Brian Bradley is on a mission to help millions of people learn how to live healthier, pain-free lives and achieve complete fitness. A frequent speaker at industry events, he presents, consults, and conducts training with corporations, organizations, and nonprofits on the topics of chronic pain, healthy living, and high-level performance. His clients include the Tony Robbins Companies, Bulletproof Radio, YPO, the Seattle Study Club, and the NFL.
Brian has been studying “true” biomechanics and human anatomy using The Egoscue Method for more than 25 years. As the Posture-Pain-Performance coach and motivational speaker, he has spoken in more than 15 countries, promoting a myriad of healthy principles for achieving success in all areas of personal and professional life. Brian believes that real and lasting change can happen when we commit to health as a lifestyle. His postural training, fitness experience and engaging personality get people of all ages moving and digging deep to get their best results.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Brian Bradley about the real reason people are fat.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How simply writing down the word fat can illicit your body to respond viscerally.
– Why many people believe being fat is their fault when it may be a lymphatic response.
– How there are movements that will help your lymphatic system drain better.
– Why improving your posture can actually make you appear thinner.
– How recovering from an injury simply brings you back to function, not where you were before the injury.
Connect with Brian:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram
@egoscuemethod
Facebook
facebook.com/egoscuemethod
Links Mentioned:
painfree.com
egoscue.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
You know, we don’t want to shame people. We don’t want to shame them for anything that’s going on with their body or their mind. Fat-shaming is a big thing, we don’t want to just tell people that they’re fat, except for the guy who I’m about to introduce you to, who loves telling people “Hey you’re fat.” We’re going to find out more about that on today’s episode of The Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body. Starting feet first usually, because those things are your foundation, but we start from other places sometimes too. We break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you’ve been told about what it takes to walk, run, hike, play, dance, yoga, crossfit, whatever it is you like to do, and do it enjoyably, do it efficiently, do it effectively. Did I mention enjoyably? Don’t answer it because it’s a trick question, because I know I did because I started with that one. Because look, if you’re not having fun, do something different until you are. You’re not going to keep it up if you’re not having a good time anyway.
I’m Steven Sashen, your host from xeroshoes.com, and we call this podcast The Movement Movement, because we’re creating a movement about natural movement. We’re helping people rediscover that using your body the way it’s designed is the better, healthy, obvious choice, the way we think of natural food. And that other part of the movement, moving that idea, is you. It doesn’t cost anything, doesn’t take any effort. If you want, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You’ll find all the previous episodes, all the ways you can interact with us on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram etc etc, and all you need to do is share. Like, review, give us a thumbs up, hit the bell icon on YouTube, whatever it is to do to get the word out about natural movement. And that’s the way that works; if you want to be part of the tribe, just please subscribe.
So Brian Bradley, it is a pleasure having you here. Why don’t you tell people who you are, what you do, and we can jump into why you like calling people fat.
Brian Bradley:
Okay. You and I might be in some serious trouble with that one, but there’s a reason.
Steven Sashen:
Hey you started it. I just asked you for something provocative to say and you gave it to me.
Brian Bradley:
I did, I did. It’s absolutely my fault, but I will tell you why once I make this intro. Okay real quick, Brian Bradley from the Egoscue method. You will not be tested on the spelling. That’s a gentleman, Pete Egoscue, his last name. Been with him for 30 years this year. We’re on our 50-year anniversary of the Egoscue method as he discovered what the method was coming out of Vietnam, and I’ll talk to you about some other stuff that we’re launching this year too. Okay, let me start by saying this: if everybody were to take a piece of paper and… You have paper there? Okay, just write down…
Steven Sashen:
I was going to say, are you actually suggesting that I do this, because I will if you are?
Brian Bradley:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Brian Bradley:
Because I want you to feel it. Even as a dude, because you don’t really hear guys being fat-shamed or stuff like that, it’s usually… Even magazines talking about stuff which I’m so tired of, telling… The women are told “Work out more, eat less.” Yeah okay, like they can work out more and eat less. Quit shaming them, but go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
The dude thing, I was seeing my doctor recently and he told me that having long hair like this might mean that I have issues with my masculinity. I said “I don’t need to hear psychological advice from my gynecologist.”
Brian Bradley:
God you’re sick. God you’re sick, I just love you. Okay, so onto a more serious note.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, yes.
Brian Bradley:
So write down the word fat. F-A-T.
Steven Sashen:
All right.
Brian Bradley:
And start thinking to yourself, when you wrote that down, how did it feel? How’s it feel to write that word?
Steven Sashen:
Would you like me to answer?
Brian Bradley:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
I felt some tension in my body, I felt let’s say a little anxiety, that’s not quite the right word. The biggest thing is I felt something tensing up, and I became very aware of the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways I don’t like this thing. I don’t know that you know this about me, in fact you probably don’t. When I roll out of bed every morning, I almost reflexively pinch a little bit of abdominal fat to see what changed since last night, or to get a barometer for where I seem to be, as if I somehow was running a marathon while I was sound asleep and lost a bunch of body fat. I’m a relatively fit guy, I’m 59 and a half, I’m probably about 14% body fat. I’d love to be less. And as a sprinter, it’d be nice to have a better strength-to-weight ratio. Anyway, all of those various thoughts flew into my brain as I was writing three simple letters.
Brian Bradley:
I hope that every single female listening to this, and every dude rewinds this and goes and gets his female partner, if you have one. Get them to listen to your explanation just now. That was an authentic, naked answer, saying “This is how I feel.” Imagine the guy wakes up and goes “Well I guess I didn’t lost any weight last night.” Now I know you have a sick sense of humor, so I know there was a Star Wars reference, or a comedic thing when you looked in the mirror, all that kind of stuff, but you look at that and you go “Wow, that’s a truth that males and females go through.” Females are forced to.
Steven Sashen:
And not just people who are significantly overweight. And here’s the other thing: I’ve basically been hyper-critical, not in a way that is paralyzing or anything, but I have a lot of thoughts about how this body thing should be different, and I have vivid memories of having that start when I was in second grade.
Brian Bradley:
Wow, okay. So let me explain to you… I have no idea what psychological… I’ll screw you up if I try to do what Freud’s supposed to do, but I’ll tell you this: judgment kills. So when we write this word down, your body got tense. How I wrote it down, okay, I wrote it down.
I highlighted it, and scribbled on there, and I felt sorry. There are people in the world who look in the mirror every day and don’t like what they see. There are people in the world who read something and say “That’s me, I don’t like myself.” They go to this place.
Steven Sashen:
I want to toss something in there. I don’t know anyone who looks in the mirror and likes what they see. And if they do, if they try a different angle, they’ll eventually find an angle where they go “I’m not crazy about that one.” And I have a theory about this. When we evolved as human beings, however you want to think about that, we never learned to look at a glass of water and be able to tell if there’s bacteria in it, something that would kill us. What we got really good at was ingesting something, eating, drinking something, and paying exquisite attention to the effect of that, to know if that was something good or bad. And my theory is that now that we know everything’s basically safe, we’re still applying all that same internal examination to our experience and to our body in ways that just have no relevance whatsoever.
Now I’m going to throw a caveat in there about my reporting. Everything I said was accurate, and I simultaneously don’t care any longer. I know that’s just what my mind does. It’s reflexive, I have no control over that, and I find it kind of funny in a way. Because again, I didn’t run a marathon overnight, why do I think I got thinner all of a sudden? It’s just kind of ludicrous, and the absurdity of it is now the bigger thing that impacts me. I have a line, I go “Everybody needs a hobby.” And that’s clearly my hobby, and I spend a good amount of money on that hobby, well yeah, decent amount of money on that hobby. So anyway, I have a theory that the… I mean, I’ve literally never met anyone who genuinely looks in the mirror and says “Right on.”
And I think the idea that there are people who do that, and let’s say there are, they’re going to be one out of a bajillion. The idea that you should be someone like that crazy person who probably has brain damage adds to that stress, adds to that judgment. It’s judgment upon judgment.
Brian Bradley:
100%. And that’s an interesting thing, and I’ll get back to this other thing we were discussing. But one of the things I heard Pete Egoscue when we were talking years ago about approval. Remember, we deal with the chronic pain world, we deal with acute injury-
Steven Sashen:
Hold on wait, just to be clear. I know that, but you haven’t explained that, do you want to say a little more.
Brian Bradley:
Yeah I do, right now. When you’re looking at what Egoscue does, the picture over my left shoulder, these two pictures right here-
Steven Sashen:
Wait hold on, some people can’t see because they’re only listening, so…
Brian Bradley:
Okay. So the functional blueprint of the human body, very simple, how the body was we believe designed, is from the ankle to the knee, up the chain to the hip, up the chain to the shoulder, and up the chain to the ear. That’s the front view and side views. There are 90 degree angles like the physics of how the human body should look, stand and walk and move. Technological society has crushed that. We believe it’s a massive opportunity, versus going “Oh no, we’re in trouble because technological society’s crushed that.” And not from a business standpoint but from a self-discovery standpoint. The idea of this discussion about fat falls right in line with that, because I’m taking it to the emotional thought process of “Okay, fat, how did it feel?” The word broken could be put in there.
And I get people coming in all the time who say “My back pain’s killing me.” And I’m like “Okay, well do you feel like you’re broken?” They’re like “I’m broken every day.” And then I get them to picture something broken. Can you ever make it look like it’s not broken, even if you glue it back together, there’s always going to be the seams. But if there’s a slight bend in there, versus broken, you can bend things back and never even know that it was bent before. Getting them to change their mindset and their emotional tie and their identification to that symptom, tied to “This is how your body should look from the ankle to the knee to the hip to the shoulder to the ear.
And I encourage everybody listening to go back and just look at the visual from this, and say “How’s my body supposed to look?” Because I’m going to show you some before and afters here, because they’re powerful enough for you to go “Wait a second, that’s what’s possible at any age.” The reason I’m a big fan of you, your company… A, you’re just a good dude, but secondly, it’s the product alone allows the body to discover the natural motion from the foot up. That resonates with Egoscue, because for us it’s about the whole system tied together, and how it adapts to the environment around it. So when somebody says to me “I wear barefoot shoes and I walk around.” And I say “Yeah, on concrete.” I would say why don’t you get the Xero shoe, and go walk in some sand, go walk on a trail, go walk in some grass that has some undulations?
If you’re in the Czech Republic, and you’re in Prague, go find some cobblestone streets and do your workout on a cobblestone street. You want to feel how weak your connection from the foot up really is? Put some variety underneath it, in a shoe that allows the variety to move like yours. Your winter boot, I can’t stress enough how in love with that boot I am. Yeah that black one, it’s unbelievable. Because I’m looking at it, A it’s so warm, and I’m not here to sell Xero shoes because that’s not what I do. But I’m telling you from a standpoint of loving it, wearing it at Tahoe, Mammoth, Breckenridge, all these places we take them, because I live in sunny Southern California, I didn’t really need it until then.
But it’s an unbelievable piece of equipment that allows the piece of equipment that I focus on, which falls right in line with your movement movement, and that’s why we were discussing the fat word earlier. So let me just take you down a road one more thing. Now write down the word P-H-A-T. What did you do right away?
Steven Sashen:
Smiled.
Brian Bradley:
That’s correct. And it happens to everybody. So let’s put a circle around F-A-T, and then a big line through it, because it doesn’t exist. We’re going to choose to not allow it to exist. Remember, it’s a thought, thoughts are cellular. I choose to shut the judgment down. What I am going to write down is the P-H-A-T, because I still didn’t lost any weight. I still have this around me, I still look the way and I still don’t approve of what I see sometimes, but what if that word was part of this word?
Steven Sashen:
Lymphatic, is what you’re showing people. Interesting, okay, all right.
Brian Bradley:
What if the word P-H-A-T was a “You’re phat.” “I agree with you.” “You clled yourself phat.” “I agree Steven, you’re phat.” But I’m telling you to spell it P-H-A-T, because what if it was just lymphatic blockage? What if it was your cells are not expelling what you think they should be expelling, you’re actually holding ‘water’? And we know this because think about the make-your-butt-larger machine. You ready? I call it the elliptical. Look at this video of somebody on the elliptical. Now this is a young kid, not overweight, but they’re trying to rehab his knee. And there’s a movement when you do this when your leg goes behind you called hip extension, and your leg goes in front of you called hip flexion. So it’s like a pendulum, it should swing both directions.
Look with this machine of the kid in the maroon shirt. For those of you not watching, I encourage you to go see this. Look at his lack of hip extension as the other lady on the-
Steven Sashen:
On the Nordictrack. I’m going to describe this. So on the elliptical, the final position when your legs… If you think about climbing stairs basically, that’s kind of what it looks like. His heel is not going anywhere further back from his butt. It’s basically when he’s done, he’s essentially standing straight up.
Whereas on the Nordictrack, where it’s a skiing motion, there’s a lot of hip extension. In fact, the leg is rarely going in front of the hip, and it’s all on the back. And this is similar, I’m going to use an analogy, to ice skaters. So when you’re skating, you push your foot back to move you forward, you don’t do anything with your front leg, you let that relax. And that’s actually how you should be walking too, but that’s a whole other conversation. Okay, so we just watched somebody who has no butt on an elliptical not getting any hip extension versus someone on a Nordictrack getting hip extension. And we were looking at it why?
Brian Bradley:
Tie it back into the lymph system. Tie it back into the spine, the hip. Just this muscle alone, the psoas muscle, here’s the femur. Here’s the pelvis, here’s the spine. When this femur doesn’t travel behind you, you get no pull on that muscle.
So knowing that, just those two things alone, I’m not bringing the body down to just these. But this is a subject that we opened up with. Your fat could be P-H-A-T, letting you know that your lymphatic system “Hey you know what, you know what I’ve heard,” especially females that I bring this up with, because I’m trying to create a freedom for them. “How does it feel?” “It’s not my fault.” Oh. But the other one was your fault.
Steven Sashen:
Well wait, what are the two things in there? What’s not someone’s fault?
Brian Bradley:
P-H-A-T versus F-A-T. Fat is my fault. If I got to the P-H-A-T, you’re telling me “Brian, maybe my lack of hip extension, which is why I have a bunion on my big toe, it never goes behind me. My hip never moves, I’m working out 10 days a week, but I’m not getting the results. I lose weight from the ribcage up, and I look amazing in a bathroom mirror, but bathroom mirrors don’t go all the way down.”
Steven Sashen:
So I want to see if I can synopsize, and I may criticize as well, just for the fun of it. So you’re suggesting, if I’m hearing you correctly, that by not putting the body… And specifically we’re talking about the hip, the psoas, the glutes as well. By not going through a full range of motion, you’re not stimulating things that might lead to, at the very least some increase in the fat cells releasing whatever’s inside of them. And then that goes into your lymphatic system, and that’s actually expelled. Did I get that right, or what did I miss?
Brian Bradley:
I’m going to make it much more simple.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, cool.
Brian Bradley:
Your plumbing is blocked. So no matter what the fat cells are releasing, no matter what byproducts are happening during a workout, no matter what’s happening internally on that, it has to be a waste product at some point moved.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so just to be clear, I just want to highlight this. We’re agreeing that something has to get the fat cells to release fat or release what’s in them, but that doesn’t do any good if… I like your use of the word plumbing. If the lymphatic system isn’t going to then drain that, which is what the lymphatic system does, and actually get rid of it. And some of those movements you’re talking about, again correct me if I’m mishearing, are things that can help make that lymphatic system work more, work better. Am I on that one?
Brian Bradley:
For example, heel strike, toe off is an essential pumping action to the ankle, to the foot, that creates a lower-leg movement that matches with an upper-leg movement, that matches with a hip movement. So when you lose ability to hitch your heel to a normal toe-off, flexion extension, flexion extension at the hip, then you start turning your foot out. You start rolling on the inside, you form a bunion. And on that same side of bunion… This is an interesting one, if everybody can get home, take a look in a full length mirror. Strip down to whatever you’re comfortable in, shut the drapes of your house, and you look in the mirror, and you say “The side of one hip looks so much fuller than the side of the other. There’s a little pocket of something out here and this one’s flat.”
Maybe it’s because the functional movement on one hip is so different from the other. How does that relate to back pain? How does that relate to knee pain? How does that relate to shoulder pain? When your pelvis and hip and not congruent, balanced left to right. This is the Egoscue method. Your whole system adapts, and makes perfect changes that serve you, until they quit serving you.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so I want to do two things. First of all I want to highlight that yes, you’re going to put your foot through that, let’s call it rolling motion. Not always, but you definitely can if you’re walking. Not the way you should be running, especially if you do that barefoot or in a pair of Xero shoes. Landing heel-first is going to A hurt, and B it’ll only happen if you’re extending your foot out in front of you when you land, which is going to be putting on the brakes and sending a spike of force through your joints, which is what Daniel Liebermann at Harvard showed. So that’s part one on the foot part. But on the hip part, I need to tell the story of how we met. Or actually, the story that I first told when we met.
Brian Bradley:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
So I met Pete Egoscue 25-ish years ago. I’m a former all-American gymnast, and like many gymnasts I had shoulder problems, especially my right shoulder, for decades after that. And I met Pete at an event. I said “I can’t get my right hand behind me, my shoulder’s locked in place.” He says “Yeah, it’s not your shoulder.” I said “What?” He goes “Okay, so I want you to stand against the wall on a slant board.” So for people who are imagining this, basically just a thing where my toes are lifted up. My heels are down, toes are up, about 45 degrees. He said “Stand on the slant board with your butt up against the wall,” and he goes “tell me where your head is.” I said “It’s about, I don’t know, an inch or two away from the wall.” He goes “Why don’t you just stand there until you find that your head is naturally resting on the wall.
I said “Well dude, I’ve got a shoulder thing.” He goes “Yeah I know. Just stand there until your head is on the wall.” And I think he forgot about me. He came back God knows how long later. You’re showing a picture of what I looked like, there we go.
Brian Bradley:
And I even put the hair in there.
Steven Sashen:
I know, that was really cute, although my hair did not extend through the wall. So at a certain point I noticed that my head was against the wall, and Pete had left me alone, and I said “Dude, how long am I supposed to stand here?” He goes “Oh dude, sorry sorry. Get off the slant board, walk away from the wall, and see how your shoulder is.” And it was like 50% better immediately. He goes “So your hips are out of whack, and that’s translating up into your shoulder. Now you may have shoulder problems, but it’s getting worse,” which I do, I’ve torn everything in there. But it was made worse by what I was doing with my hips in a way to protect the injured shoulder. And I was dumbstruck, and that’s when I started working with you guys, and made some other changes, mostly to my hips. Starting from my feet, starting from my shoulders, that changed the whole way my body moves. I spent 20 years trying to get the gymnast out of my body, and working with you guys was a huge, huge component of that.
Brian Bradley:
You know what it did, is it… You don’t know what you don’t know. And once you’re shown what you… The picture I’m going to show you now, and for those of you, I can’t stress enough this picture. I don’t really use it for marketing, but this is a 58-year-old Iron Man triathlete. One of my favorite pictures of all time. 58.
Steven Sashen:
I’m 59, yeah whatever.
Brian Bradley:
Okay. That’s him before and after, in 12 minutes.
Steven Sashen:
Wait wait, what?!
Brian Bradley:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. So why don’t you describe what I’m seeing, because that seems crazy.
Brian Bradley:
This picture right here.
Steven Sashen:
On the left, the before.
Brian Bradley:
Picture that as, everybody knows kyphosis, rounding of the upper back. “Hey, pull your shoulders back,” that’s the mother yelling at you.
Steven Sashen:
So basically, he’s kind of hunched forward. In fact, this is a classic gymnast pose, because we do a lot of things where… It’s hard to describe. Where you’re doing chest flies. That motion, or variations of that motion are hugely important in gymnastics. So he’s got that going on in his upper back, okay.
Brian Bradley:
Imagine him, bike-
Steven Sashen:
On a bike, yeah, just hunched over.
Brian Bradley:
Swim bike run. In that order. Which I’m trying to get him to change it, because getting off a bike and trying to run is just moronic.
Steven Sashen:
It’s hysterical.
Brian Bradley:
It’s so bad. But look at the guy afterward in 12 minutes. Thank God he had the tattoo, and he’s not posing. The difference is in the one where he’s rounded over, it looks like he overdosed noacetol. He has no butt whatsoever, pelvis is turned out, his pelvis is sucked forward, it’s tucked under. But on the right, on the after picture, his pelvis actually became more neutral, where his butt stuck out a little bit, like a gymnast landing, and they do this and their butt sticks out. The upper back then correspondingly changes enough for him to say “I can tell you instinctively my PR is right around the corner.” And before that, it was “Am I ever going to run again?”
Steven Sashen:
Interesting. Well there’s two other things that I noticed in that photo. One is that his feet weren’t as turned out as they were.
Brian Bradley:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
And the other is, and this is the interesting thing because we started with the fat part, he looked like he’d lost weight.
Brian Bradley:
Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not saying he did. It just looked like suddenly, just the way his body looks, it looked thinner.
Brian Bradley:
Well again, I encourage you guys to go look at this, because this is one of my favorites. This is before and after female in three months. Which one looks thinner?
Steven Sashen:
The after, not surprisingly looks way thinner. Posture’s all better, everything’s more aligned. It looks like what I looked like standing against the wall after 30 minutes, although not standing against the wall without a slant board.
Brian Bradley:
Correct. And her discussion was “I’m in pain, I’m in pain.” Once the pain’s gone, she looks at the pictures and goes “I look so much better.” Again remember, we all go the mirror, and either approve of what we see or we don’t. People tell me all the time “I work out for the health of it, I work out for my mental stress.” And I “Okay, but what’s number one?” “Oh because… Okay, no BS, I want to look better.” Okay, well don’t judge “I want to look better,” everybody wants to look a certain way. But I’m done with people spinning their wheels, and actually on the make-your-butt-larger machine. And I’m not against all these ellipticals, it’s just I don’t agree with someone thinking they’re doing cardio when they’re doing cardio, creating byproducts, and then the byproduct sits. And your bathtub’s filling up with a huge hair clog, and you’re wondering why your upstairs ceiling is leaking on you now. Because something’s clogged the drain.
And our belief, when your ankle, your knee, your hip and your shoulder are out of alignment. Any physical therapist who’s listening to this, let me just say this: zero. Not Xero. Z-E-R-O. There are zero, probably, studies that you could go find that are peer-reviewed that says posture really matters. These are the discussions I’m on Twitter about, going “Guys, I won’t say moron but that’s what my instincts are going.” You’ve got to trust your instinct that says when a guy looks like what I just showed you in the before picture, or the young lady looks that way, and the one looks like after, which one would you rather work with? You’d rather work with the other one because it looks like they take care of themselves.
The dentist says “If you don’t brush and floss, I’m going to be doing some serious digging in there and we’re going to replace this and this and this.” You do your part on brushing and flossing. Wearing the Xero shoes, what I tell people, and this is just… You didn’t ask me to do this, I’m just going to tell you this: wearing something like a Xero shoe, X-E-R-O Xero shoe, it allows your body… To me, that’s like flossing. You’re doing that extra part, rather than doing your Egoscue menu and then wearing stiff shoes, you’re doing your Egoscue menu and you’re wearing a shoe that allows the true movement of the hundreds of moving parts in your feet to actually do their job, instead of fighting against it, where everything’s bringing those little hot dogs together. Most shoes do that. You want to make my job easier? Brush and floss, if I was the dentist.
Steven Sashen:
So I like this idea that, and we’re going to talk about the what it takes to make these postural changes according to the Egoscue method. But before we get there, the point that we’ve been diving into for however long it’s been is this basic idea that if your posture is not aligned properly, the way bodies are supposed to work… And this is not “You’re a special little snowflake and your body’s magically different than other people.” Now granted, you might have some actual deformity, that’s a different situation, but for the average human being. Then one of the effects of that is that the lymphatic system can’t work properly. And if you’re doing certain kinds of exercises, they’re at the very least not helping, and may be further clogging, if you will, the lymphatic system. So if in fact you are looking to change your body, if you are looking to lose fat in some way, you’re going to be having a harder time when your posture’s not aligned, when your lymphatic system is therefore not working perfectly.
We’re not trying to say this is not about calories in calories out, but we are saying, and I’m putting words into your mouth so correct me if I’m wrong, but we are saying that you’re getting in the way of your goals if you’re not paying attention to this critical thing. Is your body in the alignment that it should be for optimal function? How am I doing?
Brian Bradley:
Well it’s the one question they ask is, “I’ve been working out for eight months, I’ve lost 35 pounds. How come I can’t lose my lower abs and my outer hips and my thighs? How come those?” When physiologically, scientifically, let’s go back to 101, you can’t spot reduce. Why are you spot gaining?
Steven Sashen:
That’s an interesting question. Again I’ll throw out the argument, just because from the people that I think of. I’m going to use the example of some bodybuilders that I know, who spot gain. Or more accurately, what it is is certain muscles they have are just more responsive than others. And there is an argument to be made that there are various, let’s say genetic pre-dispositions for the order that one might gain or lose fat. I know for example for me, and feel free to jump in and tell me I have my head up my butt, or some other explanation. But I know that I’ve always been super super lean sternum up, and mid-thigh down. And interestingly, I had my genome sequenced very early on when they had just started doing this, because I had a friend who was one of the first 10 people to have her genome sequenced. And there are some genetic markers that are common among sprinters.
And then interesting thing about some of those genetic markers that are common among sprinters, they also pre-dispose someone to gaining belly fat first. So I’m going to toss in there, or I’ll ask you: where does the genetic component fit in? Because not everyone just gains fat evenly along their body, right? I’ve seen that every now and then, but that’s few and far between.
Brian Bradley:
Yeah. Remember, the fat that I’m interested in, whether it’s for real or not. I gave it a name, I’m just calling it the P-H-A-T.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah yeah.
Brian Bradley:
I’m talking byproduct.
Steven Sashen:
Got it, got it.
Brian Bradley:
So I’m only talking why are you holding fluid? You’re holding fluid at the cellular level, your plumbing is clogged. The physiologist who knows a hell of a lot more than I do is going to say “Yeah but your lymph system draining upward is going to be based on this.” Nobody wants to look at the heel-ball toe is the catalyst for calf function, knee flexion, glute, hamstring. And I’m just talking muscle.
And looking at all the lymph channels, armpit, brain, around the abdominal wall. Because you could make a generalization saying guys are going to gain weight from the nipple line to the mid thigh. Women are going to gain weight a little bit lower, and they’re going to say “Yeah but it’s all my hips and my lower stomach.” I’m generalizing.
When you look around, that’s what you’re going to see. What I find very interesting is when somebody comes in in a set of lulus, or a pair of shorts that we can see. And I put them in front of a mirror and just say “Aren’t you curious as to why this hip, from the lateral oblique area down the hip to your thigh is pretty flat, and the other side is two inches out like this. On the side that you had the knee injury to, on the side that your foot turns out and you have a bunion forming, could it be?” And then they hit it, and they’re like “Yeah, it feels like it’s just liquid.” Maybe the garage door is shut, and you’re trying to get the car out. It’s not going to happen.
Steven Sashen:
Got it, got it, okay. Very interesting. And again, this is where I want to start moving into things about Egoscue more specifically. So again, the basic idea is until we get things aligned well, we’re just swimming upstream, to mix our metaphors like there’s no tomorrow. Very interesting. So let’s talk about the Egoscue part, and you used a term I want to clarify. You used the term Egoscue menu, which is just a term that you guys use for the different exercises, and I’m using the word exercise loosely. The different movements that you’re going to instruct people to do, to regain this alignment. I’m going to put words in your mouth again. Which some of it is letting things relax and be able to move more freely, some are just building some strength to support things as well. That’s been my experience.
There were some things that were like… For me, again as a gymnast where my chest was caved in, my shoulders were a little rounded, some of it was letting that open up, and allowing that. And some of it was finding out that there was some weakness that wasn’t supporting that to begin with. Different exercises for different things. But why don’t you dive into, because we’ve talked about not opening the garage door, having plumbing that’s stuck, I don’t know what other metaphors we used. But let’s talk about what Egoscue actually does to accomplish these changes that lead to these goals that we’ve been talking about.
Brian Bradley:
Why don’t we experience it? Okay, so do you mind standing up for me?
Steven Sashen:
Well yes, but I’ll do it anyway, my God. Because now I’ve got to move my camera in some way.
Brian Bradley:
Stay right there, you’re good. If you’re a person listening to this, if you’re driving, understandable, just listen. When you get home, try this.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah if you’re in your car, don’t stand up.
Brian Bradley:
I want you to just, everybody who’s at home, just take your Xero shoes off and just stand there. Yep, good. And I want you to close your eyes and just feel where your body weight is from left to right. Does it feel evenly distributed left to right? Does it feel evenly distributed from front to back?
Steven Sashen:
You want me to answer?
Brian Bradley:
Yup.
Steven Sashen:
I’m feeling a tiny bit of extra pressure on the outside of my right foot than I am on the outside of my left foot. Of course as soon as I say that it alters a little bit. That was one of the first things I noticed in going left to right. Front to back feels pretty good.
Brian Bradley:
Okay, so everybody makes that change, and you can put that away now. Now turn sideways, and you can open up your eyes. Now all I want you to do, and don’t move until I tell you guys to do this, because I’m not going to say touch your toes, because a lot of people reach for their toes, they don’t forcibly move anything. If I just said bend over, hang down and just see and feel what it’s like getting there, and see how far you go. And just bend over and just hang there for a second, and I want you to feel it and see how far you’ve traveled.
Steven Sashen:
I have to move, because if I just bent over I would have smashed my head into a desk.
Brian Bradley:
Yes, but you’ve done that before so I’m actually… No I’m just, go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
That’s how I got to where I am today.
Brian Bradley:
That’s true, that’s true.
Steven Sashen:
All right, so I’m bending over, just seeing where I go. Okay.
Brian Bradley:
You’re just bending over just to travel the distance. What does it feel like? Your knees are not bending. How are your low back, your hamstrings, everything else?
Steven Sashen:
So were you asking me to not bend my knees? My knees were a little bent, were you asking me?
Brian Bradley:
Do not bend your knees.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, do not bend them. Keep my knees straight?
Brian Bradley:
Yup, just keep your knees straight. Just bend over and hang there. How far did you get to the ground? What’s it feel like? Where did you feel limitations? What’s it feel like? Come on back up.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. So, can I sit?
Brian Bradley:
Well yeah, but then we’re going to go through an exercise, so then we’ll get back up here in a second.
Steven Sashen:
All right, well I’m sitting just to answer your question. So in the first part before I got to the end of my range of motion, I just really actually enjoyed the kind of letting-go feeling, that was very pleasant. And when I got to the end of the range of motion, my knuckles were on the ground, and I was feeling it pulling from about three inches below my knee to about four inches above my knee. So basically, the middle of the hamstring to the hamstring insertion below the knee, is where I was feeling a stretch/tightness.
Brian Bradley:
So if we went to typical thought process, athlete growing up, high school, college, all that. If I stretched you-
Steven Sashen:
I’m waving people away, they’re coming into my room and I’m making them go away and they don’t get it.
Brian Bradley:
Not a problem.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, they’re gone.
Brian Bradley:
If we stretch the area, the distal hamstring, the proximal calf, the knee area, right? If we stretch that area, doesn’t it make sense that we could probably increase your range of motion?
Steven Sashen:
It does.
Brian Bradley:
So here’s my next statement: stretching is absolutely garbage. If you don’t go after the reason why the soft tissue’s tight in the first place. So physiologists would tell you you don’t really stretch muscle tissue anyway; agree. But what we do is when you go over like this, you’re asking for a load on that whole posterior chain based on how the skeletal system, the frame of the car is moving. You’re asking the tires to adjust to the Ferrari’s frame. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to go after the frame, we’re going to change the bone, and you’re going to see and feel a difference in the movement.
Okay, so I want you to stand up again, and everybody else can stand up again.
Steven Sashen:
Okay, just adjusting my camera. I’m standing up, I’m moving so that I don’t smash my head into a desk.
Brian Bradley:
Okay, stay there for a second. Now I want you to interlace your hands like this behind the top back of your head.
Now those of you watching, you can see that Steven’s elbows are in a really good position. He’s not stuck rounded forward where I can’t see your face. I can see the side of your face, your elbows are back, I can see that you’ve been arrested before. This is good. Okay.
Steven Sashen:
It was only once and I didn’t do it.
Brian Bradley:
Exactly. You and Bill Clinton. Okay, so pull your elbows back, hold that. And now I want you to turn your toes in touching each other, so you’re actually pigeon-toed 45 degrees, your heels are out. Your toes are touching. Now very lightly, I want you to tighten up your thigh muscles and push you knees back. So do you feel how that just stuck your butt out?
Okay, that’s the finishing position of a gymnast who just got off the uneven bars. Hold that position right there, but your feet are pigeon-toed. Keep the weight on the inside of the foot, don’t let it roll to the small toe. Get your quads tight, elbows back, you’re only going to stand here for about another 45 seconds. Now think about what we’re doing. Any upper back rounding or kyphosis, we are artificially repositioning your upper-mid back right now.
We are internally rotating your foot, your knee, your femur. And remember what I told you before, the anatomy book says just the psoas alone attaching to this lesser trochanter, we’ve turned that femur internal, which puts tension on the psoas. We keep you here long enough, the skeleton is making adjustments now, micro-adjustments at each vertebral level. The pelvis is moving, the femur’s moving, the tibia’s moving, everything’s adjusting. 15 seconds left. And then we’re going to… Go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
I just felt something. The best way I can describe it is it felt like my hips got wider, which was very interesting.
Brian Bradley:
Interesting. Okay now relax, turn and face me. Drop your arms, put your feet back to where they were, close your eyes. What’s changed about your body weight left to right, front to back?
Steven Sashen:
I can’t even say what changed. I can say that both left to right and front to back, it just feels more centered. I can’t even say that it’s… I don’t even want to try to compare it to before, because the feeling is very different now. Now I’m feeling both the inside and the outside of my feet more, the heel and the ball of my foot more, and I just feel like I’m sort of balanced on top of that more.
Brian Bradley:
If your feet could talk, they’re saying “We are in more of a grounded position to the ground.
Steven Sashen:
Yes. I also feel like I’m not actually gripping the ground, in fact my feet are relaxed, and at the same time it feels like I’m gripping the ground, even though I’m not doing anything actively.
Brian Bradley:
That’s the relationship that I would like a person’s foot to have with your shoe.
Steven Sashen:
That’s why we make them.
Brian Bradley:
That’s right. Okay, so now turn sideways for me. Don’t hit your head on the desk. And again, you’re not doing anything except… You’re not bending your knees. Bend over as far as you can go, come back up and tell me what was different about the distance and what was different about the feeling.
Steven Sashen:
I didn’t get… Okay wait, I’m going to sit down to do this, just so I can get in frame for the camera. I’m having a hell of a hair day. I got to about the same place, but I didn’t feel tension behind my knees. I actually felt like the entire posterior chain, the whole thing was involved in the stretch, involved in the getting to that end of range of motion.
Brian Bradley:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
It wasn’t stuck in one place.
Brian Bradley:
That’s correct. So now what happened is your pelvis… For a visual, I’ll give people this picture. This is a crossfit guy out of the Netherlands, who was suicidal, going to give up his business. I gave him an exercise like we just did for his mid-back. The red is before, the green is after. Look at the difference in the range of motion, but look at the rounding in his mid-back. He actually became a hip mover. The pelvis actually hinged the movement, rather than the spine hinging and rounding over in the mid-back.
Steven Sashen:
And I’ll say something about my experience just for the fun of it. I have some difficulty moving my pelvis, because I have a grade two L5S1 spondylolisthesis with a pars defect, so I’ve got no disc between L5 and S1. And my L5 is about an inch and a half shoved forward, so it makes certain movements in my pelvis trickier, because there’s just something literally physically getting in the way, without any muscles there to move it. FYI.
Brian Bradley:
What does that make… When you get that diagnosis… I’m going to use words that are going lead you a little bit. What limiting thoughts do you have when that diagnosis is given to you?
Steven Sashen:
I only have one. It’s “Son of a bitch, I used to be two inches taller.”
Brian Bradley:
Okay. So it doesn’t scare you as it relates to “I have a grade one, grade two spondy right now. When’s grade three come, when do they do a fusion?”
Steven Sashen:
That doesn’t scare me. It seems like it’s a possibility. In fact, it’s almost disappointing that I’m not in a position where the doctor’s going “You’ve got to get that thing fused.” Because until then, I have to… It’s not even that I have to deal with it, until then it’s an enigmatic something that, I don’t know what it’s going to do, or what it might do. I mean I stopped pole vaulting and long jumping, because long jumping I’d land in the pit, and I used to think that what I was feeling, the vibrating feeling in my legs when I got out was muscular. Then I realized I was just jamming my sciatica over and over. I went “Maybe that’s not a good idea.” And pole vaulting, obviously you hit the box with the pole, and there’s that major spinal flexion. It occurred to me, “Probably not a good idea.” Because it’s going right into that spot. So I stopped doing those two things.
And I stopped deadlifting 450 pounds, that didn’t seem like a smart idea. And I do like pulling heavy, it’s really fun, so having to work around that is not as much fun. But by and large, since luckily I don’t have… The symptoms that I have are not bothersome on a daily basis. Literally the only one I get is I used to be taller. And I do think maybe at some point I’ll need some fusion. In fact, just for the fun of diving into my medical story, for lack of a better thing. It’s possible, because the disc is basically gone, that the bones are going to fuse themselves, not in the ideal position. But at least if they do that, then they can go in and clear out a little space in my sciatic without a whole lot of effort, and I won’t have what I refer to as “ass Tourette’s”, which is when I get this interesting little electric needle, vibrating electric hot needle thing that hits me out of nowhere and makes me scream every obscenity that I know. Which is very entertaining, by the way.
Brian Bradley:
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind. I’d actually like to be there for that next time, so if we can rearrange your whole schedule.
Steven Sashen:
It happens spontaneously, I can’t predict it.
Brian Bradley:
Do a long jump right before we meet again. Here’s where Egoscue comes into play with something like that, because what I just heard was what I hear from every client, their story is very profound.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I don’t know if this is profound.
Brian Bradley:
No no, there are people listening going “That’s me,” or “I’m not as bad as him,” or “Wait til you hear my story.” One of those.
Steven Sashen:
Look, we love to bond over our problems.
Brian Bradley:
No that’s exactly right, but here… You’re exactly right. That’s why I’m saying “What an amazing story.” And instead of jumping in and saying “Egoscue can help you with that, and we’ve got the cure.” No, you’re not listening, meaning I wouldn’t be listening. What I’m going to say is “What an opportunity that’s sitting in front of you, so that if your body does decide to fuse bone-to-bone down the road, what if we could get your pelvis into a better position that A, you can be more stable, stop the shocking, do all this stuff. And even if you said to me “I’m going to have surgery no matter what, because my degenerative hip is showing up. Brian, you’re not going to grow cartilage back.” Okay, I get it.
I have my own beliefs on that, but okay I get it, I’m not going to argue the point. What I am going to argue the point is, why doesn’t your hip hurt, we do this to people, when I ask you to walk around with your hands on your head? Your pain drops to a one versus a ten. So “I can’t walk around like that.” Of course you can’t, you don’t live in Los Angeles. But you could if you move there, or B, we could give you exercises that do the same thing, and then your body… So remember, your body is out of alignment, but it’s serving you to be out of alignment until it quits serving you. And the adaptation has now become its own issue. Now we’ve got to go in and interrupt that adaptation, that compensation, to allow your pelvis to become the driver again, and everything starts to change.
Steven Sashen:
This is something that I find fascinating and annoying about bodies, and that people don’t really think about, is that when we do have some sort of injury, whether it’s acute or chronic, your body’s job is just to be able to get you to function, not to get you back to what it was before. Even if you break something or whatever, the job is not to get you fully healed, the job is to get it so you can run away from something that thinks you’re going to be lunch.
And often like you’re saying, we end up in these positions that served us to that end, got us so that we could get up and move get out of the way, but are now not serving us because they’re not functionally optimal, and that causes other cascading problems down the line.
Brian Bradley:
Well, I couldn’t agree with you more, because we’re no longer in fight or flight survival mode. But yet we live in fight or flight mode all day long because of what the phones do to us, what the media does to us, what we do to ourselves, what we allow those tech and media people to do to us. You’ve got to allow the negative in to allow it to have a fight or flight mechanism kick in. Versus, what is my body and mind trying to tell me? What’s my injury supposed to tell me? Why did it happen? Why am I feeling more flexible after standing pigeon-toed with my hands behind my head for one minute?
Steven Sashen:
Well, you just nailed it. And again, this goes back to my original experience with Pete. What you guys often do with people is demonstrate that the pain that someone’s experiencing, and the cure for that is not from where they think. And just that opening, that “Hey, wait a minute. That’s weird,” like you said, “Why is standing like that, why did that make my pain in my fill-in-the-blank location go away? It doesn’t seem like they’re in any way connected,” which puts people into a state of cognitive dissonance, of realizing that what they believed and what they just experienced don’t match. And that creates this opening for “All right, now let’s see what’s next.” Which brings us to, and pardon me if I’m leading you this way and you want to go somewhere else, feel free. But that leads us to the specific things that you guys do in Egoscue practices, to then like you just said, engender or make possible those changes to the other places, that then have their repercussions in the places that someone’s usually complaining about an issue.
Brian Bradley:
No no, I totally got it. Look, there are listeners who are saying “This makes sense. What do I do next?” I started this off, not the call but our talk earlier this week when we were talking about the different shoes and stuff, and I said the 50th anniversary of Egoscue is this year. I’ve been with Pete Egoscue with 30 years. But the new book, as you can see over my shoulder here, the Pain-Free book by Pete Egoscue came out 27 years ago or something like that. I don’t remember exactly. But now the new version’s coming out in November. Yeah, in November. So when we look at this stuff, would I want people to go get the book? Yeah, that’s where I would like you to start. It’s not one of these things where I want you to come and see us for therapy and get onto our website and… It’s convincing people that their body is responding accordingly, not against you. Your body’s working for you, not creating things to happen to you.
It’s like a Tony Robbins thing, and what he got from Jim Rohn and all these things. He would tell you “Life’s happening for me, not to me.” If it’s the reverse of that, you’re in psychological and emotional hell. So instead of being in physiological hell, we want to give you a way out of this from the hip out. You’re coming from the foot up, and there’s such a congruency between this because your shoes for me, and I told this to Injinji about their socks. The toe-socks allow such a different experience than a normal sock that crowds the toes together. Getting people to apply just enough stimulus, and you can get the Pain-Free book… Let me think here. You can go to painfree.com, and you can pre-order or order the book. And we also have some other tickers on there that’ll line you up with exactly what we do. More educational tools.
Because what you and I are covering in an hour, people in chronic pain are going “I want more.” I know you’re saying that. We want to provide more, and I want you to trust the process of what your body’s going through versus going “My body’s working against me.” That’s our number one change: that you can say “I’m going to go from hope to belief,” and now you’re really on your way to that next level that your body should take you.
Steven Sashen:
Again, I’m synopsizing just for my own benefit as well. So part of what it sounds like is, and I like this… I may be mistaken, but I don’t remember the emphasis when I was more actively doing Egoscue things; while there was an emphasis on the hips, the story was not emphasizing how the hip is really in many ways the central focus, and how things sort of move out from that, and we’re working on hip-related things. Wait, where’d that thought go? There was some thought that went along with that.
Brian Bradley:
Let me just answer that real quick for one second, just to give you a simple explanation. When I pick up my fork and pick up a piece of grass-fed beef, because you know I’m vegetarian, I let the cow eat the vegetables and then I eat the cow, so I’m really a vegetarian. So I take the grass-fed, grass-finished beef and I chew this, or a piece of broccoli. This fine motor movement of doing this, or hair, or teeth, and putting glasses on, just this has to be anchored at the mid-back. Has to be anchored at the pelvis. So when I say “Become hip-driven”, every single thing from
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