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We cover topics on healing, health, happiness, growing wealth and living wise in a world that often sabotages you.
We are here at Healing Hands Physical Therapy and
body work with Dr. Jamie Pribyl and Dawn Cushing.
So Jamie owns Healing Hands, Physical Therapy and Body Work,
So,
Jamie, I want. I know. I know you guys pretty well because we've done some
marketing and different things, and I've been in for therapies
twice and will be in again. So you do
this business model completely different than a normal
physical therapy clinic. So tell me about that and
why that is. So just to start out.
When I first became a physical therapist, it was because I loved
the human body so much, and kinesiology and anatomy
just completely fascinated me. It's actually kind of funny because
when I took all those tests in college of like, what do you want to
be when you grow up? They came out as a P.T. or a hairdresser.
And I did not want to be a P.T.. I mean, I really liked the
medical. I thought maybe I'd be a doctor or do something.
But I had gone to physical therapy when I was in high school. I had
bilateral knee pain. I was a runner, played soccer, and I went to P.T.
and it was a joke. I mean, they had me do
exercises that I did more strengthening in my weights class. And then
the P.T. would come around and stretch my it band for five minutes,
crank on me. Knee made my knees worse. And then he'd leave.
And so, yeah, so. And then I actually ended up rehabbing
myself and figured out how to get myself better.
And so I really didn't want to be a P.T. at first. It's like, so
you were doing that work on yourself like as a teenager. 16. Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. I do find it fascinating that you should either be
a P.T. or a hairdresser. Obviously,
I don't want to sit behind a desk. Here I am. No. And here we
are.
Okay, so with the physical therapy and jump in when you have something to say
too, on all this, because I know you know a lot about it. And you've
been a patient here too, which is why you started working here.
No, actually, I had never had physical therapy before.
I've been really, really lucky that I have never had a whole lot of chronic
pain to deal with in my life. The worst thing is
migraines. But as a physical person and yoga teacher and a gym
rat, I wish I had known that I could schedule physical therapy
just to get a body tuned up. Like you go to the chiropractor or
you go to get a massage. I wish I had known what physical
therapy could entail, but I had no idea until the first time Jamie
worked on me. Yeah. So it can be just. It is, you know, can be
for keeping the body moving and not just when you're have
a break or a tear or something like that. So you do it way different.
Why do you. So I know you told me you didn't like it at all
the way it was done. So what do you do when you have clients come
in? Well, so, I mean, once you go to P.T. school, I mean, there's. People
don't realize how much a P.T. knows. I mean, we know a lot about
the human body. And there's, you know, it's always, okay, my back hurts, I'm going
to go to a chiropractor. Maybe if my knee hurts, I'm going to go to
the orthopedist. But then after surgery, I go to P.T.s. I think what most
people tend to think. But I mean, we know joint mobilizations, we know
myofascial release. We can work with the nervous system. I mean,
we know nutrition, we can hit it all.
And so when you go to a standard
physical therapy clinic, when it's insurance based,
immediately the second you take insurance, you become part of the rat race.
Because I thought about it when I opened up my Clinic. I was like, okay,
if I take insurance, then immediately I have to hire someone
to bill that insurance and deal with the headache of insurance, which is a
full time job. So if I wanted to see 20 patients
a week to make income cash based, right. I
only needed 20 patients a week cash based to match my
salary or above what I was making at the time. Now
if I did insurance, then they don't pay very much
and they dictate the care, right? So immediately I have
to hire someone to pay this. So that means I have to see twice as
many, which means then I have to hire a tech for them
to take them around to do the exercises. Because there's no way that I can
spend an hour with that many people and pay me and my front office person
and still somehow make a profit. So once you take
insurance, you're immediately in the rat race. I mean, obviously there's going to be some
that maximize it and we'll see as many patients as possible to make as much
money as possible. And others are like, nope, we're only going to put in two
an hour and we can make our salaries, but we're not making an exorbitant amount
of profit. But yes, insurance,
I mean, it typically follows Medicare. You can negotiate your contract,
but there's very little wiggle room there. They pay
more for certain things than they do others. So for example,
when you were walking around with a technician who is 19 years old,
fresh out of high school, going to school to maybe be a P.T.
pre P.T., and they're with you doing all of those
exercises, the P.T. is getting
paid more for that than when they are with you doing hands on hand,
like hands on work, like doing joint mobilizations, doing myofascial
release. All those things that are the very skilled things, they don't get
paid for, so. Or they get paid
significantly less for, let's say that. So a doctor gets paid significantly less for
that. The physical therapist, right? Yes.
Because you are a doctor of physical therapy though, right? So you get paid less.
I get paid less for manual therapy than I do for therapeutic exercise.
Wow. Yeah. So you can do therapeutic exercise over there
across the room with a tech. Or I can be working on someone, which is
how a lot of people will do it if they don't use techs. Okay, I'm
gonna watch you from the other side of the room while I'm trying to work
on someone. So it forces them to multitask and. Okay,
okay. Do three sets of ten of that. Okay, well, I can see that they're
doing it incorrectly. But I'm working with this patient right now and I can't go
over there. So I'm just going to say, okay, lift your leg a little bit
more. Yeah, okay, that's good. You know, like where in here I have.
I'm on. My hands are on the person and they're lifting their leg and they're
lifting it too far forward and they're firing the hip flexors when I
want them firing the hip extensors. And I can like adjust their pelvis and
say, see, feel the difference here? This is how you want to be doing this
exercise. Because I don't need to be multitasking with
other people. Because we charge enough
that we can spend one on one time with people and they can get the
true quality care that everyone should be getting. I wish I could
do this for everyone. I wish I could take insurance, but then doors wouldn't stay
open. So. Right, right. And then you're limited to on what you
can treat. And so if someone comes in with knee pain,
insurance is going to say, physical therapist has six visits to treat knee pain and
knee pain only. But Jamie can take a look at someone and say, oh,
well, your pelvis is out or your ankle is doing something weird. And if I
fix that, then I know that their knee is gonna feel a little better. And
then we can start working on all the other things, doing the exercises.
And that's how all things work. Right? So like when people come in with knee
pain, I mean, unless they slipped and fell and tore their meniscus, which
even with that, it's like, well, why did that happen? But
knee pain never comes from the knee. That's the weakest link. So
the way that the body works is that there's certain joints that are moving and
other joints that are not. And so if a joint is not moving, a joint
nearby is going to move more to take out the slack
and that's the joint that breaks down. Right? So we can do
exercises to strengthen this joint all we want, but if this isn't
moving, we can strengthen it. But then this is still not moving.
This is still going to stay hyper mobile. It's going to move too much to
pick up the slack. So we need to mobilize this joint. So
I mean, almost always with a knee, it's like you've got a tight ankle, you've
got a tight pelvis or hip or something like that. And
so if I go and I mobilize that hip or pelvis or
ankle and then I document that Now, I personally have never actually
had a problem because it's just the way I document. I mobilize pelvis to
release so it would take the pressure off the knee. Right. And. But to
document, well, takes time. And you don't get paid to document.
You get paid to see clients. And so you're at the end of the day,
you have 30 charts to do. People just whip it out really
quickly. So then they don't. They didn't document exactly why and how. And then they
get denied. Well, why are you working on the pelvis? They came in for the
knee. Why are you working on the ankle when they came in for the knee?
Denied. And they'll dictate how many visits. So I
had one time somebody came in post op. Shoulder. Okay. So
for. So if you have a shoulder surgery like a rotator
cuff replacement, there is a protocol for every doctor. Everyone knows
it. Six weeks, you are not allowed to move that shoulder. Okay.
You need physical therapy for those six weeks because shoulders get frozen. They get really,
really tight very quickly. So you need someone to be
actively moving your shoulder for you to get that moving,
because you cannot be firing those muscles. You might rip through them. You just had
them repaired, sutured. Okay. Right. So
prescription is usually okay. Go to physical therapy for two to three times a
week during that six weeks. So we're looking at 12 to
18 visits. Okay. But the insurance, there's been
multiple cases. The insurance, literally after six visits says, all
done, no more, not medically necessary. They
have not even gotten out of the passive range of motion phase yet. They can't
be doing exercises at home. There's nothing they can do. I mean, there's some
range of motion stuff that we can show them how to. Okay, don't move your
arm. Use. Use a pulley system or use a wand.
But it's not the same as someone like taking your arm and stretching
it and then getting in and releasing all that scar tissue and those
tissues that need to be moving. And I mean, we're the ones that know which
way the joint supposed to move. I mean, you don't realize how complicated
joints are. Some. It's hollow here and it glides this way.
Otherwise it's concave hair and it goes this way. And
so it's not just a matter of just moving it up and down. You have
to know the mechanics and the way the joints are shaped
in order to mobilize them correctly. And patients don't know that.
Right. But the insurance says nope after six. And then what happens after.
So you see. You see that client, say, for six visits, and the
insurance shuts them down, and they go off on their happy way, and they go
back to playing pickleball. Let's say what happens.
They get worse, or they injure themselves again or they hurt something else,
Then they end up in P.T. again or somewhere else. And then they say, well,
I had a bunch of P.T. after my surgery, but it didn't work.
That wasn't. Yeah, you really didn't do what was needed. So
either A, yes, the insurance prevented them from doing what
normal P.T. needed to be, or B,
I mean, even if they did complete it, you go to standard physical
therapy, your pelvis is locked up, and they give you knee
exercises. And so you're working on the knee, and it gets stronger, and it's like,
okay, well, it feels a little bit better, you know, because you're moving
it and you're lubricating it and you're strengthening it and you're stretching it. And so,
yeah, so it's better, but it's not. The root problem was
not fixed. So six months later,
your knee hurts again. Well, I don't want to go to P.T.. I already did
P.T.. It didn't work well, but they didn't get to the root
cause because they couldn't. They weren't allowed to because insurance doesn't even allow them to.
That's crazy. Yeah, whole system's crazy. So that makes sense. Why
you? Why? This is private pay. So you come to unit. It's private pay.
And I know with me that I've done, like, the flexible spending account,
so that's something, too. That works for that. Which was
nice when I figured that out, because I'm like, let me book again.
And now my neck goes all the way. Oh, I moved, didn't
I? It didn't do that. It's so much better. It didn't
do that prior to coming here. It was stopped right
about there when. I first met you. It was. It was this. Yeah.
I don't know. I need to get my hands on your neck in a good
way. You've had, what, two or three treatments with Jamie? Just
one. One. Yeah. And then I had cranial sacral with
Honey. So. Yeah. And cranial sacral is
fascinating. So we can definitely do, like, a. That's
a whole episode, but it'. Yeah.
We'll get into that in a second. Some more. So the way it works here
is cranial sacral. You have. And then you have
physical therapy with you, and then you have one more physical therapist,
and she also does. You tell me if I'm wrong with any of this pelvic
floor therapies. And then the stem
wave, which is a pretty cool treatment for. Is that mostly
it's all for all joints, right? Yes, it's more of like a spot
treatment for joints, but it's a
non invasive treatment that utilizes sound
waves. So kind of like a ultrasound machine, right? Like you put ultrasound machine
for like to see babies or that people will use in P.T. for plantar fasciitis.
But that's on such a low level. The waves
are very low and they just kind of increase heat.
This is shockwave. Like it actually like it's loud and it
hits. And what it does is it actually. So there's a shock that
goes off in it and then there's water in the handle.
And through that water that electricity is going through the speed
of sound. And so it hits and it creates a shock wave. So it's literally
sound wave, but it's a very high intensity shock. So that's why you hear it
every time, because you're hearing that sound wave that. So
it's like a shock. And it shocks the cells into thinking there's been micro
trauma. So there's no trauma that occurs, but it
shocks them. They're like, oh, I've been injured. And so they start bringing in.
It's the natural healing process of like, oh, I want this cell, I want that
cell, I want this cell stem cells, macrophages, all these things.
Right. That comes all those cells that come in and like do the repair.
So it pulls all that in because that's what. So when we're
younger, it's really easy, right. We get hurt, everything comes in, it
heals properly, but everything builds until the age of 30.
After the age of 30, if you don't work to maintain something,
you're going to lose it. So strength, flexibility. Yep.
Joints, brain health, all of it. Right. So
the aging process starts very quickly after the age of 30.
And so with stem wave, we're kind of
shocking the cells into like healing back. Like when they were 20, not when
they're 50. Right. Nice. Yeah. So
no surgeries, no injections, no recovery time.
And it doesn't hurt per se. The treatment
is maybe slightly uncomfortable at the most, but it
doesn't hurt. You're not going to be laying on the table, gritting your teeth the
entire time, waiting for it to be over. I compare it often to
going to the dentist. It's not awesome to lay there and have your
teeth cleaned and have things scraped and do all that work. It feels good when
it's done because everything is clean, but it's not something that you can't
tolerate. It's kind of annoying. But it's a short treatment, too, so
it's. And it also depends. I mean, a lot of people say, like, it's a
hurt. So good. Like, they'll be. Sometimes you're like, ooh, turn it up. Right? Like,
that's the spot. So it's really cool because it's diagnostic as well as
therapeutic. So we can go around the knee. We can hit areas.
And I'm like, do you feel anything? They're like. I mean, I feel the tapping.
It's like a tap, tap, tap. And because there's no inflammation there.
And then you get to the site right there on the top of the tibial
plateau. Oh, that's where it is. Oh, now I feel it. Okay, now we need
to pull that energy back a little bit. And so the energy can go up
or down. And that's another way how we know people are getting better, because
as they come in, they're able to tolerate more energy. But a lot of times
they're like, oh, right there. Okay. Yeah, that's the spot I want you right there.
Can we turn it up? Like, no, no, I don't want to give you. Because
you can get a little hangover from it, you know? So we kind of see
in that hurts. So good range. Yeah. Interesting.
Yeah, that's awesome. We'll get a shot as we go out of the
machine so that people can see what it is. Yeah, it's
so great. Okay, so then
let's do cranial sacral last. So when they come to see you, Jamie. So
they're coming for physical therapy. Like, what kind of range of things
do you see clients for? Oh, you name it, I've seen it.
And because what we do and how we do it and how different
it is, the range is even larger
than. I feel, like, your standard P.T., because. And I
mean, so you have to realize you have different types of physical therapists, right? So
you have a neurophysical therapist, usually, like, in the hospitals, and they're going to be
working with Parkinson's, stroke victims, traumatic brain injuries, the
neurological system. Right. They are very
skilled in, like, specific techniques of how to get
people to retrain to fire specific muscles. So if you have, like, a
flaccid arm, there are facilitation techniques to get arms to move,
and they know how to, like, move the leg. There was one
guy in One of my rotations, he was amazing with stroke victims. Completely
flaccid on one side of the body, and he would walk them with, like, normal
gait mechanics to teach them. Then you've got outpatient
orthopedic. And that's what I've always done. And so that's like your typical
P.T. that you think of when you, like, go to a physical therapist after
you hurt your knee or something, Right? So you're like, going into a clinic,
they work on your knee a little bit, you see the text, you do your
exercises, you're done for the day. There's also inpatient. So
inpatient is when you, like, you go to the hospital, you had a heart
attack, and those first couple times you get out of bed and you just need
to go for a walk. That's P.T., typically. Then there's rehab, where you
actually live in. Right. So then you're going to see the physical
therapist, you know, a couple hours a day.
But with outpatient orthopedic, we typically just see orthopedic.
Right. So knee pain, back pain, hip pain. Right. But
because I work so much with the tissue, I'm doing so
much myofascial release, and it's not massage, it's deeper
and more, and it's just different. But
we're stretching it, we're lengthening it, we're doing scar tissue release. So
I'll see people a lot of times after, like, causing cosmetic surgeries
or any surgery if they have scar tissue.
Everything is fascia down to the cellular level. So when we're working with the
fascia, you can work with anything. So I do something called visceral mobilization.
So our organs need to move and glide and slide. And if
they don't, then we can end up with constipation or
stomach pain or acid reflux, all these different
types of things. So I work with that. You know, Varsha works a lot
with constipation because she does pelvic floor. So she also does the
visceral mobilization. But pelvic floor muscles can. If
they're very tight, then you don't have the ability for your organs to flow.
And then with cranial, because that's a whole other thing. We're dealing with
nervous system, right? So anxiety, depression,
PTSD, vertigo, autism,
ADHD, migraines,
autoimmune. It's really good for auto. Anything autoimmune because it calms the
sympathetic system and gets them out of that fight or flight and into that rest
and digest, which is the only place that we can Heal. And it's cranial is
very much about letting your body heal itself, not
us doing the thing, your body's doing, the work. We're just there as facilitators.
Yeah. Which is. I mean, I apply that into. I think that's why
what I do is so different. Like, I could teach people what
I do all day, but it's not going to have the exact same effect. What
has changed so much about what I do
and why it's different? It's the craniosacral therapy. It's the
listening to the body and listening to the tissues. Instead of
me going to the body being like, oh, you need this, and I'm going to
mobilize this joint. I'm always. The second I put my hands on
someone, I'm always listening. I'm listening to what is it their body wants?
Where is it pulling me? Where do I feel tightness? I'm not gonna go
there because I think you have tightness. I go there because the second I touch
you, I can feel it. I can feel that if I touch your legs, I
can feel tightness in your shoulder. I can feel tightness in your mouth.
It's a very unique skill set that I remember
the first time I saw it, I was like, that's crazy.
That's not true. But then people. I would see it, they put
their hands on their ankles and they're like, okay, tell me what's going on with
your shoulder? And they're like, how did you know? And I would see
it over and over and over again. I'm like, this person's legit. Like, how do
you. How do you get that? And so when I stumbled on
cranial, I was like, that's how you get that. And
so I really. I never thought I was going to be like a cranial
sacral therapist. I kind of wanted to just use that skill set to, like,
know where to go to treat. But once you figure out
what cranial is it, it's like life changing. So you can't not do it.
Cranial psychotherapy is something you almost have to experience
to even try to understand. Yeah, I know that
it does wild things, but I don't understand the process
of it. I'm not a doctor. I just. Even the doctors don't understand
it. But I do think that that's part of
the magic of healing hands, is that our physical therapists are able
to kind of innately discern what is going
on for someone just by either having a conversation and
listening to the details or putting Their hands on somebody and
being able to go right to that root cause. And I think that's
what makes healing hands hugely different, is that kind of
innate ability for our healers to
hone in and do what they do best. Yeah. To the listening to the
bodies thing is, it's unfortunate how. What an
unusual concept. that is in our culture,
because you. You can. I've. You know, I learned this in the
process of peeling from limes years ago right about. And I could start to start
to feel different things that there was like. Anyway,
they did kind of like this little current, but it wasn't a current you could
feel, but I was able to start feeling it. So that's when you start realizing
that you can. That you can tap into your body
and know it. So then to be able to do that as a therapeutic level
where you're just touching someone and can tap into their body, that's something
that's pretty. Pretty amazing, you know? It is
amazing. Yeah. I recognized it in working with Jamie. Like I said,
I've never had physical therapy before, but I've been a yoga practitioner for
a long, long time. Decades. And being able to
recognize that in my own body and then to see it put
professionally on the table by a physical therapist,
it's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. Take it out of your own mind and
your own body and then be able to give that to somebody else. And then
she adds on the layer of science with physical therapy. Right. It's
magical.
So I want to. If we can get
Dawn on the table and have you do some cranial sacral
therapy just so we can kind of get a feel of people, can see what
it is. I know when they're listening
cranial. Watching cranial is like watching paint dry is what I tell people. No, it
is. It is like watching. You can't see the changes that occur
is occurring underneath. But, I mean, some people are. Are definitely
the unwinders. They're fun. They're. They're magical. That's for sure.
Yeah. I've heard about the unwinding. Unwinds pretty well. Yeah.
Yeah. So I can explain that. That's a. Is it. Do you
feel like you can. You can kind of say what's going on while you're working?
I can, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because if I. Because I don't know how that
interferes with, you know, the whole reading the body and
getting it. I mean, it will be the body. And Dawn
actually responds really well, so the body can still do the work. So when you
come into cranial, it's a very meditative state.
So it was funny. We were actually speaking with a hypnotherapist the other
day, and she had kind of said it perfect, because we were
discussing. She actually didn't really know what craniosacral therapy was. But I've sat in on
a hypnotherapy session, and we ask the same questions. There's
a lot of dialoguing that occurs with cranial. If you decide to go that route,
you don't have to. That's the thing. There's. Some people think you have to. Patient
will dialogue with you. Yes. So because it gets super deep,
it can go very deep. It really just depends on what's going on.
But a lot of cranial is about releasing emotions
that are held in tissues, and so it's. What are you feeling in your
body? And. Okay, I'm feeling this pain
in my hip. Okay, well, what is that pain like? Does it look like
something? Is there a color? Well, it's blue. Okay. What does blue
mean to you? Oh, well, that was the color of my bedroom when I was
three. And it can really get into, like, a memory when you were
three. Some people even go into utero. Some people go as far as
to go into past lives. It can. And then
some other people just. They don't. They experience nothing. They just fall asleep on the
table or they just feel
relaxed. Right. It just depends on who you are and where you are and
what your body. What kind of work it needs to do. Right. So
mostly in a session, we try to just focus on the patient. What are
they feeling, and is that gonna go somewhere? But there's a lot of times that
I've done things like this and I'll be working, and we talk about what we're
feeling, and it still works. The body still does what it
needs to do. Maybe she wouldn't drop as deeply
into that, like hypnosis, because you do. You get out
of it. It was funny. I worked on a friend of mine. She was an
anesthesiologist, and she got off the table, and
she was like, whoa. And I was like, what'd you feel? And she's like,
there was like, nothing. Like, nothing.
Like the head was able to be completely meditative. Yeah. Because, you know, she's an
anesthesiologist, like, and she's super smart and super type A and just like,
thinking all the time. Yeah. And she's like, I don't think there's ever been a
time in my life where I just felt nothing. Like, I thought nothing.
It's an hour long savasana being guided by a professional.
And if you can't get into the savasana, because a lot of people can't,
there's something about the hands. And when we do puts
you into that state. So if you're someone that's like laying a savasana is like,
I can't meditate. I can't. Everyone says I can't meditate because my brain never stops.
And it's like, that's why you need to meditate. Right. So
this is like a really good bridging to it. Right. Like, it kind of teaches
you because it's. It puts you into it. A lot of times, people, it
takes them out of that thinking and it just
puts them into their body and it shut. Like, as soon as someone puts their
hands on me, we start doing cranial. Like, I'll even do it to myself sometimes.
And I'm just like, whoosh. Like, okay, now I know I'm going there.
There's something about that touch. You're practiced. You're practiced. And you recognize that little
switch. Exactly. I mean, we do this. We do this in yoga too. As soon
as I lay on the mat, my body goes, oh, we're doing the savasana. Okay,
I know what to do here. But it didn't happen in a day. It took
me years and years and years of practice to be able to get there by
myself. I had to do that by myself. Jamie can help you get there through
cranial sacral therapy without trying, without the practice part.
And then if you just get a little bit of that, just a little bit,
even like 30 seconds of that is super duper powerful.
It is amazingly healing. It's amazingly relaxing. I think
everybody needs it. Even if you think you don't need it. We need it in
this. In this life. Oh, yeah, I know. I think I. In fact,
I'm in a minute. I want you to tell everyone, because not everyone, I think
listening knows about yoga and savasana and what it means. But
I know when I first started, I did. I did not ever want to do
yoga. And I really think it was the running away
from a trauma that had happened that I was never going to acknowledge
kind of thing. And so you don't want to slow down, you don't want to
hold a pose because that feels like torture when your body is
holding on to go, go, go, go, run, run, run. Because,
you know, I think it's, I think it's trauma related. That's my opinion
from my history. But can you tell people who don't know yoga like
what we're like, kind of what that is? Sure. One of the
reasons why Jamie and I are so aligned is because I do bring that background.
I've practiced yoga for over 25 years now and I
teach a couple of different kinds of yoga. So Vinyasa yoga is
the movement based yoga. Very physical, one breath, one movement. Even
still, that one breath, one movement gets your mind to focus. That's the first thing
that most of us start with with yoga. And that's where I went and I
practiced that for years. Years and years and years and years. I love a good,
hot, sweaty power yoga. I was there and then I found the
opposite of that, which is yin yoga, which taps into
all of that nervous system regulation. It's the exact opposite
of Vinyasa yoga. So it's, oh, interesting, it's cooler, it's
slower. We hold poses, you're in that meditative state for the entire
time. It's also hard. It is so
hard to be still with yourself for that amount of time holding, let's
say, pigeon pose. And at the very end of any yoga class,
you're going to get savasana, which is, hopefully you have time
for a good solid 10 minutes to just lay there on the floor with
yourself and breathe. That's all savasana is. I think a lot of times we
work too hard at trying to get to the meditative state. But
I like to offer people a good solid 10 minutes to do
absolutely nothing with nothing else expected of you. That is the
glorious part of yoga is that moment of
savasana, four or five, hopefully 10 minutes at the end of your class
where you just get to shut everything off. Your body will
follow if you give it the time to do that. And that, I think
is where the magic of yoga really happens.
And I just expanded that offering into an entire hour
within a yin class for people to disconnect
from the yang side of things. Yang being hot. Go, go, go.
Moving, physical, sweaty, red, where yin is
blue, softer, quieter, darker. We need that balance
in life and we don't offer it to ourselves. So that's why I think
yoga aligns really, really well with what Jamie does here on
the holistic side of physical therapy. Isn't that wild? Physical therapy,
Yoga, yoga, physical therapy. How do those two things align? And then
when we met, it was kind of like, yeah, all of that really, really
aligns. Yeah. With how Jamie does it, too. Yep. And I do remember what I
was going to say earlier, which is that, you know, I do think
if for maintenance, we're like, yoga, chiropractor
diet, and, you know,
then, you know, maybe we add in one or other
thing, but we don't think physical therapists. So this is a good way for us
to come and, you know, get all those tweaked.
Oh, I saw. Just a regular massage, but
you're kind of like, can do all of the different things. And,
yeah, I always say faster, you. Know, if somebody came in once a month, forever.
They're not getting any joint replacements. They're not. They're not getting injuries
because we're just keeping them aligned. And there's probably
a reason, you know, at my age, having done yoga
for a long time, that I can still do some of the wacky stuff I
can still do in the fact that I've worked here for going on two years
now. And I do get, you know, moments like this where I get a little
job perk. I get to lay on the table and have some cranial. And Jamie
will. We all kind of tend to work on each other, too. Yeah,
we share. To keep ourselves healthy. Yeah. Through it all.
Yeah. So let's do that. And I'd love to just kind of, since we're here
and videotaping, I'd love to see it a little bit in practice. Okay, that sounds
good. All right, so what I'm gonna do to start is
I'm going to listen to Dawn's body. Okay. So
there's certain listening stations, and what I am paying attention to is called the
craniosacral rhythm. The craniosacral rhythm.
So it's just like any other rhythm in the body. So we have breath, Right.
And so we know the breath rhythm. We know that we have a
rhythm of the pulse. Same thing with craniosacral
rhythm. It's a very slow expansion
and contraction, and you can feel it anywhere on the body. What
creates this rhythm is the cerebral spinal fluid that actually
flows from the brain down to the sacrum, but it
affects the whole nervous system. So you can feel it anywhere in the body. What
we do is we go through and we're listening. So as soon as I put
my hands on her, I can tell that the rhythm
is slower on her left leg than on her right.
And not only that, instead of like. This.
It'S more like this, which tells
me. So like I said, I can put my hands and I can kind of
get a hit of like where to go. Tell me she's got some built up
energy in her pelvis is what I'm kind of getting. We call it an energy
cyst. It's kind of like. So with
normal natural physics, right? So there's a law and
it's. Every force is met with an equal force,
right. So if we slip when we fall on the ice,
we land our butt on the ice, that force should go through our body and
out into the universe. Right. But sometimes it kind of gets trapped into
our tissues. And so we can get this buildup of like chaotic energy in
an area which can create pain. Okay. And so sometimes that can
present in our body and we can just feel it.
So, yeah, first tip for me is that I would work on her pelvis and
I'm just going to kind of go through and see if I feel
anything else or legs. Nothing too much
there. I'm just still feeling that I'm feeling the same pull
all to the pelvis. That's what you do
with listening stations is, okay, I got a hit on the
pelvis. Am I completely insane because it just said pelvis? But then
when I go through and I do my listening stations and everything still
keeps pulling me towards the pelvis. Then I'm probably going
to go to the pelvis.
So here, her thoracic outlet, really tight, built up
energy there. I would want to work there.
Her head's off, which makes sense because she's been having a
migraine. So head should be
expansion, contraction.
And so very similar to the pelvis I'm getting.
So she's really stuck somewhere in here. And so I would just have to
kind of go through and figure out where. It's probably her sphenoid. Yeah, her
sphenoid. So sphenoid is
grab this.
So there's different bones in our skull. Okay. So we're
taught that after we're born that all these fuse,
right? But they're sutures. So sutures are there for a reason. All these
squiggly lines, that's for mobility. Okay. Okay.
So the reason they are there is because. So
they're, they're kind of like interlocked like this. And so that Those
bones expand, contract. Now,
when we're looking at the cellular level, I mean, we could never see it,
right? It's very, very minuscule. But I'm just, I'm showing you so that you can
kind of know what it is, right?
So we learn about all the. So I mean, craniosacral therapist
is going to know every bone in the skull,
but the sphenoid is really cool because if you look
at it, it looks like a butterfly. Okay,
Butterfly. And so it sits behind
her. Butterflies off. So this was actually really crazy. So when I was
just getting into craniosacral therapy, kind of someone like Honey. So Honey
was one of my. Whoa. Patients. Like people who've never
experienced cranial sacral therapy. I mean, it's one thing if you've
heard about cranial cycle therapy and what it can do and that people can have
these visions and they can unwind and then you see
people do it. It's like. Well, they anticipated that, right? But I had two people
who had never even heard of craniosacral therapy, and the weirdest things happened to
them. You just. You can't make this stuff up. So one of my patients, I
was literally on her sphenoid and
I'm like, working on her, and I'm like, so what's going on? You know, what.
What's going on in your body? And I kind of figured she was gonna say,
oh, I feel this somewhere. She's like, I see a
butterfly.
I'm working on your sphenoid right now. And it's a butterfly shaped bone. So
that is so funny. Good job.
So your brain literally sits on top of the
sphenoid. Right. And so this is a huge
player when it has to do with. I mean, and this goes into. I mean,
down underneath you have the sinuses. All your nerves
come through here. All these holes are nerves to come out of your brain.
So I mean, you have no idea what we can do with cranial. I mean,
you've got the pituitary gland sitting right there. So you're affecting the hormonal
system, the endocrine system, the nervous system.
There's a lot.
So, yeah, her sphenoid's kind of just not moving. So we would want to
work on that. And so there's just
different handholds on the head. So you kind of. Yeah,
huge torsion there. I'll probably start with this because you have a
migraine and you are off. Not a
migraine yet. Okay. So she's like.
So you can imagine when people come in when something like this
is happening, you're gonna have vertigo. And people will say that. They're like, I
feel like I'm getting pulled to the right for no reason. Well, their
sphenoid is getting pulled to the right. Interesting.
Yeah, so.
So it's. This is the crazy part about cranial.
I always say watching cranial is like watching paint dry, because you don't see
anything. You don't. In fact, when you're having it done. When you're having
it done, you're like, you're not doing anything. You're not doing anything. What are we
doing? And why do I feel better? This doesn't make any sense. Because I'm not
doing anything. I'm not doing anything. I'm just laying here. I'm listening to the body.
So we start with 5 grams of pressure, less
than the weight of a nickel. And we just
listen. And so I can
kind of. So she's heard. So the sphenoid is my head.
She's, like, dropping down to the right,
and then she comes back up. Stop.
Drops down to the right. So this is not even a normal pattern
at all of the sphenoid at all.
So there are specific movements that the sphenoid needs
to do. And so I'm going to kind of go through and check those
and see where is she stuck. Exactly. So if I pull the
left side of her sphenoid up into the left,
it moves, which I know it's going to because that's kind of what it does.
Right. So it's kind of going this way. So I check that.
Moving really well. Now I'm going to try to pull the right side up. Nothing.
It's not moving. It's not moving at all. So
what we do in the world of cranial is we go with the direction of
ease first. So I know she wants to go this way,
so I'm going to take her that way. So it's kind of almost like
unjamming a drawer, right? Like, if you picture, like, your drawer and it's
filled with clothes and you're pulling it out and pulling out, and it's getting stuck.
It's getting stuck. You can't pull it out. You have to push it back in
and reposition it, and it pulls out. Okay. We're using that
same concept with craniosacral therapy. So I
took her up and back, and so right there, she just. I just waited, and
she had a big release. And she's shaking her head because she can feel it.
And so now I'm gonna go. Almost see it. Because, you know.
Yeah, yeah. So when you take a deep breath, that's when we get a release.
Yeah. So people will yawn, they will sigh,
they'll take a deep breath, they'll get belly gurgles.
We call it bulgarithmus. But people
are like, oh, I didn't realize I was hungry. And I'm like, no, that's your
autonomic nervous system responding to what we're doing.
So, yeah, it's fascinating
stuff because it's just, like, even close up, you look at your hands and
you're like, nope, they aren't moving. Don't know what's going on
here. Oh, so she's starting to let go. Starting to let
go. She's kind of sliding up a little bit.
There she goes. So I'm just kind of, like, exaggerating it with my
head, but it still just feels tight. So
I'm just gonna hang out here. It's kind of like a rubber band. Like, I
let go, but the rubber band's still holding on. The other one just flew.
Like, it was just easy. I'm just gonna wait a little bit
longer. Oh, yeah, There. She's got another release. So you can get multiple releases.
And that's. That's something where, like, you know, when you first
start doing cranial, it's like, oh, did I feel a release? I think I did
okay. I guess I'm done, you know? But you get to the point, like, you're
an experienced practitioner. Just like anything else, you know, like, you get better at it
and you learn it, and you're like, that's not done releasing, like,
because people will be like, well, when? When do I know when she's done releasing?
Do we do five? Do we do two? Do we do one? Yeah, you
just know. But one thing you can do. So a lot of people
are, okay, so now she's. I'll
finish that sentence again. So I'm sliding her. So her. So
her sphenoid should slide to the left and slide to the right. It doesn't want
to slide to the right. It wants to go to the left. So I just
kind of gave it a little nudge, and so now we're hanging out over to
the left. But
what was I saying? Just with experience,
you just. Oh, that's what it was. You can talk to the inner wisdom.
So the inner wisdom. So everyone has an inner wisdom. And
so whatever you want to connect that to. Is that intuition? Is
that God? Is that your higher self?
Whatever it is for people
it's your body's inner knowing. Right.
And so we will use the rhythm a
lot of times to ask questions if we're not getting
somewhere. And so, like I said, you can feel that rhythm. It kind of goes
up and out. Right. And then there's certain areas where it's not moving. So well,
so we know we need to work there. But when we're in treatment,
we can just like. I can just to myself just
be like, okay, inner wisdom. Are you done? Releasing?
And it will resp. You can just be like, stop. Stop the
rhythm for yes or start the rhythm for no.
You know, and it will tell you.
And then if that doesn't work, I mean, then you. Then you get. That's where
dialoguing with the patient gets involved. So a lot of times maybe,
you know, so sometimes you need to kind of like, talk to the inner wisdom
if the patient isn't getting anything.
Because not everybody gets messages from their body. Other
people get them clear as day. They're really good at communicating with their body. I
think it's a practice, you know. Yeah. You get more
acclimated because we are not taught it at all.
I am not doing this. Yeah. So this is called unwinding.
So unwinding always trumps everything in my world, at least.
So tissues will unwind. So she feels like I'm
moving her head, but I feel like her head is moving me.
So this is what I'm talking about when I say this
is such a different touch than massage. I
am not moving her head. Her head. I'm feeling where the
tissues want to go, and I just follow. So they unwind
out of their dysfunctional pattern. So if you're in a car accident
and you're like this in the car accident, but you don't realize that, and
you've had neck pain for the next 20 years, and nobody can get rid of
it, you start to unwind, and you'll get back
into that pattern, and then the body will
slowly unwind out of it itself. And so the
body is healing itself. It's not me doing the work. I'm just here as a
facilitator. And so that's why this work is
so powerful. Yeah. For sure.
Suddenly becoming, like, very aware of the back of my
throat and, like, this inner sinus
situation behind my. Okay,
so tell me more about that awareness.
It just feels like my right eye. Wants to shut off. Shut off.
Shut off. Not close, but shut off.
Yeah. Like there's a hole there. Like there's a hole in your eye. Yep. Where
the eyeball is. It's just like. There's a big empty spot there. empty
spot. Okay. Can you tell me why there's a big empty
spot there? I don't know. It's just tired. It's tired.
What's it tired of?
How many new glasses? Yeah. Okay,
so right there. That's the kind of stuff that happens all the time. That's a
diagnosis, essentially. Mm. She just figured out she needs new
glasses, and she has a headache. Maybe her glasses are not
supporting her and that's why she has a headache. I didn't diagnose
her. I didn't come up with that. She did. Yeah,
well, I knew that as soon as I walked in. I'm like, girl needs
new glasses.
Interesting. So it's just the right eye but not the left eye.
So maybe you need to get the right adjusted. But how's the
left doing? Does the left need an adjustment? Left feels
fine. Okay.
So she can go to our eye doctor and say, hey, can we check this
out? I think my right eye needs something different.
There's the part where it starts to get weird. I think that.
Sometimes when I share these things with Jamie, it's kind of. Funny, so feel free
to laugh. Why am I seeing clowns? Hate clowns.
You hate clowns? I do. What do you hate about clowns?
They're just messy. They're messy. Okay.
Do you not like messy and loud? I don't mind it.
So you don't mind messy and loud, but you don't like loud? I don't like
loud. Messy is fine. I'm messy. You don't like loud.
What do you not like about loud?
It's jarring to my system.
I have to, like, come back from it. Like, if
it's, like, interruptive and it bothers me, and it just annoys me. Like, if you
pull up to somebody at a stop point, the music's too loud. I'm just like,
dude, I was having a thought.
So she's kind of just settled. So I'm going to recheck this sphenoid because I'm
getting pulled into her right occiput now. But I want to make sure her sphenoid
is good, so I move up her left. Good. Right.
Good. Where's the right occiput for those that don't know? On the back
of your head. Moving to the right. Good. Moving
to the left. Still a little stuck there. So I'm going to slide
her to the right again.
Yeah. So I don't think I got to finish that one. Because she started unwinding.
Okay, so now I'm gonna push to the left, which when I say push,
it's. It's the intention. It's just a thought
almost. It's like one gram of pressure.
And there it goes. Which is barely a touch.
Yeah. Can you feel that? I'm pressing harder on the right
than the left, Dawn. No. Yeah. See, she can't even feel it. It's just
a. It's an intention almost. Good.
So she kind of settles there. So kind of to reset, I'm going to
compress her. So I'm kind of pulling the sphenoid back and down
into the rest of her skull. And then
I'm going to lift it and decompress.
Just a reset. We always do. At the end of working with the
sphenoid,
she's in what's called still point. So still point is when the
rhythm completely shuts off in the entire body. It's when it's doing work.
So there's still point, it's doing work. And then there's significance detector, which
is like an even deeper drop. Like, ooh, this is significant. Like, we're really
doing work. But she's just in still point right now. And there it just turned
right back on. So now, because the rhythm turned back on, I'm going
to go to the next spot. I'm not gonna move during a still point
because there's too much work getting done. So the suboccipital
elease is the best thing in the world. They've tried to
make so many little fidgets to put, to lay on,
to copy it, but you can never copy it because you just can't copy
human touch. But I say to everyone, I'm like, if
everyone had a suboccipital release, the first thing in the morning,
we'd have a world peace. It is. That's
interesting. It is the most relaxing, most amazing thing
if you get it done right.
I mean,
there have been times where I have done an hour of
just a suboccipital release. I just hold it. Wow. That's what the
body needs.
So she's really tight on the right side, so I'm just kind of
sinking in. So like I said, cranial
starts really light, but it can get heavy.
It can be a heavy. I get pulled in sometimes. Like, I'm digging it. Like,
I'm digging into her suboccipitals right now. But, like,
I'm not forcing it. I'm not hurting her. I'm not. Like, I don't go in
fast. That's the difference too. So, you know, people will be like,
oh, my massage therapist got into my psoas. And, oh, my God, it hurts so
bad. Because you have to go all the way, like, through the abdominal cavity. Well,
yeah, if they go hard and fast, that's gonna hurt like a mother,
Right? But if you listen to the tissues and
you start light and you wait
until the tissues allow you in, you can get
so deep and not hurt someone. I mean, they'll be like, ooh.
But it's always. It's that hurt so good. It's the same thing. I always stay
in the hurt so good, because if I go in too hard, too fast, the
body doesn't like it, it's gonna tighten up, and it's gonna kick me out, and
it's gonna make that and create more of a problem.
So it's not always, like, necessarily even, like the technique that I do.
It's how I do it and that I'm listening and
respecting the body. I'm not going in
as a bully and being like, you're gonna do as I say.
No, I go in as, hey, body, what is it that you need today and
how can I help? Yeah, I wish I could do for
myself. You can do
cranial on yourself. If you learn it, you can kind of do that. But
there's. Obviously, you're gonna get way more from someone else
because that. We are energetic beings, right? We are positive and negative
ions all the way throughout our entire body. So whenever somebody touches you,
there's a reason. There's a physiological response. And when we. So we'll do.
We do cranial multi hand sessions. And those things are
so powerful. So powerful. I get 10
times more work done on a weekend when I take my classes than
I do seeing one therapist once a week for six
months. Wow. And then if you do multi hands in water.
Talk about mind blowing. And we're actually. We're trying to start
a program here in Reno. There's the only place that we know that you can
really do it is in the Bahamas, because that's where they teach it,
Right. So there are programs where you can fly down to the Bahamas and get
treated multi hands in the water with dolphins,
because the dolphins communicate. It's amazing. I haven't done it yet.
It's on my to do list. I can't lie. I cannot wait. But so my
mentor reached those people and said, hey, can we do
an aqua class here in Reno? And they came out here and we did a
class so we're trying to figure out how to make it. The problem is there's
so many practitioners, like, how do you pay them for their time and
rent, the pool and all of these things. But we're trying to put that
together for people who really need it, because it's.
It's mind blowing. Yeah. Interesting.
So how does the water make a difference? It's just a faster facilitator kind of
thing or what? So if you think about it, our bodies are 80% water, right?
We are water. And the craniosacral system, the cerebral spinal fluid, it's
water. Okay. So it's a conduit. And.
Okay. So did you. So you seen how her head kind of moves? Right, Right.
Okay. So that's unwinding. She is
stuck to unwinding her head right now because that's where my hands are. And I
can lift up and take. Make her. Like, if I was on her leg, I
would hold her leg and make it weightless, and then I would just follow it.
Right. But I need to be holding that leg. I need to be holding
her head. Now, there are some people who are true unwinders. Like, if you watch
me, I'm an unwinder. I will look like an exorcist. On this table, if the
right person touches, it's the right day and the right time.
Like, you wiggle and you're a worm, but you're still limited by the table, right?
In the pool, there's no limitation. People flip.
We do flips. We spin around. We're going forward flips,
back flips, spinning, twirling.
It's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. It's
unreal. And you see, you'll have, like, 10 people on one person,
and they're all feeling the same thing. Interesting. And it's all very in
sync and in unison because they're all listening to the body,
so they're all responding to the same rhythm, to the same flow,
to what it is that the body wants.
That's amazing. That'd be something to watch or experience.
Better yet, experience. Yeah.
That just feels so good, I can't even explain it. I'm getting in real deep
right now, which there's no way I could have gotten in here when I first
touched her. I mean, I'm like a solid inch into
her suboccipitals.
So I know from my yin training, this gets a little.
But go with me on this. I know from my yin training that the right
side of your body is the need to express the
left side of your body is the need to recieve..
So if I have a right eyeball blocked
and the right side
tension, whatever the hell that is that you're working on right there, it feels so
good.
That tells me that there's something that I'm not seeing,
I'm not expressing. Mmhmm.
So it's just kind of. Her tissues are shifting. It's like it pulls me in
the suboccipitals and then pulls me down lower into her, like, lower neck into her
paraspinals, and then she shifts over to her right. So once again,
she's still unwinding. So still paraspinals, a little bit of right scalenes
getting right there. It's just kind of shifting back
and forth because it all needs it. So apparently it doesn't want one at a
time. Once all the tissues want to take turns.
This nice stretch. So this goes kind of more into, like, myofascial release.
And so because she's kind of leaning that way, I just feel like her body's
saying, like, oh, stretch this for me. So I'm gonna lock it down
over to the right, and I'm holding the back of her head to give her
a nice, nice stretch. How's that feel, Dawn?
She's pulling my hair. Is it too much? No, it's fine, actually. No, it's
totally fine.
And then you let go. It's like a rebound. Much better.
And that loosened it up. Nice.
That's a little bit of cranial. That is. That's awesome.
Vegetables are going to be bright today,
girl. That's awesome. It is awesome. I
can almost feel some of it in my neck as you were doing it. I'm
like, oh, I feel like I'm moving. But energy.
Energy flows through people. It does 100%.
That's awesome. Thank you, guys.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I
appreciate you guys being here today. This has been awesome. You guys know
I love you so much.
And the website is healinghandspt..net
yes. Yes, thank you. That's right. I should know it by now.
All right, thank you guys, again. Thank you.