I love this interview with Holly Middleton of Flow Movement Therapy because she says so many of the same things I do, such as “you don’t know what you don’t know” and “listen to your body, don’t ignore the symptoms”, yet we are talking about the body from different perspectives. Holly is talking about the body from the perspective of movement and structural integrity and being able to re-train the body and brain to regain movement in areas that the body has shut down, thinking it’s unsafe because in your past that caused pain!!! Our body is ingenious, and it will heal when we get the proper guidance, and Holly is a wonderful guide in helping you alleviate your stubborn aches and pains, and educating you on how your body works, so you can take proactive action and not end up with ‘aches and pains. As we both say, you don’t have to simply “accept aches and pains as normal aging”, it’s not normal at all, you can choose to get help in resolving your aches and pains. Holly has provided a great starting point for you with her free gifts.  

Free gift from Holly: I have two free programs in my MemberVault: Refurbish Your Feet which is for foot movement restoration and Free Sampler which gives a broad overview of what working with me is like. Neither requires a code to join. Click here: www.flowmovement.ca

Your Guided Health Journey Membership

https://yourguidedhealthjourney.com/membership-programs/

Health Kickstart Program: https://yourguidedhealthjourney.com/health-kick-start-detox/

Linktree:

https://linktr.ee/yourguidedhealthjourney

About the Guest:

Holly is a Vancouver-based movement coach. She helps active people feel better in their bodies by teaching them how to move better. She uses a keenly trained eye for movement to analyze the fine details of gait, restoring full foot function and bringing back the coordination of each body part's movements. Her background includes 30 years as a high-level dancer, a Ph.D. in animal behavior, and certification in personal training, biomechanics, and breath-based postural restoration.

Instagram @flowmovementtherapy

website: www.flowmovement.ca

courses: https://flowmovementtherapy.vipmembervault.com/

email: holly@flowmovement.ca

About the Host:

Melissa is an Integrative Health Practitioner helping people get to the root cause of their health issues. Melissa neither diagnoses nor cures but helps bring your body back into balance by helping discover your “toxic load” and then removing the toxins. Melissa offers functional medicine lab testing that helps you “see inside” to know exactly what is going on, and then provides a personalized wellness protocol using natural herbs and supplements.  Melissa’s business is 100% virtual – the lab tests are mailed directly to your home and she specializes in holding your hand and guiding the way to healing so that you don’t have to figure it all out on your own.

Melissa is the winner of the 2021 Quality Care Award by Business From The Heart and is also the recipient of the Alignable “Local Business Person of the Year “Award 2022 for Whistler.

Melissa has been featured at a number of Health & Wellness Summits, such as the Health, Wealth & Wisdom Summit, The Power To Profit Summit, The Feel Fan-freaking-tas-tic Summit, the Aim Higher Summit, and many more! She has also guested on over 60 different podcasts teaching people about the importance of prioritizing our health and how to get get started.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/yourguidedhealthjourney

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Imagine getting up every day full of energy is if you were in your 20s. Again, what would that be? Like?

What would that be worth to

you? What is your health worth to you? Think about it. Your health isn't everything. But without it, everything else is nothing. And yet too many of us are taking it for granted until something goes wrong. No one wakes up hoping to be diagnosed with a disease or chronic illness. And yet, we've never been taught how to be proactive in our health through our school system, or public health. As a registered health coach and integrative health practitioner, I believe it is time this information is made available to everyone. Combining new knowledge around your health and the ability to do my functional medicine lab tests in the comfort of your own home will allow you to optimize your health for today in all your tomorrow's. Don't wait for your wake up call.

Welcome back to another episode of Don't wait for your wake up call. I am Melissa Deally, your host, and I am very excited to have with me today. Holly Middleton of flow movement therapy. Welcome, Holly.

Thanks for having me today.

I'm excited for this conversation. So just to introduce you a little bit to the audience. Before I have you share your story about how you got into your work. Holly is a Vancouver based movement coach, she helps active people feel better in their bodies by teaching them how to move better, she uses a keenly trained eye for movement to analyze the fine details of gait, restoring full foot function and bringing back the coordination of each body's parts movement. So Holly, you found me by hearing an interview I did with someone else on this podcast and reached out because I know there's a lot of alignment in our work and the way we approach our work, which is really digging deep and getting to the root cause. And so I loved that idea. That's why I wanted to have you on the show. But if you can start out just by sharing what got you into this line of work, because there's always a backstory, and I'd love you to share it with the audience.

Yeah, there's always a good backstory. So for me if I go back a little bit, but I was younger, I was a dancer. And so I danced at a high level. And as dancers, we're very good at moving, but not necessarily taking good care of our bodies. And so that sort of came about to what is the chickens came home to roost. And eventually, I couldn't ignore the aches and pains in my body anymore. And I ended up having a foot fracture that got me stopped me from going to a dance competition, it was pretty devastating to have that taken away from me at the time.

One second, sure, because you've said a few key things there that I talk about all the time. And that is symptoms, symptoms are our body's way of talking to us and trying to get our attention. And they're not really for us to be ignoring. And yet it is what's been normalized in society, right? That we have to push through, we have to do more. And we do ignore our symptoms. But the body is very smart as well. And when the boss isn't getting what it needs, it will send you a bigger symptom. Yes. One of the lines that I love to share is listen when your body first, you know, talks to you gently in the whisper of a feather. Because if you don't, it might come along and get you with a two by four. Yes, not listening. Watch out. There's a wrecking ball. And here in your story you're sharing exactly, that's what's happened, right? The fracture happened because you were ignoring the earlier symptoms. Because I'm sure in a high level dance, you felt like you have to keep showing up, keep practicing in order to maintain your fitness and your skill, etc. To go to the competition. But then you didn't go to the competition. And that is I'm sure that was heartbreaking. So please keep

going. Yeah, so and in the irony, if that is correct definition of irony. The bone that I broke is one of the smallest ones in the body. The biggest impact on me, both stopping me from dancing but also my wake up call. Of Oh, okay, I need to stop ignoring this. I need to stop the dancers way of pushing through and getting stuff done without, you know, at all costs. And so that caused me to have no choice but to be stuck on the couch, watch my teammates competes virtually and then try to sort out what's going on. And so I was frustrated, I couldn't do very much. But the things that I could do were to search and try to understand what was going on. In other words, researching Yeah. And trying to understand

how long ago was this, if you don't mind me asking?

Almost exactly six years, six years ago? Yeah, I think it was like August 30, or 31st. A Facebook reminded me. And so it was a moment where I had to just, you know, sort everything out and figure out why my body was doing this, why it led to what it led to, and what I can do to make sure it doesn't happen again, not only can I be stronger, but mentally figure out what the heck is going on. So that I can make sure that I'm taking care of myself, I'm noticing what's going on. And so that led me to a practitioner in Toronto who does very similar work to what I do now, I found found her work, she had written a book, I devoured the book, I bought her program meant for dancers to help them cross train and get back from injury. And it cleared up a lot of the things going on. And at the same time, my other career that I was in fell apart, and I had to decide what to do with my life. And of course, many of our stories is this work for me, I want everyone else to know, it took me a while to find this thing. And when it worked, it was life changing. And so I went about going through the training to do this, but already had a lot of soft skills that helped me to be able to be good at this. So being a dancer being really observant about people's bodies helped me to already have a lot of the skills that I needed to do what I do. And so I went through the program through the training got all of the credentials that I needed

visitors now, is this the training from the person in Toronto the wrote the book, or is this flow movement therapy training that your toe so

so the training that she has, I chatted with her all the different things that she learned and tried to figure out what was the most effective, what was the thing that was best, right, and then settled on this modality that we both use mostly just this in our in our practice, I went and did that training, right. And then now that's what I do. But not all, but a majority of what I do with my practice.

I love it. And I love that you wanted to really understand what was going on with your body, and what you needed to do in order to help it heal, and what you needed to do to ensure that it didn't keep happening. Right? That's right. And that's where we find true healing is when it's not continuing to happen. And so that is where our work is so aligned. So I know there's even further alignment, because I'm very interested in the brain and neuroplasticity, etc, etc. And I know that you've said that, you know neuroplasticity can help your body heal itself. And so talk to me a little bit more about how that comes into your

work. Sure. So the work that I do is looking at how the whole body moves as one big not machine, but as one holistic piece, right? So we're not we're not the we're not a knee and an elbow and a shoulder, we're a being that is all completely connected together in really mysterious and wonderful ways. And so the brain, of course, is cleverer than we even give it credit for that it can figure out how to get your life done, regardless of what's happened to you. So whether that's injuries or different experiences you've had in your life, it's going to set you up for the way with the way you breathe, the way you sit, the way you move, the way you interact with the world. And all of that is running in the background, you're not aware of any of it. If you were it would be so distracting, right, exactly. We're not aware. I'm just

gonna say these are all the autonomic programs happening in the unconscious mind. That's right. So we don't have to think about it. Because imagine we never get anything done all day if we had to think about running these programs for

ourselves. Right, yeah. And so my work is looking at where those sorts of bugs are in your software, where you've deleted pieces of your program of movement that your brain had said, well say you twisted your ankle when you were a teenager. And now many decades later, you're having trouble doing certain movements, and you never really connected it to that ankle sprain. But that ankle sprain has meant that your brain has said it's really unsafe to go into that shape where the sprain happens. So we're just not going to go into that space at all. But it's not going to tell you that it's done that it's just going to simply never allow you to go there because that was bad. And if we go into bad places, it distracts you from the stuff of being human, right? You can't get your work done right because we know when you're in pain, it's really distracting and it prevents you from doing the things Do you want to do? But for many of us, we don't know what we don't know, we don't realize that our brain has done this to allow you to still get on with it. Do you imagine if you stubbed your toe as a kid and hobbled around, and then your body would be like, Nope, no more walking. It's over. No, your brain says, well, we'll just hobble for a bit, we'll still be able to get around. Same thing with bigger injuries, or surgeries or emotional experiences, they shape how you're moving. And we don't even know because it's all programs running in the background. And so my work helps you shine a light on all those dark areas, take out those bugs in your movement programming and bring them back to you so that your body can start moving into those shapes that it's unfamiliar with, which then frees up the potential for you to be able to move in new ways that maybe feel better, they're more efficient, they're less painful, they're your performance is better. If you're more of an athletic type of person, you can lift things faster or easier, you get stronger somehow without realizing why. And it's just simply getting all of those systems online, again, that you have no idea that you have that in the background, they have shut off. It's kind of like your iPhone, or your your cell phone, right? You don't know what your factory settings were, you probably couldn't set it yourself if you were asked to rate Oh, yes, absolutely. Right. You have no idea what your factory settings were, right, conveniently so that you're not distracted by them.

Right. Right. And so when you take out the bugs, for instance, is that an instantaneous fix? So to speak for someone? Or is it something that needs some practice to kind of rewire the brain so that, you know, you got to practice the proper gait or whatever it is that you're working on? That takes a little bit of time to get back to where you were?

It really depends, it depends on how long you've had that pattern, right? If it's been setting for decades, and your body's really adamant that this is working, it may take a while for it to say, Okay, you have a point that might be a bit better, and to start to accept that as something it can do. And it can be same thing in the background doesn't change doesn't change doesn't change. And then one day, the pain is gone. And we have a little bit of amnesia around that. Now I feel that people that come to me and say, Well, yeah, I came to you because my foot was hurting so bad, that I couldn't go on walks in the evening, I was so frustrated, I totally forgot. But now we're working on my breathing and my hip. But you're right, I totally forgot about my foot. Well, because it's not bothering you anymore. It's not on your radar. And so this is what's happening is that those things, we take those things out of the patterning that we've had for survival for being able to get those movements done day to day. And then once your body is accepting that those are okay, then it just becomes part of your second nature, you're just moving into those spaces again, but your brain will, it will try a little bit and not be quite sure. And it will need some time and so and a safe space. So sometimes your body's just not ready for that you're holding on to those patterns for a very good survival tactic. And so it may be other layers that you need to work on. First, it may be somatic releases, and maybe from your practice, there's many other layers that you can think of that would be things that may be stopping, maybe blocking and getting in the way. And so there's, there's different things that we need to start digging into the junk drawer and trying to figure out what's stopping.

Or, as I like to say, peeling back the layers of the onion. And I was just gonna say exactly what you're saying that ultimately our brain is charged with keeping us safe and alive. And when we're start to do things differently, that it doesn't recognize, or that we haven't done in a really long time, it is cautious about that. Because it's not sure if it can keep us safe. When we start doing that different thing knows that can keep us safe where we are because we're here and we're alive. And that's where our brain starts talking to us. And so I'm also always talking to my clients about the ability to talk back to our brain, and that we don't have to listen to every message from our brain. Because a lot of the time the messages from our brain are beating ourselves up and negative messages and telling us we can't do things. And we can talk back and say, Yes, I can do this, or I do know what I'm doing or just give me some time here while we test this out. So that we can keep moving forward. So

your body does that too. It says you can't bend that knee. Remember last time we bent that and he would happen and that was really bad. So you remember that right? So we're not going to bend that knee. We're going to do all these other things. Because I don't trust that that knee is going to be okay. That was 30 years ago. Still, it was bad. So we're not going to do that. And then you start moving the knee and the knee feels fine and your body is fine and the client is completely at ease. And you go, Oh, I'm bending my knee? Well, yes, because we've shown your nervous system that it is okay. It can start to accept that that is something it can own again. But it takes that safety factor to be able to be ready. And to know what you don't know that you had no idea you weren't bending your knee.

Yes. And sometimes we just aren't aware of that. Right? Yeah. And so yeah, I love how you say that the whole body influences how you move and vice versa. And what you were talking about before in terms of the connectivity, because I know for myself, you know, if I have, you know, lower back pain, or I have knee pain, maybe the knee pain is coming from my lower back, maybe the lower back pain is coming from something else, right. And it's very hard to figure that out on our own, it's not as easy as that, you know, song where the hip bones connected to the eyeball bone in the thigh was connected, right? Not that simple, which is why we need people like you to be able to help us figure all of this out. But I love how you say that your whole body is influencing your movement, and vice versa.

But I think that there's two sides to that. So there's partly you don't know what you don't know. And that can be people like myself that can help you figure that out. But it's also your body is very smart. It knows what it can and can't do. It knows how to adjust when something happens to you. It just figures it out. It has a negotiation that goes on in there, and it figures out. But the nice thing is that if you start paying attention to your body, you can start noticing these changes, you can start noticing you're like, Oh, my hip, there's something up with my hip, what's going on in there. But we've been programmed to ignore our bodies for so long. When you were a little kid, you can't go to the bathroom right now. You have to sit in your classroom, nope, sit still. Don't fidget, Do this, do that. So we're told how to experience our bodies. But what would be great is if people now we're able to get the knowledge from people like myself that can help you figure out, you know, I didn't know that wasn't moving that way, and then let you on your own sort yourself out. And that's what I want is for people to be able to know that you don't have to necessarily have somebody who's an expert, always telling you what you need to know. Because at some point, your body will just open up, and it will have that space to be able to do those things for itself. So you need the guidance. But we don't want you to be reliant on somebody else to fix you. Because once you give your body that permission, and that space, it does its own healing, it does it on its own.

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You sound like you're mimicking everything I say. It's true, I always say when we create the space for the body to heal. When the body's back in balance, it will take over and it will heal itself. And so I agree with everything that you've said. And in my work too. I'm that guide. And then I guide people so they can be on their healing journey, and you're doing the exact same thing. You're just working with more of the structural aspect of the body, then what I am, but I absolutely love it. So tell me this, I bet there's lots of people in the audience that have stubborn aches and pains. So how does a daily movement check? How can it help to mitigate those stubborn aches and pains? And I'm not saying ignore? I'm saying listen to the body, be aware of them and mitigate them?

Yeah, I think that a lot of people have a life where we have to ignore what our body is doing and just get stuff done. And we just put it off and put it off and we ignore until we can't ignore it anymore. Just like my story with my foot. You can't ignore it anymore. But if we took a few moments every day to just notice change. So sometimes change happens as the wrecking ball. And sometimes it's just the little whisper, right? So we want to be able to to notice the subtle changes and know your own little cues. Like oh, when that starts to happen, that's my knees starting on the path towards that bad stuff way down the road, right so you can step in ahead of time and you know what to do Listen for. So you and you can also track your progress as you're getting better and better. So if we're teaching you how to move your knee better, simply noticing what your knee is up to, can be part of you just being aware of can I start allowing that change to happen. And so what I do and many of my colleagues do is we just have a daily check in practice where you just whatever body part that you're working on, you just for me, it's trying to move my big toe out to the side, because I was in ballet shoes that for so many years, so every day I check in and see Oh, is that getting better? What and I know from my work, how that's connected to other body parts. And so I'm just checking a couple things. For me, it's my big toe and one side of my pelvic floor. So I'm just checking where I'm at with certain things that I know are connected with that some people do a much bigger body check in because they really want to know what's going on. But for many people, it's just checking in with those things that we're working on together to see if you're starting to notice those changes. And for for many of us, I recommend that as an early warning sign type of thing. So take 15 to 30 seconds, maybe a minute, depending on how many body parts you're checking in on and just see, oh, I think my foots starting to do that thing. So I should grab, you know, grab my exercise and just do a couple reps of that and just keep on the right track instead of waiting until it's really bad. And then trying to figure out now what do I do, but instead No. And so that's what I do with my clients is to teach them how to listen to their bodies, to teach them how to a lot of mine is education. It's about this is what a knee and a hip should do together. Yours is doing this other very creative thing. We want to start getting you towards doing this other thing. So noticing, oh, I didn't know my hip was doing that it didn't know my knee was doing that. And then bringing you that awareness. And then you can start checking, you're like, Oh, my knee is starting to move better. And now I'm noticing my hip is getting better or my knee is getting worse. And my hips symptoms are coming back. So just having that daily check in helps you pay attention. I mean, how many of us get the chance to pay attention. I wish we all did

exactly not enough of us. And I smiled again, when you said that talking about listening to your body because and having that awareness because again, I do the same thing. I'm having people create awareness around how they feel based on what they're putting into their body. Right. So exactly the same thing. And it doesn't have to take long as you said, you know, depending how many body parts, you're doing a little check in with 1530 seconds, a minute, Max to just do that. And, you know, you can do a full body scan, if you're lucky one and don't have any aches and pains and do the full body scan every day just to check in and make sure it stays that way. Or as you say, scan and just do focusing on the areas where you are struggling. And you do have some aches and pains so that you can also see that improvement as you check every day. Because I'm sure as you do your toes, you'll notice over time, you've got more more movement, moving your toe out, right? That's right. So you start to notice that improvement when you stop and pay attention. Otherwise, it's so subtle that if you're not paying attention, you might be thinking I'm doing this and it doesn't work.

Right? Yeah. And there's that too. There's the impatience that in our bodies, our bodies can change very fast. And they can also change very slow. But the healing is not linear. And I have so many people who are oh, it's regressed back again, like lean, it's not linear. It's not like a TV show where the you know, the the bad thing happens. And then it gets resolved in an hour. Right? Right. Doesn't get wrapped up neatly like that. So our healing takes the time that it takes. And for some people, it's in one session, I can figure out what's going on your heel is in this shape all the time. And we just move your heel and other people it's like, well, it might be this it might be this, it might be this, it might be a whole host of different things. We just have to find the thing, right, find the thing, and then it's suddenly Ah, okay, we've got

it. Right. And so that ties into a comment that you've said that restoring movement involves the whole body.

Yes, yeah. So we're not, we're not a knee and a shoulder and a hip. We're the whole the whole machine working together. And there's many body parts that we think we know a lot about. And as just you know, average folks, we know a lot about what things do. And then other body parts that are a bit of a black box and one of those is your feet. And there's a lot of presumptions we have about feet and what feet need and what feet should do and how how feet should show up in our lives. And a lot of that is just social programming. That feet Have to be covered and feet should you know all of these things,

things rarely they're dirty, we can ignore up. And

holding the arches needs support. And all these sorts of things are just a result of, of decisions in the past that people have made about what feet should do. And then we end up ignoring our feet until they hurt. And then we have certain assumptions about what foot healing is like that we wouldn't apply to any other parts of the body. So it's always a mystery to me. But we do want to make sure that all the bones in your feet are moving as they should, they're just like your hands are analogous to your hands, they have similar joints and structures. And yet our feet are because of our social programming are kept in certain situations, most of our lives. And then that prevents us from having good movement and all the other parts of your body. If you're familiar with reflexology, the reflexologist have different points on the foot that relate to different parts of the body. And it's the same thing with the skeleton. So different parts of the bones in your feet relate to the movements in other parts of your body, so your heel moves the same way. So in all the different planes of motion as your pelvis and your skull. So they need to all move in the same way at the same time, for everything to be nice and coordinated. And most of us don't realize there's these connections. And each of the bones in the foot will relate to the movement of a part all the way up to your to your head. And we want all of those parts to move in your foot to allow the parts in the rest of your body to move as it should. But many of us don't know, I didn't know this until I took the training either we're all unaware of the importance of the movements of your feet. And vice versa. If you can't move your pelvis, you might not be moving your heel very well. And then you've got plantar fasciitis or, you know, fallen arches or something like that that's going on. And so when when we quote that I like is where you think it is it eight, Mm hmm. So the thing that starts bothering you is not necessarily the place you want to look, it's just the thing that has popped up to the surface and said, Excuse me, something's going on here, we need to pay attention, listen, and so you want to listen to to what's going on in your body. And that's why we have those check ins is, ah, that's a little niggling thing in my knee, which means that I need to pay more attention to this part of my foot, or whatever it is, whatever we've we've connected together. And so you can stop those things from happening ahead of time, you can be pre emptive, instead of reactive to what's going on in your body. If you choose to do that, then many people don't many people are happy just going having someone you know, a chiropractor, or massage therapists to just try to fix them and get on with things. But you do have the power to keep yourself well on your own. If you want to take a bit of time to understand what your body's trying to say. And then what your body is meant to do. And to be able to bring those back. I mean, do you want to spend an hour once a week for the rest of the year at a massage therapist? Plus the driving and parking and all of that? Or do you want to check in for 15 seconds a day and see how your body's doing? Right to pay attention to it?

Absolutely. And for many people, they may not even know that there's options like your work available because they only know there's massage or physiotherapy, for instance. That's right. And so having you on the show, hopefully just gives people more options. And you're in Vancouver, but your work is virtual as well. Right?

It's virtual. Yeah, so I work everywhere, anywhere in the world. Yeah. And so because my work is movement is really great, because it's all visual and verbal cues. So I'm watching what you're doing with my eagle eyes with all of those skills of being able to see what is and isn't moving. And then I help you feel and move into those spaces on your own. You could be in Australia, you could be in the States, it doesn't matter where you are, we're still able to do that. Because movement is something that can be done through to through me looking at me giving you words to help prompt you into movements.

I love that. And I also want to say that I love what you were saying about your feet and our feet. I believe our if we don't give our feet enough respect, first of all, and I remember reading somewhere a couple of years ago about how the faculty are always in shoes. And so we're not using our feet and their sensory ability enough for you know that we should be able to walk down stairs in our senior years without having to look at the next step without holding on to the railing because that's what our feet can do for us when we give them the practice of doing that. But we need to be barefoot, for that to work really well. And it's interesting because when I I was a young child, I was living in Australia, we'd run around barefoot outside all the time, right. But then we moved to Japan where you didn't run around bare feet. And you did take your shoes off when you got in the house, though. So you might be walking barefoot or in, you know, socked feet inside the house. But I remember once my mom's like, can you go buy a bag of rice and I got on my bike, and I rode up to the corner rice store. And I didn't even think about it, I just ran out of house barefoot, got on my bike, rode to the store, walked into the rice store, you know, sacks of rice everywhere on the floor, and picked up a bag of rice to buy it. And the little lady in the rice store was just telling me how awful it was, I didn't have any shoes on my feet. I think she felt sorry for me, like I didn't know. Oh, no. And that's just the societal, you know, expectation that has happened, you know, we protect our feet, because we don't want to be stepping on, you know, glass and nails and getting cuts, et cetera, et cetera. But there is so much benefit to going around bare feet from your work and, and allowing our feet to move as they naturally should, but also in my work from getting bacteria from the soil and the grass and nature onto our skin and into our bodies. So for all of the audience, it's think about the next time you can get outside barefoot. Yeah,

but it's also important to know that if you've been in shoes, or arch supports for a long time that your body needs, your feet need to adjust to that. So it's like, if you were sleeping in a bed, and then you had to sleep on the floor, your body would not be okay with that sudden change, as all those tissues have to be able to strengthen and be prepared to support you as you're doing that it's the same thing with your feet. And so I see this often I've been in groups for people who are barefoot, minimal shoes enthusiast, and a lot of people come in all gung ho excited, oh, I'm gonna do great things for my feet. And then I have plantar fasciitis. And I have neuromas, all of a sudden, all these things have happened to my feet. Because you didn't transition your body, you didn't give it a chance to catch up with your excitement about the boat going back to something more natural. And so we have to give our bodies a chance to do that. And I've seen that a lot is people very excited. And I'm great, great enthusiasm to be thinking about, just as you said, the connection between the importance of your feet and the and the ground. But we also need to give them a little bit of a help a helping hand to get there. So So yes, always wanting to be the least amount of stuff on your feet when you can when it's appropriate to do so. And then if you want to transition into more minimal types of shoes, make sure you do that in a way that's not just instantaneous, not just suddenly changing, make sure you give your feet a chance to catch up with your your excitement.

I love that and a really great reminder. So I have a question that I always ask my guests at towards the end of the show. And I want to ask you, I know you mentioned it earlier. But what does don't wait for your wake up call mean to you now, it means

to give your body a chance to give yourself an ability to notice what's going on in your body, be able to recognize that pushing through and ignoring things that are going on in your body will only work so far. And at some point it will catch up to you. And so that's the same with if it's nutrition or sleep or any of the other inputs to your body. But it's also how your body is moving. And so you can have a youth he can have great nutrition and great sleep and all those sorts of things can be online. And we want to make sure that we're also able to have your body keep up with with you, as you say as you get older. And I've seen that with my grandparents that my grandfather had great, he was able to get around all the time and my grandma's knees betrayed her, she wasn't able to keep up with them. And so we want to make sure that we're doing the work and I have many people say I wish I had worked on my knees when I was 30 Instead of now, because it's so much harder as I get older. But people when they're younger, they just they have that, you know, get on with it. Oh, you know, it's not important. It's not going to affect me. But I have so many people who say My grandma has such trouble with her hips getting out of chairs, I don't want to be like that. And you don't have to be like that. And then we think, you know, the further and further down the road you get the harder it is to unravel. And that's true, but it's not unravel. Right, because I've had, I've had clients in their 70s be able to get their hip function back, be able to get foot function back, be able to do all of those things, get good breathing patterns, and be able to have their vitality in their older years. Because they realize that Okay, so a nice Race and orthotics isn't necessarily going to keep me going, that there are other things. But like you say, we just don't know that there's these modalities out there that can help you.

Right. And I absolutely love what you're saying there. Because again, I say the same thing that the further out of balance the body is, the longer it will take to come back into balance, it can come back into balance, it will just take longer than if it's only a little bit out of balance when we address it. Or even better, that we take proactive action and choose to, you know, really understand how our body works, and how we can support our body in the best way possible. So we have the movement and agility for life. So I love everything about what you're doing. There's just so many synergies between our work, I think. So I'm sure the audience would love to know how to get ahold of you. So please share how they can get ahold of you. And I know you're very generously offered a free gift as well if you can share what that is too.

Sure. So you can find me on my website at flow movement.ca so that you can learn about more about my work. And there, I have lots of free tutorials and things you can go and try out some of my thought processes and exercises on your own as well as my podcast, my podcast appearances, you can find me chatting about this stuff. And I work internationally online. And if you're in the Vancouver area, you can come and see me on commercial drive. So all that information about working with me, that's all available on my website. And if you want to get started on either getting some check ins and noticing about your body, I have on my website, I also have some links to my member vault which has two courses, there's my free sampler, which gives you a chance to try out all the different things that I do, you can get a gait analysis for me. So I can see how you walk, you can try out one of my workshops to see how I think through all the different things going on to help your spine. And then you can get a vault of different exercises that I don't release to anybody else. And then I was talking about the foot function piece with your getting into minimal shoes. So I have refurbish your feet, which is a course on my website as well, that helps you with all of the things that you need to start bringing back those movements in your feet, specifically for people that want to start to go into minimal shoes. So those are all available on Flo movement.ca.

Well, that sounds incredibly generous. Thank you very, very much. I know I'll go and check it out myself. And are there any last words you would like to leave with the audience before we wrap up the show? I

just think that this is an amazing synergy that you're able to do this to bring more information to people that are out there of all the things that they may be seeking and looking for. And I know a lot of people come to me after they've either discovered the type of work that I do. And we're you know who's local who can do this. But definitely I want to keep supporting your podcast, because I think that it's important for people to be able to discover modalities that they had no idea that were out there that can really help them. And many people are saying, I know that, you know, a surgeon told me I need this or that I need injections or I need these different things for my body. And I don't want that I want the opposite of that. But I don't know what the opposite of that is. I don't even have the words for that. And so people like yourself, when you're doing your podcast, it helps people put a vocabulary to what they need. Because many people just don't have the words for it. Like maybe I needed stretches. Maybe I need a massage thing I don't know. But we need to start having a better vocabulary for everybody to know what it is they're seeking. Because they maybe don't know what a movement coach does. Maybe they think that a movement coach is somebody who helps movie actors behave like Elvis like they don't know, or a high level Olympic rower roll better, right? But what I do is help average people be able to move better and to keep themselves well. And hopefully that's something that people can start seeking out those sorts of vocabulary to be able to know what their body needs.

Well, I love that I love what you're doing. I know there's millions of people out there that need it. So I'm absolutely honored to have you on the show and to share this with people so that they are aware of what is available to them and can seek you out. So thank you so much for giving your time and being here today. I really appreciate it. And thank you to the audience for tuning in listening and sharing my podcast with those who you think it can benefit