The Nathan Crane Podcast
How I resolved my chronic gut pain and pelvic floor issues naturally: Jana Danielson | Nathan Crane Podcast
So we wonder why both men and women. We are muted when it comes to pelvic floor health. You know, there's a $21 billion in continents industry. There's a $9 billion reptile dysfunction industry. And did you know that in 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction cases, it is not medically rooted in any sort of diagnosis. It is, hold on to your chairs, everyone, improper breathing, poor posture, and a lack of pelvic floor fitness. All things that we, in minutes a day, can absolutely fix. He's a best-selling author, award-winning filmmaker, inspirational speaker, certified nutrition coach, plant-powered athlete, and host of the number one holistic health podcast in the world, Nathan Crane. You know, one of the most important things I've learned over the years in helping many people get and stay healthy is to help them shift their mindset into thinking of themselves as an athlete no matter their age, whether they just walk 30 minutes a day in the mornings, for example, or they play sports for fun on the weekends, or they go to gym a couple days a week, no matter what your activity level, if you think of yourself as an athlete, then you start to naturally take better care of your body, focus more on your nutrition, recovery, sleep, other health protocols that optimize your performance as an athlete, and in turn may help you prevent and heal against chronic diseases and help your body be the healthiest that it can possibly be. So if you want to live a long, healthy, vital life and start thinking of yourself as an athlete, head over to plantpoweredathlete.com and get the latest organic plant-powered protein, super clean, nutrient-dense, high-quality plant-powered protein to help you live your healthiest, most vital life. And you can use our discount code, panacea15 for 15% discount off your first order. Again, that's plantpoweredathlete.com. Get some of the plant-powered protein for yourself and start thinking of yourself as an athlete every day and see how it impacts your health for the long-term. All right, let's get to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. Today I've got my friend, Janet Danielson here to talk about all things wellness. Janet is an award-winning wellness entrepreneur. She's a Pilates master instructor. She's a certified Pilates instructor and Amazon international best-selling author. She's the founder of lead Pilates and lead integrated health therapies and also the couch ball and the couch ball for men. We'll talk a little bit about that, which is the world's first pelvic floor fitness tool for women and she's got one for men as well. I've used it, it's quite the experience. I'll tell you that much. She's also a member of the Holistic Leadership Council. We had a great retreat this past year in Mexico and got to spend some good quality time together and actually got to experience your Pilates class firsthand, which was actually my very first Pilates class, believe it or not. I mean, I've done tons of yoga over the years. I've never done like a legit Pilates class that I was super impressed. It was fun, there was some challenge to it. It was engaging, you were super energized and just brought like a ton of education about Pilates as well as keeping us engaged and moving and getting a good workout all at the same time. I was like, this is pretty cool actually. So, Jana, what's up, welcome to the podcast. - Thanks, Nathan, it's great to be here. - Yeah, I'm excited for you to be here. So, let's talk a little bit about your journey because you dealt with a lot of physical pain in the past, which kind of led you to the work you do now and then helping many, many thousands of women around the world and so it led you to Pilates and talk a little bit about that. What were you struggling with pain and then how did you resolve that? - Yeah, so I grew up in a small Saskatchewan agricultural town. We had acres of gardens that back then I cursed because I had to weed those acres of gardens and that was on my summer holidays. So, we had lots of fresh air. We, you helped your neighbors out. That was my upbringing and my upbringing was also in the realm of when you got sick, you went to the doctor, you got a little prescription, you walked across Main Street, you went to the pharmacist, they filled your prescription, you took your medicine and 10 days later, you were better. And so in my late teens being the oldest of three kids, pretty a type, wanting to achieve my best in whether it was athletics or academics. And so I found myself in this digestive pain cycle, thinking that I just had a stomach like my dad. My dad was a farmer, he had thumbs and acids within an arms reach of him all the time. And I just thought genetically that was, I was predisposed to also have stomach issues. And so moved to university and by the time I was 21 years old finishing my business degree, I was on 11 different medications. And I was, seemingly I looked healthy on the outside. I was teaching fitness to pay for tuition. I was newly engaged to my high school sweetheart and I did a really, I got really good at pretending and making people see a healthy version of me while inside I actually felt, I felt like I was dying. I didn't know what was wrong. And I remember sitting across the desk from my doctor one day thinking that we would plan out like the next six months, which specialists would I see, what tests would I do? And she looked, she opened my file and as quickly as she opened it, she closed it. And she just looked me straight in the eye, very matter-of-factly and said, Jana, you know, we've consulted your medical team and I'm here to tell you today that we truly believe that the pain is in your head and that you're seeking attention and we wish you a nice life. And she stood up from her chair and she walked out of the door. And I just, I sat there and I walked out of her office and I got to my vehicle and I cried because I actually thought at 21 years old that I would never do the three main things I wanted to do, which was marry my high school sweetheart, Jason, have kids and be a mom and then one day run my own business. And so that's really what started, that was a pain journey. Now I can look back, was a total gift. Back then I, you know, prayed, didn't know what I did to deserve, you know, a life like that. So that's how it all started. - What were all of your digestive issues like? Like what can you run us through like what you were experiencing on a day-to-day basis? - Yeah, so the sensation I described, it was like a baseball-sized ball of fire behind my belly button. That's where it started. And anyone that's been in any sort of pain, you know that if you are in any sort of acute pain for long enough, it encompasses your entire body. So that digestive pain very soon became chronic headaches, a lack of energy. And as a young 20-year-old, I started having like pelvic floor issues, a lot of pain. I would even find myself like coughing and sneezing and like wetting myself. And I was like, "Whoa, wait, wait." I thought this only happened when you were in menopause or maybe after you had a baby, what was going on in my body that I was, you know, experiencing things that I thought were like for older women and I was in my 20s. - And so that pain behind your belly button, was that like 24/7? Was that after you ate certain foods? Was it when you were feeling stressed out? Was it like just chronic all the time? - No, you know, I had, for sure I had triggers. Like it first started if I had an exam or, you know, if I was going for a summer job interview, it would be like, you know, weekly. But then it started becoming more often. And, you know, like let's, we're talking like this is in like 1994, 1995. And so we weren't talking about like food sensitivities and, you know, the testing for that whole, there was nothing like that. I don't even think, I can't even imagine going to the grocery store looking for anything gluten free. I don't think there would have been a gluten, you know, tie back then to it, right? And so I did, I got into this idea that I had to eat every two to three hours. That was my, it must be something to do with hunger, right? So I got on this cycle of eating breakfast and then eating a morning snack and then eating lunch and eating an afternoon snack, right? So I didn't realize how metabolically inflexible my body was becoming. 'Cause unbeknownst to me was riding these blood, you know, blood glucose waves throughout the entire day. And just thought that when I started getting those pains in my stomach, that was my body asking for food. And in fact, that was not always happening. - You know, with the cold and flu season here, it's critically important that we enhance and strengthen our immune systems. Yes, would you agree? The problem is though that there's so much confusion out there when it comes to what actually works for our bodies and for our health. Well, I'll tell you what I used. I use Maison Beljansky's Wellness products. Maison Beljansky's products are backed by science to not only help empower the immune system, but can support detoxification and contribute to our overall health. Coming from Europe, the all-natural Beljansky formulas are now available in the United States and are recommended by top doctors everywhere. A lot of the colleagues I work with, functional medicine practitioners that work with patients with all kinds of diseases, are recommending Maison Beljansky's products to their very own patients. 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It was over this two year experience. I just got this grocery list of meds that I was taking every single day. - What did you notice after those two years by the time you're on 11 medications in terms of like additional symptoms that started, you know, coming probably because of the medications? - Yeah, you know what? What I noticed most, and I wouldn't have said it then, but I looking back is the depression and just the disconnect from my body, right? Because I, when I said earlier, like I thought I was dying, I actually did because how could, it didn't make any sense in my mind how two years worth of white coats and stethoscopes and lots of letters behind names, I just thought in my mind, I have something so rare that nobody knows what it is, right? - Right. - And then, you know, as I was going through this depression, questioning, like, you know, I would look at my engagement ring and think, why would I walk down that aisle? Like, why would I give this man that I love a lifetime, almost like a jail sentence of a wife that who knows how my life was gonna progress? So if we wanted kids in the worst way, if I would ever be able to have kids, you know, the thought of running my own business, how, I can't even get at a bed in the morning, how would I, right? I would find myself in my office when the pain would come, I would lay on my desk and I would, against the, you know, the edge of my desk, I would lay my belly button against the corner of my desk, reach across it and pull it into me and I would just start breathing and I would find some sense of calm and almost like an escape when I felt that pressure in my stomach. And you know what I did, Nathan, is I actually decided to name my pain and I didn't give my pain like a human name, I just called my pain my edge, called her my edge and I was, it seemed weird at the time, but when I personified her, it was like I could have a relationship and you know, notice her when she started to rear her ugly head and be grateful when I had moments of like peace and no pain. And you know, I've had people in my life since then say to me like, you actually did exactly what you should have from like an emotional or an energetic perspective is because I really, in those days, I hated my body, I was shameful, I just despised everything about it and you know, after reading Dr. David R. Hawkins, power versus force and learning the scale of consciousness, right? What is the lowest frequency? It's shame, it's hatred, it's, and that's what I was living in. So how, there was no way my body could even think about healing when I was so like disgusted by it. That's what a lot of us go through in dealing with chronic health issues is one, like not trusting our body anymore, not having a connection to our body, you know, feeling like our body is betrayed us, right? And no matter what we do, nothing's getting better. And you know, and then we turn to other medications and other solutions or become depressed or drink alcohol or whatever to try and cover it all up. When in fact, there is a solution, there are multiple solutions, we just have to find it, right? And so understanding, you know, what the causes are and then focusing on healing, focusing on, you know, what I teach is solution oriented mindset, is putting our minds on like, okay, let's quit focusing so much on the problem and really understand, you know, what's causing this and then what can actually do about it? What things are working? What things are helping? What other solutions are available and trying new things and new modalities and new healing methods? Like never giving up, that's it, right? Isn't that really it? It's like never giving up and trying to continue to find solutions and eventually you will, that's what I found. In my own life, when I've dealt with issues over the years and many of the clients that I coach, it's like eventually you will find the solutions if you never give up. So there's always hope in my mind, but what did you discover was the cause or causes of all this pain and digestive issues that you were going through? - Well, you know, even at that point, I still didn't know. And so I was in the grocery store about six months after that conversation with my doctor and I was putting, taking my groceries out of my cart and I looked over at the magazine rack right beside and I don't usually like pick up magazines when I'm paying for my groceries, but that day, Madonna was on the cover of a fitness magazine and I still am a Madonna fan for this day, so I just without even thinking, just picked up the magazine and put it in my cart. And little did I know what the impact of that seemingly simple action. And I mean, you said it so, you know, so beautifully that if you keep searching and sometimes it's like the right person comes into your life or the right book comes into your life or you listen to a podcast and all of a sudden you're like, you know, the heavens open up and there's the blue sky. And so when I got home that day, I opened up this magazine and in that magazine was an article about, I didn't even know how to pronounce it. Okay, we know, I know now that it's Pilates, but I was actually pronouncing it pilots until I saw in the article, you know, how they have the phonetic pronunciation. And I read the article and then I went back and read it again and again because, like I said, I was teaching fitness, I was teaching spin classes, I was teaching, you know, weightlifting classes, like stepperobics, all the things that were slide, Reebok slide classes, if you guys remember those. And in my mind, working out meant huddless sweat on the floor, cannot wash your hair the next day. And if you could wash your hair, you better kick it harder on with those arms the next time around. But yet what I was reading in this article was information about, and it looked like yoga to me, spinal alignment and something called diaphragmatic breathing. And it talked about a sympathetic and a parasympathetic nervous system, which as a fitness instructor that, we did not cover that in our training. And it kept talking about the healing, like this movement as medicine. And I was like, what? I've never heard of this. This was before Google. I couldn't even Google and find a class. I had to go to like our printed city of Saskatoon leisure guide and flip through the pages. I found a Pilates class, and I went. I went to that class. And as Janet Danielson would do, I went to the front center of the class, surveyed the class, looked at the people, made my judgments that I was gonna just knock this class out of the park, right? And as we started, it took less than 60 seconds. I was like, in my peripheral vision, I could feel my breathing start to speed up and my throat get really dry because these people were following the instructor's cues about breathing in through their nose and out through their mouth and letting your belly fill with air and exit and feel the connection of your feet into your mat and your palms and roll your shoulders back. And they were like this beautiful symphony orchestra, just breathing and their bellies were moving. And I felt like I was like a trumpet and a grade five band. I couldn't breathe. Like I was like, what the hell? Isn't breathing the first thing you do when you enter this world? How can I not be breathing? And then right away, I just got this anxiety. And like I said, I was grounded in frequency that was not positive about my body at all. And it was another reason for me to be like, see like once again, disappointing, unable to serve me. And if I hadn't been front and center, I would have rolled up my mat and walked out, but my ego was too proud. And so I stayed for the whole class, struggled through it. The instructor approached me after she didn't say anything, but Nathan, she just wrapped her arms around me and I cried and cried. And the only thing she said to me was come back on Thursday. And so I left the studio. My then fiance now husband Jason was outside the room. He was in the weight room. And my eyes were swollen like I'd been chopping onions. And he's like, what happened in a Pilates class? Like what? I thought you were just exercising. Why are you so upset? And I just said, I have to come back on Thursday like in between my sobs. And so I went back Thursday and I went back every Tuesday and Thursday. So twice a week, 16 weeks after my first class to the day, I had weaned myself off all 11 medications. I had no idea, no idea what happened, right? I was still doing things like crossing my fingers and throwing salt, seriously, throwing salt over my shoulder. Like I just thought that it was too good to be true. And it was at that point where I was like, the only thing I've changed in my life, the only thing is coming to this classroom twice a week for an hour each time. There's something here and I was so curious and so intrigued and so hopeful because all of a sudden my mindset started shifting. Like, can I truly be healing my body with simple breathing and spinal movement and posture, checking in and understanding posture, could that really be what healed me? And that's when I like, it was probably the first real healthy obsession I've had in my life. I dove in and as the good Lord would have it, in my small little city of Saskatoon, there was a woman from Phoenix coming to do her Pilates mat certification and her Pilates, the full equipment apparatus training and I was like, okay, if that's not a big enough tap on the shoulder, I don't know what is. And I got certified in Pilates, started teaching as a hobby out of our home 'cause at that point I was a human resource consultant. I was helping small businesses with their human resources, with their recruiting and so I started teaching out of my basement. Two classes a week turned into four, turned into eight, turned into 16. Jason and I were still farming at the time so we sold some extra grain and invested in a Pilates reformer and a trapeze table and a chair and I hung my shingle up and I would go upstairs and I would be writing reports for my business clients and then I would have someone come and see me downstairs and within 16 months it was obvious that there was a business, not just a hobby and so I opened my first studio in 2010, expanded to a 9,000 square foot facility in 2015. That included an integrated health therapies clinic, grew that until the end of 2022 to a team of 60 clinicians, instructors and administrators, literally hundreds of thousands of people walking through our doors. And you know what, so that's that, all from picking up a magazine in the grocery store and realizing that we are meant to live beautiful lives that flourish, sometimes we're gifted these moments where we can struggle in a major way and there's a purpose and a reason for it and the right people and the right information comes at you when you're ready to receive it. I'm a true believer in that and the rest really is history. - That's so beautiful, an incredible story. So what do you feel about Pilates actually helped you finally heal? What are the deeper underlying aspects about it, you know, nervous system, breathing, you know, movement, obviously you were doing exercise and exercise by itself wasn't helping you heal. What do you feel was, was, you know, your blockage, the challenges that were causing your, you know, gut pain and what about Pilates actually empowered your body to finally heal after 16 weeks of twice a week, right? 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Secure your supply today and fill the invincible shield up around your health. Just like countless satisfied customers worldwide, I actually take this beta-glucan myself and I highly recommend it. You can visit nathancrain.com/betaglucan. That's B-E-T-A-G-L-U-C-A-N. nathancrain.com/betaglucan for a special discount today. - Yeah, so I mean, first of all, it truly was what I had a very dysregulated nervous system, first and foremost. I was living in fight, flight, freeze for probably years. And we know the sympathetic nervous system serves a very important purpose. It is that spidey sense, it is that it's the ability for us to, you know, for our thirst mechanism and our hunger mechanism to be shut off for our heart to pump blood quickly to our extremities. So if we do have to physically exit a situation, we can do that, right? We've all heard the sabertooth tiger metaphor and my sabertooth tiger was just like, you know, on a leash tied to me, always behind me, but I didn't realize that, right? But because I was in this cyclical, sympathetic, you know, cortisol, adrenaline, always, always going, even if I was laying on the couch watching TV seemingly relaxed, my nurse, I was still lit up like a Christmas tree, right? And so that's why in that first Pilates class, when I was talking about diaphragmatic breathing and I couldn't, like I physically could not get air past my collarbones. It was like anything below my collarbones and my body, it was like I was ahead in a body, disconnected, not together, that's what the breathing started to do. It was actually, I was so conditioned to push harder, more, wanting to do the best, striving to be the first at this or the, you know, bust through whatever glass ceiling I was trying, had in my mind that I had to do these things, right? And in that, I lost the ability to be vulnerable and surrender and be comfortable with what I had in front of me at that moment. Like being present for me didn't, what does that mean? Like if I compliment, you know, I was winning different awards through the different certifications that I was doing, you know, through my MBA and becoming a certified human resource consultant that it would be like, you know, you'd win the award, it's like, okay, yeah, great. You'd go to the event, get it. And it's like almost like, okay, now what, right? There was never a moment to step back and appreciate. So that was the first thing, is once I started learning how to breathe, when we breathe diaphragmatically, some major, major, major things happen in our body. So first of all, we take in 600% more oxygen. What do you think? My cells were having like a Mardi Gras party. When they started getting 600% more oxygen, right? They were like, what? We can actually like thrive now. We're not, you know, we're not in the state of oxygen deprivation. And I can remember for the first two or three weeks of Pilates, when I would start breathing, honestly Nathan, like it felt like I had just drank two bottles of wine, like my head would be spinning. I felt dizzy when I stood up, but that was because I did. I was living in such a state of oxygen deprivation. My brain didn't have the oxygen it needed to have, you know, clarity and confidence I was living in this brain fog. And when you, and those of you who lived in, or are living in chronic pain know that you, it becomes just a regular thing. Like you don't even think, geez, I feel foggy today. Like that is your modus operandi. So breathing was key. It helped me nurture my parasympathetic nervous system so that I could, like I started actually chewing my food. Imagine that. I wasn't like shoveling. And I remember there was, there were days, I would look over and Jason would be like just watching me eat and his like jaw would be on the floor. And he'd be like, did you even, did you even taste? And I was like, right? Like so all of those things started to slow down for me. I do believe that the Pilates has like a recipe, like a, I think of like a chocolate chip cookie recipe. So Joe Pilates who created the system of Pilates was ill as a child. He had rickets, so softening up the joints. He had asthma, so breathing for him was very challenging. And then he also had a long stint of rheumatic fever, infection in the brain. And so when he was creating Pilates, this is like in the late 1800s in Germany, his mom was a naturopath actually, and his dad was a gymnast. So imagine Germany late 1800s, very, you know, you're thinking industrial, you're not thinking my mom's a naturopathic doctor and my dad's a gymnast, right? So he grew up with very different lenses around movement and healing. And so once I started learning the five spinal movements, which simply are spinal flexion, like tucking your tailbone between your legs, spinal extension, tipping that tailbone back as you like look up toward the sky, spinal rotation, side bending, and then spinal inversion, which is if you're laying flat on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor, if you were to lift your hips into a bridge position, gravity gets to work in a different direction on the, you know, the blood, the spinal fluid, and it just kind of helps the intervertebral disc, those little jelly donuts. And so that movement also was really important as part of my healing. And then as I learned later, right? The way I was activating my vagus nerve, you know, that started to improve things in my body drastically, that long 10th cranial nerve, right? That innervates with all of the organs. So bit by bit, it was like I was putting the pieces of my health and wellness back together and like one piece of learning and experience led to another one, or then I did this training. And so that's how it really all came to be. - Yeah, that's exactly what I was kind of hinting at or alluding to and thinking is, you know, what really helped your body heal itself, right? Was your taking control of your nervous system, activating your parasympathetic nervous system, and then allowing your body to up-regulate its own immune system, its own healing properties? So many people today live in that kind of fight or flight or freeze or stress mode day-to-day, and they don't even realize it's down-regulated their immune system. It has contributed to chronic inflammation, and it's preventing their bodies from healing, and in fact, contributing towards chronic pain and chronic disease in the body. And so through that deep diaphragmatic breathing, we know that we can activate the vagus nerve, we can up-regulate our parasympathetic nervous system, we can turn on our immune system, and our body can go to town actually working for us, right? Healing, reducing damage DNA and damage cells, you know, activating autophagy, cleaning up the inflammation in the body and in the joints, and so people live in this really shallow-breath state because of the chronic stress that so many of us experience in the modern world, right? And it's, you know, we can do a practice right now for everyone tuning in, it's like, do you breathe diaphragmatically, you know, throughout the day, often, right? And you can breathe, you know, big deep breath through the nose, and do you only feel it in your chest? Or can you actually take that deep breath in and feel it? Go past your chest down into your diaphragm and feel your stomach and your whole core expand out. And that's how we're supposed to breathe, right? That's how we breathe when we control our nervous system, when we activate our parasympathetic nervous system and activate healing. But like you said, like you weren't even aware of that, you weren't even aware that you were kind of in the shallow-breathing mode. And, you know, when the doctors told you, oh, it's all in your mind. Like, number one, you know, as kind of arrogant and, you know, incorrect that was, there was some truth in that, right? Because your mind, through the knowledge and experience and wisdom you gained, actually is what ended up allowing your body to heal itself. And, you know, I want to talk about shame for a minute because there's so many of us that have dealt with shame from our childhood, have felt shame and probably still feel shame today. And having, you know, shame in our minds that manifests into our bodies does contribute towards chronic disease in the body. You know, and until we heal that shame and learn to love ourselves and forgive ourselves and forgive others, you know, that shame is going to be at the root in our subconscious, contributing towards all kinds of issues that can manifest in your body. You know, people probably heard your issues become your tissues. We know that neuropeptides get released into organs and can stay stuck there causing chronic inflammation. That's Dr. Candace Pertz work, you know, the molecules of emotion. This has been studied, you know, over the years, a lot of people don't know this work actually exists, that these emotions and traumas and feelings of shame and guilt and resentment that, you know, we create or experience, especially as children, that we don't know how to deal with or how to resolve or how to forgive or let go, literally fuel our subconscious into our adulthood and then cause us to have so many of these painful and chronic inflammatory conditions. Not to mention the toxins and the food and all the other things, but our bodies are miraculous, right? Like our bodies are miraculous. They can heal themselves from anything, especially when we give them the proper conditions and the conditions really do start with the mind, in my opinion, like that's 80% of it. You know, if we get our mind really focused on the healing aspects that our bodies can activate, everything else just supports that. Clean diet, removing toxins, clean environment, you know, give the toxins out of our food, water, air, skin, products, all that kind of stuff. Like, yes, that's important, but the mind is so powerful. I mean, I've seen miracles. I've literally seen miracles with just the mind, literally healing people again and again and again. It's incredible. So you did heal yourself with your mind, right? - I did, and you know, like as I was listening to you talk, it made me think of some of Dr. Joe dispenses work, right? And he says, of the 60 to 70,000 thoughts we have in a day, 80 to 90% of them are what? The same as yesterday, last week, last month and last year. So we live in that familiar past because even though consciously we want to change, right? We want to, it's December 31st, we have our running shoes by the door or we, you know, we're purging our fridge and our cupboards. We want that change so bad. But yet January 1st and 2nd and 3rd, we still have the same thoughts we did on December 29th, 30th and 31st. So, you know, that's really important. If we want that new unfamiliar future, we have to be present first of all. And that's one of the things that made me that kind of triggered for me when you were talking. And the other thing, Nathan, I'm, this is going to be a mic drop. I'm pretty damn sure because, and I know we're gonna transition into pelvic floor conversation in a second. But since you mentioned shame, the pudendal nerve is the main nerve that runs from our brain to our genitals and the pelvic floor area in both a man's body and a woman's body. So it's called the pudendal nerve. If you were to Google, what is the Latin root of the word pudendal? You know what comes up? An area of shame. Parts to be ashamed of, pudendal meaning external genitals derived from pudendal meaning parts to be ashamed of. That's crazy. Is that not like, and so we wonder why both men and women, we are muted when it comes to pelvic floor health. You know, there's this, you know, there's a $21 billion in continents industry. There's a $9 billion reptile dysfunction industry, and did you know that in 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction cases, it is not medically rooted in any sort of diagnosis. It is, hold on to your chairs everyone, improper breathing, poor posture, and a lack of pelvic floor fitness. All things that we, in minutes a day, can absolutely fix. And so, you know, what was the percentage? What was the percentage you said of pelvic floor issues? Is that what you said? Say that again. - Yeah, so Dr. Bruce Crawford, who was a urogynecologist from Reno, Nevada, did some research in the mid, like 2014, 2015. And this is like, I think it was really what started shifting things for me, was that he found in his study, 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction is not rooted in a medical condition. It is rooted in poor breathing habits, poor posture, and pelvic floor fitness. So either, and we know with any muscle in the body, a too tight muscle is just as dysfunctional as a muscle lacking strength, right? So that's what he's talking about, because for some of us, we've got hyper tone, too much tone, too much tension. And for others, we have a lack of tone, hypo tone. So nine out of 10 people can move through their pelvic floor dysfunction simply with breathing, exercise, and proper posture. - What are the pelvic floor symptoms in men and women that are most common? - So the most classic one, obviously, for women is incontinence, right? So there's stress incontinence and then urgent incontinence. So stress incontinence would be if I cough or sneeze or laugh really loud and leak a little bit. Urge incontinence is more of that. I don't have to go to the bathroom. I'm walking from my vehicle. I have bags of groceries in my hands. I walk up to my steps, and I have to go like now. So you drop your groceries, you're punching in the code to your door, and you are undoing your pants as you make a beeline to the bathroom. So there's the urge part of it. Pelvic floor chronic, pelvic floor pain in both men and women, and that actually is a, I believe the physicality of pelvic floor pain is rooted in energetics because guess what? Guess what's located in the pelvic floor, everybody? The sacral chakra, right? The chakra of sensuality, of creativity, and they're unbeknownst to us. So many of us are like literal tightasses. Like we kind of, you write like we- - That's a good term. - He's a tight-ass, well, he really is actually really tight. - Really tight, right? Like the anus is being, like think about when you're watching a scary movie, or if you live in a place where there are seasons and you are driving on ice or walking on ice, if there's instability, even on a path that has, you know, a little bit of unstable ground, you don't realize what happens, but your body is searching for stability. So you will unbeknownst to you, you will, the anus will squeeze a little bit. And for some of us, that is literally how we, like that's how we're operating our life. So constipation is often a pelvic floor dysfunction outcome. And a lot of people don't realize that constipation is connected to the pelvic floor, but it is chronically tight hips. Chronicly tight hips are a pelvic floor dysfunctional kind of consequence. Low grade back pain. So across the back in that lumbar spine, low grade, like enough to go for a massage, but not enough to stop you from doing your activities a daily living can often be pelvic floor. There's, the pelvic floor is 14 muscles. I have my little pelvis here. So it's 14 muscles that make up the bowl. This is a female pelvis. Men's look very similar. They're just, it's, women have just a little bit of a wider, a wider pelvis to allow for childbirth, but cold, tingly feet. That's one that a lot of people don't connect with the tight pelvic floor because when a pelvic floor is tight, often there's a muscle located very near to the pelvic floor. We have one on each side of our body. It's called the SOAS. It attaches from the inside of our long femur bone at a spot called the lesser trochanter than it comes up through the pelvis and attaches to the five lumbar vertebrae on each side of the body and the intervertebral disc, those little jelly donuts I talked about. So when our pelvic floor is tight, it sends a message to the other muscles around. Our glutes, our SOAS muscles that we need to guard, we need to protect this woman or this man is a little bit, we have to just make sure nothing bad happens. So all these muscles are on guard and causing these issues. A lot of TMJ issues and a lot of foot issues. There's even been a link between plantar fasciitis and pelvic floor because the feet are the base of our structure, of our being. And so there's a whole sequence that I do with my clients on. We do some interoral massage. I use one of my little fascia balls that I created to work through these gum chewing muscles, the masseter. And like it's kind of like a chicken in the egg. What came first? Well, who really cares? Let's work on all three because there's such an interaction. And I mean, even the Met Gala this year, you didn't have to watch the Met Gala 'cause Kim Kardashian's photo was splashed all over everywhere. She had that little teeny, tiny waist. I don't even know how she took any sort of a breath with that. And so even fashion, the pants we wear, the drawstrings, the shoes we wear, they can also impact our pelvic floor, which then turns into, like I said, the pain, the chronically tight hips, the low back pain, the constipation, bloating and inflammation through the gut is also related to the pelvic floor quite often. I guess you were talking about 'cause I don't follow any of this stuff online. Yeah, look at that. Okay, yeah. Okay, so this thing just like squeezed her waist like way tighter than it normally would be. He is snatched in there. Like I don't quote me on this, but I thought that she said that it was like 20 inches when she was in that corset. And so think about that. Where are her organs going? Where is her gut going? That's crazy. And so that would have, so that in itself can be a major, like I said, fashion itself can be a major indicator or impactor of pelvic floor health. So her normal waist is like, I'm trying to find a picture of like maybe her normal waist so you could compare. Is this her? Kim Kardashian? Yeah, that's her. She was like, she squeezed her waist like almost to almost half its size it looks like. Look at that, her normal waist. And then look at that. Yeah, that's crazy. Maybe took a third off of it to squeeze all the organs in there and to, yeah, I mean, you know, you wear that for a couple hours. Probably not a big deal, but like if people were trying, you know, back in the day, right, when women were in court sets a lot, like just imagine how terrible that is for your body. That's crazy. I want to show this so as too for people who are visual because I'm super visual and I, you know, so as can also be responsible for a lot of back pain. And because you can see here, right, where it attaches from the hips and, you know, through the hips up into the lower vertebra. And what I found over the years is, I would get this some pinching in my low back and it's a very specific kind of pain. If I, once I figured it out and I knew, like all I had to do was I got a so right. It's called a so right. If you know about an RITE, PSO, RITE, you can use a kettlebell. You can use maybe you're the ball that you have. Maybe you can get in there, a couch ball could probably get in there. Yeah, all I once I learned, like all I do is get in there with something and massage it deeply. And it's a very weird, interesting pain. And for a few minutes and then stretch it, stretch my hips. And, you know, depending on how bad it was, maybe in two days, it was all better. Sometimes a few days, just depending on how tight it really was. Thankfully, knock on wood, it rarely happens anymore, but like if I'm training a lot or doing a lot of squats or whatever, sometimes it'll tighten up, I'll get that pain, I'll get on it right away and boom, by the next day, usually it's totally better. Once I discovered like it was a SOAS, it took me a while though, and I dealt with that pain for a long time until I figured it out. But yeah, I mean, you can see how that tightens up, how it's gonna pull on. And this tightens up a lot when we sit a lot too, right? It literally starts to shorten when you're sitting in a chair hours and hours a day, which is why I got rid of my desk chair. And, you know, I sit here, you know, a couple hours a week in this chair doing podcasts. Other than that, when I'm working, I have a standing desk. I got rid of my desk chair years ago, and it made such a huge difference for my back. I mean, night and day. And I think a big part of that was sitting for eight, 10 hours a day, for years and years, just shortened up, tightened up these muscles and was just yanking on my low back. - Well, and then there's that, you know, sitting at a desk, but then think about how many people are side sleepers that sleep with their knees bent. You're essentially in a seated position, just 90 degrees on your mattress, laying on your bed. So some people will sleep in that position all night, and then they'll sit in that position for most of the day. - Wow. - And right, so this is why even like something simple, as, you know, five minutes a day, like getting on the floor, getting off of your chair, it does wonders for our hips. And I mean, kudos to you, Nathan, because not a lot of people, we get so conditioned with going to the source of the discomfort and believing that that is the root cause. - Right, there's something wrong with my back, my back's the problem and then we get pain meds and we go to a doctor and then they want to do surgery and then we just surgery on the spine. They go, "Oh, you're vertebrates." Like, "Oh, you know, it's like so many of those things "can be resolved naturally." And, you know, yeah, exactly. And they're usually stemming from somewhere else is what you're saying, absolutely. - Yeah, and that's why I think like, you know, for me, healthy feet, you know, using there's a high degree of lymph tissue behind the knee. So a lot of knee discomfort, think again, like sitting on a chair, it's like you have a garden hose that's kinked at your hips and then a garden hose that's kinked at your knee. If you have water coming out near your feet to water your garden, your garden's not gonna get a whole bunch of water 'cause you've got two kinks in that hose. So because our lymphatic system doesn't have a natural pump like our circulatory system has our heart, we have to through breathing and movement. And then sometimes, you know, things like dry brushing or castor oil, even just taking your hand once, like every couple of hours behind your knee and giving it like five or 10, really nice assertive like slaps behind the knee. That is enough to get that lymph tissue moving or fluid moving. And we don't then feel like the, you know, I often say the tin man from the Wizard of Oz after a heavy rain, like after a serious day of work when we're focused on this screen, it takes a couple of steps before we can, you know, get truly upright. And I'm here to tell you everyone that we have to, I wanna encourage us to stop using the fact that we maybe just had another candle on our birthday cake as the excuse or as being okay with these small little aches and pains that happen because we're learning so much now about longevity and how to age, you know, gracefully and what the body can do if you put it in the right situation. - Exactly. Back to the topic of shame. So, you know, I've done a tremendous amount of, you know, emotional healing work over the last 17 plus years. And, you know, because I really started kind of my healing journey and spiritual journey in 2005. So, I think it's, is that? - Coming up in 20 years. - Almost 20 years, actually. I don't know, I keep saying 17. So, almost 20 years, like 19 or 20 years, just like fly my, whatever. The last couple of decades, I've done tremendous amount, you know, meditations and all kinds of healing modalities and practices and sweat lodges and therapies and you name it because, you know, I had a really rough childhood. I think you know, you know, homeless drug addiction, alcohol addiction, you know, near death at 17 years old, so many issues and many traumas that I've had to resolve. And like, I'm still discovering things, you know, still almost 20 years later. So, you know, I've had some like 10 to 90s show up recently and I've really been wanting to get to the root cause of it. And, and why it hasn't fully healed. It's like healed like 85, 90% past few months but it's like still, there's still some nagging stuff and then there's like an underlying thing. I went and saw an acupuncturist and then he goes, "Hey, did your parents divorce? "You know, you have a little crack down your tongue." I said, "Yeah, when I was 12." And he said, "Well, this is it. "Your internal organs are out of balance "and we're gonna help get things back "into balance and harmony again." And so I thought, okay, interesting. My mind, in my memory, like my parents divorcing, was a good thing. I thought they fought a lot. You know, they were, had so many issues at 12 years old. I remember feeling good that they divorced and then I talked to my mom about it and she goes, "No, you were devastated." I said, "Really?" She goes, "Yeah, you were crying. "You were so upset. "You were devastated." I said, "I don't even remember that at all." Like I have no memory of that, zero. All I remember is a positive spin on that they got divorced. So immediately I go, "Okay." So I suppressed that emotion at 12 years old and just put a positive spin on it, you know, for protection, for survival. So I hired a RTT therapist, Rapid Transformational Therapy. I don't know if you know about that modality, but it's incredible. It's like 20 years of therapy and in a two-hour session. It's hypnotherapy, you know, guided. You go to subconscious and then you have your subconscious guide you to, you know, various, what you need to heal that's directly associated with whatever issue is going on in your body or your life currently, right? Could be relationship issues you're dealing with, could be money issues you're dealing with, could be physical health issues. So we asked my subconscious, Kate, take me to the, you know, memories, experiences, root causes of what's, you know, kind of preventing this balance in my body and preventing it to like fully heal for this tendonitis. And so we went to three different memories. One was when I was 12, which was the same age to the divorce, but we didn't get to the divorce, by the way, which was interesting. But one when I was 12, one when I was 10, and one when I was seven. And the one when I was seven, I didn't even want to go into. I actually kind of forgot about it, you know, kind of buried it, pushed it aside and hadn't thought much about it over the years. But it was an experience I had when I was seven where I felt this deep shame as a seven-year-old and had, you know, didn't tell anybody about it, didn't have any way to resolve the issue emotionally. And basically created this kind of protection in my body to hold onto that shame, which later, you know, is what I think and what the therapy has identified is like, you know, caused some of these things to be out of balance in this inflammation, you know, 30 years later, right? And so resolving that, becoming aware of it, you know, loving, forgiving, bringing that seven-year-old back with me, understanding it's, you know, basically eliminating that shame and saying there's nothing to be ashamed of, there was seven-year-old who was experimenting with these things, there was like nothing to be ashamed of at all. In fact, it was very natural, normal for a seven-year-old to do that. I'm like, yeah, I have an eight-year-old and, you know, it's like I could talk to him to those things and not make him feel guilty or shameful, absolutely. So having that awareness and then how that shame and also like feelings of worthlessness and feelings of like, I'm a bad person, right? Like how that then showed up at 10 years old in another situation, again, at 12 years old and then after 12, like my life went really downhill. I really did become a bad person, do a lot of bad things, you know, how those things start at such an early age and we don't know how to deal with it, resolve it and, you know, and then it manifests in our body and we hold on to it. So big part of that session was awareness and then basically forgiving, healing, understanding, and compassion, love, bringing that seven, 10 and 12-year-old back with me now. I mean, I released some serious tears. I was crying like crazy. Like I hadn't cried that way in a long time. Like I obviously really needed to. And, you know, and then-- - And that was one session, Nathan. That was one session. - One session is a two-hour session and then we healed lit the lineage's seven generations back and seven generations forward on my dad's side, on my mom's side. Like we did a lot. Like you do, it was, it was work. It was like two hours of work. I'm ever being halfway into it. And I'm like, I'm like, do I really want to continue this? I'm like, yes, I want to heal. I want to heal. So, you know, and then she was like, 'cause you're conscious in hypnosis, you can come out of any moment. You can say yes or no, right? Like, but you're in that deep theta state and where you can really heal the subconscious, which is where all this stuff comes from, right? And so I remember, yeah, when the memory popped up and I go, oh man, I don't know if I want to go there. She's like, well, you don't have to, you know. It's up to you. And I said, well, I want to heal. I want to be free of this. So let's go there. And so it was, you know, it took courage in me to go there and talk about this with somebody else, you know, and face it. And so that's part of the work we have to do, is face the things that we're afraid of. And so shame and worthlessness and feeling like I'm a bad person, right? Those, those kinds of things start so young until we become aware of it and have that understanding and then can heal it, it's going to show up. Even though I've done so much work in other ways, like there's still a little bit that, you know, in the subconscious that's kind of like sabotaging my life in the background, no matter how much conscious work I do today, right? No matter how many saunas and, you know, even meditations that I do in ice baths and nutrition and detox and, you know, red light therapy and all the stuff I do to keep myself incredibly healthy, there's still that little bit that's like preventing me from really experiencing my highest, you know, mentally emotional, physical and spiritual potential. And so that was incredible and now I'm listening to a guided meditation that was created from that session. It's about 15 minutes, you do that every day for 21 days and then we do a follow up coaching session and then we'll do, I agree to do 90 days, so three sessions. And usually you can result with RTT, they claim you can resolve most anything in one to three sessions. So whether it's alcohol addiction, drug addiction, cigarette addiction, it's these feelings of shame and worthlessness, whatever, you know, any of these underlying emotional issues often get resolved in, you know, somewhere between one and three sessions as long as you follow through with listening to the recording after 15 minutes a day, you know, and follow up with it. So I said, yeah, I'll agree to three sessions. Let's see this all the way through and let's see what happens. I can tell you, I feel like a changed person, literally. In one session, like a totally different person already, it's crazy. - Was this in person or to shoot? - No, I did it on Zoom, I did it on Zoom. She was an amazing therapist. I would say probably not all TT therapists are the same but they're all certified and trained through the same program. They're all over the world, Marissa Pierce trained, you know, I know Marissa pretty well, she's the one who kind of invented RTT. She has trained thousands of practitioners. You can do it on Zoom, you know, and it worked great on Zoom, like on my phone. There was no problem with that. And yeah, I just found her through the RTT Practitioners website. I just went through and was like, looking for someone who's certified as a practitioner and a coach and then someone who seemed like that, a lot of experience, I probably looked at five or six websites and just kind of watched their videos and then I found someone that I resonated with. I liked, you know, her presence, her voice, her energy and I just, and her experience and I thought, you know what, I think this might be the person. So then you might get with her for about 45 minutes. Yeah, it was a game changer. I mean, really, like, so that deep work is so essential. In addition to the work you're talking about with, you know, pelvic floor health and like, it's all connected, right? It's, it literally is all connected. Yeah, did you, you had a session with our colleague David, Dr. David Bursseli, right? With his, the trauma, the, the tremor? I've done a few sessions with him personally and then he led, were you there at the group session? He led one at the HLC that we did. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, I've had some crazy, like, it was such an amazing experience. Yeah, we, I did one after, well, before we did the one at HLC, I did one over Zoom with him when I was back at home in Mexico and then I had my husband, Jason, do one too. And it was, again, I mean, I do, I want to go and check out this RTT thing simply because, like you said, I mean, you get 80% or 90% of the way there. Yeah. And, you know, what, what is it? And you can't, I mean, as good as you try, I don't think we can actually access those things on our own. We do need help with someone trained like this to get there. Get us there, right? So, so, Collette Stryker, who just joined the HLC, Tom says he's gone through her program and says it's unbelievably, I'm going to go through it and check it out. But he said she trains you on how to do that kind of deep, you know, resolving work on your own. Her program is maps. Let's see if I can, I think it's called maps something. So, I talked to him for like, we talked for like a good, you know, 45 minutes, yes. Okay, it's called map coaching institute. Apparently, like Tom says, he's been able to go and do deep, deep healing work, getting trained by, and you can learn to do it on your own, like you can have therapists and practitioners guide you, but they train you on how to do it on your own too, which can be a great tool, right? Like, I like to have a therapist guide me through stuff like this and then learn it and then learn how to do it on my own. Absolutely, I love that. And some people don't ever want to learn how to do it on their own. They just want someone to guide them through it and others want the empowerment to do it on their own whenever they need it. But yeah, Tom speaks so highly of the map coaching institute. So I'm going to check that one out next 'cause there's always stuff to work on, you know. It's like, there's always something, you know, until we're enlightened. Until we're enlightened, Buddha's like, you know, there's always going to be something to work on and suddenly get, you know, and it's like, yeah, you move that extra. When you're at 85, 90%, it's like, you move another percent. But that one percent at that point is like 10 X, right? You move another one percent, it's like another 10 X. So, you know, when you're at 30% and then you, you know, you jump to like 50 or 60% 'cause you do something like that, it's such a game changer in your life as well. Yeah, it was amazing, I highly recommend it. I could send you the contact of the therapist that I went through to, I would highly recommend her. She was really, really good. She's really like, she got the scientific side dialed down, dialed in, but I would say she's also very intuitive and can, you know, yeah. And I would, it's so like our, the physicality of this, you know, of our humanness is not one dimensional. Like it's not like you have tendonitis, therefore you must have been doing something, you know, biomechanically wrong with that, you know, with that finger, with that whole arm, whatever it was. And I think, I feel like there's a shift, Nathan, don't you? Like I feel like there's more people now that are starting to connect the dots. Like five or 10 years ago, it felt like we were such a little minority that we're kind of like maybe a little bit loopy. You know, when you would hear someone say seven generations back and seven generations forward. And I had that experience, I had my first plant medics and experience before Christmas. And that in the integration piece of my experience, the shaman that was leading me through the, you know, through my three days actually helped me understand that. And so the physicality of our, fill in the blank, whatever it is, chronic headaches, low back pain, knee pain, it's not related. I just wanted this like a public service announcement. It's not, you don't have arthritis because your dad had arthritis and your grandma had arthritis. Like, you know, we know that genetically what, is it less than 10% of illness is actually genetically determined? Guess what that means? 90% is not. And that's where this whole concept of, you know, yes, there's metabolic health and terrain and the physicality of it. And there are these beautiful aspects of who we are, the emotionality and the, you know, the energetics and the frequency. And, you know, I just love this platform. You've created Nathan because we can have conversations about all these pieces and not have to think, okay, well, I can't talk about that on this podcast. I gotta save that for a different one. So kudos to you for creating, you know, the safe, just curious space that you have. - Yeah, thank you. Now let's go deep into that. 'Cause, you know, have you read autobiography of a yogi? - No. - Okay. - I need to. Well, you know, do you know about Paramahansa Yogananda? - See, no, tell me. - Name sound familiar? Okay, so Yogananda came to the West early mid-1900s. Basically, he brought yoga here to the West, right? And then he opened the Self-Realization Fellowship. And if you've ever been to, you might, I don't know if you have, anybody's ever been to Encinitas, California and goes to the meditation gardens, overlooking the Bluffs there at the Self-Realization Fellowship. That's one of the places that he started. And, you know, he trained in Kriya Yoga and, you know, what the Rishis in India, the master teachers in India train in, which is basically how to become enlightened beings. Very similar to, you know, Buddhist teachings, but slight differences and nuances, different than Hinduism as it's become today. This is more like the deeper esoteric teachings from the Vedas, from the Bhagavad Gita, like taking the messages and trainings and teachings to become, you know, an enlightened being. And enlightenment, meaning, you know, you don't see any mistaken appearances. You have no, you know, judgments, doubts, worries, fears, angers, resentments. You don't sin, and Christians would believe, many Christians would believe, well, you can't not sin, but actually there are many people who have claimed many who know people who they would say, yes, this person was, became an enlightened being. They could do all of these incredible, superhuman abilities and were the most loving, kind, compassionate people you could ever meet in your life, who did get to a place of no sin, of basically enlightenment, of, you know, having the ability to, he shares a story of one of the Rishis, one of the yogic, you know, masters, where the police officer was telling Yogananda that when he ran after this guy, who he thought was a thief that was getting away from him, that he, you know, ended up cutting the guy's arm off, and then he realized, oh my gosh, this was like a yogic master and he felt so terrible, shame, right, talking about shame again. And then the yogi said, you know, don't worry about it, let it go, I'll reattach this by this evening, and, you know, forgive yourself. And literally when the police officer went to go check on him, later that evening or the next day, within three days, basically, he had reattached his own arm and regrew it with zero scars, right? Like stories like this that some people were believed too crazy to believe, to be true, but I believed them. And Yogananda had many followers here in the West, you know, through the mid 1900s, who saw some of the miracles that he did, and, you know, similar to what you would say Jesus did, and there are many yogis today who have done very similar miracles, and people claim that they've seen them do those kinds of miracles, heal people instantaneously from disease, right, with their mind, with their hands, regrow limbs, do all, you know, trans-apperate. So he put in their body, literally, Yogananda's telling a story of one of his teachers where he's sitting there, and he goes into meditation, deep meditation, and he just felt Yogananda felt like, even though I could see him, he was no longer there in front of him. And he went, actually, operated another body, if you will, to go find a man that needed to meet Yogananda, brought him back to his kind of apartment where he was staying, and then disappeared back into, and Yogananda was there for 30 minutes, never saw the guy leave, and the guy came, and he said, oh, yeah, this teacher told me to come here, I need to meet you right now, and then he kind of ran off. And Yogananda was like, why are you talking about? Like, he's been here in front of me the whole time, because I'm not lying to you. He was even wearing those sandals right there. He guided me here, how would I know to come meet you, right? And they're like tripping out, because the guy never left in front of him. All these kinds of stories that Yogananda shares of these enlightened beings with all these incredible powers that he learned from over the years, and went to the Himalayas to learn from these master Yogan teachers. And so anyway, autobiography of a yogi, I read it, I don't know how many years ago, but I'm listening to it again now on tape, and I'm actually diving into more of his teachings, 'cause he's written a bunch of books on manifestation and self-healing and affirmations. The yoga of Jesus, which is really interesting, how he connects the yogic traditions and teachings to the teachings of Jesus and the Bible. And it's so profound. So I'm like diving more into that work, 'cause I'm diving more into the actual Buddhist practices of enlightenment. There's a cool book called Modern Buddhism that actually guides you through like what Buddha taught his followers, how to become enlightened, and kind of a step-by-step approach. So anyway, autobiography of a yogi, if you haven't read it yet, I highly, highly recommend it. Yeah. I'll add to my summary English. Yeah, that's a good one. But point being is that what he taught people is and what he experienced himself and what he helped others with and what he learned from his teachers was you can heal anything with the power of your mind, with the power of God, with connecting to the power of God and bringing that force into you and through the direction of your mind and the power of God coming through to you, you can heal anything. And then you tell your story. Just by breathing, you basically healed yourself of all these issues, which was like the power of your mind connected with the wisdom of God, guiding you through like the breath, like even in the Bible, right, talks about the breath of, in the beginning was the word and the word was God. Well, where does the word come from? Well, the word comes from the mind, thinking, the brain, but the word also comes from our breathing, it comes from our lungs, you know, and breath is like, breath is essential to life. So anyway, we could dive deep down at rabbit hole, but very interesting stuff. - Yeah. - Yeah. All right, where do you wanna go next? - Well, where do you wanna go? I mean, we can, well, let's just, let's just just touch on breath. One more, let's just loop back one more time. Did you know that the transverse abdominis, which is like the deepest set of abdominals, really is what the diaphragm triggers in a way or connects into when we're breathing. And so I'm just trying to pull together, like we, you know, we chatted about pelvic floor, we chatted about breath, we've chatted about, you know, shame, and we've chatted about this concept that, you know, a physical ailment is not just that's not just the silo. There's all these other aspects to it. And so even the SOAS work that we did, you know, sometimes when you go for a massage or you lay on your, you know, your fascia tools, whatever it is, think about or feel into those emotions, right? Like sometimes you can get very angry or all of a sudden there'll be tears, you know, dripping down your face. Like that is, that is, you know, proof that there is an emotionality to our muscles. And so when we become metabolically unhealthy and, you know, movement is not something that we speak but it's something we have to do or, you know, dammit, look, I had to park so far away from the front, you know, from the front door of the grocery store. Now I have to walk with my bags and the power of the mind and how, you know, how do we shift the, this is happening, you know, to me versus this is happening for me and when you talked about the connection with the breath to God, that was exactly where I was because I was for many years asking God, like, why me? Why? Why is this happening to me versus the shift in my frequency once I understood that, you know, the breath of life was actually missing from me. And because we're so good at, I think, pretending and trying to do right by others and show up as who they think you should be, we kind of lose ourselves in that, right? And that's what I was, I felt like I was a bit of an actress, right? When it was time to go into my workplace or time to interact, it was paced on the smile and away we go. And so the authenticity of who we are, even though it's like gross and it can be messy and it can be uncomfortable, like the beautiful authenticity that is us is, you know, it's like that seven layer Mexican dip, right? You got to work through, you know, the refried beans and the cheese and the guacamole, you know, to get down to the bottom, to the rice. And that's what I, that's what I lived. And I'm sure many of your audience members are somewhere in those seven layers wondering which way is up. And I think the proper-- And the beans, are you in the onion? Are you in the tomatoes where you're at? Exactly, where are you? Are you in the cilantro? Yeah, exactly. You're in the cheese? Yeah. So this is the passage I was thinking about from the Bible is Genesis 2, 7, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. The breath of life, right? Like, that is so powerful to think about because as modern science, as ancient yogis and ancient, you know, TCM and ancient chigon practitioners have known and have used breath for health and healing and spiritual evolution for literally thousands of years, modern science is catching up and realizing just how the power of breath really is essential at healing our bodies. And yet, if we go to the Bible, it's right there as well, right? It's like, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. The breath of life, you know, so learning to use our breath and now breath works become really popular and really famous. It's kind of bio-hacking and things like that because there are a lot of ways that we can, you know, and people don't give credit to where breath work came from. It came from yoga. You know, yoga is not modern yoga that we know today, which is mostly an exercise class, is nothing like, you know, the yoga that has been taught for thousands of years, which the yoga has been taught for thousands of years is actually more of a spiritual practice, a deep meditation practice, a practice of healing yourself, becoming enlightened, being and being closer to God. You know, the physical side of it just came out of a way to keep the body healthy, right? So today you get like, you go to yoga class, you get like 5% spiritual, you know, 95% physical exercise, which is good for you. I can't, I mean, yoga is great, right? But if you go to Kriya Yoga or you go to Raja Yoga or these other yoga practices and traditions, the breath work, the meditation, the spiritual practice, the, you know, connection to God, that's at the essence of what yoga really is and it's transformational. And there really are so many similarities between the teachings in the original yogic traditions and what Jesus said and what the Bible says. It's very, very fascinating. - Well, and you know, yoga is, I mean, thousands of years old, Pilates is like 200 years old, but Joseph Pilates kind of leaned in to a lot of the yogic concepts, right? And so in his book, Return to Life, one of my favorite quotes from him is breath is the first and the last act of life and somewhere in the middle, it becomes dismissive, right? Like we don't think about it, like think about breath. When do you pay most attention to it? Maybe when you are meeting your newly born child for the first time and you're just waiting for that first, you know, gasp and scream or maybe when you're sitting with someone at the end of their life and there's a breath and then there's an absence of breath and then there's a breath and then there's an absence of breath. We totally take it for granted, right? In between those moments where you're just, you know, think of even the saying, waiting on baited breath. Like you're just, right? Like there's, we have even pieces of our language that bring the importance of breath into it. And so why, you know, why do we, is it, I know it's just, it's an unconscious thing that happens to keep us living. But we're not human living, we're human beings. So what if we took the concept of breath in, you know, sometimes it's minutes a day and, you know, connected to it? Because one of the things I tell my clients all the time is in those moments where you feel those tornadoes of life are spinning around you and you feel like you are completely out of your control, right? You get a call from your kid, you, you know, you're having conversations with your spouse, whatever it is, something at work. The one thing we can rely on is that, you know, the feeling when you close your eyes and breathe in through your nose and feel that cool air hit the back of your throat, being in that moment and then feeling on the exhale, the warm air leaving your body. Like that is, that is a spiritual moment. I feel. - Yeah, it really is. And it's self-control, it's self-regulation. It's, you know, taking control of our nervous system. It's using, you know, the spiritual force that's within all of us to really direct our own healing. It's so simple, but so powerful. So as we kind of wrap up here, I mean, you've got a lot of cool stuff going on. You know, maybe talk a little bit about some of the new things you're doing and then also, you know, how people can get in touch with you, what's your website. - Yeah. - Yeah, just share a little bit more about that. That'd be awesome. - Sure. So, I mean, the couch ball is, and the couch ball for men, so it's co-branded. It is a product that I created. I feel out of a moment where I drew my line in the sand. When I learned about Dr. Crawford's research that 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction is fitness related, not medical related. That was, so yeah, even if you hit to, yeah, their Nathan or BloomBetter.life on my new website, you can find the couch ball there. But here's the deal, gang, is that when any muscle is void of blood flow, - BloomBetter.life. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's my, so my, for whatever reason, my Wi-Fi, if there's like a redirect, my Wi-Fi, for some reason, like restricts it. I can't go to any redirect URL. - Then go to couchball.com. - couchball.com. - Yep. - Now it's trying to redirect to BloomBetter.life. So if I go to BloomBetter, yeah, that's weird. Yeah, this happens on my own websites, but this doesn't happen to anybody else. So anyway, so the website, BloomBetter.life. - BloomBetter.life, and there you'll find the couchball. So here's the simplicity of the couchball. As a Pilates instructor that had an integrated health therapies clinic with pelvic floor physical therapy, what I wanted to do when I worked, learned from Dr. Crawford was that when the pelvic floor does not have a healthy environment, meaning there is a lack of oxygen rich, nutrient rich blood flow to that area. Those muscles are not gonna be healthy, they're not gonna be able to be functional. And so when you go for pelvic floor physical therapy, which men and women can both go, women, it's a vaginal experience, men, it's an anal experience. There's only one way in, right? And so what I wanted to do was create something that I could use in my classes that would create an experience through simple diaphragmatic breathing and good seated posture that you could sit on the ball, almost like a foam roller for the pelvic floor. That's essentially what it was. I tried to find it on the market and I couldn't find something because by then I was very dialed into my nervous system. So everything I tried on the market, either jacked up my sympathetic nervous system or there was like no really big impact, right? So I went out and there were days when I was calling like spalding and Wilson, like all these well-known sporting goods manufacturers, I got laughed off the phone, I got hung up on, they're like, you wanna create a ball to do what? So I found a manufacturer, created the couch ball. The cool thing about the couch ball is the system that comes with it. So the training videos take you through how in fact to fill your ball, how to sit on your ball, how to breathe on your ball because breathing is key, right? Breathing is our communication between our body and our brain. And when there's an absence of breath or when it's erratic, your nervous system is going to trigger sympathetic, right? It's just, it's what it does. That's what it can't even get mad at it 'cause that's what its job is, right? So I created the couch and gooch ball to start to shift the pelvic floor conversation because once I learned that the pudendal nerve meant an area of a shamelessness, it made so much sense to me why we don't talk about it or why we would rather just go to the grocery store and buy the pads and wear the pads than actually have the conversation. So I've been a champion for pelvic floor fitness from a movement Pilates perspective for many, many years. And as I've evolved, I've now sold my clinic in my studio, moved my family from Canada to Mexico, wanted to be like, we've had really deep roots here, wanted to spread our wings and kind of strengthen that part of our lives. I started to just realize that if I could create another product that would work in conjunction with the couch ball because the couch ball was missing that real deep, special work in the feet, along the jaw, through the glutes, the piriformis. So the squish ball was born. And as things happen, you know, how one idea kind of leads to another, almost like Hansel and Gretel with like the breadcrumbs. Then my paths crossed with Dr. Naisha Winters. I don't know if you know Naisha Nathan, but she's like my neighbor in Mexico. She lives like 20 minutes down the coast from me, got to know her, spent some time with her, really dove into her world. She's a naturopathic oncologist at 19 years old, had stage four ovarian cancer and has spent her life, you know, her professional life just really diving into and positioning this idea of metabolic health and terrain. Instead of treating, you know, instead of treating the cancer, let's treat the environment, the cancer is in, and then let's see what happens, right? And so I started reading and learning from her and I thought, "Hey, wait a minute." This concept of terrain is exactly what I do with the couch ball. We use it for pelvic floor health, but we use it for gut health, working through the ascending transverse and descending colon. I work on low back pain and glute tightness. So someone with sciatic pain can start to take control over it. Using the scooch ball for plantar fasciitis or for Achilles tendinitis, right? I've helped people, you know, with ear issues, just releasing tension through their TMJ. And I was like, "Hey, wait." All this stuff that I'm doing is actually metabolic health. It's not just pelvic floor, it's not just fascia. And so this concept of terrain fitness is something brand new that is part of my launch of my Bloombetter brand, literally like a month ago, 29 days ago, is a part of. So the couch ball and the system of pelvic floor health with the scooch ball and terrain fitness really helps me connect with people and just reframe what fitness is. It doesn't matter if you are, you know, a CrossFit athlete or a marathon runner or a yogi or you're a Pilates enthusiast or you love doing, you know, a dance class. We all still need a lymph system that serves us, good circulation, fascia that's not restricting blood flow. And so that's what these two tools and this new concept of terrain fitness are really about. And then I had the good fortune, you know, they say when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I got connected with a gentleman named Sean Wells who was known very, you know, very well in the supplement world. When I learned that 80% of supplements out there are truly not meeting label claims. My blood kind of started boiling kind of like it did when I learned the whole truth about pelvic floor health. And I was like, that's not right. That's just not right because you and I and millions of other people are buying. I mean, maybe not you and I are going to Costco to buy our but many millions of people are going to Costco in the drugstore to buy their supplements and it just isn't right. And so working with Sean, I came up with a custom formulation that really is all about blood sugar management through dihydroberberine. We're using tetrahydrocurcumin for inflammatory support and bloating. We're using white chaste tree berry for hormone support and we're using L ergo thionine, which is a great antioxidant for mitochondrial health. And so I feel like, you know, once I had my third baby, I was like, okay, our family is complete with this new brand and being able to pull in the metabolic health through fitness and movement using the couch ball and the scooch ball with, you know, high quality supplements. Once we do have that beautiful garden that's ready to flourish, I feel like my message and how I'm showing up in the world is exactly where I'm supposed to be right now. So bloombetter.life is where you can go to check out what I'm up to or jana.danielson on Instagram tiktok. - Beautiful. On that, on the 80% of, you said 80%, you found out 8% of label supplements. - Supplements, yeah. - Claims on labels were not accurate. Like where did you get that statistic from? Do you know? - So yes, I do. I was listening to a podcast that Sean was on with a gentleman named. Um, let me find it. Let me see if I can quickly find it. They bought a whole bunch of, he was talking on this podcast, they bought a whole bunch of brands off of Amazon and sent them for third party testing and only 80, only 20% came back meeting label claims. They're like a supplement watchdog group. Do you know what they're? - Was it Mike Adams group? What is the great call? - I mean, I know he tests a lot of supplements for heavy metals and things like that. Let's see. - It's in my lab. It is. - His thing's called the health ranger, but I don't know what his lab is called. Clean label project, let's see. - No, let me look. Let me keep looking. Wow. - Yeah, I'm curious where the client, I found, I found, I mean, 'cause I never heard that percentage before. So I found this article, but it sounds like it's different, was like, where the New York Attorney General in 2015, they were testing some specific herbal supplements in Walmart Target, GNC and Walgreens. And they found that same percentage. They said almost 80% of the pills officials tested did not contain the key plant ingredients listed on the label and included fillers like rice and beans and additional ingredients such as wheat mustard or radish. So they had more of these filler ingredients, but some of the, not some of the plants that were actually listed on the label. And that's it like, this was the actual, they sent cease and desist letters. These were their store brand. They told them to stop selling some of their store brand herbal supplements. So that was, they included ginseng, St. John's Wort Echinacea, Ginkgo, Belova. These were like the GNC brand. That's what it sounds like, you know, in some of the store brands from Walmart Target, GNC, Walgreens, which is pretty crazy. This is the first time I've seen this. Now, does this mean all supplements have 80% that are not, no, of course not. This was specific herbal supplements that they tested, you know, at these stores back in 2015. But that's why I'm curious about the 80% that you reference, 'cause that's interesting to know. It's one of the reasons I created plant-powered protein, which we were talking about offline. The new supplement through my company, Plant-Powered Athlete, right, is because I saw such a need in the protein space. I mean, so many proteins that are out there today are just filled, honestly, like, are filled with stuff that I would never wanna put in my body. Just put it that way. I mean, ingredients that have studies behind them that are toxic, that cause cell damage, they disrupt the gut. And, you know, those are things that's like, why do you have to damage your health just to get the protein that your body needs? So I wanted to, you know, reluctantly go into the protein space and create a protein, reluctantly, 'cause like, it's something I've been wanting to do and work with athletes for a couple of years, but have just reluctantly gone into that space and done it. One, I've never created a supplement before, but two, I, you know, have been so focused on education with helping people with cancer and chronic disease for so long. I'm like entering into the, even though I'm an athlete and I love what I do, it's like entering into that space was just kind of like, well, maybe, you know, am I the right person to do it? And all that, even though I had this passion for it. And so I dove in and finally did it, and I'm glad I did. I'm so happy and proud of this protein powder because it is clean, it's organic, it's not filled with pesticides, herbicides and chemicals and tons of processed sugar and fillers and additives and stuff that so many of these products have nowadays. They get, they often get such cheap bulk ingredients, fill it with a bunch of stuff that, honestly, I don't think your body needs. And then they make a ton of profit off of it. Like, our ingredients are expensive, our profit is low, but we wanted to create something that was really effective that actually had scientific studies behind the ingredients to enhance energy, to enhance recovery, to enhance athletic performance, and not with all the other potentially damaging ingredients that are in a lot of these products today. So, super proud of what we created. And I know that's what you went to town on creating your supplements as well, is creating something that you could be proud of that actually have, you know, like the adaptogens in our protein. We actually have the quantities of milligrams that are in them that show in the studies where they got the benefits from them, versus like just putting them in there to throw on the label like a lot of these companies do. They'll just throw like 30 or 50 ingredients in there. But yeah, we got all this good stuff in here. And if you actually looked at the milligrams and you knew what they were, 'cause you take the total amount and then try and divide it by how many of those ingredients are actually in there, you're like, this is worthless. Why would you even put, you know, 25 milligrams of something in your body that, you know, the benefits don't even have it even shown in studies to start until it's at 200 milligrams, for example. So that's why, you know, that's why I formulated this with all that in mind. And I know talking with you offline, that's why you worked with someone to help you formulate your products as well. - Totally. And I just have to, I mean, I did say this before we hit record that Nathan so graciously sent me a bag of his protein and it is like, it passes the Janet Danielson test. So thank you for that. I am a big fan. You did a good job. - That's awesome. Thank you for that. What do you like about it so far? - So what I love is how, first of all, how well it blends. Like for me, I have a palette that is like, if something doesn't feel good in my mouth, it doesn't matter how good it tastes. It's like, I'm out. So I am, like I said before, I blended it with some just unsweetened coconut milk. - Hey, I put two scoops. Should I put two scoops? - Yeah, two scoops is a serving size that's 26 grams of protein. That's five sources of plant-based protein, specifically that create the two one one, kind of ideal branched chain amino acid profile. Which just means like, that's the most study. That's the most research we have on branched chain amino acids in their proportions that have shown to actually help muscle protein synthesis, muscle recovery, muscle strength, all of that. So two scoops is the correct serving, so you did it right. - So yeah, I mean, for me it was the texture, how it blended with my avocado and my arugula, and I put some vanilla in there with some ice cubes. And then it just tastes really good. Like there's nothing worse than being like, I'm gonna plug my nose and chug this because I know that this is good for me. Like this was very tasty. - That's awesome, I love to hear that. Thank you for sharing that. Did you find that 80% where that came from? - No, but you know what, can I send it to you and we'll put it in the show notes? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it, no, it's 'cause I'm curious too. I wanna actually see it and review it and research it 'cause that's really, that's crazy, if that's true. I mean, that's insane, right? That up to 80% of the products tested that they bought from Amazon, are these all different kinds of supplements? - Are not needing label claims. - Are not needing label claims, like, and they were just all different kinds of supplements from different companies. - Yeah. - Wow, that's wild. - And I mean, Amazon has become a trusted source, right? And plus it's just so damn easy to place an order in the next day, it's on your doorstep, right? So, and not all of us do our due diligence, right? Or we see, you know, we might see it on our Instagram feed and just trust. So, like you with your protein, you know, going that extra mile so that if someone, once they do become, you know, the brands become a trusted, trusted brand, people can sleep well at night knowing that they're putting good stuff in their body. - Exactly. So, your website, people can get your supplements, your kooch ball, kooch ball, kooch ball, all the balls, all the blue balls, all the blue balls, by the way. - All the blue balls, the blue ball, free blue balls. That's how sometimes I've had a few of mine. - Oh, there you go. - I had one of my, one of my, yeah. One of my guy clients was like, okay, this might be too much information, but I just gotta tell you, he's like, I wake up as the 16 year old version of myself every morning now and I just, he's like, my wife just loves it. So, it is, do you know what it, like, it's just so simple. And that's how I wanna make my mark in this world. It's just helping people live their days to their absolute most joyful potential. - That's beautiful. Well, you're doing it, you're doing it. So, thank you for what you do. And love this conversation with you. It was a lot of fun and enlightening. And I think everybody tuning in still this far, maybe a little bit more, and you know, all of us a little more percent enlightened in our lives. So, that's always a good thing. So, bloombetter.life is your website, bloombetter.life, there you go. Head over there, folks, check it out. - Janet, thanks so much. Yeah, great chat. - Thank you. - Appreciate you coming on the podcast. - Sounds good, bye-bye. - Thank you for listening to the Nathan Crane podcast. Please make sure to subscribe and share this on social media. Then, head over to nathancrain.com for your free ebook. - So, when we're talking about, you know, what are these underlying cause and conditions of these chronic diseases? Cancer, diabetes, heart disease. They all have very similar, if not, identical causes. And that's the thing, is when we get to the root cause of these diseases, we can not only prevent these diseases from ever happening, but empower our bodies to heal from them. - In every one of our cells, we have tens in hundreds of thousands of chemical reactions that are happening every second that are cycling back and forth. And it's like sort of a yin and yang. - And, you know, for me, the soul's purpose is evolution. It doesn't care about comfort, it cares about evolution. And so I think so long as we are following our soul, then we will evolve. And I think what sometimes blocks us from living our purpose, from manifesting that next level of our expression, is we have not evolved. There is also a time for letting go all the expectations and relax, and just breathe and be grateful for what you have achieved. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)