I wanted to talk about what it really means to have a holistic perspective, not only in terms of the pelvic floor that I focus on so much, but in that whole body, inside and out, top and bottom side to side, front and back setup that I am so passionately interested in, as well.
 
The best way I can describe it is that your body is a system of levers and pulleys- your bones and your joints- and they are covered with rubber bands- muscles.
 
So, any misalignments in your bones, any stuckness in your joints, and/or any tightness in your muscles, affects everything else.
 

• Maybe your neck is tight and that causes pain in the opposite hand.
• Maybe your pelvic floor is tight and it causes face and jaw pain.
• Maybe you're like a friend that I was just talking to has been doing pelvic floor exercises, and you've developed a pain in your calf, that is a direct result of that pelvic floor being now too tight, too engaged.
• Or maybe you've had foot pain. And now that pain has moved to your back.

 
The point is, everything is connected, and I don't mean that in any wishy washy kind of metaphor, it's literally the case that the foot bone is connected to the head bone.

So try this. Make a fist. That clenched fist represents a tight muscle.
 
I know there's a lot of muscles in your hand, there's a lot of muscles in your forearm that caused this. Just imagine the whole thing is one tight muscle.
 
From here, how can you strengthen that muscle? Well, you can't. It's stuck there. You have to loosen your grip and pull your fingers back, let go, stop making the fist in order to be able to do anything to that muscle in the first place.
 
So sometimes the answer to a tight muscle is stretching. But all the time, the answer to a tight muscle is to stop holding the tension in the first place.

If you've ever experienced TMJ, tongue tie, or headaches coming from your face and neck tension, you know what I'm talking about. The best graphic I ever saw of it showed the tension lines going over the jaw and coming out of the eyeballs like lightning. That was perfect to me.  

First things first: I'm not going to fix your tongue tie, TMJ, face pain, or headaches during this here little podcast episode! I want you to get your expectations set early. This is a complex issue, with skeletal, muscular, nerve, and habit components. Plus, I understand that watching demonstrations of things that can help is often more helpful than just listening to me describe them, so I encourage you to go check out the additional resources I'm going to share with you.

What I am going to do is talk to you about some of the factors that contribute to exacerbating your discomfort, that you probably have some control over. I'm also going to talk about some stretches and moves, that might help you be less uncomfortable when you have an episode.

If you're wanting more specific moves, then I want you to take a look at my Face Tension and Pain mini course at my website, paulasherbals.com. I also have some ribcage and back stretches in my free Resources hub on my website as well. 

First, let's get aware of the things we do that are causing muscle tension in your face and neck in the first place. There's familiar things, like gritting your teeth. There's also less familiar ones. A big thing I experience, and that others have been surprised to realize they experience too, is working my whole jaw, or sometimes just my tongue, when I'm doing some kind of manual task. This is usually when I'm cooking or washing dishes- during these repetitive tasks like stirring and chopping, I find myself mimicking the motion with my face! I don't know definitively why this happens, but I have a theory.

Personally, I have tongue tie, which means that my tongue doesn't move very much because of how it's attached behind my bottom teeth. So my face and neck muscles have to do almost all of my talking- which is no small task, since I talk for a living

And also, as a pilates instructor, I have frequently found myself cuing clients to relax their shoulders during a completely unrelated stretch, like a quadriceps stretch. The line I use is, "Your shoulders don't stretch your quads, no matter how hard they try!"

I think that's what's going on here. My face and neck muscles are accustomed to overuse, so when my arms are working they try to as well. It's really hard to stop this- it takes constantly becoming aware of it, stopping it, and repeating that indefinitely. Eventually you start anticipating it and trying to not let it happen in the first place- this is how you know you're making progress! But catching yourself straining face and neck muscles when they're not needed is certainly an important step to lessening the strain on those muscles in the first place.

Another contributor to your pain is Tech Neck, I'm guessing- this is the situation when we spend too much time in a forward head thrust looking at screens, usually, but also driving, reading, and such.

A forward posture like this means that everything behind your face- the back of your neck, the base of your skull, the muscles on your skull, and the muscles down over the back of your shoulders- they all stiffen. They're trying to pull back and prevent a forward collapse of your heavy head, while your head is dragging them forward. And they end up stiff and frozen, and also overstretched so you can't even strengthen them like this. You can't build strength into an overshortened or an overstretched muscle.

It means that everything in front stiffens as well, in an attempt to prop up your head. The muscles at the front and side of your neck, into your jaw and your collarbone, and into your face, start trying to brace you up.

We need to get your ears back over top of your shoulders, where your head is balanced between the front and the back of your neck, and nothing is working in a way that it's not supposed to be. The passive way to do this is to lay flat on the floor on your back. You can put something under your knees, or even rest your lower legs up on a chair or the couch, but the point is to let your neck relax in line with your shoulders.

When you're really tight like this, laying on your back is going to have your head tipped up. This is because that forward position forces your neck to bend up, to lift your chin so you can still see. Pay attention to where your gaze is when you're lying down- it should be going straight up; if you had a Nerf dart suction-cupped on your forehead it would point straight up, not diagonally back, in an ideal world. Let your neck relax so that your forehead tips more straight up, instead of backwards. Your ribs are probably arched up towards the ceiling too, so relaxing them down and relieving the excess curve in your upper back is necessary as well. 

Now, I do have a mini course available specifically about Tech Neck, if this is a big problem for you. That is available on my website, PaulasHerbals.com, under Work With Me. This mini course has more active stretches that you can do to actively draw your ears back over your shoulders. This lying back and letting your neck stretch is a passive stretch that works. If you need more active things, check out my mini courses on my website.

Here's one tiny move that has been amazingly helpful to me. We know that staring at computer screens all day isn't good for us. And you also may know that the act of looking at a distant object or vista or just anything further away requires your eye muscles to relax- which is the opposite of the computer strain.

So, try this. Give yourself a few neck stretches- a few slow, deliberate Yes's and No's, a few side to side tilts, a few gentle full circles in both directions, paying attention to your range of movement.

Now, hold your hand out in front of you, with your index finger up like you're saying "Number 1!" Focus you eyes on your finger, and slowly and smoothly pull your arm in until your finger touches your nose or the center of your forehead, then reach it all the way back out. Keep your eyes focused on your finger, and feel your eye muscles shifting to stay on your finger.

After you've done this, repeat your neck stretches. You should feel more range of motion. There's some quirks of anatomy here that closely tie your eye muscles to the the base of your skull muscles, so moving and stretching and reliving tension in one of those sets of muscles relieves it in the other set at the same time. Wild, right?!

This has been a little look into three physical things you can do to help your ​face and neck and jaw tension, whether you're suffering from TMJ, headaches, tongue tie, or anything else.

I always recommend doing these things BEFORE you're in pain, so you know what they feel like and then you'll also know if you're doing them right when you need them! So practice these things- they might help stave off a flare up of your pain, or help you relieve some discomfort if you're in the middle of one.

Next week, I'm going to talk to you about some herbal remedies that have also saved me a lot of grief from my tongue tie over the years. These are plants that can relieve tension, heal inflammation damage, and are particularly, specifically helpful with the kinds of pain and problems these face and neck muscles give us.

Listen to the episode here

Life is like a… no. That’s not right.

Your spine is like a stack of teacups. There, that’s the one!

Think I’m just being silly? Well, that's entirely possible but look at it this way: Your vertebrae (that’s the name of your spine bones) have flat surfaces, so they stack together. And they have padding between them, so the edges don’t chip. And they have handles, for attaching things to so they make it safely to where they’re going. Just like teacups.

Now imagine carrying a stack of 33 teacups. That would be quite the feat, wouldn’t it?? All wobbly and unbalanced and shifting… it’s a terrifying thought for someone as not-graceful as me!

You know those sets of cables that anchor telephone poles into the ground? (As an aside, now that they don’t carry telephone wires, what do we call them?) There’s usually two cables, coming off in a V-shape, held in the ground by the biggest metal tent peg you’ve ever seen. 

Maybe these cables have something to do with electrical grounding, I don’t know. But they definitely help with stability of those poles- and now apply that to your spine. Each vertebra has one or two bits of bone that look like wings, and they’re there for muscles to attach! Go figure. 

So all along your spine, right up against the spine bones themselves, are bits of muscles connecting the vertebrae with little V-shaped buttressing. They act like little fingers, holding the vertebrae together and allowing them to bend a bit, and also helping bring them back upright too. 

Ohhhhhhh, your back muscles say. We don’t have any of them! ::ouch::

But really, you do. Yours might just be tired and tiny and overtaxed, from constantly fighting poor posture and gravity and “tech neck” and scoop-shaped car seats and everything else we do to ourselves.

And here’s the key- it takes tiny movements to work tiny muscles. A big move, like a forward bend or a deadlift or a burpee, really hammers the big muscles in your torso and limbs. 

But the little adjustments you make in yoga, the incremental relaxation you get in a float tank, the itty bitty shifts you unconsciously make when you walk on texture instead of smooth, even, flat surfaces- that’s where you start getting movement and love into those tiny spine muscles.

So do your inner teacups a favor and slow down, change things up, rest a bit more, and see how that feels in your spine. 


​

Pop quiz- how many joints do you think you have in each foot? Five? Ten or twelve?

Thirty-three. There are more joints in each of your feet than there are days in a month! Isn't that wild?!

Now, the total number of joints in the human body depends on some variables, including things like whether your call the plates in your skull joints, or when you're counting- babies have more bones than adults, which fuse together as we grow. In general, we have between 250 and 350 joints.

If we assume 250 joints, in an adult, counting only the places bones both meet and move, 66 foot joints is 26.4% of your body's total. That's over a quarter of ALL your body's joints that you're standing and walking around on every day.

Here's why I care- we don't use most of those joints. And just like when you take a cast off an arm and it's weak and thin, both the muscle and the bone wasted away, when you put casts on your feet they waste away too. This leaves you with weak joints, and a tendency to injury. And feet injuries quickly impact the rest of your body in not-good ways. When your feet have problems, the ankles, knees, hips, spine, and even shoulders can take on the work of moving you in inappropriate ways, and cause further injuries quickly.

But, wait, back up a few sentences, you say. Casts? On your feet?

Sure! A cast is something hard and immobile, that prevents movement. In the case of a broken arm, a cast goes over the elbow joint (or wrist or shoulder) so the joint can't move because that would pull on the break, preventing healing. In the case of feet, a cast goes over the feet so they don't have to feel things in the environment that are hard, sharp, cold, hot, wet, etc.

We call them shoes.

I get it- shoes are helpful, and they can look awesome, and there's lots of people that can't handle the thought of going barefoot in their own house, let alone outside. But we have to take off the casts to be truly strong in our whole bodies!

Yes, I'm saying don't wear shoes- but not all the time! I'm also saying, wear less shoe-y shoes, as much as you can. Here's what I mean:

In order to strengthen a newly-healed broken arm, you'll start doing "normal" things again but find that the weak arm needs to build strength back up. OK, you'll move that cast iron pan with the other hand. You'll carry that grocery bag with both arms. Maybe you'll ice it or rub it or elevate it at the end of the day.

But your feet, all the way down there, as far away from your brain as they can get? If you just start living your normal life in bare feet or minimal shoes, after a lifetime of wearing the stiff, structured ones, you'll be injured before you notice it. So we have to do this gently:

1. Wear thinner, flatter shoes more often. Get used to feeling more of the world underneath you
2. Stretch your toes, feet, and ankles
3. Wear yoga socks to start separating your toes
4. Practice lifting your big toes, scrunching and spreading your toes, pointing and flexing your feet, when you're barefoot

Don't just ditch your shoes and go full Hobbit- for starters, you'll never be allowed in a public space! But start paying attention to how stiff your feet are, how many ways you can move and stretch them, and how much work you can get them to do in your day. They'll thank you for years and years to come.

Work With Me to learn more

​FUN FACT: your feet aren’t the blunt end of a pogo stick, they’re more like the springy part of the pogo stick! We’re supposed to roll with and propel from our feet, not stump around slapping them down.

You’ve got 26 bones in there- that’s 25% of your TOTAL bones between those 2 feet- but can they move or are they all smashed up next to each other?

Feet are designed to have just about as much movement as our hands do! Not many people can spread their toes out even a little, let alone like their fingers, and this has massive implications “up the chain”
✔ for stability at the ankles, knees, and hips
✔ for balance
✔ for gait
✔ for pretty much everything

So UNSQUISH YOUR FEET and get some space around those foot bones. Use yoga socks, your own fingers, foam pedicure forms, or silicone toe separators (gold star⭐for these!) Practice your toe spread and see if it impacts your other aches and pains too.

Have you ever really stopped to think about just how complex and mind-boggling you are?

Well, I've been thinking about it. And I've been thinking about how many descriptions and metaphors I've used in the last 15 years or so to try and describe our selves to my clients.

​It's time to make a series out of those descriptions.

Everyone is different, yes, but we're all very similar too. And our bodies tend to move (or not) in familiar (at least to me) ways. 

The more you can understand about these functional, "physiology" ideas, the more you'll understand the deep, intertwined connections you have- why your breathing is connected to your digestion and your knee pain and your hearing and vision, for example.

This leads you down the rosy path of "the foot bone is connected to so much more than the ankle bone" as one of my teachers Claire Mockridge says. Why do you care? Living with ease and grace means avoiding strain and overwhelm, and since we tend to be so much more familiar with the latter, the former takes deliberate awareness. 

Hence, this series happening about monthly, where I'll start introducing you to your own self! Deliberately, cheekily, colorfully, and clearly.

Coming up first: 

• Your ribs are supposed to move like fireplace bellows. Do yours?
• Your feet aren't just the rubber bottom of a pogo stick, bouncing you around!
• Do you have space between your bones?
• Your spine is like a stack of tea cups...

Do you have any body movement questions you want answered? I'm serving the cheek here, nothing dirty or NSFW.