The Colon Connection
This week on the Unreal Results podcast, I talk about the often-overlooked impact of the colon on overall health and performance. In this episode, I dive real deep into the anatomy and physiology of the colon highlighting its intricate connections to the nervous system and beyond. You’ll hear how the colon can cause symptoms such as back pain, sciatica, and even foot pain. I also provide ways for the healthcare and movement provider to assess issues in the colon as well as provide specific treatments such as various breathing and stretching exercises.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Episode 0: Why Being Able To Guarantee Results is a Key to Feeling Fulfilled in Your Work as a Sports Healthcare Professional
Episode 1: My Mom's Cancer Diagnosis Changed My Whole Approach to Sports Healthcare
Episode 42: The Fundamental Attribution Error and Why You May Be The Problem, Not The Client
Episode 45: The Kidneys - Visceral Connections To Movement
Episode 48: Small Intestine and Mesenteric Roots
Instagram Post: Embodiment of the Left Kidney
Instagram Post: How To Mobilize The Colon
Instagram Post: DaVinci Rolling Pattern
Upcoming In-Person LTAP™ Courses
LTAP Level 1 in Boston, October 2024
Considering the viscera as a source of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction is a great way to ensure a more true whole body approach to care, however it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start, which is exactly why I created the Visceral Referral Cheat Sheet. This FREE download will help you to learn the most common visceral referral patterns affecting the musculoskeletal system. Download it at www.unrealresultspod.com
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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! Welcome to another episode of the Unreal Results Podcast. Hopefully the fan behind me doesn't mess up the audio too bad. Usually with the noise reduction things on it, it's usually fine, but it's hot. It's still summery here in San Diego and um, today feels like it's gonna be a hot day.
It's only 12. 45 and my office is still, is already really warm. Usually it's not, it doesn't get super warm till like two. So I was like, shoot, I better film the, record the podcast before my office gets really uncomfortable. And, um, fun fact about audio. Audio always sounds better in a warm room. So, that's helpful, but also, Anna doesn't feel better in a warm room, so, it's a mix.
Anyways, so, update from last week, I did have a couple of you reach out about, um, what I shared about my own body and how I'm feeling, and, um, I appreciate you checking in. I appreciate your help. Um. So I just wanted to follow up on that too. I don't want to leave people hanging, but I did get my blood work redone last week and my thyroid hasn't really changed a ton since January, which is great news.
Um, and further like supports that like, yeah, I didn't think my medicine was like really doing that much. Um, but it'll be interesting to hear what my doctor says. I see her tomorrow. Uh, I did have some like low. MHC, MHPC, which is like basically like how well your blood, red blood cells are taking on the hemoglobin.
So maybe feeling that is why I'm tired. Like maybe feeling like a little anemic. Um, I will say, um, after realizing just like how tired I've been feeling, I've been doing better about taking, actually it was a thyroid support, um, supplement, supplement. Now it doesn't have thyroid in it. It's just like vitamins and minerals that support the thyroid and It contains vitamin b12.
So Since taking that I feel much better. I also I also Will say that I have consciously tried to stop wearing my Birkenstocks all the time and my feet feel much better Too and I really hate that. I really hate that because I love I love Birkenstocks. I wear them, they're pretty much the only shoe I wear if I'm not going somewhere that I need to wear my sneakers.
And, um, perhaps I need to stop doing that so much. So, been going back to flip flops, which most people will be like, flip flops are the devil, but they're not. Um, I feel much better in flip flops. So, it may be because flip flops is just, you're quicker to take them off and go barefoot. I don't really know. I don't really know, but we're trying the things.
Um, also last week on one of my lifts, I was in the gym fucking around and I found out that maybe I shouldn't fuck around so much because I was doing a hanging high pull and I pulled my QL, I don't know, maybe, maybe I didn't pull it because it already feels a lot better. Maybe I just, like, did something that created a very intense QL spasm, but I was down for the count on Friday.
Really felt like I was going to die. I couldn't barely move. I basically, anytime my trunk was unsupported, I was in excruciating pain. But, um, shout out Fringe for the free, uh, CBD lotion that came with some of my purchases. That seemed to be the only thing that, um, calmed it down a little bit. And then by the next day, I was feeling much better.
And every day since then, I feel better. feel better. Um, but it was definitely my QL because I definitely felt it when I single leg balance on my opposite leg or, and, or reached across my body or went into extension. So, and then also just based on where I was feeling it. So that was an interesting few days.
Um, I still kind of feel a little bit, but for the most part, very normal participating in activities of daily living without any problems. So this is what happens when Anna has time on her hands. That's my update. So hopefully once I talk to the doctor tomorrow, I'll have a better update. But you know, as far as the conversation last week about like how hypothyroid can cause things like that, you know, Hillary, um, Granotte, one of the physical therapists that's gone through my program.
She's a physical therapist out in Washington DC. Shout out Hillary. She had reached out to me and was like, hey, yeah, those are hypothyroidic, but as a reminder, they're like perimenopause symptoms too, like so maybe get your sex hormones checked out and yes. I just want to like, remind people that those symptoms can be the symptoms of a lot of different things.
Not just hypothyroid. So, it can be perimenopause, it can be other diseases, it can, not that that's a disease, but you know what I mean. Like, it can be diseases, it can be Low vitamin B, it can be hypothyroid. There's a million things that could be. And my point in sharing it was to let you know, like, this is one of the questions I get with the participants in the LTAP and even like people listening to the podcast and stuff is often like, how do we know it's a red flag and how do we know when it is time to refer?
Right? Because. If you haven't listened to the story about my mom's lung cancer and how that sort of led me to learning all of this information, which I'll have Joe link that podcast episode because I did a whole podcast episode about how my mom's lung cancer influenced how I practice sports medicine now.
And um, so it's always a question that comes up and part of it, and this goes back to, I did another episode about this. Um, that I'll have Joe link in the show notes. And this is also why I'm so big at being able to guarantee results for your clients. Because when you have the confidence to guarantee results, it means that you have the confidence to know that you're doing the right things.
And that. When there is a musculoskeletal complaint, when you're doing the right things for it, and it's not getting better, instead of blaming the patient, or instead of thinking like, I'm not a very good practitioner, I want you to think like, of the differential diagnosis. Like, what could it be? One, is it just being influenced by the viscera and the nervous system?
That's the whole reason I created the LTAP. So we have an assessment that can like direct us to an organ. And so, especially if it's directing you an organ over and over and you're treating and you're not seeing the results that you know you should get, like, this is time to refer to a doctor for blood work.
So for me, Just knowing my health and being able to work with my body, like, I know, I was knowing that the soreness I was feeling, the fatigue, the, like, aches and pains, like, these were not normal musculoskeletal things for me. And. You know, believe me, like I tried some like musculoskeletal approaches. I tried some like visceral self visceral manipulation, mobilization techniques, and it didn't really shift it a lot.
And so instead of being like, Oh, it's just aging. I mean, cause that's an excuse people give a lot, or like, it's, I'm not being like diligent enough or doing the right things. It was like, no red flag, I need to get my blood work redone. And like, You know, recognize that these are red flags, you know, like worst case red flag scenario like fatigue Like the level of fatigue that i'm having that like won't go away.
That's like a big cancer um Red flag and not saying I have cancer, but I'm just saying that this is like when it's like yeah It doesn't fit and the confidence to know that it doesn't fit and it's time to refer back and also not just have to refer Back to the doctor, but be an advocate for your patient or make sure you're patient is being an advocate for themselves and asking for tests and acting, asking for their doctor, like to do the extra work and really figure things out and make changes for the better.
Like that's, that's why this confidence is important. And that's why I say it's like the confidence to guarantee your results, you know, in X amount of visits, because this should be a trigger for you to know that if you're not getting the results in that time, it's just doesn't mean there's anything. You know, doesn't mean it has to be anything, but it's a trigger for you to be like, did I do all the things, did I do my due diligence in differential diagnosis, in, you know, referring to a more specific visceral manipulation specialist, in, you know, getting blood work done, and like, starting the process.
It doesn't mean that you're not starting the process. biomechanical things and you're not still doing the work you're doing with the person, but it just means that you're, like, bringing in other things and always considering a more whole organism picture. So, that, um, that is the whole point of it. That was the whole point of me sharing my story, too, of being like, hmm.
I know how I take care of myself and my body and I know the activities I'm doing and I understand movement and I understand visceral stuff and you know granted I am doing a lot of self treatment type of things but also I'm like I know enough to know that there's something off with this and you know to go and talk to the doctor.
And then also though you saw me at the same time, what I do, I'm changing my footwear because one of the main things, like the biggest piece of soreness was not just soreness after my workouts and just general body aches, but it was like very extreme foot pain. And so I'm like, well, hanging fruit, change up my footwear and see if it changes things.
And so it's like, I'm doing the biomechanical musculoskeletal thing as well as All of the other stuff and so that's, you know, really truly approaching it as a whole organism type thing. So, um, that's what I want you to like, not lose sight of is like the more 30, 000 foot view of the stories I tell you is like, I don't know why I'm feeling like this.
You know, the other piece of information I'll give my doctor, which sort of leans to the anemic piece or something going on with my brain. Blood cells a little bit more is you know when I also lift and I might have shared this last week but when I lift like, um Granted I do lift heavy. I like I'm like I am linked that episode too.
I'm like big big heavy lifter Proponent to create stiffness because I tend towards hypermobility but um When I am lifting in my rest periods I get really hypermobility don't feel good. It takes a while for my heart to recover, like my heart rate to recover, my blood pressure to recover, to the point that most of the time, especially towards the end of the sets, um, I feel like I need to lay down flat during my rest periods in order to like, not feel nauseous or like I'm going to pass out.
And so to me, like, that's a little bit of a red flag too, because I'm not working out that hard. And I'm also not that out of shape. Like I am an active person. in life. And so it's like, that's not a normal response. And so something about my blood pressure increasing during the lift, which is totally normal and fine.
But when it comes back down, either it's like not coming back down enough or it's coming down too much, right? Like I'm having low blood pressure symptoms, which I have a history of and it's making me feel like I'm going to pass out. So something's definitely off, right? It's just more information of like, This is just all more information, and it's good to like, again, like, recognize when you're gaslighting yourself, or when you're gaslighting your patient, um, and like, having the confidence to be like, No, I'm not out of shape.
Like, something's wrong. No, I'm not doing things wrong. Like, I'm doing the right things, and they're not getting better, not because the patient's not being compliant, but because there's something else going on. So it should, it should open your curiosity, not close you off. So, I've talked about that, there's another episode I'll have Joe link to, it's called the Fundamental Attribution Error, um, and the tendency for us to blame our patients instead of like, take the responsibility for really taking a truly whole organism and team approach to figuring out what's going on.
So, enough of this soap, soap box. Um, let's get into this week's episode. So this week's episode I wanted to talk about the colon. Um, so I shared on my e to my email list and I shared on Instagram, um, last week I had filmed a new tutorial for a way to treat or affect the colon. the kidney and, um, see how basically embodying the kidney and giving the kidney a little bit of love through a visco elastic technique or gentle compression with our breath and movement and how it can support, um, just our dynamic alignment posture, like how we move our hip into flexion and extension, et cetera.
And when I was sort of doing the background research on this. And like thinking about how you could affect the kidneys through movement, which is also by the way, how you can affect the kidneys through manual therapy, is the colon has a very strong relationship to the kidneys. And so I wanted to talk about that too, because actually colon not only has a strong relationship with the kidneys, but it has a strong relationship to many other organs in the abdomen that are and the pelvis and really the thorax because of one how big the colon is and all of its attachments and understanding how its attachments go because um when you can appreciate the anatomy better so i did a whole instagram post on this yesterday when you can understand the anatomy better you start to see Why there can be so many more influences on the musculoskeletal system than we can, like, we really appreciate when we think about the anatomy that we know of the colon, right?
If I talk about the colon to anyone, pretty much everybody would be like, Oh yeah, I understand. It's sort of as like a frame around your abdomen, right? Like a frame of a picture. The, um, large intestine also called the colon or meso colon, um, is the. connection, the connecting tissue around it. Um, the colon, the large intestine starts on the right side, down by our pelvis goes up the side of our body and then across the transverse colon and then down the left side, the descending colon.
And then it sort of curves back up and around as it goes out in the rectum. Right? So everyone has that picture. And actually I just recently got an anatomy model. So this guy, um, I probably should give him a name. But, here's an anatomy model. And so this is sort of what we're talking about, right? Like, it starts on the right, goes up, across, down, and here.
And this anatomy model is like, you start to appreciate that there is actually a little bit of 3D ness to this. It's not so flat like we think of it as pictures, right? We can see how on the right side it goes from a little more anterior to posterior, and on the left side even more extremely, which I can appreciate, right?
And that's important because the trans, or sorry, the ascending and descending parts of the colon, which is the long parts on the side, they're actually retroperitoneal, right? So they're behind the peritoneum, um, which the other organs are in the retro peritoneal space, the kidneys. So no wonder they have a strong effect on the kidneys.
Also, and I'm going to get this model out to talk about it, to have a visual. So everybody on YouTube, when you're like, Oh, it'd help if you had visuals. You're welcome. So here's a visual of this, this whole, like, the way this model works is it includes the large intestine, the small intestine, the pancreas, all the, the duodenum, the rectum.
So on the back, you can see sort of the rectum, sigmoid colon. So really the rectum, um, beginnings, because that's in the rest of the model. And then on the back here, you can see the duodenum, You can see sort of like relationship to the roots. This is pancreas. So it gives you an appreciation a little bit for a little bit of the 3D ness.
Still not perfect, but, um, it's better than nothing. Right. And obviously in our room, in our bodies is much larger than this. So the large intestine in general is about, um, one and a half meters long. So what would that be like? five, six feet long. Um, it starts wider at the beginning of it and then it progressively narrows as we get to the sigmoid colon.
So let's talk about the pieces of it. So you got the, the beginning down at the right is the cecum. The cecum is, sits in the right side of your, um, pelvic bowl at about the level of the ASIS. Or like, top of the iliac crest, sort of like anywhere in that top portion of the pelvis. And it goes to about the mid clavicular line, okay?
And then the other border of it is going to be the inguinal ligament. So here's the inguinal ligament. midclavular line. So the cecum is really right in here on the right side. So the difference between the cecum and then the sigmoid colon, which is the end of the colon on the left side, the sigmoid colon is like within the whole entire side of the left part of the pelvis, where the cecum is just on this top.
So this matters to you if you want to know what's Um, during the LTAP, how to palpate it properly. It matters to you if you're manual, doing manual therapy on it. It matters to you if you're even doing movement to appreciate where the movement is and appreciate how the body changes, like how you can change your body to emphasize the different parts of the colon, which I'll probably get to a little bit today, but I want to talk more about it.
So from there, it, um, starts, it's very anterior. It's basically when it's full, it's touching the ab, the anterior abdominal, abdominal wall. When the cecum is less full, it's usually the loops of the small intestine go right on top of it. So there's a little buffer between it and the anterior abdominal wall.
But when it's full, it extends out and touches. It's the back of our abs, basically, and then it goes superior, and as it goes superior, it goes slightly oblique towards the posterior, and at the, um, top of it, it articulates with the liver. There is a ligament that goes from the liver to the corner. where that colon turns as well as this corner to the diaphragm, this corner to the kidney, all of that is very connected in there.
So that corner, so in anatomy terms, corners are called flexors. So that flexor is called the hepatic flexor because it's right next to the liver, but it's very much attached to it, very much attached to the liver. In the kidney and the diaphragm, it's a very fixed part of the colon. That flexure doesn't move very much.
This is going to be a little bit like mind bending. It doesn't move. It stays very fixed. So then the parts of the colon that come off of that flexure are actually very mobile. Whereas on the other side, the hepatic, not sorry, not the hepatic, the splenic flexure. This is more. This flexure is more mobile.
So these parts of the tube are less mobile because this corner has ability to kind of move around a little bit more. The other difference is the level at which they go to. And this is again because of the liver. So the level of the hepatic flexure on the right is about rib 10. The level of the splenic flexure.
On the left, it's typically around rib 8, though it can be a little higher and it can be a little lower depending on the person, depending on the tone of their diaphragm, depending on the fullness of their stomach, depending on the fullness of the colon. There can be a lot of changes to it, right? That corner is a little bit more mobile.
Though there's still ligaments. The ligaments go from the corner of that to the spleen, and then the corner of that to the diaphragm, and then also the corner of it to, um, the abdominal wall. Then,
the other piece that's important is if you can understand where the spleen is in all of this, which I'll Bring this guy back up. It's behind the stomach. It's more posterior. So if that flexure connects there, that means it's coming even more posterior than it is on the right side. So already we have some 3D ness or like oblique ness in the situation.
So even if I'm just standing here, my colon already is set up so that the left side is farther back than the right. So that's already a little bit of a twist. So if I were to add more stretch onto that, I would rotate to the left more, or I could rotate to the right more, which kind of would theoretically stretch out the transverse colon.
A little bit more in different directions, right? Like, so you can appreciate how it's doing a different thing because of its attachment points. And also because we know one attachment point in the right is more fixed than the left. So we could potentially have a tendency for when we move the right side, the left side, instead of staying and actually stretching the tube, it tends to move with us.
So whereas when we, stretch the tube going to the left, we might feel a little bit actual more of a stretch because the right state side tends to stay fixed. And why does this all matter? It matters because as we start to embody movement from the organ standpoint, it's just the more you can understand how the organs are.
where they're supposed to be and the qualities of them. And one of the qualities of the colon is that it's more fixed on the hepatic flexor than it is the splenic flexor. The more you can appreciate how that changes the movement experience and what you're going to feel. If we do the exact same movement on the right versus the left, how it might feel differently, or it could even give us some insight onto like where we need to direct our treatment.
Though the ultimate insight is the LTAP. We can get very specific when we're inhibiting the colon and inhibit the various parts of it. We can inhibit the cecum, we can inhibit the ascending colon, the hepatic flexure. The transverse colon, the splenic flexure, the descending colon, and the sigmoid colon.
And each one of those parts, then understanding the connections to the musculoskeletal system, it allows us to have a better chance of matching a movement or manual therapy to address it. So now let's talk about the descending colon. Again, it's in the retroperitoneal space. And then it comes more anterior and it fills up this whole entire bowl of the left side of the pelvis as it bends around and comes to the midline up here kind of by the belly button and drops down straight to become the rectum.
Now, it's attachments on the, it's attachments. So I already said that the ascending and the descending colon were retroperitoneal. There's a fascia. On the, that, covering those, that relates to the posterior abdominal wall called the fascia of Toldt, or Toldt's fascia, T O L D T, apostrophe S, Toldt's fascia.
And that's the same fascia that connects into the perirenal fascia of the kidneys. So this is why mobilizing the ascending and descending colon can be so supportive to the kidneys. As well as we already talked about, especially on the right side, there is an actual ligament that goes from the hepatic flexure to the great kidney.
Now I didn't mention it on the cecum, but down in the cecum, there is a ligament that can attach the cecum to the right ovary in women. It's called the ligament of cleat. And oftentimes, cecal irritation or inflammation, which It's intestinal inflammation. Usually a, you know, big driver of that is like irritable bowel syndrome or any sort of like gut problem.
It can actually cause problems to the ovary and cause dysfunction around that. Not only does that set us up for a connection with the iliac fossa and an influence into the pelvic organs. So there's a pretty strong influence from the cecum to the pelvis. Reproductive organs and the bladder so something to think about on top of its connection already to the kidneys on the left side That connection, oh, and on the right side, the sigmuid colon also have connections of their mesa colon or the peritoneum to the mesenteric root.
So the mesenteric root, I did a whole episode on that. That was about the small intestines, mesenteric root. And so this, we know, influencing the colon can influence the small intestine, which makes a little bit more sense because like, okay, yeah, They're a continuous structure, but also like you start to see like even their mobility and the way it's set up for tensions and pressures in the cavity are set up to influence each other.
And so, um, the mesenteric root, we have a connection to the SI joint, the posterior abdominal wall, as well as the diaphragm via the ligament of trites on the superior aspect of the mesenteric root. It's a lot of anatomy, right? So again, this is what I mean when I say that, like, you think you know anatomy and then you, like, There's always more to learn.
And the more you can learn, the more you can understand, and the clearer it makes sense that the viscera can affect movement in musculoskeletal systems, okay? So that's pretty much about the anatomy and, and, um, well, the anatomy that I want to share from a connections and factual standpoint. And then we've got the relationship to the nervous system.
and the vascular system and the spine via the viscerosomatic reflexes. So that's going to be that the levels between T10 and T12, maybe even L1, and then also a relationship T9, that's blood flow relationship, Um, so basically T, I'd say, safely, T9 to L1 is all gonna influence, um, the cecum, ascending, hepatic flusher, transverse, splenic flusher, and descending colons.
And then as we get lower in the colon we can even pull in a little bit of the sacral, um, ganglions as well. Expect to find some vertebral restrictions in that. Thoracolumbar Junction basically, lower thoracic area, and then also the connections to common pathologies and musculoskeletal things. As you can imagine, back pain is a big one.
I already told you that it is, like, connected to the fascia of your posterior and your anterior abdominal wall. So people who have back pain, people who, um, complain of having a hard time, um, activating or, like, getting core control, that's a big one too. Any sort of gut inflammation tends to affect these.
From an emotional standpoint, the colon is associated with protection. Um, more of like a motherly feeling. So colon problems are usually a little bit more likely in women than men, though it can happen in both. Um, we, we have masculine and feminine in both, you know, genders, all spectrums of genders. And, um, then also besides back pain, sciatica is a big one.
So one of the easiest ways to see if the colon is like connected to the sciatica is to, you know, do a straight leg raise. Feel the sciatic pain, and then, you know, mobilize the sigmoid colon superiorly, the cecum superiorly, or the, um, ascending and descending colon laterally and see if that changes things.
And often times you'll have an immediate reduction in pain. The hepatic and the splenic flexors can also be associated with shoulder pain, neck pain, a lot of those, um, similar, uh, visceral referrals to the liver. to the stomach, gallbladder, those kind of things. So, but it makes sense because it shares those ligaments with the upper abdominal organs.
And remember those from a sensory standpoint, you're innervated by the phrenic nerve. And so we're going to have a lot of upper extremity disruption, but for the most part, the lower parts of the ascending and descending colon are going to be related more to low, uh, back pain, low and like middle back pain as well as sciatica or just issues with the lower extremity.
Heavy feet in the morning, um, foot pain. So, lateral foot pain is pretty common for, um, intestinal issues, both small and lateral, or small and large, as well as, um, bunions tend to be associated with it as well, even though that's on the medial side. So lots of potential for reasons why you might want to consider the colon in your treatment plan.
So, so with that said, let's talk about treatment. So it's a tube and I've probably said on many. Podcasts and many teachings that when we have tubes, tubes love to be stretched. So this is why I spent so much time talking about the attachments of the colon to the pelvis, the colon to the diaphragm, the colon to the posterior abdominal wall, the anterior abdominal wall, because understanding those attachments is going to make it make sense for you of how to stretch it.
And then the other thing to note is that the ascending and descending parts of the colon. So, the lateral borders of that frame, um, they are the least mobile parts of the colon, and the mobility that they do have is going to be rotational around the axis of the tube, as well as shear, medial lateral shear.
So medial lateral shear, rotation of the tube, and the whole tube has that rotational component and then stretch, or lengthening of the tube. So, and if you get an idea of the 3D ness of it, you should start to see, like, oh, all the ways that we could potentially stretch it. Now, the other thing to think about when we have a structure that's kind of like a tube, and I'm like, is there something in my office that is tube like?
I used to have one, but not really, but I'll use a deflated coregeous ball. It'll work. So if you have a tube like this, what's one way that we could stretch it by just fulcruming it in the center, right? So if these two things are fixed, if we fulcrum it, right, if we fulcrum it from the center, it starts to stretch it out.
So you can use props to create a fulcrum like that. The most easy prop to use is like a quarter's ball. or a towel roll or a bolster, and do that on the side of your body where the ascending and descending colon is. Then once you have a stretch there on that part, then you can take the more fixed points of the flexures or where it connects into the pelvis and you can move those in relationship around it, which is basically like trunk rotation or pelvic rotation to create more of a stretch on the tube because remember Those tubes live on sort of already oblique lines.
So we want to add more oblique line stretching, which is rotation. So rolling patterns are really good for the colon as well. Rolling patterns. Also, the nice thing is as we roll over our body on our side, we get a little bit of that medial shear to the colon itself. So, um, the other thing that you can do is use the diaphragm and the relationship to the organs.
to use your breath as a directed way to facilitate even more movement. And so the easiest way to think about it is when you take an inhale breath, right? The diaphragm drops down and the organs have to drop down too. And then they also Go out to the sides. And so you can really facilitate that rotation, external rotation and lateral shear of the sides of your colon with an inhale breath.
Right? So you can do that too. And so with that said, You can do that in that side lying position that we talked about. It's going to be not the side that's being fulcrumed that you're going to facilitate that lateralness, but probably the upper side. If you're laying on your side, right? If I'm laying on the quarters ball on my right, I'm facilitating medial shear with the ball.
So my breath is going to allow for that lateral movement, lateral external rotation on the left. Versus it on the right. So then you would flip over. You can, um, also use the pelvis in this sense. So remember though, that the left pelvis has like a stronger relationship to the colon than the right pelvis does.
The right pelvis does a little bit. I'm not saying you can't use it at all. It's just, I wouldn't be surprised if when you're doing stuff related to right hip extension. or right rotation of the pelvis, you feel less of a stretch sensation of the tube because it just doesn't anchor down into the pelvis quite like the sigmoid colon does, right?
So a little, a real easy way you can already feel this is
Take your left leg and bring it behind you in a, like a hip flexor stance position. It can be standing or it can be, um, kneeling. Doesn't really matter. Just as long as the hip is in extension. So here's the key too. We need the pelvis to move into extension too. So we need to allow the pelvis to anteriorly tilt.
So this is not maintaining a posterior tilt. This is not, do not confuse this with the hip flexor stretch, though it might feel like hip flexor stretch, which is then information to you of like, Hmm, have I been stretching my hip flexor or my colon? Depends on your lens of view, right? So let the leg be behind you.
Let the pelvis be in anterior tilt. And then think about the obliqueness of that tube. It's already going more posterior. Right now. Because it's going posterior on the upper part on the left, and now you've taken the bottom part and you've brought it more posterior, it might feel like a stretch already without adding anything else.
But if we want to increase it, we can move it away by side bending, we can move it more posterior, or we can move it anterior, though for me I don't feel that right, more posterior is the And then we're going to use our breath. We're going to take an inhale breath and picture in our mind's eye the tube on the side of our trunk going out as we breathe in.
And for me, I can feel exactly on the tube where I have the most restriction, which is about halfway down the tube, where it likely starts to attach with the mesenteric root right around that same thing. And that's what I'm feeling. So maybe then Knowing that, maybe I'm like, okay, I'm going to respond really well then to lying on a coregeous ball on that side, bringing those two pieces together and letting them stretch out.
And then I might go back to this, or I might just be in this position and breathe for a little bit. See if I can mobilize it. Maybe I take the, my hand and grab the loops of mesenteric root. So that's nice. That's another, like, Joe, link that in the show notes because you might not know what I'm talking about unless you listen to that episode.
And then, see if you can get a little bit more left rotation or a little bit more side bending, right? Every exhale, can you take up the slack of what that inhale stretch created? You can do that on the right side, but remember, because there's less of that in the bowl of the pelvis, we not, might not feel the same sensation.
So right legs and hip extension. And I, if I go into, um, trunk rotation, I don't feel a ton of stretch to the colon itself. I just feel a big, like groin stretch on that side. So I'm going to pick something else. I'm going to take the hepatic flexure away by side bending to the left. Now I feel it in my colon a little bit more, and then maybe I can add the rotation.
Yeah. And funny, I have to add rotation and flexion to get here. And then I can use my breath, taking an inhale. And imagine that tube going out to the side. Man, that feels really good. So again, allowing yourself to know where the anatomy is gives yourself permission to change the, movement in the body to have a different experience.
It's not the positions of the movement that matters. It's to feel like you're stretching the right structure. So if my goal is to stretch the tube, I should be feeling it in the tube, not just the hip flexor, not just the groin, not just my side, right? It's not just an oblique stretch. I had to find a very specific position, but I picked those positions knowing about The connections of the body, right?
so Hopefully that makes a little sense Hopefully, you know again, my whole point Of these podcast episodes and like everything I'm doing is to expose you to a new lens of view of looking at the body differently, looking at movement, looking at pain and dysfunction from a lens of view that incorporates everything in the body, not just the motor mechanics, not just the musculoskeletal system.
So just putting the lens now, like not only are we putting this visceral and neural lens of view on right now, but we're putting a very like colon specific lens on us. And so we're experiencing movement in the body from the standpoint of the colon, what's happening in the colon. And when we do that, when we spotlight our attention on that specific organ, we have a better chance of actually mobilizing it.
Um, and actually improving proprioception around it, which is going to affect all the organs, right? Because they're all within containers that relate to each other. So Sometimes, the best way to affect something is to pick an organ that's easily felt or palpated. So, like, again, going back to that video of the kidneys I shared, I think it's a pretty easy video to follow, but the kidneys are pretty deep and people might be like, Anna, I don't really feel the kidney.
I don't really feel what you're feeling. Okay, so don't struggle with it. Pick something else that I know is going to affect the kidney. But it's easier to feel and the colon is like a great way to do that or just appreciate that when we are moving our limbs in our trunk into rotation and extension and sometimes flexion just different quadrants of rotation and extension and flexion We have an opportunity to stretch the tubes of our intestines and they love to be stretched.
So that fascia told us to, like I even talked about, and I talked about this a little bit, even maybe in the kidney video, I might've cut it out, but the kidneys live on the sides of the spine, same thing. They, the, the colons kind of live posterior, especially at the upper parts, right? So they're already doing this like amazing, like extension and opening fulcrum.
around the spine. So just even laying on a physio ball with supportive opening into extension and like openness like that. And then doing the breathing we talked about and imagining the sides of the colon opening up to the sides, like, and maybe even the tube lengthening from the pelvis to the ribs, especially on the exhale, right?
That should make sense on the inhale. We get the ascending and descending colon going out to the side. On the exhale, our diaphragm comes up, which means we're pulling our hepatic flexor and our splenic flexor with it, which means we're stretching the tube. So we're shearing it laterally, and then we're stretching it longitudinally.
It loves that! But again, if I don't bring attention to my patient, or to myself, of that is our intention of the exercise, then you lose an opportunity for the exercise to be as powerful as it could be. So, having this intention makes all the difference. Whew! Longer episode, hopefully you followed all that, hopefully you got up and moved your body and felt it a little bit, and, um, try it out.
Next person you have with Sciatica, back pain, shoulder pain, hard to know, foot pain, just mobilize your colon a little bit and see what changes. Be curious. Be curious, don't cause pain, can't go wrong. Have a great day. See you next week.