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Episode 42: Compassionate Myth-Busting
994 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to Episode 42 of the Movement Logic podcast! Laurel goes it alone this episode to unpack six common myths that still inform the way movement teachers and even clinicians think about and talk about the body, to potentially harmful effect.
You will learn about:
- The Magical Low Back Exercise Myth
- The Poor Body Design Myth
- The Posture Predicts Pain Myth
- The Scapegoated Isolated Muscle Myth
- The Fragilista Warning Label Myth
- The Muscles As Modeling Clay Myth
- How questioning your own beliefs as a teacher helps you be a better teacher.
- How challenging your student’s beliefs may not be as productive as actively listening to them, and creating motivating, positive, and enjoyable movement experiences for them.
Book Explain Pain to recommend for your clients
Papers
Does unequal leg length cause back pain?
Paul Ingraham -
The Complete Guide to Low Back Pain
Should We Stop Teaching Yoga for Low Back Pain?
Complete Guide to Plantar Fasciitis
Physio Network -
The McKenzie method for (sub)acute non-specific low back pain
Is neck posture subgroup in late adolescence a risk factor for persistent neck pain…
Greg Lehman - Do our patients need fixing? Or do they need a bigger cup? and How to Better Treat “Shoulder Impingement”
Ian Griffiths - The myths of foot orthoses
Julie Weibe - To Kegel or Not to Kegel?
Recommended
Transcript
Welcome to Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up to date and cutting edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
Debunking Common Movement Myths
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey everybody, Laurel here. Sarah's got the day off today and today I'm talking to you about some common myths we hear about the human body or movement. Six myths, in fact. These six myths I'm going to share arise from outdated models or ways we tell the story of the body that are not research supported. They are not evidence-based.
00:01:03
Speaker
And here's the deal, it takes some ungodly amount of time. Okay. It takes, I guess around 17 years, which maybe it's not ungodly, but it seems like a long time for evidence-based understanding, understanding we get from research, of the body to make its way into the hearts and minds of clinicians. It probably takes a lot longer than that for it to trickle down and makes its way into the hearts and minds of the general population.
00:01:31
Speaker
So it's no wonder that there are a lot of ideas still floating around out there that are not supported by evidence. And these are what I want to talk to you about today.
00:01:43
Speaker
In fact, the myths I want to address are what I like to think of as parent myths. They're like broader myths that give birth to little baby myths or more specific myths that we might actually hear coming out of the mouths of yoga teachers, Pilates teachers, social media influencers, the bros, personal trainers, or maybe it's even our own chiropractors or doctors. We might hear these myths
00:02:13
Speaker
when we go to these folks or we're looking for solutions to problems we're having around specific areas of our body. But these baby myths, they arise or they are birthed from parent myths. So here are the six parent myths, the bigger ones that I want to address in this episode.
The 'Magical Exercise' Myth
00:02:30
Speaker
Parent myth number one, there are special exercises or sequences that are categorically better solutions for low back pain than others.
00:02:42
Speaker
We'll call this the magical low back exercise myth. By the way, these parent myths, I've named them all just so that they stick in our mind better, but these are the names I've come up with personally. These are not established names for these myths, but this magical low back exercise myth purports that there are some exercises, ways of moving, sequences that are better for low back pain than others. We'll look obviously specifically at the lower back when we take a look at this parent myth.
00:03:09
Speaker
Parent myth number two, certain normal anatomical occurrences that take place during movement are actually problematic. We'll call this the poor body design myth.
00:03:21
Speaker
and look specifically at shoulder impingement or the shoulder impingement model and how it attempts to explain certain occurrences of shoulder pain. Parent myth number three, how you hold your body statically, what we call posture, predicts whether or not you will have pain.
Debunking Anatomical Design Myths
00:03:41
Speaker
We'll call this the posture predicts pain myth and look at the feet and how this myth offers a common and incorrect explanation for plantar fasciitis. Parent myth number four.
00:03:54
Speaker
Certain muscles are problem muscles and responsible for pain that we experience in areas of our body. And therefore to fix this pain, we have to address these problematic muscles specifically and in isolation. We'll call this the isolated muscle scapegoating myth and take a look at the pelvic floor and pelvic floor dysfunction with this one. Parent myth number five, the body is inherently fragile, especially certain parts of the body you've been warned.
00:04:24
Speaker
We'll call this the fragileista warning label myth and look specifically at the neck. Parent myth number six, muscles are moldable like clay. When you stretch a lot, you permanently lengthen them. When your posture places them in short muscle lengths for long periods of time, you permanently shorten them. We'll call this the muscles as modeling clay myth and look specifically at some outdated explanations for hip tightness and pain with this one.
00:04:48
Speaker
Now, maybe you're wondering, hey, Laurel, why these six parent myths? Why these six regions of the body? How did you come up with them? Well, I will tell you, in all and full transparency, it's because movement logic has to date six evidence-based movement therapy tutorials. And right now, we're running a site-wide sale. You've probably been hearing about it.
00:05:13
Speaker
The way this works is the more you buy, the more you save. So if you buy one tutorial, you save a percentage of the cost of that tutorial. If you buy two, that percentage goes up. All the way up to six, you get the biggest possible discount, which I think is like 30% off.
00:05:28
Speaker
This Monday, which is Memorial Day if you're listening to this podcast shortly after it was released, is the last day to save. So you want to head on over to our website by clicking the link in our show notes to take a look at that all tutorials sale. So what I'm doing with this podcast episode is I'm kind of giving you a little peek inside each of these tutorials in podcast form. I'm going to share with you a myth around each of the body regions our tutorials educate around.
00:05:55
Speaker
That way, you will know what we are not going to try and tell you about this body region. You will know the mythical smoke that we are not about to blow up your ass.
The Impact of Misinformation
00:06:05
Speaker
At MovementLogic, we believe learning begins with unlearning and that what you don't say to your students and clients is sometimes just as important and sometimes even more important than what you do say.
00:06:19
Speaker
If what you are saying instills false hope, unrealistic expectations, or if it's nocebic in nature, it suggests that something that is actually harmless is harmful and then creates negative expectations in your student's mind which may worsen their symptoms of pain, we believe that it is of utmost importance that you reprogram that belief software.
00:06:46
Speaker
Therefore, at Movement Logic, we believe that to first help, we must seek to do no harm. And hopefully now in this day and age, we understand how harmful misinformation can be. It spreads like wildfire on the internet. So getting things right or less wrong when it comes to how we teach, what we say, the advice we give our students, the beliefs we influence them to have about their bodies is of utmost importance.
00:07:15
Speaker
Therefore, identifying myths, or as I like to think of them, thought viruses will disallow them to influence what we say and the actions we take as teachers so that we can actually get out of our own way and focus on the things that do help. Therefore, we are strong believers at movement logic in the benefits of myth-busting and body science re-education
00:07:43
Speaker
And we're also big fans of having strong, clear points of view that you're able to hold on to loosely. In other words, that we can all practice humility and recognize that while trying to get things mostly right, we might somewhere down the road discover that we got it horribly wrong. And that's when we need to have the humility and the courage to change course and do better.
00:08:06
Speaker
So in this episode, I'll go into the specific mythical beliefs we hear from our clients, teachers, social media influencers, and yes, even our massage therapists, physical therapists, chiropractors around certain specific areas of our body. And then we'll tie each back to that parent myth or several perhaps. Now, before we get into it, let's talk about myths. Let's define myth in true movement logic fashion.
00:08:33
Speaker
A myth is a widely held but false belief or idea. A lot of people have it in their mind, and it's incorrect. Typically, when it comes to myths about the body, and probably all myths, but I'll just stick to an area that I know a bit more about, which is the body, a body myth serves to do one or both of two things. One, it seeks to offer a simple explanation for something that is happening in the body. It seeks to explain why.
00:09:03
Speaker
that or it offers a simple solution for a problem we're encountering with our body. Notice the word simple here. I suspect it's the simplicity of a myth, any myth, that is its primary reason for existing. It's the simplicity and also the specificity.
00:09:25
Speaker
Let me explain. The body is anything but simple. Our body is a system made up of systems from the cellular level on up. It's extremely complex. Its complexity means that it's very difficult.
00:09:40
Speaker
to pinpoint specific causes of things that go wrong in the body. Oftentimes, things that go wrong in the body are multifactorial because the body is a complex system. What this means is that multiple systems are involved simultaneously for different time courses in causing something to happen. So what does this all mean for people? For people, for human beings, it means that when shit goes sideways in the body, it's fricking scary, because we don't know why.
00:10:09
Speaker
We don't know why we have pain. We don't know why we're injured. We don't always know why we get a disease. We often don't know what to do about these problems. And sometimes our doctors don't appear to know what to do either if we can even find one. We might try to solve these problems and then fail a bunch of times. And then we start to lose hope that there even is a solution. It's so difficult. Enter the myth. For a while, the myth serves to go
00:10:40
Speaker
This is very simple. You see, the reason your back hurts all the time is because your hamstrings are tight. The solution is very simple. You see, all you need to do is stretch your hamstrings. Cue the advice to just do yoga. Or maybe it's, oh, now, now, hush, hush. The reason your back hurts is your core is weak. You see, there's no monster under your bed. Your life isn't over. Just strengthen your core.
00:11:06
Speaker
cue holding plank pose for long periods of time. And that's on the individual level. On the population level, we get a different magnitude of impact from myths. I think these unsubstantiated beliefs, these myths, I think of them like little seeds that you blow off of those fluffy dandelions. They're all over my yard. My daughter loves to pick those and blow them everywhere.
00:11:30
Speaker
These little seeds, they get blown into other people's ears by the mouths of people in relative positions of authority, like PTs or influencers or popular teachers and coaches, where they in turn sprout a way of thinking about the body on the population level that is inherently flawed and counterproductive to reaching the goal
00:11:51
Speaker
which is either to more correctly understand why we hurt and or more correctly understand what to do about it.
Community Myths and Misconceptions
00:11:57
Speaker
And that's when you get whole yoga communities refusing to strength train because they've been told that strength and flexibility are opposites, that strengthening muscles will make them tight, which is just plain wrong. Or it's when you get PT clinics or chiropractor offices sending people away thinking their lower limb length discrepancy, one leg is longer than the other, is responsible for their back pain.
00:12:18
Speaker
Again, wrong. Link in the show notes. It's when you get influencers on social media convincing people to take ivermectin to cure COVID. ivermectin is a horse medicine. I mean, this stuff can be, at best, a red herring, an expensive waste of time. And at worst, it can be life threatening. But here's the deal, these ways of thinking about the body, these myths, they're challenging to handle.
00:12:47
Speaker
Because on one hand, they're serving a very important purpose. They're giving people comfort. It's comforting to believe that there's a very simple explanation for low back pain. It's just your tight hamstrings and your weak core, and now you know what to do about it. As teachers, you've probably had students approach you with mythical explanations for their pain and injury, often things they've heard from outside sources, doctors, PTs, or other teachers.
00:13:13
Speaker
And in these scenarios, it's hard to know what to say because the truth is students often don't always care about what is scientifically true. Remember, people want relief from the uncertainty and the anxiety that that causes. People don't think in terms of facts, they think in terms of stories. They want a story that lends their life coherence, a life that currently feels all mixed up
00:13:42
Speaker
and frankly, pretty freaking scary. They want something that really clearly and simply explains something that they don't understand and as a result feel afraid of. Also, you trying to convince them otherwise with one impassioned speech or you talking shit about the teacher that told them this information that you think is
00:14:05
Speaker
mythical, untrue, unhelpful, or you bashing a whole occupation like massage therapy because massage therapists tend to hold these pretty evidence-lacking beliefs about how the body works. This isn't going to help you either. This is going to backfire on you because you're not going to have the effect you want. You're not actually going to teach your student anything. You're just going to look like an insensitive know-it-all jerk with poor people skills who doesn't listen to them and likes to hear themself speak.
00:14:35
Speaker
So there's more at the end of this episode about how to listen to your students coming to you with body myths, because I know that this is an issue I've experienced. I've grappled with it quite a bit. I've learned what not to do. And I've also, I think, taken a more helpful and at the very least relaxed approach. But I've also gotten questions recently about this from a member of my virtual studio.
00:15:04
Speaker
The fact about myths is that they are powerful coping mechanisms humans use to feel better about uncertainty and struggle. And I think all compassionate human beings can relate to that and understand then that myths don't arise out of people being stupid or even necessarily uneducated. They just arise out of the human nature of wanting an explanation for something.
00:15:32
Speaker
that is actually sometimes unexplainable. Those of you who've experienced debilitating pain can probably certainly relate. You know, the pain that stops you in your life's tracks and makes it difficult for you to do the activities that give your life meaning, that pain that might be career-ending.
00:15:48
Speaker
The pain that takes you away from doing the things that you love to do, you know that the worst part of that pain is not knowing why it happened and not knowing when it will go away. You don't know when you will get your life back. That is incredibly difficult and oftentimes more difficult than the experience of the physical pain itself. It's just horrible.
00:16:11
Speaker
You also, if you're a teacher or a coach, understand what it feels like to really care about a student who's explaining their problems to you and really wanting to fix it. Really feeling tempted to offer them a simple explanation or solution to take their struggles, their worries away.
00:16:29
Speaker
We want to help. We're coming from a good place. But here's the deal. The person might start doing yoga to stretch their hamstrings. They might get special shoes that close the gap on their limb length discrepancy. And for a while, that might feel good, like they are doing something, right? They're taking action. Taking action feels good, especially when it's really specific. It's really clear. Just do this and you'll get this. X plus one equals Y, right?
00:16:54
Speaker
But then what happens when the pain comes back? They're doing all these things. They're doing what they're supposed to do. The pain comes back. That really specific intervention didn't work. What happens? Well, that overly simple explanation, maybe it made the person feel better in the short term, but what's it going to do to them in the long term? Is it going to make them feel better or worse about their chances of getting better? In the long term, I think it probably makes things worse.
00:17:20
Speaker
Because now they're more confused. They feel like they were lied to. They can't trust anyone's advice. Or maybe even worse, they feel like there is no solution anywhere. There is. It's usually just not so simple. Okay. Let's go one by one through some parent myths and look specifically at how these birth more specific baby myths
Exercise Myths Versus General Activity
00:17:44
Speaker
around the low back, the shoulder, the foot, the neck, the pelvic floor, and the hips. Let's start with low back pain. Here's the myth.
00:17:53
Speaker
There's a special specific exercise or set of exercises that alleviates low back pain better than others, i.e. hamstring stretching exercises or core strengthening exercises. This is probably where classes like yoga for low back pain arise, classes where the teacher believes and the students believe that this particular sequence of exercises or the way these exercises are performed is special and specifically,
00:18:20
Speaker
beneficial for people experiencing low back pain. However, according to research, yoga, as a practice, just generally, we know that there are a wide variety of ways to practice yoga, from hot power yoga to restorative yoga, right?
00:18:38
Speaker
Yoga, in general, might be a little bit more helpful than doing nothing, but actually research has failed to support fully that yoga is better than doing nothing. The evidence is mixed, but it's pretty blunt on this front. All exercise, including yoga, is equally mediocre for back pain. So there is no magic bullet when it comes to exercise for low back pain. And here's where I'll let my bias step in.
00:19:08
Speaker
Same thing with strength training. Strength training is no better and no worse than yoga and any other form of exercise you can name for low back pain. But it's not just in the yoga world that we have these secret special sequences and classes. Well, they're not secret. These special sequences and classes. This is also the case in the physical therapy world where there's this special series of exercises called the McKenzie Method.
00:19:35
Speaker
This is a set of exercises that function as a type of assessment and treatment. They were very enthusiastically implemented before there was any research conducted on their efficacy. There is, however, a well conducted systematic review.
00:19:52
Speaker
in the Cochrane Library, that the McKenzie Method, when compared to manual therapy, or just getting advice, or doing little or nothing at all, was shown to have slight short-term reductions in pain as well as no effect. In other words, the McKenzie Method, these series of exercises that
00:20:14
Speaker
are often prescribed to patients of physical therapists, they are pretty underwhelming in their efficacy to reduce low back pain. This is par for the course because overall it seems as though scientific evidence suggests that for low back pain,
00:20:33
Speaker
It's not important what type of exercise you do. And so people might feel better after doing yoga for low back pain. They could also potentially feel worse. And the same could be said about hot yoga. And the same could be said about Pilates. And the same could be said about the McKinsey method and also Zumba. Or insert whatever modality for low back pain.
00:20:57
Speaker
Maybe this idea of some movement being for low back pain is a misnomer. Because actually what's been shown to help people overcome episodes of low back pain, chronic low back pain, is exercise. Full stop. That's it. Exercise. Not any specific form of exercise.
00:21:16
Speaker
Just get moving. In next week's episode, I interview Dr. Ben House, who is a nutritional scientist who has his PhD. We talked a lot about strength because he's into strength training and bodybuilding. He says a number of times in this episode that strength is range of motion and task specific. That's true. If you want to be strong,
00:21:38
Speaker
you get strong in ways that are range of motion and task specific depending on what you do. And this is exactly not an explanation for how we get rid of low back pain. In other words, low back pain, reducing low back pain, eliminating low back pain is not strength specific. It's not range of motion specific. It's not task specific.
00:21:58
Speaker
But the reason exercise in general, any type, Tai Chi Pilates Yoga Zumba might help, strength training, yoga, has more to do with how it influences complex systems in our body. Think immune system, central nervous system, like how our central nervous system predicts and outputs pain.
00:22:18
Speaker
as well as the power of working with how we process things like fear and self-efficacy and how these emotions or these beliefs about our body influence the behaviors and habits that we form. And so you see with a complex phenomenon like pain inside of a complex system of systems like your body, oftentimes the stuff science can support is much, much less specific and much, much more general.
00:22:47
Speaker
One of my favorite pain science educators who's a physiotherapist out of Canada and also a chiropractor, Gregory Lehman, uses an analogy that I think is really adequate. It's that we're better off when we're seeking to reduce low back pain. We're better off casting a wide net, right? So think of like, this is a fishing analogy. So if you've ever gone fishing, I spent a lot of time fishing when growing up.
00:23:07
Speaker
you can bait your hook, right? The bait that you use can be a bug of some kind, like a fly or a worm or a grub, right? It could also be a frog, like there's all kinds of things you could bait your hook with. And these are very specific ways of trying to catch fish, right? Reduce pain. But he suggests casting a wide net because when we cast a wide net, we catch a lot of fish. We catch some of the fish we wanted to, maybe some of the fish we didn't really care to catch. In other words, when we engage in exercise,
00:23:34
Speaker
Say it's strength training. We start strength training, we see a reduction in low back pain. It's not because we baited the hook specifically with strength training. It's that we cast a wide net over our whole system and we influence these systems within our system. We influenced our immune system, our central nervous system. We influenced our attitude about ourselves. How do myths, specifically this myth of magical low back exercises,
00:24:02
Speaker
How do myths like this interfere with these more evidence-based, albeit general, interventions?
Educational Approaches to Pain
00:24:09
Speaker
Well, these really specific exercises that this myth supports that you should do in order to reduce your back pain. A lot of the times, if people believe that that's true, that these exercises are the magic bullet to reducing their low back pain,
00:24:23
Speaker
they become less open to a wide array of possible solutions. Ones that, in all honesty, they might enjoy doing more. Ones that might actually put them in contact with their community and or put them in environments they prefer more to be in or allow them to do their exercise at the time of day that they prefer to do. Instead of these special exercises that
00:24:51
Speaker
You know, they might be paying a little too much for, they might be like chasing rabbits down expensive time sucking holes when actually the opportunities for helping themselves out of pain are above ground and much more expansive.
00:25:04
Speaker
Another thing is that these myths, what they do is they plant this idea that actually the solution to low back pain really lies in the hands of the teacher or of the method rather than in the hands of the person with the pain, right? And so it does not promote high levels of self-efficacy. It causes a kind of dependency that might actually be counterproductive.
00:25:27
Speaker
And another thing beyond just general exercise that's been shown to meaningfully help people beat low back pain in the long term is pain science education, right? So helping people understand how pain works in the body.
00:25:38
Speaker
And how it doesn't work in the body is one way to move the needle significantly in the direction of reducing their pain. And this is evidence supported. And this is because we can understand pain and see a reduction in pain without really understanding why we have pain. We don't have to know the cause to find workable solutions.
00:25:57
Speaker
In fact, the cause of the pain isn't actually the problem. The pain is the problem, right? You don't have to know, for example, exactly why there's a pile of potatoes in the middle of the highway to know what to do about it either, right? You just move the potatoes out of the road. You understand moving potatoes. You understand pain. If you can understand pain, you can sometimes reduce pain.
00:26:20
Speaker
never having any idea of where that pain arose from to begin with. The thing about low back pain is it's mostly not a biomechanical or structural problem. It's not an issue
00:26:29
Speaker
Here's another analogy. It's not an issue with the hardware of the body, but rather with the software, with the way that our nervous system is processing what's happening in our body based on the input it's getting from other highly complex systems. The specific exercise for low back pain myth can directly interfere with people understanding how pain works because the myth itself misunderstands how pain works.
00:26:52
Speaker
Here are some more evidence-based ways to move the needle on pain, improving motivation, enhancing enjoyment, creating positive experiences. So creating these, for example, in an exercise scenario. The special exercises for low back pain interferes with these efforts because a lot of times in classes designed or methods designed for low back pain, what's happening is that there's just a shitload of pathologizing going on while the person is moving.
00:27:22
Speaker
There's a whole lot of talk about the injury. There's a whole lot of talk about the pain. There's potentially a ton of nocebos where the person is being pathologized, hopefully from a clinician, but oftentimes from a movement teacher, a yoga teacher, a yoga therapist, a Pilates teacher who has really no business in talking about what is going on specifically in a person's body. They're like what my one of my favorite pain science educators Paul Ingraham calls
00:27:49
Speaker
little fear factories. These classes for low back pain are like little fear factories. You know, and then in my mind, there's like, should someone who's a yoga teacher, a yoga therapist, apply to the structure of personal trainer, even beginning into the weeds with their students about this stuff? No, I don't think so. I don't think we should be pathologizing. I don't think that we should be talking a whole bunch about the injury itself. Again, because that's not
00:28:12
Speaker
probably going to be that motivating, enjoying, or create a positive experience for students. Remember, those are all evidence-based ways to reduce pain, is to create a motivating, enjoyment-rich positive experience for students. If we're just talking about the injury the whole time and about what to do and not do about the injury, we're probably not doing any of that. We're out of scope of practice primarily as movement teachers. Then we're creating these little fear factories.
00:28:37
Speaker
I think instead we should be focusing on what motivates our students to move in the first place. Now, if getting out of pain is one of those motivations, yeah, it probably is. Then I think it's actually better to focus on the positive aspects of training or moving. Like, it feels good.
00:28:54
Speaker
feel stronger, you sleep better, you feel like you're reducing stress, you're gaining greater skill and movement, you're gaining greater capacity to enjoy your life. And definitely not things like if you do X or Y or Z with your low back, you'll pay for it later. This is just not our job. And it's not only not our job, it's potentially causing harm.
00:29:17
Speaker
and it's running directly counter to what the research shows is an evidence-based way to help our students feel better. It's also, frankly, just a fucking bummer to listen to as a student. Have you ever been in a class where all this teacher can talk about is how much danger your body is in all the time? It's not fun. Before taking on new ideas and concepts,
00:29:43
Speaker
We often have to be willing to reevaluate what we think we already know or were once taught. Therefore, in our low back pain tutorial, definitely we don't prescribe a bunch of magical exercises. Not at all. We help you understand how to get your clients moving who have had or are currently experiencing some amount of back pain as long as they've been cleared for exercise by their doctor.
00:30:09
Speaker
And we also debunk in the service of reevaluating what we think we already know or were taught. We debunk other unhelpful counterproductive beliefs about the spine, the low back that are potentially getting in the way of you actually helping your clients move the needle and shift their attitudes, habits, and beliefs toward being more conducive to actually getting out of pain.
00:30:36
Speaker
Okay, next up, shoulder pain, specifically shoulder impingement syndrome, which will file under the parent myth of poor body
Understanding Joint Function and Pain
00:30:45
Speaker
design.
00:30:45
Speaker
Here's what shoulder impingement syndrome purports. Shoulder impingement syndrome attempts to explain a type of shoulder pain that typically happens when people take their arms up into the overhead position. And it's explained that this pain is occurring because of impingement, like a squeezing or a pinching of tissues taking place within what's called the subacromial space. And I'm gonna explain what that word means.
00:31:15
Speaker
in your shoulder, which is a joint complex. It's a series of joints actually, but the glenohumeral joint is the ball and socket joint of the joint complex. This is the joint space between the head of our arm bone or upper arm bone and the socket on the shoulder blade.
00:31:35
Speaker
If you put your fingers on the very, very edge at the top of your shoulder or like the corner of the broadness of your shoulders and move your arm around, you're going to feel a bone moving underneath your fingers. Now, if you work your fingers towards your neck, just an inch or two, and then move your arm around again, you probably won't feel a bone moving in the same way. You might feel a little bit of movement there, but that's a different bone on your shoulder blade.
00:32:02
Speaker
And it's actually a bony protuberance or a bony landmark on your shoulder blade called the acromion process. The acromion process is like an overhanging bone that hangs over the top of the upper arm bone, the head of the upper arm bone, and in between the head of the upper arm bone.
00:32:22
Speaker
And the acromion process, which you could think of like the roof, is some space between the head of the arm bone and the acromion process is some space called the subacromial space. And then in that space are things like bursa, which are fluid-filled sacs that create space between structures and cushion between structures.
00:32:44
Speaker
And then also tendons. So tendons connect muscle to bone and in that subacromial space are some of your rotator cuff tendons. So the shoulder impingement syndrome theory purports that tissues like bursa and rotator cuff tendon get squeezed when we take our arm up overhead because that space is reduced and there's not enough space and this is why we have pain because these tissues are basically getting squeezed.
00:33:11
Speaker
So this idea, it basically blames the way that people's bones fit together, their shape. It's saying there's not enough space, like just inherently the structure is built wrong because there's not enough space for these soft tissues. And so we have these problems. It might also blame poor posture, like someone just has rounded shoulders or they they slump all day long. And then of course, when they go to yoga after work and they go to take their arm up, they're going to have
00:33:37
Speaker
shoulder impingement because the way their posture is sort of dictating that space makes it so that the tissues are going to get pinched when their arms are overhead.
00:33:45
Speaker
Now it turns out that this is an outdated model and it is incorrectly explaining pain in the shoulder. You're still going to hear a lot of people use the word impingement, like I have shoulder impingement. Many clinicians are now advocating for the use of subacromial pain in place of shoulder impingement syndrome, but basically this model is very
00:34:07
Speaker
Biomechanistic in nature right it seeks to explain pain through a biomechanical or structural lens when again pain science Shows us that pain is just not so easily explained I'll link some systematic reviews that have shown that actually the size of the subacromial space
00:34:27
Speaker
is not any different in those with or without shoulder pain. In other words, it is not predictive of pain. This does not in any way negate the fact that people have pain when they take their arms out. Not at all. It negates the explanation for that pain. It negates this idea that the body is poorly designed or that posture predicts pain. We have two parent myths feeding into this shoulder impingement syndrome myth.
00:34:54
Speaker
Instead, the new more accurate language of subacromial pain that evidence-based PTs are adopting to describe this, it's very general. Notice how it's very general. It's pain in this subacromial area. And actually, it turns out because it's more general, it's probably more accurate. This is something that is hard for people to reconcile. I know it was for me.
00:35:14
Speaker
But it's this, it's often more accurate to speak in general terms when you don't know and actually have no way of knowing what's causing something to happen. The reason it's more accurate is because it avoids offering an inaccurate explanation and it's also more honest, like you don't know. So I'm going to speak in general terms because I don't actually know. And for that reason, it's also more ethical.
00:35:36
Speaker
Also, is it just me or is the word impingement sort of scary? It sounds like something is being irreparably harmed by being squeezed and the idea of that happening in the body might actually cause us to be afraid of our body like, oh, I don't want to move because I'm going to.
00:35:53
Speaker
impinge my tissues in my shoulder. But meanwhile, impingement is like a normal anatomical occurrence. When joints move, certain tissues on certain sides of the joint, depending on the way the joint is moving, get squeezed.
00:36:07
Speaker
And they get compressed right and then when the joint moves out of that position they go back to their regular shape so. Tissues being squeezed is just a part of human movement function and nothing to be afraid of like what what would we do if we were afraid of impingement we would probably just not move because.
00:36:26
Speaker
Basically, when you flex your knee deeply, tissues get impinged. When you flex your hip deeply, tissues get impinged. When you flex your spine, right? Your discs on the front side of your spine are being squeezed slash impinged. It sounds kind of scary to be talking about shoulder impingement when
00:36:45
Speaker
It doesn't have to be, right? It could simply just be an acknowledgement of the fact that there's pain and then it's less scary about why there's pain. There's nothing damaged when you take your arm up overhead. There's nothing being irreparably harmed. It's just that you have pain when you take your arm up overhead and let's actually focus on that rather than this incorrect story about why there's pain and this scary story
00:37:11
Speaker
about why there's pain, which may be making the pain worse. In our movement logic shoulder tutorial, you'll study up-to-date biopsychosocial pain science. That's pain science that often contradicts the explanations of more biomechanistically or mechanistically modeled explanations for pain.
00:37:33
Speaker
The tutorial seeks to break down those old beliefs around shoulder positions and movements so that we stop incorrectly emphasizing position and we start emphasizing function. We spend a lot of time in this tutorial giving you a wide array of exercises
00:37:50
Speaker
to get the shoulder moving in all the ways to work as well on some of the most basic functions of the shoulder, which is pushing and pulling. We seek to help you understand the area better from an anatomical viewpoint, a biomechanical viewpoint, and then also how to cast a wide net.
00:38:07
Speaker
for your students coming to you with specific shoulder concerns. All right, let's talk feet. For this one, we'll be addressing the scapegoated but completely normal foot movement of pronation and how it's often blamed for plantar fasciitis. And so this speaks to the parent myth that posture predicts pain.
Foot Movement Myths
00:38:25
Speaker
First of all, let's talk about what pronation is. Pronation and supination are terms that are often misused
00:38:32
Speaker
to mean, in the case of pronation, a collapsed arch, which sounds like a bad thing, right? Like something you don't want. And in the case of supination, a lifted arch, maybe a collapsed outer arch. What pronation actually is, is a triplanar movement of the foot, so a supination. And I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of the three planes of movement and what movements are taking place.
00:38:52
Speaker
We get into that in our movement logic foot tutorial though. But I am going to say that pronation is often, the posture is often seen as being a lower medial arch. So the medial arch is lower to the ground if not touching the ground. And the people who have this as kind of their static normal of foot posture are called pronators.
00:39:14
Speaker
right, or over pronators. And then likewise, people whose medial arch is perpetually lifted, that would be more like my foot, are called supinators. But the truth is that pronation and supination are dynamic movements that can happen in the foot. Plantar fasciitis is a really painful, oftentimes sometimes just annoying, but like not anything you want. It's a condition of your plantar fascia, which is a thick band of fascia that spans from your heel out to your five toes muscles connect to it.
00:39:44
Speaker
and tension it. Also, when you toe off of the ground when walking, you stretch your plantar fascia. I think a good analogy for the role of the plantar fascia is like the role that the string plays in a bow and arrow. So the bow, specifically, is what we'll talk about. The bow is analogous to your foot's arches, and when you pull the string back to shoot an arrow, you tighten.
00:40:07
Speaker
the string, you tighten the plantar fascia, and what that does is it creates a deeper arch in your bow, it creates a lift of your foot's arches. Hopefully you're following this analogy. So when the plantar fascia is injured, right, when you have plantar fasciitis, it means that it's potentially been overloaded
00:40:27
Speaker
Maybe it's not springy enough, or maybe it's too springy, right? Maybe it's not allowing your foot to flatten out enough, or maybe it's not allowing your arches to soften down enough. So then the myth that posture predicts pain suggests that if your foot has too little of an arch in it, this must be the cause of your plantar fasciitis. And therefore it follows from this
00:40:56
Speaker
mythical belief about the foot that you would try to change the foot's posture. The fact of the matter though is that there is a wide range of static and dynamic foot postures that work for different people. There are people who supinate a little bit more, some that pronate a little bit more, and it's true that while these people might benefit from doing a little bit less of their tendency and a little bit more of what they don't do as much that it's definitely
00:41:19
Speaker
not so simple to say that someone's plantar fasciitis is because that they're an overpronator or a pronator. In fact, it's just as likely that somebody who supinates would have plantar fasciitis and also someone who is closer to neutral, who neither supinates nor pronates could experience plantar fasciitis.
00:41:36
Speaker
In fact, science doesn't have any evidence to suggest what the optimal position for the human foot should be to avoid plantar fasciitis or different types of foot pain. But it's probably the case that for some people, changing the forces their foot is experiencing most of the day, as well as changing the foot's dynamic posture might help. But it also might be the case that it doesn't help. In a blog that I read,
00:42:02
Speaker
hosted by Adam Meekins, but written by Ian Griffiths, a specialized sport podiatrist. Ian sums up for us quite nicely how foot injury happens, and he uses very general language to do so. So injury happens when a healthy tissue is loaded in an abnormal way,
00:42:26
Speaker
when an unhealthy tissue is loaded in a normal way. Or perhaps worst of all, an unhealthy tissue is loaded in an abnormal way. He goes on to say it has been postulated that each of the body's tissues has a zone of optimal stress.
00:42:42
Speaker
and the tissue must be loaded within this zone to remain healthy. This zone will of course be different for each of the body's tissues, and I, Laurel, would add that it's likely also different for each individual. Thus, he goes on to write, for a given individual, exercise should facilitate the loading of the target tissue
00:43:02
Speaker
to fall back within its zone of optimal stress if it can. So he's talking a lot about loading. He's talking about forces. He's talking about a zone, not a specific position.
00:43:18
Speaker
He's definitely not naming positions that the foot can adopt or movements that the foot can do and saying that these are problematic. Something I hear a lot in the strength and conditioning world is this idea that we should avoid letting our arches collapse or our knees come in during a squat. And so this is where we get this advice to
00:43:40
Speaker
constantly push our knees out when we squat. And I guess maybe another reason behind that cue would be to help the glutes activate a little bit more, but I don't think your glutes are going to need any help activating when you're squatting sufficient enough load. But this idea that we should not let the feet pronate can actually have adverse effects because what it does is it prevents people from allowing more of their foot to contact the floor. If you think about it, pronation is just a way for your foot
00:44:10
Speaker
to gain more contact with the floor the medial arch which is a big portion of the bones of your feet come down they come down more all the way so that you can get a good push off into the floor so you can press the floor way through a larger surface area
00:44:28
Speaker
which is going to potentially increase your ability to produce force, to be stable, and to get up from under the weight. So I address this myth a lot when strength training, which is that you don't need to relentlessly push your knees out in the squat. It's okay actually if they come in a little bit. And in fact, if you have knee pain or if you have foot pain,
00:44:48
Speaker
or something doesn't quite feel right in the squat and you keep insisting on pushing your knees out all the time, you might want to try not doing that. See how that feels. In our movement logic foot and ankle tutorial, we address this triplanar movement of the foot called pronation as well as the other triplanar movement
00:45:05
Speaker
supination as well as the individual movements that happen within these planes that make up pronation and supination. In other words, you learn in detail how the feet move. By the way, the feet are made up of 26 bones. That's 26 bones per foot. And whenever you see an area of the body made up of a lot of bones,
00:45:28
Speaker
some other areas of the hand, the spine. Whenever you've got an area that has a lot of bones, you better believe that that area of the body is designed to move and actually requires movement to function well. So in our foot and ankle tutorial, we actually spend a lot of time looking at how the foot moves and then you get dozens of exercises that invite movement and invite your foot to experience forces to get your foot moving and to help your feet.
00:45:57
Speaker
adapt well. We definitely don't demonize pronation. And we definitely don't suggest that foot posture is in any way predictive of foot dysfunction or pain. All right, let's talk about the neck. Believe it or not, numerous studies have shown no association between neck posture and
Neck Fragility Myth
00:46:17
Speaker
neck pain. This is just going to blow people's minds.
00:46:20
Speaker
I'm sure you've heard of Tex-Nick. It's not a thing. So, again, we're kind of talking about how posture does not predict pain here. The posture predicts pain myth. But I want to relate this now to another myth that we frequently hear arise whenever we're looking at the neck, which is the fragileista warning label. Myth, the fragileista warning label gets slapped onto the neck.
00:46:42
Speaker
and other body parts like the neck that have been deemed fragile, more fragile than other areas of the body, like the low back, the knee. I can't tell you how many debates I've gotten into with people on the internet who've seen me do certain exercises and have gone, oh my god, you're gonna hurt your neck, or if my neck is just not in neutral.
00:47:03
Speaker
Like if I'm doing an exercise where my neck is out of neutral, I've gotten into debates with people about the fact that neutral is not necessarily any safer position for the neck than all the other ways that it can move. And that again, the neck is made up of a lot of joints.
00:47:18
Speaker
and is actually designed for a great deal of movement much more so than any other region of your spine and therefore we need to move it in all the ways but somehow we've decided that neutral is the only safe place for the neck to be in this is the fragileista warning label fragileistas have slapped a warning label on the neck and the warning label says move outside of neutral and you'll pay for that later another fragileista warning label that gets slapped onto the neck a lot is don't load the neck at all it can't handle it
00:47:46
Speaker
In other words, treat your neck like a delicate flower and hold it carefully and don't ever put any weight on the neck. Don't ask the neck to bear any weight at all. Meanwhile, did you know that the neck is made up of more than 20 muscles and these muscles do not function any differently than the other 600 plus muscles of your body? In other words, they are force producing organs that get stronger the more you
00:48:16
Speaker
systematically and progressively overload and overload them and weaker when you don't progressively and systematically overload them. We know that strength is protective. We know that we're less likely to be injured and also suffer certain musculoskeletal diseases like osteoporosis when we are strong.
00:48:34
Speaker
This is why high speed race car drivers and wrestlers actively strengthen their neck. But protection from injury or injury mitigation is not the same thing as pain reduction. So somebody who's trying to strengthen their neck so that they don't get injured in the future is coming to you with a different problem than someone coming to you with active neck pain.
00:48:57
Speaker
So does neck strengthening and do neck mobility exercises reduce pain? I think the research is mixed here. It may for some and it may not for others. However, we should not just assume that because of its relative size or the fact that it houses many vital vessels, our trachea, our esophagus, major arteries, that we should not treat this area like other areas and seek to make it stronger or seek to move it in all the ways.
00:49:25
Speaker
What we do know is that overuse injuries are often the product of high repetitive movement, high amounts of repetitive movement without variation. It's possible that when you do the same thing for long periods of time, you're going to have neck pain, but mobile phone use is nothing special. Looking down for long periods of time is not something that we just recently started doing with the invention of the cell phone. People have been looking down for long periods of time,
00:49:54
Speaker
since the beginning of time, crafts people making things for hours on end with the fine motor skills of their hands, scholars pouring over ancient texts, surgeons performing 12-hour long surgeries on people. We've looked down for hours and hours and hours throughout our evolution, so we don't need to start blaming one specific device for our neck pain. What we probably should seek to do is, here it comes, exercise.
00:50:25
Speaker
move more and move more often. And this includes the neck. But if we've got the fragileistas slapping these warning labels on our neck all the time of like, never leave neutral or never load your neck, we don't actually get to do that. And I'll also remind you about what our evidence-based ways of reducing pain and nocebos are certainly not one of them. Making people afraid, mistrusting of their necks is exactly the opposite of how you help somebody out of neck pain.
00:50:52
Speaker
The more complex explanation for how to address neck pain is that we should first, of course, stay within scope of practice while also trying to figure out what this person does a lot of and then maybe what they also don't do a whole lot of and start from there.
00:51:11
Speaker
We should also seek to better understand the neck and shoulders relationship, the integration of the neck with the thoracic spine, how the breath and even pelvic floor dysfunction influences neck pain, the relationship between neck pain and jaw pain and headaches. And guess what? We do all of that and so much more in our movement logic neck tutorial.
00:51:35
Speaker
Okay, let's talk about the pelvic floor. I'm sure you've heard of Kegels. So now we're gonna talk about the isolated muscle scapegoating myth or this idea that we can separate out a single muscle or group of muscles and blame it for all our trials and tribulations.
Pelvic Floor Myths
00:51:51
Speaker
Or that we can prescribe an exercise that addresses a single muscle or group of muscles in isolation and that that will be like the magic bullet to fixing some type of
00:52:04
Speaker
complex experience like pelvic pain or pelvic floor dysfunction. Here's the deal. To train the pelvic floor for fitness, to train the pelvic floor so that we experience less pelvic floor pain dysfunction or pelvic pain in general,
00:52:19
Speaker
we need to take steps beyond kegels. To do that, the pelvic floor needs to be trained in the way that it actually functions, which is in conjunction with all of the other muscles of the body, a few sets more directly than others, but pretty much the pelvic floor, like all of the muscles of your body, is an integrated part of the whole. So when we encounter this isolated muscle scapegoating myth that
00:52:42
Speaker
okay we have pelvic pain or we have urinary incontinence we leak when we jump around for example when we go running this idea that we can just blame the pelvic floor for that issue and then prescribe one type of exercise which is often also misapplied it's incorrectly done now don't get me wrong the kegel has its place it definitely has its place it's definitely can be used as an exercise to help
00:53:06
Speaker
So just like it's not all good, right? There's no single solution typically to pain and there's no single muscle or muscle group that we can blame for pain. The cable is also not all bad. It is a way of many ways to load the pelvic floor and it's also a way to bring awareness to the pelvic floor.
00:53:23
Speaker
Now, I mentioned that Kegels are often performed incorrectly, but you can learn to perform them correctly, and correctly probably means you can learn to perform them in a number of different ways, depending on what you're going to benefit from more or less. When performed correctly for the person, they can be beneficial, but it's literally one solution of many possible solutions that you might want to try and consider.
00:53:46
Speaker
when it comes to alleviating pelvic pain, pelvic floor dysfunction. And this makes sense, right? Think of it this way. If you went to see someone for knee pain, would they just look at your knee? Would they just like spend some time looking at your quadriceps muscles, your hamstring muscles, and go, okay, it must be your quadriceps, or okay, it must be your hamstrings, because those are the two major muscle groups that influence the knee?
00:54:08
Speaker
No, they would look at your knee, sure, but they would also look at your feet. They would also look at your hips. They would probably also look a lot of other places too, and then they would ask you a bunch of questions about what you do and what you don't do a lot of, right? There's a much bigger story that the therapist would probably be trying to piece together. So why is it then when we have something like urinary incontinence that we immediately go to Cagle's?
00:54:38
Speaker
This drives us, at Movement Logic, totally bananas.
00:54:43
Speaker
Muscles don't operate in isolation, including the pelvic floor. Your pelvic floor needs to do more than just contract and relax just like all of your muscles need to do more than contract and relax. They need to participate as a team member on a team in a coordinated fashion. And they need to be able to handle a variety of forces depending on what you do. Therefore, in our pelvic floor tutorial,
00:55:08
Speaker
You are going to acquire a broad range of progressive exercise techniques, and these can be used for clients who were either diagnosed with pelvic floor conditions, have continence issues, are pregnant, or are suffering from unspecified pain. You will be working within scope of practice, and you will know when to refer out.
00:55:30
Speaker
You'll also review musculoskeletal anatomy to better understand how the pelvic floor integrates with the rest of the muscles of the pelvis, as well as the trunk, the legs, and even the neck. All right, we're on our last area of the body, and we're on our last myth.
Muscle Tone and Posture Myths
00:55:50
Speaker
Let's talk about the hips. And this is where we get to talk about the parent myth, muscles as modeling clay.
00:55:58
Speaker
This comes down to the idea that what you do with your muscles most of the time will permanently alter their resting tone and change your posture to deleterious or beneficial effect, depending on what you do. So probably most of you know that the pelvis, the pelvic bowl, can anteriorly and posteriorly tilt. So if you're standing up and you place your hands on the side of your hips
00:56:21
Speaker
and you wrap your thumbs around the backside of your hips and your index fingers around the front side of your hips. It's like hands on hips position, right? What we would call hands on hips. It's really hands on pelvis. And you tilted your pelvis so that your index fingers are closer to the floor and your thumbs are closer to the ceiling. That's called anterior pelvic tilt. And you can also tilt your pelvis the other way so that your thumbs are closer to the floor.
00:56:42
Speaker
And your index fingers, your middle fingers are closer to the ceiling. That's what's called posterior tilt. So the pelvis can anteriorly and posteriorly tilt. So maybe you've heard this idea that if you sit for a long period of time,
00:56:53
Speaker
that all this time spent sitting in chairs permanently shortens the resting length of your hip flexors. Your hip flexors are a group of muscles that cross the front of your hip joint, many of them attached to your pelvis and then go on to attach to your thigh. And when you sit in a chair, because your hips are in a position of flexion, right, the front of the joint is a little bit more closed and the back of the joint is more open, that this will cause your
00:57:19
Speaker
hip flexor muscles to shorten, which will in turn cause your pelvis to be in a perpetual position of anterior tilt posturally. And this is then where the posture predicts pain myth steps in to say, and because of that anterior tilted pelvis, you're going to pay for it because you're going to have low back pain, SI joint pain and all.
00:57:39
Speaker
of these faulty predictions, right? Posture does not predict pain. But here's the deal. This is not how muscles work. Muscles are not modeling clay. Muscles can change length. They can contract and shorten. They can contract and lengthen. They can contract and stay the same length. When they shorten, it's called a concentric contraction. They produce force and they get shorter from end to end. When they lengthen, it's called an eccentric contraction. They produce force and they get longer from end to end.
00:58:07
Speaker
and isometric contraction, they produce force and they don't change length. They neither get shorter nor longer. And in the case of every single muscle in your body, your muscles can do all three of those muscle contractions. It's like a baseball player on a team that can play multiple positions, right? And this is only while they're contracting and producing force, they can also passively do all of these things as well.
00:58:33
Speaker
They can passively shorten. So this would be like if you're getting a massage and the massage therapist wants to massage your hamstrings, they might passively flex your knee. You're lying face down. They'll passively flex your knee. They'll lift your
00:58:47
Speaker
leg bone up and then they'll be able to potentially manipulate the tissues of the back of your thigh a little bit easier because they will have become passively shorter. They can also passively lengthen, right? Your massage therapist or maybe it's your Thai massage therapist could give you a passive hamstring stretch by moving your leg into a stretch that would stretch your hamstrings.
00:59:09
Speaker
And they can also passively stay the same length, which is what they do most of the night while you're sleeping. So, muscles are not modeling clay. I play play-doh with my daughter a lot and we make sculptures. Basically, we just create weird-looking conglomerations of shapes that we make with play-doh. And then we, you know, we leave the play-doh on the table for too long and it hardens in that shape. That is not how your muscles work. Thank God. Oh my God. Can you imagine if we were all just like permanently formed into like
00:59:35
Speaker
Plato sculptures? No. Your muscles are dynamic organs that are shape-shifting and force-producing. And so, yeah. Not a very good explanation for how muscles work, but unfortunately this is the explanation a lot of people use for why people have, for example, low back pain. It's because they sit for long periods of time and now they're
00:59:59
Speaker
Pelvis is anteriorly tilted because their hip flexors are short and then of course the solution is we just need to stretch your hip flexors and that will take your low back pain away. So now we have like this confluence of all these myths kind of communing together and having a party.
Complexity of Interrelated Myths
01:00:14
Speaker
We've got the muscles as modeling clay. We've got the posture predicts pain. We've got the magical exercise for low back pain. They're having a party and meanwhile we might be missing the boat on why we actually have pain. Which might be because we sit at a desk for too much of the day and we actually need to wait for it.
01:00:35
Speaker
Exercise more. In our hip and SI joint tutorial, we address this myth among others about the hips that are rampant in the yoga world. Have you noticed yoga people are downright obsessed with their hips? We also offer a wide variety of ways to load the hips, the muscles, the bones, the tendons, and more.
01:00:55
Speaker
through exercises that are prevalent in PT, prevalent in yoga, prevalent in Pilates, and also strength training. There is definitely some kettlebell and barbell instruction in this tutorial.
01:01:08
Speaker
One of the concerns we address is just general hip tightness. Again, which often gets explained with the muscle as modeling clay theory. Oh, your hip flexors are tight because you sit all day and they're short and that's why they hurt. So let's stretch them out like taffy and voila, your modeling clay muscle will be longer. Uh, we address this, but we also address other concerns like yoga, butt sciatica, low back pain, IT band syndrome, hypermobility and more.
01:01:37
Speaker
All right, so that wraps up our six parent myths. And at times throughout this episode, you've heard me joke and maybe speak with like admittedly a somewhat cavalier bordering on mocking tone. And I totally admit that
01:01:54
Speaker
I do this to entertain myself, which is a way that I increase the longevity of my career. If I'm honest, I must first entertain myself if I am to have any hope of holding your attention. But please don't mistake this approach that I take on a podcast or on social media for the approach I take working one on one
01:02:13
Speaker
with individuals who come to me for help. These individuals are sometimes people who come to me also with deeply ingrained mythical beliefs about their body as well. I don't take the same approach. I don't try to bust their myths. Oftentimes I don't even try to correct their myths.
01:02:31
Speaker
I did when I was a newer teacher. I think I liked to hear myself talk. I think really what I liked was to reassure myself that I wasn't indeed a total imposter and possibly also to impress my student. And, you know, probably what you're hearing is that this was all the dance of insecurity. Moshe Feldenkrais said, to correct is incorrect.
01:02:52
Speaker
Now, he is the creator of Feldenkrais, which is a somatic practice. And he may have been speaking purely within the context of movement, but I think this might be true with our students' beliefs as well. I don't think we need to correct their beliefs. I think we need to give them the best information
01:03:12
Speaker
tools and care we have available and consistently and reliably show up for them, listen to them, try to put ourselves in their shoes while holding healthy boundaries and through all of this established trust.
01:03:26
Speaker
Then with that, trust comes a relationship, a meaningful one, possibly a long-term one, in which the habits we help them form start to change them. In other words, we help them help themselves. We also lead by example, so the way we talk about their body or our own body matters enormously and sends a powerful message to them
01:03:51
Speaker
that they may or may not consciously process in the moment, but that will certainly influence their habits of thought as well as their habits of behavior. I think this is what I'd like to leave you with. We just don't always know what purpose everything our students do or believe is serving in their life. And it's probably not our job to fix what they haven't asked us to. There's this great concept that I love that in author that I have
01:04:18
Speaker
benefited enormously from reading. His name is Nassim Taleb, or Nicholas Taleb. He writes about this concept called via negativa, which is basically addition by subtraction. It's enhancing the functionality of something. It's benefiting a system by taking away the things that are obstructing its ability to function well.
Effective Teaching Strategies Against Myths
01:04:44
Speaker
This philosophy, via negativa, I think is very applicable
01:04:47
Speaker
to continuing education as teachers because inevitably down the road, we've probably learned faulty beliefs about the body. We've internalized these myths and via negativa is an approach that prioritize actually the undoing of that learning, the addition by subtraction of myths, right? So that if we can actually let go of some of these outdated models or ways of viewing the body, we will be of better service, of more service to our students.
01:05:14
Speaker
But I don't think that this philosophy is necessarily applicable to everything. And I don't necessarily think it's the case that via negativa or addition by subtraction is something that we necessarily need to take on when it comes to the myths that our students hold. If I could coin my own phrase, I would say it's via positiva or to actually create positive
01:05:34
Speaker
experiences for your students or reinforce what is positive about the work that they're doing with you. This could look like listening to your students while they talk, really listening, not trying to interject or insert your own opinion or pave over their ideas or their beliefs with your own. It also might look like affirming their efforts and acknowledging their struggles compassionately.
01:05:57
Speaker
Maybe it's offering your students your best ideas, your best solutions, your best tools that you have currently in your toolbox, and then also checking in frequently to see how they're landing, if they're even working, and then changing course when they're not working. These are all positive actions we can take. Potentially, it's also reflecting back to them their positive progress, reminding them that they are doing things differently, more efficiently. They're lifting more weight. Their mobility has improved.
01:06:24
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their skill in performing a particular movement has improved and helping them to recognize these changes as positive changes that they
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are responsible for making. It's also potentially giving them helpful feedback to make their work with you more beneficial to them and offering them as well inspiring information or resources where they can continue to learn about the subject matter that you're working on them with. So an example of that is I often share great educational books on pain science like Explain Pain, which I'll link in the show notes, to help my clients understand
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how pain works by actually scientists who've studied pain and have written vividly and even in an entertaining way about it to make the subject really approachable and to make the subject really easy to understand actually. It's helping your students articulate to you the benefits that they feel they're seeing from your work together as well. Maybe they're sleeping better. Maybe their balance is improved. They have more strength. They feel more capable. Their endurance is improved.
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So taking that positive path, being that source of positive influence, helping students reflect on what's going right with their body. I think this is via positiva. But in order to do that, sometimes we have to get out of our own way.
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We have to question our beliefs, especially the ones that run counter to scientific evidence and that may actually be causing more harm than we know. All right, that is a wrap. I've had fun talking about myths today and maybe trying to put a bit of a more compassionate spin on myth busting and this idea of addition by subtraction and the work that we should be doing as teachers.
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Because a lot of times I think on social media, it's like it's easy to sort of be like, come on, dumb, dumb. That's just wrong. Because we have, you know, maybe a really short amount of time to make our point. And of course, especially on social media, those blunt statements that lack and nuance often perform best according to the algorithm. But there's a human side rather than an algorithmic side to the way people function. And myths are complex, and they are not
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something we can just take a hammer to and smash. We should approach them as we do all other aspects of humanity and treat them as an aspect of the whole person that is probably serving an important function whether we realize it or not.
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And we can also recognize the function that myths that we may be holding on to serve for us as well. It's challenging, I'll acknowledge, to change the way you teach because the way you teach is very much wrapped up in your identity and also potentially your business model. So it's also important to be gentle with ourselves. If you've made some mistakes in the past because of these faulty beliefs that you've bought into, believe me, I've bought into every single one I told you about today.
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You are far from alone, and the team at MovementLogic, we're here to support you in your reeducation, as well as your ability to step into your authentic, creative, and compassionate power to really, truly help and enhance the lives of your students.
Meet the MovementLogic Team and Promotions
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I want to tell you a little bit about who's on the MovementLogic team. It's Dr. Sarah Cort, who's a physical therapist and I. We co-host this podcast, so you know us both really well.
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What you might not realize is that we have worked with guest teachers in the past, starting with our first two tutorials, which were the low back pain and the pelvic floor tutorial, which we did with the inimitable Trina Altman. She has been on the podcast a couple of times, and I know many of you are very familiar with her work. We've also worked with the
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fantastically talented Pilates instructor, Anula Meiberg, who is very much on top of her game, a well-loved and very popular teacher in the Pilates world. And so those of you who are Pilates teachers, you've probably heard of Anula. Anula is a co-creator on the shoulder tutorial as well as the foot and ankle tutorial. And then finally, we have our dear friend and powerhouse yoga teacher, Jaisal Parikh. She is co-host to the Smash Hit podcast
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yoga is dead, which I recommend that every yoga teacher listen to as it offers a vital education on the role that white supremacy, late-stage capitalism,
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and cultural appropriation all play in the yoga community as a whole and on the way that yoga is communicated and transmitted in the Western world. As a reminder, you can learn from all of us and enjoy any of these tutorials right now at a very steep discount. It's the all tutorial or
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site-wide sale that we're hosting at www.movementlogictutorials.com right now. The way this one works is the more you buy, the more you save. So head on over, check out what's on offer. Each tutorial has a detailed page describing exactly what's in the tutorial, every single exercise, and more about the content that you will benefit from as a teacher.
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You also don't need to be a teacher to benefit from these tutorials. We have a lot of general population type folks, people who are not teachers, benefit from the information that we share in these tutorials as well. So I don't want to leave y'all out who are listening who are not teachers. You too could very much benefit from learning about these different regions of the body through these tutorials too.
01:11:48
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Okay, I think that officially, officially wraps it up. Please don't forget that it always really helps us out if you rate and review us in iTunes and if you have a request for a podcast episode. Consider leaving it in a review. It kind of does two things at once. We get to read your review. We read all the reviews and hear what your request is and take it into account for next season. Sarah and I are going to sit down pretty soon here to talk about what's going into season three. So pop your request into the comments.
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soon because we're going to have that meeting in a couple of days actually. And also it helps us out because it helps put our podcast in front of more people like you who are interested in this material and for whom this material could benefit.
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All right, that's it. And I am going to go eat some lunch now. I'm hello and gray. I hope you all have a great week. And we'll see you again next week on The Movement Logic podcast for more of our strong opinions, loosely health.