I was living this double life, right? For because from the outside I looked completely normal. Inside I felt like I was dying and it was like I was leading this double life. And so I read this article about this form of movement called Pilates and the pictures that it was showing me, and the words that I was reading were not making sense in my brain, because I had believed and bought into the mindset that to be fit, you had to leave a puddle of sweat on the floor at least five days a week.

You had to wake up the next day from your workout. And if you're, you know, if your arms weren't sore or if you could, if you could wash your hair without having to drop your arms, you better do more weight the next day. And it just was this huge disconnect that breathing and spinal movement and posture could produce the bodies that I was seeing in this magazine. And so I was intrigued, and I treated myself to a new mat, a water bottle, a new pair of leggings. And I found myself a mat class. And I went and I went to the front row center spot.

That's typically what I do. And I scan the room very quickly, discerning that I was going to be the best student in the room because everybody else was different ages, different sizes, and in less than 60s. From the moment my instructor started speaking and talking about inhaling through your nose and exhaling out of your mouth, I realized that if I was not in the front row center, I would have rolled up my mat and I would have made a beeline for the door because she should have been talking a different language, right?

She should have been, because nothing that she was saying to me, neither my brain or my body, understood a word of it. And I would look in my peripheral vision and I would see these people, their bellies rising and lowering. They were making this sound when they breathe. And I was like, what is this? And I stayed because I was front and center and I was too. It was the embarrassment of leaving was worse than the embarrassment of not being able to do anything. And after class, my instructor walked up to me and as she approached me, I burst into tears and she just wrapped her arms around me and she just said to me, come back on Thursday.

That's all she said. And so I nodded with my tears rolling down my face. And I came back on Thursday, and then I came back every Tuesday and Thursday after that, and 16 weeks after my first class, everyone, And one important fact I forgot to mention was by the end of my two year medical journey, I was on 11 different medications, and after 16 weeks of this form of movement, I had weaned myself off of all my medication. Did not understand for a minute what was happening in my body and why this was happening. But it was.

And I was like, all right. I realized then that I was looking outside for my ability to heal, when really I had to remember that if I focused on inside, that I had the power

What Pilates Is and Its Five Spinal Movements 7:10

to at least start the healing process. And, so yeah, that's my story. So there's parallels with the fibromyalgia story. You know, you go to seeing all these different doctors. You have these aches and pains and fatigue and brain fog, and you can't sleep. And you're oftentimes passed from one doctor to the next. And he or she may or may not know, you know, what's going on. Usually they don't. So they pass you to another doctor, and then you get on another drug and before you know it, you're on the medical merry go round.

And then and then you oftentimes hear, well, maybe you just need to see a psychologist, or maybe you need to say a psychiatrist. The implication is that's all in your your mind, right. You're faking this. Of course. Who would fake this? You know, no one has a wife. It's not it's really not living. It's existing, trying to make it through the day. So your story is very similar to to to the fibromyalgia journey. And, so tell us how, well, first of all, let's start with what is priorities. Can you share a little bit about the history of it and how it works?

And then you know, what's fascinating? And the main reasons why I want you on here is for you to be able to share and be the example that by changing your physical, you know what you're doing and your activity, that you can reduce pain and you can increase your health through activity. What did you call it now? You said, what now it's what was the, active movement? What did you say? I'm it was it it went in and came out, but it was. Well it's really about mindful movement is what it is. So take mine for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah sure. With this for sure. Watching. Yeah. All right. So Pilates is a form of movement, named after Joseph Pilates. Now the history 101 to Pilates. Joseph Pilates, grew up in Germany in the late 1800s. His mom was a natural path, and his dad was a gymnast. So when you think of growing up in Germany in the 1880s, very industrial age, you don't think that that's that's the the backdrop of this young man growing up. Anyways, Joe had asthma, rickets and rheumatic fever, so he was not a well child growing up, so spent a lot of his time observing people and animals move.

And he was so intrigued by the way some people moved effortlessly, like they were floating. And he said, like, some people looked like every step they took, it took effort in their body. And so before Joe passed away, this form of movement was called control AG because it was all about controlling the body through focus. Thought of your mind. Once Joe passed away, it you know, the kind of it shifted to be called Pilates. So Joe believed that the health of the spine dictated the health of the body.

And like a cookie, if you're making chocolate chip cookies, you would go to your recipe book and you would follow the recipe and you would make your cookies. There's a recipe, a recipe for Pilates as well, and it's five very specific spinal movements. And what I'm going to say, doctor Roger, is I'm going to give a little plug for my free gift because my free gift for this summit for everyone being here is one of my most favorite movement experiences that I've created. It's called Renew Your Body movement is medicine, and it doesn't matter if you're in the middle of a flare up.

It doesn't matter if you have rheumatoid arthritis or osteo or a bulging disc. This, course that I am gifting you is literally for everyone, and it covers the five spinal movements and it covers there's like little mini educate me sessions that talk about why what happens when you create these movements. So when you move your spine these five ways and the first way is called spinal flexion. So when we sit at our desks and we can become very forward rounded, very almost like, you know, ape like that's not what I mean by forward flexion or selection means when you take the bottom of your spine, your tailbone, the kind of that the tailbone area.

And if you were to tuck it between your legs, give it a little tiny tuck. All right. It's not a big movement, but that's what we call spinal flexion. It creates activation in our deepest set of abdominals called the transverse abdominals. It asks for some help from the pelvic floor. Our butts going to want to squeeze really hard if that's if you're like a pusher in fitness or an exercise. But it's very it's very subtle. What's also happening in that moment is this gentle, visceral massage. The organs are getting beautifully massaged against each other, and when you are in a pain cycle, a few things happen.

We start to breathe more shallowly. We kind of turtle our posture because we're protecting from the pain and our sympathetic nervous system, which is that fight or flight. It goes through the roof while the parasympathetic, which is the rest, and digest, kind of gets shoved by the wayside when we can start to create these beautiful little undulations. And I'm doing them right now, I know you can't see me. It creates a boost to that parasympathetic and can really start to remind you that even in those moments where you think that everything is out of your control, you can always come back to these spinal movements.

All right. So spinal flexion is number one. The opposite of that is extension. All right. So imagine if you if you were wearing a jacket and if you were zipping that jacket up. And if you think of your spine lengthening as you zip the jacket and you zip the jacket and you kind of get right to your eyebrows, this is spinal extension. So my heart is open, my spine is kind of bent a little bit backwards like a banana. And my neck is being supported by all those little vertebrae of my spine being in the right position, if I'm simply hanging my head off my spine.

Yeah, that's going to hurt. It's not going to feel good. But if you focus on zipping up the jacket, that's going to create that opposite curve of the spine, which so many of us need. Again, because we live on a planet with gravity, we have this forward rounded posture syndrome going on. We're on our tech all the time. We need to learn how to open that up. All right. So that's the second spinal movement. Second part of the recipe, spinal movement number three is rotation. So if you were shoulder checking in your vehicle twisting your spine again gives those organs a nice little ringing kind of effect.

And it creates this really nice interaction between spinal fluid and blood and all the tissues, the intervertebral discs, the little jelly donuts that live between each of our bones and our spine. And it's just as yummy, almost like a little car wash for our spine. The fourth spinal movement is lateral bending or side bending. So if we were to reach down one side and the other, that is lateral flexion. That's spinal movement. Number four. The fifth and final part of the recipe is called spinal inversion.

So if you were laying on your bed or laying on the floor with your knees bent and your feet on the floor, if you were to gently float your hips up off of the floor so your tailbone was a little bit higher than your heart, now gravity gets to work in a different direction on that spinal fluid, and we call that an inversion. So like kind of, you know, those, those snow globes that you see here on the holidays that you kind of shake. And it's right. That's what that that's what a spinal inversion does to our spine is kind of like the little snow globe experience for the spine.

And so Joe believed if we were to move our spine these five different ways. And if you, you know, when you, when you get my free gift, you'll see that it can happen in less than five minutes. He believed that after ten sessions of Pilates, you would start to feel a difference in your body. He then believed in 20 sessions of this form of movement. You would start to see a difference in your body, and after 30 sessions, you would have a completely new operating system because it does literally rewire the neural network in the brain.

And if you think of the spine with all these millions of nerves kind of plugged in like lights on a Christmas tree, the more impactful, the more effective our spine can move, the more impactful the communication system can be to all other systems and parts of our body. So that in a nutshell, really is the history of Pilates and how it's rooted in the health of the spine, dictating the health of the body. So you're speaking my language as a chiropractor. Although I don't do manual therapy, know I had a number of years style telemedicine, but, yeah, I mean, that's exactly what we think is, you know, as chiropractors, we think that, large, part of your health is dictated by the health of your spine and the nervous system that's emitting from that spine and feeding the muscles and ligaments and tendons and organs.

One of the, one of my colleagues and actually Yanni's own your doctor Yanni went and, as a chiropractor, and he talks about movement and posture and how it affects, inflammation in the body. One of the things he talks about is the posture and the vagus nerve. And we know with the vagus nerve is really helps control that parasympathetic nervous system that is the calming part of your nervous system with fibro, their sympathetic nervous system, which is, drive, drive go go go go is, over alert. I mean, it's it's out of control.

And so these people always feel wired and tired and they're generating information. But by changing your posture, just changing your posture, you can actually ignite the parasympathetic nervous system partly through the vagal nervous and some of the stretches and exercise. But from what you're sharing with us, Pilates is another way to do that. Maybe a more, even more advanced way than, you know, just changing your posture. Yeah. And, you know, it truly is about alignment of the entire body. I think sometimes we view the body in an incorrect paradigm.

I think sometimes we see it as arms and legs and a torso and a head,

Posture, Alignment, and Nervous System Benefits 17:20

but we don't realize is we're not like, I like to use this analogy, we're not like those Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head dolls where you can change up your arms for your workout and then put your sexy arms on for date night. Right? We're a series of systems, and we would be extremely naive if we believed that these systems worked in isolation from each other because they don't. So any disruption in them in the structure, the bones, our skeleton, our posture is 100% going to impact digestion, elimination, circulation, lymph, lymph, like all of those kinds of things.

And so what I like to tell, you know, my, my clients is that it's as simple as understanding where the weight, if you're standing, where the weight distribution through your feet should be. So we have 26 bones in each foot, that great big bone at the back of the calcaneus. Right. That's the big heavy solid bone in the foot. The other bones are small and weird shaped. And when something is small, it's meant to move. When something is big and solid long, like a little leg bone, the femur, or like that calcaneus bone in our foot.

It's meant to bear weight. Now, you don't have to be a structural engineer to understand that if you got a big solid bone, you got to load it with weight. And if you have small bones, they're meant for movement. But if you start to have posture that is too far forward or too much weight forward, those little bones get really confused. Those little bones are like, hey, wait a minute, I thought I was meant for moving and jumping and twisting and turning, and now you're asking me to hold this load above?

How am I supposed to do all of that? Right? So it's a simple mathematical distribution of weight 60% of your weight in that calcaneus bone, the heel, and 40% across the widest part of the foot, the metatarsals where those toes connect into the main part of the foot, if you can, just remember, if that's the only thing you remember from this conversation is the 6040. And let me tell you this, your body may not love that. If you've been one of my. I call them my ski jumpers. If you've been living with like 80% of your weight forward on your toes and your quads have gotten used to holding your glutes and hamstrings at the back of your body, have gotten used to being on a permanent vacation.

Bringing your weight back in space might give you a little bit of back discomfort, a little bit of knee discomfort, and if you didn't know any better, you'd be like, oh, this hurts me. I better not do it. But it's the body's way of reintegrating its proper weight bearing capabilities on to the right bones. And so posture and alignment and Pilates is huge. And I say it all the time, I do Pilates so that I can live a higher quality of life. So all of my activities of daily living are done more optimal.

That's why I do plays. It's like putting a little deposit into my wellness bank account every single day. So when I do, maybe step off a sidewalk a little bit, or when we're back in Canada, if I slipped on some ice, my insurance policy would kick in, so I didn't end up with that sprained ankle or that broken bone because my body knew how to respond. Yeah. You know, I think that exercise and activity, physical activity, certainly mental as well. But physical activity is really is a way that you can, maybe get away with some, some lifestyle choices that aren't as is as good as they should be.

I really think that exercise is a way that you can overcome some bad habits. Healthwise. And, and so the, the problem for fibromyalgia is they're so sedentary from this illness. I mean, they've had, you know, they they've gotten so rundown and they have so much pain that if they try to exercise, oftentimes it sets them in a flare and they're told this, I mean, their doctor's often tell them, hey, you know, you just need to exercise more. And of course they're thinking, I can barely get out of bed.

How am I going to exercise? Yeah, this just that isn't going to happen. What I love about Pilates is a is is an exercise and movement therapy. That's why I try think earlier. I think that that allows for you to to put your body in a state of stress without it causing any flares, without it being too dramatic for the body to handle. And you can take it in steps, right? You you can, with Pilates. I mean, you can be in the very basic stretch stretching program and then you can build on top of that. You don't have to.

You know, I see people with the boards and the pools and the, you know, that's so intimidating, but what you're sharing sounds so doable and in a way that, anybody can do this. Right. Well, it is, and I think one of the, you know, I've worked with many clients who have who who live with a fibromyalgia diagnosis. And when they come to see me or they start working with me, it's so evident that they are so disconnected from their body. They don't trust it. They're frustrated by it. And that's, that's where the the body and the mind come together in Pilates.

Because you guys, there were there were days where I could not get out of bed. There were days. So I even though I don't have a fibromyalgia diagnosis, I lived that. And so even being in bed because the diaphragmatic breathing, I do want to touch on that. Diaphragmatic breathing is a big component of this because the diaphragm is the main muscle of respiration. It sits right inside of the rib cage. When we are in pain, we we talked about parasympathetic and sympathetic before, but what happens from a respiratory perspective is we stop utilizing this big, beautiful, diaphragm muscle.

And we actually start using the secondary breathing muscles that live in our neck. They're called the scalings and the sternocleidomastoid. Now, why is that important? Because these little beef jerky like muscles already have a job. They got a hold this big bowling ball on top of this tiny little spine. So now we're saying to these little muscles, hold this mass plus breathe 86,000 times a day, you're in charge of breath. So we actually create so much unnecessary stress and tension through our neck, through our jaw, low grade headaches at the brow line, at the hairline.

And we don't even connect the dot to breath because it's just what we do. Right is the first act of life. What do you mean? I have to relearn how to breathe when you start to use your diaphragm, your deepest set of abdominals called your transverse abdominis, which start in your low back and wrap to the front of your body like this big Olympic weight belt or a big corset. It starts to wake up. And then you know what else I mean? Pelvic floor health is another one of my passions. When your diaphragm wakes up, your pelvic floor starts to respond.

So now that functional muscle that holds your organs inside of you and it's a very, you know, sensual part of our body, a lot of our confidence sits there that starts to wake up. And so, you know, understanding that even in the days where you're flaring in a really major way, if you can simply do your diaphragm breathing, you are doing all of these, you're, you know, impacting your core, you're impacting your pelvic floor, you're feeding your cells the oxygen they need. So even on those days where it's just if you think that's that doesn't count, it absolutely does.

Yeah. I think just being aware of your posture. I had Deanna Hansen on here, in the summit and she's, what talks all about fashion, which I have a chapter in my book all about my fashion release. We really had a great conversation, and, as a chiropractor who used to really focus on chiropractic biophysics, which is posture and the role that that posture plays in health. You know, there's a I think there's a disconnect. A lot of people don't realize that you just did a wonderful job of sharing this, how your posture affects your muscles, which then affects the tension and can create the pain.

So, you know, as you mentioned, the bowling ball, right? The bowling ball is 8 to 10 pounds that people are carrying around on our, you know, our neck, our, our spine. Normally we have a curve as you, as you well know, curve in our neck. So this bowling ball is over our center of gravity. It's where it should be. But over the years, you know, we of end up like this. And then as we get older and older, if we're really not active physically, we're not moving, you know, that movement, you know, we get like this.

And now so you got this 8 to 10 pound bowling ball that if you were to walk around a bowling alley, know maybe you had one hand underneath it, you could do that for a little while, you know. But if you take that same weight and you put it out here within about five minutes, all these muscles, tendons and ligaments are giving you, you know, all that pain. Same thing. That's how important posture is incredibly important. Yeah. It is. And I think, you know, you might think back to days when you're in elementary school, when your teacher tells you to sit up straight.

Right. It's not that very military forced way.

Breathing, Core Activation, and Pelvic Floor Health 26:35

I mean, it's respecting the curves of the spine, understanding where you have to properly like what I say to people is if they're like, it's so much to know. And I'm like, actually it's not. If you get 60% of your weight in your heels and 40% across the widest part of your foot, when you're standing, you have your base. And then if you bring your head back in space as if it's resting against an invisible headrest in your vehicle, if when you get the two ends, the head and the feet in the right position, the middle is going to find its way because it's got, you know, a bit of leadership from those two.

And when you're sitting, I've talked about, you know, standing quite a bit, those bony butt bones, those Ishmael tuberosity, those really become your feet. So get rid of your eagle, move the flesh of your butt out of the way. Feel those bones where you're sitting and sit on top like golf balls on a tee. That's where you want to be when you're in seated posture. And then the same thing with the head. And so, careful not to make this dramatic and lots because you won't stick with it when your mind believes that it's easy and simple and it's just a little check in a couple times a day, even if you're in the wrong spot, check in and be like, oh, okay, here I am.

You'll be slowly evolving to your new, your new posture. Well, I think the first step is just recognizing the importance of this and just being aware. You know, it's like mindfulness. It's just, you know, that's the first thing is actually being mindful of whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. I wanted to go back. You shared a question with me and I wanted to, so you've got on here about this, one of your favorite quotes. We hadn't talked about that yet. Okay. So this is a quote from the, the, the founder of planets, the creative Commons, Joseph Plotz.

And he says the mind, when housed in a healthy, helpful body. Oh, I'm missing the the quote. Can you give us the quote because this is something need. Yeah. Know for sure. So it's the mind when housed in a healthy body possesses a glorious, amount of power. Right. And so, yeah. So what I love about that is because it truly it brings together what I believe is so important. And again, I'm not like Pooh poohing classic fitness, right? Because it serves a lot of people very well. For me, it just it just lost that sparkle.

So what that means to me is when you are mindful of your movement, the connection between the mind and the body becomes so beautifully, highlighted right? You know, sticking in your earbuds and going for a walk, listening to a podcast. Yeah, there's some value in that. But what if once a week you kept those earbuds at home and you actually focused on what you were feeling in your body? Do you feel when you're stepping, do you feel the same amount of weight, you know, kind of working through your feet, you know, what are you what are you hearing?

What where is your head? How can you? So that's what that quote means to me, is that when you put the body and the mind on two different ends of the spectrum, there's going to be this gap in the middle that can be frustrating for some people. They, come at movement in a very ego driven way, like, I've got to do so much every week, and if you're in the middle of a flare up, we can get on that shame roller coaster where we feel like, oh, why am I even bothering? Like I missed it again, or I was on such a good roll, and then right.

And then and then we get into that. My body is not serving me. It's you know, I'm. I'm ashamed of it. It doesn't, you know, I'm not living the life I want to be living. And so that quote from Joel just so beautifully brings that back together because, it's it's quite empowering when you can feel how your mind can connect through those little subtle movements, and that the next morning you wake up and you're like, whoa. My head felt like I didn't do much, but I can actually feel how my core has been challenged in a really unique way.

And so it's the gentle kind of that Aesop's fable, the slow and steady wins the race. We're the tortoise in Pilates. We're not the hare, we're not that go crazy off the start line. And then I'm going to have a little nap because I'm so far ahead. And then the tortoise ends up crossing the finish line. Pilates is the tortoise. You know, this is really hard channel because for a lot of those, the fibromyalgia your type is, you know, they're doers. So I take care of a lot of doers over the years. They they do doo doo doo doo doo doo.

And one day they're done out, you know? So these are, high level bankers and lawyers and doctors and nurses, but it can be, you know, household moms, household dads. It can be a bus driver. But there is they always kind of have to be doing something. And something comes along and that's it. You know they hit rock bottom and they can't get back to that. And one of the things that I really encourage my patients to do is this whole thing called an hour power. And that's your time where it's your quiet time.

And I think it's so important because really the only way you I think that you can have a dialog with the universe, whatever you want to call that God, the universe, whatever is when you're quiet. Otherwise you miss it.

Mindful Movement, Quiet Time, and Practical Takeaways 31:55

You miss it. You know, and I see people out walking with their Walkmans and, you know, they get all this music going or whatever they've got going. And I think they're missing a golden opportunity. That's your quiet time. So one of my colleagues, fellow chiropractor, wonderful human being, Joe Dispenza, talks about the walking meditation. And that's something that I've been using for a number of years. I love for me, again, being active, I think, is a way to shore up some of the things that you have cut corners on.

You know, I think depending on your health, you have to be more vigilant than, than others. Obviously fibromyalgia, you really have to, really be careful what you eat and things that you're doing with your with your life, you know, but Joe has this program where you're as you're walking, you're just really kind of focusing on straight ahead and, and just kind of listening, feeling what's going on inside of you and as a thought comes, you kind of acknowledge it, but you let it go. And I think that's very powerful for the fibromyalgia community, because again, I'm many of these these interviews and even on this one, we've talked about the nervous system being on hyper alert.

And so what you've shared kind of goes right into this whole idea that just get quiet, just get quiet. And these stretches that you've shared, and I want to encourage everybody get this free program that she's that she's mentioned, Janice mentioned, but just to get quiet and try to hear what what what is your body trying to tell you about this illness? Know the symptoms or warning signs? What what what in your life has created this drama? And be quiet and be quiet and try to try to hear what the universe is telling you about this.

You know what I love about what you're saying is that what this does? The hour of power Pilates, I mean, whatever, whatever your, you know, your your flavor is, is it allows us to get reacquainted with our body, I think. Right. So many of us would pass our body on the street and not even recognize who who we were. And so what what you become through these experiences is connoisseurs of movement, just like connoisseurs of fine wine. And you start to understand what your body wants when it's whispering.

Because if you don't understand what it wants, when it's whispering or you don't understand that language, the whisper gets a little louder and a little louder until it's a full out flare or a full out temper tantrum, and then we finally pay attention to it. It's just like our kids, right? Like mom, mom, mom. And pretty soon they're like screaming mom, right? So that's what these mindful movements and movement therapies offer. And for those of you who are like the A type like this doesn't count as exercise, I want I have this to share with you.

Let's make so I know okay. But I can't think of it. Well, yeah, but I still need my two hours of pickleball or for sure. Absolutely, absolutely. But here's what I want to say if you're like. But what if my body, like my body is not going to respond to it? Or what if my genes start beating differently? Here's what I can say. My body has changed dramatically since I started doing Pilates and everything else that I do when I'm in my spin class, or when I'm out for a walk or whatever else I'm doing, is so much more impactful because Pilates is is what creates the the alignment and the connection.

And then when I'm doing all my other things, I can tell really quickly when something is just a little bit off and I can grab my foam roller or like Diana's block, I can grab her block, or I can grab a little tennis ball and get that little ache out of my shoulder and so I'm dealing with my whispers. And in the meantime, my body is getting exactly what it has needed. And so I have, and I have many clients in the same boat that they're like, how is this even happening? Like, my scale isn't changing much, but yet I just went and bought a pair of jeans that were two sizes smaller than I had, and, you know, six months ago, that's the beauty of, working the system versus working the pieces.

Yeah. And I will say, moving in the health circles over the years, last 30 years, anytime I come in contact with someone that either teaches priorities or is habitual user of plots and yoga, by the way, they always radiate this, this energy, this beautiful vibrating vibration that's coming from them. You know, this innate, inborn healing dynamo that we have, they have tapped into it. I mean, there's no doubt. And their bodies look different, their bodies different than someone who does not practice this, this, this one.

So, Janet. Thank you. That give us your website so they can go and find out more. And we're going to have that free program, on the summit. We'll have that available as well. But, we're what's the website they need to go to. Amazing. So I kind of plot my seeds and two different websites. So meta district ecom. So meta with two T's. Meta district is that's my online movement community. And then I just mentioned pelvic Floor really briefly today, but, I've created a product called the Cooch Ball, which helps men and women with pelvic floor health.

And so if you're interested in pelvic floor fitness, then Coach Volcom is where you can find me, right? This has been very interesting. And, I'm going to have to get my whole Pilates workbook out and, you know, on the mat. I love you. I do, I love yoga, but I might have to start switching over to in some places as well. So just from what you've shared got me, got me motivated. Well, I, you know, there's so complementary. I think sometimes people are like, I do yoga, therefore I don't do Pilates and vice versa, but are such a beautiful system.

Together. So I think there is, magic to be had when you combine both. Yeah. Well thanks again. This has been really fun. Thank you. For.