Straighten Up: Transforming Your Child’s Health Through Posture And Fascia Care

Introduction to Fascia 0:00

Welcome back to ADHD, Autism and Chronic Disease Parenting Summit. I'm here with Deanna Hansen, who is the founder of Fluid Isometrics and Block Therapy. I'm really excited to chat with you and talk about fascia. I've never talked about that before on some other events. I'm really excited to learn from you about that. No thanks doctor Gator, I'm so pleased to be here and to be able to share with your community. Awesome. So maybe let's just start with what is fascia for somebody who doesn't know what it is and how?

That's relevant to health and kids health? Absolutely. So I think I have a really unique perspective on fascia, because I've spent over 60,000 hours working in other people's bodies with my hands as well as my own. And I really started to sense what this beautiful connective tissue really does and how it changes with time. So essentially, we have trillions of cells in the body, and fascia is the connector to every one of those cells like skin to the body is the skin to the cell interconnecting every other cell.

So it communicates with all cells in the body. It also creates both mobility and stability for the body. There's a balance of collagen and elastin that make up this tissue primarily. So the elastin allows us to be mobile. The collagen allows us to not turn into a puddle. So it's the combination and the balance of these two proteins in the tissue that actually creates the structure that we have. And the ultimate goal is if we have all of our trillions of cells positioned where they should be, there's optimal space and spaces.

The key, because space allows for ease of absorption of nutrients and oxygen into the cell, as well as ease of the removal of the carbon dioxide and the toxins and waste away from the cell. And as long as the body is fluid and there's an ease of flow in general, really, I mean, as we go through time, there shouldn't be any issues with pain. Dis ease in the body aging, but that's not the reality

How Posture and Breathing Affect Fascia 1:56

because we are afflicted with this wonderful force of gravity that keeps us on the earth. However, it also creates a compression of the body over time. So when we're talking about kids, you know, you think that kids haven't really been impacted by aging yet. However, there's such an interesting dynamic that's going on. I've been watching generation after generation and how the bodies are changing with time, and I'm 54 years old. I don't know how old you are, but in my generation, at least, when babies were born, you would see them breathing diagrammatically.

And that's the healthy way to breathe. Is the belly rising and falling? Yet what I have been seeing with the younger generations now is that they're not actually babies coming out, aren't breathing with that same diaphragmatic ability, because essentially the baby is coming out with the mother's breath. So my generation, I didn't have a computer in front of my face until university, and I actually was a Luddite. I didn't even really buy my own until about 15 years ago. But kids are growing up with technology and a whole raft of other things that are affecting their health.

But I feel that the posture that the technology is creating for kids is really impacting their breath, as well as their ability to develop in the most harmonious way for their body. So now we've got the mother, let's say 20 or 30 years old. This age group grew up in front of computers, so there's already a compression happening as a result of that. So now the mother's breath is compromised. Different from my generation. So now the babies are coming out with a weaker breath in general. And it's the diaphragmatic breath that is really the magic to everything in the body.

I'm just going to bring my camera down here for just a moment so I can just explain the diaphragm properly. So the diaphragm is a plate of muscle that is the foundation of the ribcage. When we're inhaling as it moves down. When we're exhaling, it lifts. And when we're breathing properly, all of the organs in through here. The heart, the lungs, everything is getting this continual internal massage. And that's adding energy to this area. However, if we don't have a strong diaphragm, it becomes weak and we start collapsing into the core space of the body, and we end up getting a displacement of organs as well, because we don't have that mechanical movement.

The area starts becoming cooler. So this causes issues with the organs because essentially everything needs to be at a certain temperature to function optimally. I live in Winnipeg where it's I mean, it's -30 in the winter sometimes. So try to start that car when it's been sitting outside in the winter for, you know, overnight. It might take 30 minutes even to be able to drive it. Where start it in summer. You just turn it on and it goes. We want that body to be nice and heated at the optimal temperature, so that all systems function with ease.

When we start decreasing our diaphragmatic breath, the body in general becomes cooler, so things aren't as efficient. And when this happens, when we're kids now, as we are developing and forming, that's impacting their health overall. So turning on the diaphragm is really one of the foundational pieces of the work that I do. And teaching parents how to do that for their kids so that as they continue to get older, they're not being impacted by this lack of breath. Yeah. And I think that's really interesting because you know what you're really getting to the the core here is a root cause, right?

I mean there there's so many issues that we're seeing with our own health, with children's health. And there are many. It's multifactorial. There are many things. But I think that, you know what we're getting what you're getting at here that's really important, is that we don't really always think about our posture. We don't think about how, you know, technology being in front of the computer all day. All of these things are affecting us. But I can say as a doctor, I mean, I see kids forward all the time, and that's almost the norm at this point.

You know, everyone's looking down their phone. I could do a better job myself. We all we all could, right? We're all kind of hunched over more than we ever were, but we don't think about how that affects our body and our posture and then how that affects everything else. So I'm wondering if you can maybe connect the dots a little bit more. So let's say, you know, you have a kid teenager who is is hunched over. How does that affect the fascia, which in turn then affects your health? Or how do you see those connections?

That that that's so great question. So think of blowing up a balloon. When it's fully blown up. It's round, it glows. It's almost defies gravity. Take out the air out of the balloon, it becomes wrinkly. It attracts dust and dirt in the creases and it becomes heavy. So if we are conscious breathers lifelong, we are feeding the cells oxygen. And like that balloon, those cells are nice and buoyant. And if they're space and we're aligned properly again, there's there's a lightness to the body. There's an ease of flow.

As soon as we start compressing what's happening from the fashion perspective is this balance of collagen and elastin starts to shift. The collagen are the building blocks. So if I start tipping off balance because we're dominant on one side, we don't compress linearly. We wind down one direction or another.

Fascia, Scoliosis, and the Before-and-After Example 7:01

Over time, we become shorter and wider. So it's the collagen that starts to migrate. So if I'm sitting in front of a computer always because I'm right handed, always compressed more on my left side, now I'm getting this migration of collagen to areas of need or weakness. And if that didn't happen, I would tip over and land on my face. So the body is always unconsciously creating shifting of movements of this balance. If we don't own our proper posture and breath. So it's this unconscious, continual process that occurs.

And that's part of the problem. We're so highly adaptable until we're not so our body is always going to be moving and migrating, and then suddenly you might wake up and you might say, well, I've got chronic back pain, but I didn't do anything yesterday to cause my back to hurt. It's finally we get to this tipping point where we're so held in this negative forward alignment that all the muscles in the back of the body are having to fight this forward pull, and the collagen, those adhesions will grip and adhere to bone with a force of up to 2,000 pounds per square inch.

I mean, think of that. That's wildly crazy. If I've been in front of my computer for decades, I am literally magnetically sealed in this alignment. So yes, you might be able to sit up straight for a minute, but then the power of that is going to pull you back down into that negative alignment. And where it is most dramatic is on the limbs, because the limbs, your calves and your feet, your forearms and your hands, as well as the top of your head, they are all the furthest from the engine, the diaphragm.

So the diaphragm is like your body's furnace. Breathing through the muscles of the upper chest is like heating your body with a space heater. I live in a 30 story building. When it's winter, if I have a space heater only, I can heat one room. If the building turns on its furnace, all floors and all rooms in the building are heated and the challenge is pain. Fear and stress cause us to reactively hold the breath. So even if we are born breathing properly diagrammatically, we are constantly under stress.

I mean, this world is not kind necessarily, and I mean, it's challenging all the time. So we become these chronic upper chest breathers and it's just this unconscious, continual thing that happens. We don't even really recognize it until somebody says, okay, take a nice full diaphragmatic belly breath, and they don't even know how to access these muscles because they're so weak. And then on top of that, you think of the vanity aspect. I was a dancer when I was a teenager. Hold your belly in. Well, if I'm holding my belly in, I'm going to be forcibly breathing through the muscles of the upper chest, because the belly is part of the equation of diaphragmatic breathing.

When we inhale, the belly should rise. When we exhale, it should fall. But if you're holding your belly in because you want it to look nice and flat, all the time, you're still going to breathe. But your body is going to adapt to that action. And we're going to be like, just so I can keep this area flat. But the challenge comes from the fact that now we've got this week diaphragm. So now the weight of everything above comes crashing down into the core. And then I get a belly. Get a belly because of the compression and the ballooning.

And then if I'm not breathing properly, all the contents in the abdomen, they start cooling down. So now my systems aren't working well. I might get leaky gut, or I might have fatty liver disease or a pancreas that doesn't, you know, know how to control blood sugar properly. So then the body starts sending inflammation to these areas because it's like, okay, I need to go in and I need to fix stuff. But the inflammation also needs energy. And if we're not breathing, we have no energy in the space.

So the body keeps sending more and more and more. And then we're not eliminating waste. We're not absorbing nutrients. We have we then attract parasites, bacteria, fungus, all those things that we don't want. They create waste. We get bigger and bigger and bigger and more bloated and more inflamed, inflamed. So most people are in this cycle of like chronic inflammation, but the inflammation is the gold. We just have to know what to do with it, which is to heat it up. But the limbs are key because the fashion will gripping adhere to the limbs.

So even if we're dealing with a scoliosis, for example, which is really becoming a becoming a common affliction in the younger populations, we need to address the limbs because it's the limbs that are working the core and the core is responding to the limbs. I have actually a photo of a before and after of a, a young gentleman, if you'd like to see. Yeah, that was great, cause I was going to say, I mean, I think that what you mentioned is fantastic. And now I think there's a lot of parents are like, okay, like, what can what can actually do?

Because I would say, just for me, before we get into scoliosis, which what we'll talk about next that, you know, parents do come into the office and they say, you know, I notice that my child's posture is terrible and they're hunching over and I'm getting more and more concerned about it.

Breath, Trauma, and ADHD Connections 11:40

You know, what can we do? And generally I think the the medical advice would be like, okay, you can go to physical therapy, you can work on it to strengthen. You know, sometimes I'll tell people, you know, if their kids are willing, they can get into like some sort of activity that will help months like a yoga or, or, you know, even exercising if as they're getting older. But I think this is interesting just to bring up because you're kind of bringing a different perspective and other things that that we can do to kind of to stretch things, but at least just to think about it.

So yeah, I mean, let's go into the scoliosis, which is a very tangible, example that we do see a lot. And you can talk about that a little bit. Yeah. For sure. I'm just going to share my screen here. So can you see this. Yeah okay. So this was one month and I also have the testimonial from the parents. So I'll just kind of let you take a look at the difference in the before and after. This was only one month. I'm just going to pull up is my testimonial in your screen now or is it just the pictures you can see?

Now I can see there's the text too. Yeah. Okay. So after years of trying conventional therapies without significant improvement for our son's idiopathic scoliosis, we felt disheartened and desperate for alternatives. It was a turning point when we sought out an osteopath hoping for a fresh perspective. Our osteopath enlightened us about the often overlooked role of fascia in maintaining overall health, sparking our interest in exploring alternative methods, delving into research on fashion scoliosis, we discovered block therapy and our journey toward healing took a promising turn.

Intrigued by its potential, our family began incorporating block therapy exercises into our daily routine, and the results were remarkable. Encouraged by our initial experiences, we eagerly enrolled in the scoliosis program under the guidance of our certified Block therapist. Our son underwent a personalized program tailored to his needs. After just one month, we were astonished by the positive changes we observed in him. His posture improved and he experienced a newfound sense of comfort and confidence.

We're in anyway. Then they're grateful. But the whole point being that it was only one month and they were trying for years, and they had even said in a prior communication that they were considering having the surgery to a spot. Not that they wanted to, but, you know, they didn't know what else to do because all of the other things that they were trying weren't working. And the reality is, is if we don't address, again, those limbs, which if you're not really versed in the the world of fascia and how the body freezes and magnetically manipulates everything up the chain, we don't think of that.

We want to work where the issues are. So a lot of people work core. But again, that's not going to give you any long term result because as soon as you start walking, the calves in the feet are the most frozen magnetically. So you start to walk and then you start to get pulled back into that negative postural alignment, which creates the problem in the first place. Right. And then I know you had mentioned a little bit about ADHD, mental health and how it can affect the brain, but I think that that's also not very clear for most people where that that connection is.

So maybe you can, talk about that a little bit and how you're finding, you know, you're noticing that even the posture and fascia can affect, you know, mental health or ADHD or, you know. So, whether we have a physical and emotional, a mental assault to the body, some kind of trauma, whatever that might be, the reaction is to hold the breath. And when we hold the breath again, we're going to start breathing through the muscles of the upper chest because we're designed to survive. But breathing diaphragmatic with that, we're designed to thrive.

When we change the, breath to the upper chest, we actually change the brain frequency. Diaphragmatic breathing keeps us in a very calm state in our nervous system. It turns on the vagus nerve. We're in the parasympathetic state. When that's the case, when we're breathing through the upper chest, we're in the sympathetic state. And that creates a stressed frequency in the brain. And we can't heal when we're in that state. We should have our body 80% of the time in the parasympathetic state. Yet many people are literally 100% in prayer or in sympathetic.

So we never get into that rest and digest phase in our body. And that's creating whether we're talking a muscle cell, a liver cell, a brain cell, it's creating chaos. And the chaos makes it very hard to focus and to function in your day, because we're not getting those proper signals. If we only have 10% of our cells getting properly fed with blood and oxygen, because the rest of our body is shut down because we've got this lack of breath, now we're getting cells not communicating properly with the brain, and the whole bunch of wires are getting crossed.

And then that's creating confusion. So once we start to tap into that breath and we also tap into the nervous system as a result of that, that changes how the brain works, how we view life, how we perceive everything. So the breath is really the key because again, trauma is going to be the beginning process of why it gets locked in the body. Because if we don't release that trauma in the moment, like when you see a deer survive an attack, they shake. Where we as humans, we have some kind of a trauma.

We go into freeze mode and we we tend to stay there and then we age from that point. So if it was when we were a kid that we had some, you know, awful thing happened to us and we don't let that go in the moment through releasing those adhesions that got created. Then we're breathing again from that very limited range. And they say we only use 10% of our brain. I think we're only breathing 10% of our capacity, which is why really, we're only using probably 10% of our body in general. And it's potential for what we can actually use our bodies for.

Yeah. If you think about it, this goes back to, I guess, ancient wisdom, ancient cultures. I mean, a lot of we're talking about Chinese medicine or robotic medicine. It's all, well, not all, but a lot of it is breathwork. And and that's all part of yoga and breathing and,

Practical Fascia Work for Parents and Kids 17:28

you know, not to get into all of it, but that's a big part of what they do. And I'm sure that this is rooted in the exact same, you know, foundations where we are just not using our lungs like we're supposed to. We're not doing the breath that we need. And the majority of these ancient practices involve sitting and just breathing it. So yeah, that's how important it is. But I also think, I mean, from the 50s, I've learned there are 144,000 more toxins that we are dealing with. And from the 50s. So I mean, like think of your fascia like a fishnet.

If you put a fishnet in a fast flowing clean stream for a month and you pull it out, you might have a few leaves or debris stuck to it. But if you put it into a bag with no flow that has algae, after a you pull it out, it's a gluey mess. We're kind of that boggy netting now because we're so dirty in this world and we can't escape it. I mean, you know, like the air, the water, the food. I mean, we're all living with pollution on a different scale than we ever used to in the past. So we need something a little more impactful to truly create a release in the body than what those energetic principles in past were able to accomplish, because it's not the same world.

So with the process of fascia decompression that we teach, we actually move in through the layers of fascia, releasing those adhesions, pumping blood and oxygen flow into those newly created spaces at a much more efficient pace than simply not simply doing yoga. Because I mean, yoga is fantastic. There's so many practices out there that are. But the reality is the fascia gripping to bone with this crazy 2,000 pounds per square inch seal, especially at the limbs. It's not going to budge through stretching techniques.

You know, it was my brother in law who actually, was doing yoga when he started working with me and he said, so what's the difference between, say, doing a hamstring stretch and having a treatment with you or doing block therapy? And the difference is when we're stretching, we are keeping at length the potential that we have in that moment to lengthen with what we're doing. We're releasing the adhesions from the bone to add more tissue to lengthen. And ultimately we want to be as tall as we possibly can be lifelong.

Because if we are, then that concept of compression, it's the compression that creates the shifting of alignment. We become shorter and wider as we age. Basically, we want to put that height back by releasing those adhesions and pulling those cells back in to their space. And then again, if we've got optimal space, the body doesn't go through stress. If there's ease is a flow is the key. Because I mean, again, we can we're all pulling in toxins. But if we have a really efficient system the body knows, okay, I'm going to keep you because it's good and I'm going to let go of you because it's not good.

And then we pull in, we release, we pull in, we release where this continual system. But if we're not exhaling and that's really the key, is this full exhale. If we're not exhaling fully and properly, then we're pulling in and we're storing and we're pulling in and we're storing. And then we store more and more and more toxins. And then combine that with the negative postures of technology and all these other things, even play, I mean, kids, when I was a kid, we'd be climbing trees, you know, hopping fences, running all over the place.

Play. Now it seems to be very different. It's either a sport where you're very specific in movement or you're in front of a computer playing a game, like there's not a lot of just free play anymore. It's, it's it's a different world. You know? I mean, nobody was worried when I was a kid that you're going to get taken. So like like, yeah. Come back before dark. Right? Right. Exactly. Thought the world doesn't work that way anymore. So it's creating a shift in how kids are today in their health. And I want to finish up getting very practical.

I want to talk about and what parents can, can do today. And I guess my question around that would be so now if somebody is listening to this and they're thinking about their own kids and their own family and they want to do some factual work, is that the type of thing that they can do on their own at home, learning some techniques from somebody like you, or is it something where, you know, you feel like they would want to find a factual specialist, whether that's you or somebody else in their area, and go for treatments.

And obviously it certainly depends on the situation and the severity, but but what would you recommend in terms of for a parent, if they are thinking that this is something that they would want to look into more, what would be the different avenues that they might want to take depending on what's going on with their child? Can I show the tools? Sure. So, we have two tools. So block therapy is basically a self-care modality. This is the block, buddy. This is the block, baby. This one was actually designed for kids.

Now, we've got a whole bunch of classes that use both, whether you're a parent or a child. You know, this one is awesome to have as well. But for kids, this is lovely because all of the work that we teach an adult to do, the child can do as well. And often we see pictures of, you know, the adults doing the blocking or a grandparent and then, you know, their kids or grandkids are there and suddenly they want to follow along. So depending on the age of the child, they can certainly and will end the development, whatever.

They can do the work for themselves. But in our membership, we also have a couple of really great classes where we teach the parent how to decompress the fascia for the child. I really endeavor to try to make this accessible to everybody, because it's not realistic for a lot of people to go to continual treatments to do this work. It can get very expensive. So teaching people how to understand their own body first, as a parent, if you are interested in this and you dive into the process, then you then you learn on yourself and then it's an easy application over to your child.

If we're talking babies, I have videos. I think we can actually maybe share it for everybody. A video teaching you how to make sure that your baby is breathing properly, because likely they're not. So the baby, I mean, we're born to breathe, die from. It's the most natural thing to do. We've just locked ourselves out of alignment. So I have a video that we can share with everybody teaching you if you've got a baby, how to start that right away. And then in my membership, I have a block for kids section, where again, I show the parent how to work with their hands on their child.

And then you get to the point where, okay, now the child can do the work for themselves. So depending where they are in their maturity and age, depends on sort of where you want to start with things. But as a parent, learning how to do this on yourself would be, in my view, the most efficient way to understand what's going on as well. It's only going to support the parent too. And we do have, a free series, nine part series teaching you using a rolled up towel that becomes very impactful in the body to create that release and understanding of what you're doing.

So you can start right away and just get that sense of, this is what this work is all about, and then you'll feel it in your own self, that beautiful breath. It's a game changer. Like we are physiologically different animals when we breathe diagrammatically compared to when we don't.

Tools, Technique, and Where to Find Block Therapy 24:18

So, that would be my, my recommendation. And then of course, people can find us and reach out and we can give guidance along the way for any specific issues and questions. People may have. And I thought it one more question, because when I learned about fascial work in the past, it's been with tennis balls. So I'm curious what the advantage or why you chosen to go with blocks as opposed to like a ball or something circular. I'm curious. So because fashion grips to bone with that 2,000 pound per square inch steel, we need something similar in density to bone to be able to get to the root of the problem when we do those other, modalities, like if you've got a fashion roller or a tennis ball and you're rolling, you're going to be affecting the surface adhesions.

But we need to drive through the fascia to get to the root of the problem at the bone. So the difference is kind of like you're you're taking a boat on the ocean compared to deep sea diving. We're going deep sea diving. It's also a very specific shape with these rounded edges. As we're going through those layers in the body in different parts throughout, we want it to be comfortable. So if you have something that's a little sharper, that will be limiting for you to be able to do that. So these tools have been designed specifically for this work.

But it's the density that's key from that perspective of. And I like. Water bamboo. Yeah, I can say I mean, you do facial work. It's it's it can be a little bit painful if you get in there like you could you can when you get in there and you work in the right areas, you know, it. It's great when. We're teaching people your breath as your guy. There's only two rules in block therapy. Your breath is your guide. So as long as you're breathing in a relaxed way, you're feeding and healing your tissue.

If something hurts so much, it makes you your breath impacted. That's your body saying, no, this is too much. You can do the work on a bed. You can do it lying on the floor. And there's ways to adapt around areas that are too painful as well. And then the second rule is a minimum of three minutes in each position. Because we are melting we can't rush melting. So being for 30s is not going to do anything. We need to really engage the breath. And the cool thing is, is the pressure fibers are larger in diameter than the pain fibers.

So as soon as you start putting pressure into the body, you'll initially move into that area of pain, which is the goal to find the pain on purpose and then connect to the breath. And then we start to sink in and melt, because we're heating the body from the inside and the outside. And then we start to sink to those deeper areas of concern. But you're in control and your breath is your guide. And it's all demonstrated very easily through the classes. I love it. Well, well, thank you for sharing.

Know I've definitely thought about fashionable stuff before and done, you know, the ball rollers. But I never really got into depth into understanding. So this is really helpful for me and I hope was really helpful for all the parents watching. And maybe before we finish, you can just, one more time, tell people where to find you, your website, social media, anything that you want. Yeah. So Block Lipscomb is the website we are on all the social media channels, which you can access right through our website.

And we also have, YouTube. We've got tons and tons of free information on our YouTube channel showing you, again with the rolled up towel, different areas of the body that you can work, as well as tons of information there. So, everything is block therapy. I love it. Well, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us and thanks everyone for tuning in. Thank you so much, Doctor Gator. It's been a pleasure.