Rethinking Mobility and Stretching
In this episode of the Unreal Results podcast, I am taking a clip all the way back from season 1 episode 12, Rest Postures vs. Mobility vs. Stretching. In this specific episode, I highlight insights from Philip Beach’s work that emphasizes floor-based rest postures along with sensory input can improve overall function and mobility. I also talk about the value of making rest postures feel genuinely restful through the use of props, thus facilitating increased mobility without the discomfort often associated with traditional stretching. I hope as fellow healthcare practitioners, you’re encouraged to consider how safety and sensory input play a crucial role in effective movement therapy and rehab.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Episode 12: Rest Posture vs. Mobility vs. Stretching
Philip Beach's Book, 'Muscles and Meridians'
Blog Post: Rest Postures
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Anna Hartman: Hey there, and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman, and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone, even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs and the nervous system on movement, pain, and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole body assessment and treatment really looks like.
I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.
Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Unreal Results podcast. So, uh, just a reminder that the podcast for the summertime, so about a month and a half between the beginning of July and the middle of August 2024, We're going to be doing some, um, reruns, but not whole episodes, just clips of some of my favorite things that I've covered in the last 66 episodes.
I'm going to be focusing on more of the episodes that haven't got as many downloads as others. Um, just thinking that, you know, Not sure why you missed it, whether it was timing of the year, or the title, or whatever. Um, want to make sure you get the information, and then also I know that when you, when it comes to learning stuff, whenever you can hear it repeated again, it's going to have a better opportunity to sort of be absorbed and stick.
And then also, um, my experience and a lot of the mentorship alumni. Experience is when you re listen, re watch material, go back to it in a, you know, in another year, in another time, sometimes you hear and catch different things because often what we pick up in a class or what we pick up in a lecture is what we need to hear in that moment.
And you are a completely different person now than you used to be, um, a completely different practitioner, especially if you. been listening for a while and implementing some of these practical tips of utilizing a more true whole body approach, uh, that considers the viscera and the nervous system in your, uh, assessment and treatment plan.
So, um, Maybe it is exactly what you've already heard, but you're going to hear it in a different way and pick up different gems and different information from it. So I hope you enjoy it. I'm curating this specifically for you. And, uh, thanks for being here. Enjoy this episode.
This episode is from the Season 1, Episode 12 called Rest Postures Versus Stretching Versus Mobility. It is a game changer when you can consider how you can modify the intention of stretching or mobility exercises to actually tap into your rest, um, rest like biology and really maximize
your gains in range of motion and also the ability to shift your nervous system into a more rest state that's going to support recovery restoration and overall general health. So I hope you enjoy this clip and be sure to check the show notes for a link to the whole episode if you want to dive in more.
That's actually the difference between, a rest posture, a seated rest posture, or even a lying down rest posture. And, Stretching there is a, a, a very distinct difference.
And it's a little bit about the intention of what you're doing. Just talking about this reminds me of, um, about eight years ago, I took a course with Philip Beach. He's the author of, the book Muscles and Meridians, the Manipulation of Shape. It's one that I talk about often. It's a great book.
Even more great than the book is actually learning from Philip in person. , he is an amazing human, so smart, created this, um, movement model based on blending. Chinese meridians, evolutionary vertebrate biology and embryology. And the model he came up with is so thorough and so amazing, but what came out of his model was this emphasis on sensory input is the driver, but also
a pattern emerged in his studies that floor based seated and laying positions among every vertebrate is how the body knows it's resting. And this concept of when you're sitting on the floor or laying on the. That it should be actually restful, that if you are sitting out on the floor and it's uncomfortable, if it's painful, then your body's never actually registering that it's rest.
So because we're so deconditioned, from sitting in furniture and, um, not really ever accessing the floor very much in our life, we sometimes in order to go back to a floor based experience, we need to use props and to basically meet the body where it's at, bring the floor to the body, and this.
Concept also makes sense as I was learning visceral manipulation and the osteopathic types of manual therapies because there was this, um, paradigm shift of going from sort of traditional western medicine things of like forcing things to. Not using force, meeting the body where it is, in going into the positions of ease, into the direction of ease, and then noticing how the body, once it is met in that direction of ease, feels a little safer, and then can open up into new ranges of motion.
And then that also mimics this understanding of like the importance of our nervous system being wired for survial. The relationship between this fight or flight response of this sympathetic response, which is our primitive being this survival instinct, and then our rest, digest, recovery; parasympathetic nervous system, which is our newer nervous system, but the nervous system that is responsible for the self-healing capacities and the, um, feeling safe.
Right? So this dichotomy between, um, feeling safe or not is a, is another way to think about forcing things or not, right? Because usually when you're forcing something, force is met with more force. Force is a threat, most of the time. And so, um, this is the importance of rest postures too, is that they actually feel safe and not threatening.
And a not threatening rest posture then means maybe it shouldn't feel like a stretch because oftentimes when we're seeking out a stretch sensation, it's not actually, um, comfortable and it's not actually. Even stretching the thing that's tight and lacking mobility. So, anyways, so back when I learned from Philip eight years ago, he's an osteopath from New Zealand, so he doesn't come to the United States very often, and I feel so lucky to have met him when I did.
And, um, I, I went to his course and I learned this work and I was like, oh my gosh, this is the missing piece. This is the missing piece to all, like the functional. Screen and like emphasis on like, um, not just the functional movement screen, but also like the developmental patterns, right? The dynamic neuromuscular stability, dns, the, um, applied, um, Developmental kinesiology type of things that were like going back to sort of looking at the way babies developed in their movement patterns and revisiting some of those primitive, movement patterns to facilitate a better, connection into our core and more efficient movement patterns.
And the missing piece of all of that work was. Even more regressed stage of just the ability to be on the floor and rest. And so when I learned his work, I was like, this is a huge missing piece in the industry and I wanna share it with the world. So I started sharing with it and I started, that's when I started seeing how it integrated with so many other components that I was learning at the time.
But then things that I learned before. And, um, the other thing that emerged out of his work was this importance of the sensory organs getting more sensory information, specifically the feet, getting your feet out of shoes and socks, giving them a life as he says. And he is who I learned about the rock mats through.
And then I started sharing about the rock mats, um, right after that I met, I went home like the first day of the course, and I made my own. And it, it was like totally a huge change in how I felt in my body, just introducing that sensory work. But anyways, the whole, this whole story is to tell you that, um, After I learned his work, I was like, oh my gosh, this makes so much sense.
I was talking to an orthopedic surgeon friend of mine and who is like my, you know, supervising physician as as an athletic trainer. And I said, oh, hey Shafe, like this stuff is like so profound and it's helped me with my back so much. And it's like, so cool. And he's like, okay, what is it? And I was like, well, it.
Adding in the sensory information with rock mats to my feet and then sitting on the ground, in these rest positions. And, then also, strengthening from the ground up. Like the value of sitting on the floor in these rest positions is you get to stand up from the ground, which is a built-in exercise.
And he looked at me. He's kind of one of those people that is just like no bullshit sort of guy. And we, and when we were at like happy hour we were having a beer and he's like, what's so novel? Like, what's so new about it Anna? And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, you basically just told me that what's helped your back pain is, improving your sensory information or proprioception, um, and stretching and strengthening your muscles.
And I was like, oh fuck man, when you put it that way, like yeah, it is, it is pretty basic. But again, like the intention with all of it is completely different than just stretching and improving my mobility and, working on proprioception and strengthen. My muscles, right? He's right. Those are all the things that we know, like tried and true methods for pretty much like any ache or pain in our body, right?
But the intention behind it really matters because the intention goes back to this fundamental understanding of how the nervous system works. And also whether we can even trust a sensation, like a feeling of a stretch. And if seeking a stretch sensation is really actually changing our mobility because they are not all the same.
So resting versus stretching versus mobility work. They are not all created equal and they're very different. They might look the same from the outside when you see somebody doing them. The intention behind how you implement them when you implement. And why you implement them are very different. So that's really what I want to talk about.
And I, and I already obviously am telling you a story about meeting Philip Beach and going through his program. I already sort of told you, but the fundamental most important thing about the rest postures is meeting the body where it's at. So the nervous system feels safe and in that moment, In those moments when the nervous system feels safe, it grants you more mobility because it takes you out of this protective pattern of protecting our ventral body, which is the front side of our body, right?
Going into that, almost like that startle reflex. And, um, because of that, when we. Then sitting, sitting in these rest postures while feeling safe, we've met the body where it's at, with props, with pillows, with towel rolls, whatever it is. Then we are actually, , able to progressively work on our mobility of our joints, specifically when we're working on our rest postures, our seated postures on the ground.
We're working a lot of ankle, knee, and hip mobility. And then there's some laying postures that would work on shoulder, and upper body mobility. But, but I'd say the majority of us always, like if we're thinking about improving our mobility, most of us are thinking about improving the mobility of our hips and our ankles and our knees, and then realizing too that when we can improve our.
Mobility in our lower extremity, and I include hips as like pelvis, lumbopelvic area. When we can change the orientation to our pelvis over our legs, the rest of our spine kind of comes along with it and even our thoracic spine ends up being less stiff and we end up like having more rotation available in that kind of thing too.
So, the intention though needs to. It feel like nothing, and this is how it's different than stretching, because I would say that if you're doing a stretch, whether it's seated on the floor or standing, whatever you are seeking or searching for a stretch sensation and a stretch sensation, Whether it feels good or not actually is not a message of safety to the brain or not, because oftentimes what provides this stretch sensation to us is actually an overstretching of nerves or neurovascular vessels. And that actually is seen as a threat to our nervous system because nerves hate to be compressed and they hate to be over elongated. And so that stretch sensation, even though we think sometimes that it feels good, that is not a message of safety to your body. And so that's often why too, why we sit in a stretch and like we don't really feel like it does anything.
It feels good, but it doesn't change our actual mobility.