363 | Using Your Eyes, Smell and Neurology to Reduce Pain and Improve Health with Missy Bunch

[00:00:06] Welcome to The Optimal Body Podcast. I'm Dr. Jen. And I'm Dr. Dom and we are doctors of physical therapy, bringing you the body tips and physical therapy pearls of wisdom to help you begin to understand your body, relieve your pains

[00:00:17] and restrictions and answer your questions. Along with expert guests, our goal of The Optimal Body Podcast is really to help you discover what optimal means within your own body. Let's dive in. Before we get into this episode, an exciting announcement I think you're going

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[00:01:00] 20. And that's going to get you 20% off on Vivo Barefoot shoes. And what's cool, what you'll hear in the episode today when we talk with Missy Bunch is how it's all connected

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[00:02:15] T-O-B 20 to snag that discount. I'm so excited for this new episode with Missy Bunch. You're going to learn some simplified different things that could really impact your pain and your joint mobility. Now, Missy is a multi-certified movement therapist who's been educated in coaching for over

[00:02:33] 14 years. As a young professional dancer, she battled many injuries over her career. And one day she found someone who studied neurology, which is the study of the brain and the nervous system.

[00:02:44] And after one session with this person, her four year knee pain was completely gone. She knew she wanted to teach this approach to the world. The importance of brain function and using the nervous system to rapidly debug movement patterns, decrease pain, and increase performance has led her

[00:03:01] to teach and create lightning fast improvements with people from all walks of life. Her specialties include injury prevention, injury rehabilitation, joint mobility, and decreasing pain holistically. Let's get into it. Well, Missy, thank you so much for taking time to be here with us. I think

[00:03:20] what you do, what you teach, how you teach is very unique and something we've, I mean, I think we've talked about it on the podcast a couple times. Yeah, we've talked to different people about neurology implications to rehab and pain, but-

[00:03:35] But it's such a complex topic. So, I'm excited to like really dive in, maybe give some practical tools for people to start exploring with and help the understanding. I think that's pretty key here. So, thank you for being here.

[00:03:49] Yay! Thank you for having me. I'm honored. It's my favorite thing to talk about. So, I could talk about this all day. So, I'm excited to just dive in and see how we can contribute

[00:04:00] to your community. And I think one of the best places to dive in is understand where this passion comes from and understand why this kind of niche area of really diving into some of these intricate neuroscience applications and how that can affect people's pain and rehab journeys

[00:04:20] became so important to you. Pausing quick from the episode to talk about a sponsor that has been so supportive to us in the journey to become pregnant again and are now continuing to support us during

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[00:05:55] a great question. So, the very beginning of my journey started, it was a very long time ago, I was a lot younger. I was dancing professionally at that time and I'm performing on an NBA court

[00:06:21] and the court is sticky. People think it's slippery and I'm like, oh no, oh no, sticky. And I go to do a turn and my foot stayed and my body went and I have 32 of these to get through

[00:06:37] and that was rep four. I mean, if you could see my goosebumps all over my body, I get viscerally ill talking about it because it literally changed my life that moment. So, I feel something happen in my left knee and all I can think is, uh-oh,

[00:06:57] something bad just happened. It's bad and I feel it kind of vibrate up my spine. There's 20,000 people in the audience and as a dancer, you're taught when something goes wrong, smile bigger. So, you do not stop in the middle of a performance no matter what.

[00:07:17] You don't show it, you don't react, you just smile bigger and keep going. So, I went on with the routine and I walk off into the tunnel, I collapse, my knee, my knee and everyone's like,

[00:07:31] oh no, what happened? And that set me on this three and a half, four-year journey of what happened to my knee. All the imaging was normal, you're fine, your knee shouldn't hurt.

[00:07:47] And I got chills again. I was so young as well. So, I don't know anything, right? But I do have access to very smart people, right? I have the NBA's chiropractors, trainers, PT, like all the

[00:08:03] people. And I saw all the people, did all the things, never missed a rep of any kind of rehab and the pain just never went away. And I just basically decided I have a bad knee,

[00:08:18] this is my identity, this is my life. I clearly cannot be a professional dancer anymore because you kind of need your knee to do that. So, I kind of like laterally move into fitness, right?

[00:08:33] It's like, okay, dancers either go to Pilates or fitness, it's a very lateral move industry-wise. And I met someone and she was a professional salsa dancer and she said, you know, I took this course called Z-Health. It sounds kind of weird, but they said when your left

[00:08:52] leg moves, your right arm affects it and your right elbow could help your left knee pain. And 10, 15 years ago, this conversation is very not accepted, right? Now it's not that weird, but back then it was like, okay. But I also would have done anything at the time, right?

[00:09:13] I would have flown to Bali and sat on a mountaintop for 12 days in silence. I would have done whatever someone told me to do. I want my body back. So, I moved my right elbow a couple

[00:09:26] times, like full range of motion, elbow circles. And I move into my left knee just like you would like a regular anterior lunge. Knee pain was gone. And it like, you know, end games metaverse,

[00:09:44] like shook my world up. Like I, my brain couldn't compute what happened. I had like a glitch in the matrix and I was crying and I was so angry. I was like, why did that work? That doesn't make sense.

[00:10:01] I saw all these people. And also why was it so simple? Like it wasn't injections or surgery or this, like why was this elbow movement so, why did it work? It just, it really upset me to be honest. Like I was relieved about the pain, but it actually

[00:10:21] just made me angry. Like I just couldn't wrap my head around it. And that was part of a session that you were doing, like someone was guiding you through this elbow exercise?

[00:10:30] It wasn't even a session. It was just my new boss, kind of my friend. And she was like, let's just see what happens. And we take the similar position as my turn, which was, it's kind

[00:10:41] of like an anterior lunge, but your leg is externally rotated. It's turned out in the front. So I stand in that position and do the elbow circle. Cause she says to kind of mimic the

[00:10:52] position you injured yourself in. And that was, it wasn't even a session. It was like playing. It was like, let's just try this. And it's still to this day, I just still, and my knee pain has

[00:11:07] never come back, right? Ever like full depth squats, all the things. So I basically say to her, what was that? Who taught you that? I will do that forever to all people. And the next question kind of running through my mind is if I'm in movement,

[00:11:31] I am immersed and I didn't know that what's the average person doing when their knee hurts. That's my first thought, right? I'm in this world and I didn't know that. So I basically declared,

[00:11:48] I will teach this to everyone I know for the rest of my life, because what if I could get them out of four-year knee pain in a couple seconds with moving their elbow? It's a concept versus it just,

[00:12:02] it had never been shown to me to even consider. It was always quads, hamstrings, glutes, knee, whatever. It was never away from the area. And then you get deeper into neuro and it's like,

[00:12:16] oh, those who focus on the side of pain are lost. And these things start to just kind of blow my mind. So that's how it started. And then someone tells me, right? Well, it's gay.

[00:12:32] When you walk, your left leg moves with your right arm. And it was the most logical thing anyone had said to me up until that point. I was like, that actually isn't weird. That actually

[00:12:45] makes all the sense. And then it kind of progressed into the whole eyes, inner ear, cranial nerve stuff. So that's where it all began. That's so insane. And I think someone can start to conceptualize, okay, well, yeah, I walk opposite arm, opposite leg, but are you saying

[00:13:04] that's all it was? Is that the explanation for how your knee pain went away? Because someone listening to this is like, but what? Because you just moved your opposite elbow and now your knee

[00:13:18] feels better. So can you kind of break down a little bit more of the reasoning of what took place and why did that happen? Yeah. I mean, I'll do my best, right?

[00:13:32] I think so. If I had been trying other modalities for let's say three and a half, almost four years, and that all wasn't working, and we know there's no damage. It's like, okay, that's been cleared.

[00:13:45] Everyone's done all the imaging and everyone's like, I don't know why your knee hurts. Okay, so then I think you pull back and you go, okay, what other things can influence other things? And in this case, right arm to left leg. And then you picture this threat bucket,

[00:14:04] and we all have what I call a threat bucket, right? And there's a threshold for when that threshold gets hit, we have this experience of pain. And in my case, there was an acute injury,

[00:14:16] but then four years later, we're not, right? So something along that path, or if you want to call it a chain could help that movement pattern be more efficient. And so they start to think of it

[00:14:30] like, okay, here's Missy's threat bucket. Her knee hurts. There's this, a right SI issue, a jaw thing, her left eye is weak. If we can start to pull out one threat at a time and lower that

[00:14:45] threshold so that we don't have the experience of pain, that is a way to look at it. So I think it's kind of a couple ways of working with how can we change the pain experience if the issue

[00:15:01] has been cleared that it's okay to do rehab and there's no structural damage and all that stuff. So did that make sense? Yeah, I mean, I think it's continuously seeing because a lot of people get

[00:15:14] told, well, your MRI is fine. Your x-ray is fine. Like you shouldn't have pain. Like maybe you need to go talk to a mental health therapist. That's one thing you said that I feel like you said you

[00:15:25] got chills right around when you said, you're fine. You shouldn't be having pain. And can you talk a little bit about why? So whether you're a person out there who has heard that from a professional,

[00:15:35] or if you're a professional who has ever said something like that or similar to that to a patient, well, you shouldn't be having pain. In my opinion, I feel like that can be one of the

[00:15:46] most damaging things to tell people because it's like gaslighting, like, but I'm in pain. Don't tell me I shouldn't be in pain. Like it just – I don't get why people feel like they need to say that to somebody who is telling you they're in pain. I don't know.

[00:16:00] Right. I mean, hence why I was excited to be a yes to your podcast, right? Because I know both of your views on this type of thing. And no matter what, the pain is real. Yeah.

[00:16:15] Right? No matter what, it's real to them. It was real to me. And we can see it from our perspective, but – what was the question? Now I forgot what I was saying, but – Well, statement slash question, but like how negative of an impact that can have on somebody

[00:16:35] because it's almost – and I'm almost answering it, at least in my opinion, like it's almost gaslighting that, oh, maybe I shouldn't be having pain, but I feel pain. It's just like I feel like it is going to mess with someone's neurology that much more.

[00:16:50] Yeah, that's true. And from my lens, I would consider that a threat in the threat bucket, right? Like what's wrong with me? Yeah. What is wrong with me if I shouldn't have this pain, but I do? Right. Yeah.

[00:17:07] And this can go all the way to like deeper subjects, right? Like I've had two C-sections. I know you have as well, Jen. And someone said to me, you should just let it go.

[00:17:21] And I was like, gulp, right? I don't want to feel the feelings I feel about this situation, right? I don't choose that. I don't want to be sad about that, right? It's like a journey for me to

[00:17:39] figure out how to accept what happened because it was not the plan, right? And so, it's like even I'm in my position and getting statements like that said to me from whoever, right? You shouldn't

[00:17:52] feel that way. Just let it go. Just move on. Okay, but I had surgery. Right. Yeah. And it's numb. And I've been working on it for 16 months and it's still numb. Just the world of that, that's a threat and it also has an emotional correlation now, right?

[00:18:12] And what I'm making that mean about my body and my relationship to my body and all the things because from our world, right? I should have been able to have the birth I had planned.

[00:18:27] But as we all know on this call, we don't get to choose. And so, it's a wild ride. But yeah, that's one thing I try to really drill in my messaging is you are not crazy. Your pain is real.

[00:18:43] Your pain is validated. That is okay, right? And we can change the experience of pain even if we can't completely get rid of it. We can at least change the experience of it and the

[00:18:59] relationship with it. And there's always something we can do, especially if we use neurology, right? Because I always say if it's above the neck, it's affecting everything below the neck. So let's try that because a lot of people aren't. Yeah.

[00:19:17] And how on earth could smelling in my nostril help my left knee pain, right? Well, it seems weird, but it's actually science. It's just right there in anatomy. Well, and I love that you said changing the experience of pain and giving that a little

[00:19:35] bit of freedom and empowerment to someone to say, yes, you have it. You are experiencing pain. And what if we had a different relationship with that experience? What if we could just change your relationship, your experience with it, what you're feeling and maybe lessen it sometimes,

[00:19:55] maybe make it go away sometimes. And like, wouldn't that be cool? What if the past, like you open up the possibility for someone. And I think that's what's most powerful and encouraging when it comes to someone in pain. And you touched on neurology. So what does that

[00:20:12] mean when you say the word neurology and what kind of systems are you now looking to work with when it comes to working with neurology? Because isn't that, I mean, it's all connected, right? So

[00:20:26] we're doing that with movement. We're doing that with this and that. But what is specific that you're talking about when it comes to working with neurology with patients? Yeah, that's a great question because we're all doing neurology whether we know it or not. So

[00:20:41] you're like, well, what is neurology then? So yeah, that's actually a great thing to point out. Yeah. So I think when I say it, I am thinking of the brain and the spinal cord and possibly

[00:20:55] the nerves that come out of it, just like a tree, right? You've got the main trunk and then all the branches that come out of it. And now, we all have phases in our career and now I'm in this

[00:21:07] craze about cranial nerves which are just nerves that come out of your brain. That's why it's called cranial nerve, right? So your cranium. And it's because I have found that if I can contribute in that way, a lot of the other approaches are being fulfilled,

[00:21:27] right? So I don't need to come in with more of that, but I do see this missing link with eye movements, vestibular work which is your inner ear, your balance system, tongue, smell, swallowing, sound. There aren't that many people educating general population or professionals on how to use

[00:21:51] it for movement or strength goals or pain reduction rather than like, okay, let's just make sure you don't have a TBI. You're good to go. A lot of us know the assessments, but we weren't

[00:22:04] taught how to use them for the goal that the client has, right? So when I say neurology, that's kind of what I mean is contributing to that person in front of me in a different way

[00:22:19] that I think might be missing. So cranial nerves, also something that I am fascinated by because I think it's something that we understand so little about and we're still learning more and more about

[00:22:32] all the time because they're connected into this deep, deep portion of the brain, our brainstem that evolutionarily is like one of the oldest pieces of the nervous system that we start to

[00:22:44] see appear in all these old animals as we see the development of what is now the human nervous system. So just tell me, what do you think is so special about cranial nerves and how we can use

[00:22:57] them? And if you could give like the people listening something that they can try in their house that might help them tap into a specific cranial nerve. Yeah, absolutely. So you kind of

[00:23:11] nailed it on the head with what we call the old lizard brain. So it's prehistoric, it's old, it's very emotional and illogical. It's what happens when you're hangry, right? You're just like, I need food now, like barbaric. Totally. Or when you want to reproduce, you're like,

[00:23:30] no, whatever. It's just, it's very old. It's the old lizard brain, right? And then your cortex is the new brain. That's like sophistication and your degrees and you know two languages and you can

[00:23:44] think before you speak and all the things, right? So if anything happens to your brain, you don't want it to happen in your brainstem. Yeah. If you had a choice, you want it to be

[00:23:53] in the cortex because you can lose French as a language, but you don't want to lose swallowing. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You would be dead. So when we talk about cranial nerves, that's the beauty is

[00:24:05] going to that autonomic system, right? The autonomic place where all of that stuff you're doing that you don't know you're doing is housed that we tend to neglect. And kind of one of those

[00:24:20] bigger moments for me, like even swallowing and gargling, I'm thinking like, this is crazy. How am I going to use this stuff? And then I start testing it and you're like, oh, vagus nerve. Vagus nerve helps parasympathetics. If we can help the parasympathetics, that could decrease

[00:24:38] the threats in the threat bucket. Oh, maybe their knee pain went from a seven to a three out of 10 by gargling, right? So if you just take the information for what it actually is and just

[00:24:54] explore, you need a little bit of courage and bravery to be kind of the weirdo. Um, it just tends to make all the sense when you start getting into it. So yeah, if someone wanted

[00:25:05] to try something now we could do any movement you wanted. You could go into the bottom of your squat or do a forward fold and say, okay, right now I feel a six out of 10 stiffness in my low

[00:25:17] back. And I would say, okay, great. Let's plug your right nostril. Take something non-toxic smell in your left nostril. Can you identify it going over some, um, I call like the criteria for smell is can you smell anything? Yes or no. Could you identify it? Let them identify.

[00:25:39] And those are two different places in the brain. And then retest your forward fold or your squat and you come up and you're like, whoa, my low back's a two out of 10 stiffness

[00:25:50] from smelling in the left nostril because we are giving the area of the brainstem, right? Well, cranial nerve one technically doesn't live in the brainstem. It sits on top, but you're helping the brainstem have better prediction for your surroundings, which makes your body feel

[00:26:06] safer. Smell is a great one to utilize because it's so simple and very effective because it's one of our main systems for protection and survival. So if you can't smell fire, you're

[00:26:19] dead is kind of how the brain works. So, um, that's one example of just using your body and movement with a simple cranial nerve test and just see what happens. I think that's great. I mean,

[00:26:31] especially because one of the main things that we find as, as PTs, or at least I could speak for myself is when someone comes on the table and I'm saying, relax, relax, I'm just trying to,

[00:26:43] you know, explore what's happening in their range of motion. I want passive assessment, but it's so hard to get because people are holding on to such underlying tension within their body that they're not aware of. And that underlying stress, that underlying tension,

[00:26:58] you know, can be creating the stiffness that you feel, the pain that you feel, all these different things without even having that awareness that I'm, that I'm holding on. You know, I usually tell

[00:27:09] someone, okay, relax. They're like, I am. And I'm like, but if I let go of your arm, it would stay in the air. So, you're not actually relaxed. I'm so relaxed. Which tells us it's subconscious.

[00:27:21] Like that might not be housed in their cortex anymore. That's probably housed somewhere deeper that they aren't even able to be aware of. But then if you were on the table and you had someone

[00:27:31] smell something or if they're just at home feeling like super tense in their body and they're like, let me try this. Let me just close my right nostril and take a sniff and see what happens,

[00:27:41] see what I'm experiencing, what I smell, what I detect and then see what happens within my body. I mean, it's pretty incredible and immediate how quickly this can have an effect. And so,

[00:27:53] this is where it becomes so important to start to take notice of some of these weird things of how that can help within your body. And I know you talk a lot about eye exercises as well. Can

[00:28:05] you talk about what that means? What are eye exercises? Are there simple eye exercises that would kind of help globally for people? Yeah. Typically, we have a couple that are like,

[00:28:18] okay, this should work, but you are a human and you're allowed to have more than one problem. So, nine out of 10, right? I wanted to say with the smell thing, what's cool about something like that,

[00:28:31] especially with the cranial nerve stuff is the compliance is really high because it's so easy and it's not a nerve glide where you're like, twist your arm, tilt your head, right? And clients

[00:28:41] are like, I did that one time yesterday. I know you told me to do it five, but the compliance is high because it's, hey, smell this. Put an essential oil in your gym bag and put one on

[00:28:53] your desk and one in the kitchen. And every time you see it, now you're doing rehab. Yay. Congratulations. So, it's nice from that perspective. I love nerve glides by the way, not a hate on nerve glides. I'm obsessed. But it's just something I've noticed. So yeah, for eyes,

[00:29:11] the coolest thing for me, I think is we have muscles attached to our eyeball, right? There are six muscles attached to each eyeball. There are 12 cranial nerves. Three of the 12 innervate muscles of the eye. So, I just got chills. I'm such a nerd. This is so powerful,

[00:29:38] right? Move your eyeballs equals move your brain. That is wild to me that we have access to move our eyes at any time, anywhere, any duration, any volume. It's up to you. You can do it with your

[00:29:57] eyes closed. You can do it lying down and you know you're stimulating those specific cranial nerves that live in your brainstem that are going to help autonomics function a little bit better. Possibly, they might not, right? Depending on that person's history. But we know they're at

[00:30:15] least being activated because we are moving them. In a world where eyes forward and down is the majority of eye movement, right? And we're designed to move our eyes in a lot more positions than those do. Yeah.

[00:30:32] Totally. And I think exactly what I was thinking of as you were saying this, I'm like, the majority of people every day, what's the variance of how many degrees their eyes look

[00:30:43] side to side or up and down? And if people listening just try to keep your head forward and look your eyes up as far as you can go and hold it for five seconds and then down and to

[00:30:54] either side, you will feel the stretch of those muscles. And I think that's something pretty profound when you feel the muscles attached to your eyes stretching and feeling that kind of like as if you're stretching your hamstring. You can feel that literally behind your eyeballs when

[00:31:11] you just move your eyes. As you were talking about it, I was doing it. So, you probably saw me go cross-eyed a few times. But yeah, it's pretty crazy to feel that stretch sensation behind your eyeballs. And you really can feel it. Yeah.

[00:31:25] That's the thing. You know that this is true because you can feel that they are – I don't know if we can say atrophied, but they are definitely not used as much, especially the eyes up, right? Totally.

[00:31:38] So, it's a sad world with everything within two and a half feet from our face. Yeah. But there's a lot we can do about it. So, there's so much hope. Well, you mentioned with the autonomics, I think that it's so important for people to keep thinking

[00:31:54] back to the autonomic nervous system. And when we do these cranial nerve things, it's helping us shift this automatic portion of our nervous system because it can't ignore us when we do certain

[00:32:05] things. It has to obey the rules of when you're smelling something or when we fix our sight, like we do the majority of the day, that gets us more into that sympathetic nervous system versus

[00:32:18] moving the eyeballs and letting our eyes take in our peripheral vision and take in the whole amount of scenery around us. That's so much more of a parasympathetic driver. And the amount that that can drive and shift your nervous system, it's something your autonomics can't ignore.

[00:32:36] And it's something that you will likely feel in short order. I love that. I'm totally stealing that. Yeah. Your brain cannot ignore this. You are smelling peppermint. Yeah. Like you can't not do what I... So, that's actually a really cool point. That is what I say in a

[00:32:57] different way of like you have to speak the language of your brain. Yeah. Right? Like your brain speaks in cranial nerves. It doesn't know if it's French or Spanish or Mandarin, right? So, smell is... Think about how important just that one nerve is. It's so

[00:33:16] important. It's its own nerve and that's the only job it has. Why is it still there? Exactly. Like its only job is to smell so we can predict better to create safety in the body and have

[00:33:30] that survival calm down, right? Like there is no saber-toothed tiger about to eat my face. I don't smell it or see it. I love how the saber-toothed tiger is always the example people use because

[00:33:41] I feel like that's always the one. Okay, I don't see the saber-toothed tiger. I don't smell. I don't feel it. I know. I need a new one, right? Evolutionarily, it makes sense to me.

[00:33:51] So, is it that simple though to start doing just experimenting moving your eyes in all these different directions? And if there are places where you're like, wow, the right eye actually moves really well but the left eye doesn't, does that kind of play into what could be

[00:34:08] happening side to side within your body, differences within your body as well? Yeah, absolutely. So, in the beginning of the, we'll call it cranial nerve journey, you can kind of start vague and like, oh, everyone do eye circles. Yay, right? But then we do want

[00:34:25] to isolate and figure out which eye muscle is causing the issue, which exact cranial nerve needs a little love. And if you already try stuff and you just said my right eye's totally good,

[00:34:38] but when I move my left one, I feel kind of like fatigued or it's blurry. Then this is where the fun and annoying part of neurology comes in because some people respond really well to working on we'll say quote unquote the weak eye.

[00:34:55] I don't love calling it that, but just for conversation sake, right? Sometimes we work on the weak eye by covering the good eye. We cover the right eye, literally wear an eye patch for 20 minutes a day. Now you're doing rehab. No one has to know,

[00:35:09] stay in your office. Look like a pirate. And the body might respond really well to that. Pain goes down, movement feels freer. I feel more range of motion. Interesting. But then for some people, that eye is too threatening to work on. So we can't just

[00:35:28] blanket say, cover your right eye if your left eye's weak, have at it. I mean you could, but that would be a disservice, right? So we do want to have a way to reassess the body.

[00:35:41] And luckily it's kind of whatever you want. It's whatever your goal is at the time. Maybe it's moving your neck right, left, or the pushup you want to feel better, or your pull-ups are feeling

[00:35:53] funky, or maybe it's pain. It could be some people that I have use numbness on a body part, right? Like my left quad is numb. Okay, let's see what happens when we move your eyes and decreasing

[00:36:07] the threats in the threat bucket that way. Maybe it's just a sensation thing you're working on. So it really depends on the person in front of you, but yes to the question on right versus left

[00:36:18] and the specific movements. But we can also start with a general eye circle type of movement just to get the body kind of more acquainted, and then you want to dissect from there and isolate. Yeah.

[00:36:33] Absolutely. So again, we're talking very central nervous system here, right? And that's where you said like your current love is in the central nervous system, the brainstem, the cranial nerves, which again, I can geek out over that stuff a ton because I love it as well, obviously.

[00:36:51] But you also speak about how joint mobility is so important, right? And joints, at least my traditional PT brain and other people listening will be like, oh, joints, that's very peripheral, or that's the peripheral nervous system. We're outside of the brainstem that controls

[00:37:10] our joint mobility. How can somebody maybe use some of these things to start globally addressing joint mobility or even in a specific joint that they feel very restricted, how can some of this neurology play start to help improve mobility?

[00:37:29] Okay. I think I'm understanding the question. So rather than moving the joint, how can we use neurology to help support that? Or do both and how does that work to improve when you're talking about joint mobility? Are

[00:37:47] you using them in conjunction or are you just doing stretches for your joint mobility? Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay. So I think I got it. We'll know by the end of my tangent if the

[00:37:58] question was answered. So a couple ways. Yeah. So we already talked about this kind of X with the way someone walks. So that's one way to use neurology for joint mobility. So if someone has a left ankle issue, right wrist, left knee, right elbow, left hip, right shoulder.

[00:38:19] That is an option, right? So, hey, I roll my lateral ankle two to four times a year. Okay. Interesting. I'm already going, okay, the brain doesn't trust that ankle. It finds that map,

[00:38:34] proprioceptive map in the brain is blurry. We can do a ton of stuff at the site. Absolutely. But I would also go along that line and help the right wrist, right elbow, right shoulder,

[00:38:47] left hip and left knee send better signals on that X so that everything's independently efficient. Then it makes the whole thing interdependent and efficient, right? So it's like they're all supporting each other. So that's one way. Skin stimulation is super underrated. This is another

[00:39:09] thing I go crazy about because skin stimulation produces mechanoreception, which helps decrease pain because it's that feel good oxytocin receptor, right? So I don't say that to clients that way, right? I'm just like, rub your skin. But in our conversation, we can go there. But yeah,

[00:39:26] so just like a light topical 10 to 15 second quick rub on the area will change the experience you have of discomfort, stiffness, pain. Do we want to try something real quick? Yeah. Just on the call. Like

[00:39:42] why not? Right. I know you guys can't see us, but what you're going to do is just lengthen up and take your four finger pads of your right hand and start to rub the top of your left hand really

[00:39:53] fast as if you were cold. You were warming up your left hand, right? And think about all the bones in the hand and the wrist. We'll do this for like 15 seconds and then we'll go to the inside of the

[00:40:04] wrist. Yes. Beautiful. This is, do you guys put this on YouTube? I feel like you do. Can people see it or not? No, unfortunately not. No, we should. Okay. So you guys can't see us. We're just

[00:40:15] rubbing the skin back and forth quickly. It's not hard. So we're not doing a massage. Okay. So let's say that was 30 seconds. Yeah. So now go ahead and just drop your hands by your

[00:40:27] sides like if you were just relaxing and just feel the difference between your left hand and your right hand. And what words would you use to describe how your left hand feels?

[00:40:44] I mean, for me, it's alive. I can actually connect to it. My brain is very aware of where my left hand is in space and what it feels like. Yeah. I closed my eyes right away because I wanted to

[00:41:00] really hone in on how I was feeling. And the first thing that came to my mind was my left hand feels much brighter. Yeah. Bright as if I can see it even with my eyes closed. Yeah. I see you. I feel you. Yeah, that was interesting.

[00:41:18] You were there, right? Yes. So how cool is that? Okay. So now let's take a moment and give Wrighty a little attention. And what words would you use to describe your right hand?

[00:41:29] I mean, just not as connected. I feel like I don't have the sense of exactly where my wrist is, where my fingers are compared to my left. Like my left, I know exactly where my wrist joints are,

[00:41:43] where the skin is that feels over my right is just like, you know, my hand is there, but there's no brain connection, I would say for me. Yeah. It was a little more muted. Yeah. Kind of what I was thinking.

[00:41:58] It wasn't nearly as present in my brain as my left hand was. Yeah. How cool is that? Yeah. Skin stimulus, stimulate your skin. There's my homework, right? So let's do the right side so

[00:42:11] it's not just left there. Mine was like jealous. My right hand was like, this is taking forever. Really? When are you going to touch me? That's what I was feeling, like dead and heavy and jealous. So this is super powerful for joint mobility.

[00:42:32] Imagine if we just, whatever you were doing that day, imagine if you just stimulated the skin on your knees, the front of the knee, the back of the knee, your feet before you did squats. Oh, right? Yeah.

[00:42:45] Your low back, your neck, your armpits, whatever you want to do. But hands and feet and spine are really great place to start to have a bigger effect on the body. Yeah. But that's another way to help with joint mobility, just skin stimulation.

[00:43:03] I love that. So I'll leave it at those two. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a very cool introduction into what you're doing with clients and professionals to help bring awareness of other areas of how we can start to create

[00:43:19] change and impact change. And everything is about impacting change, not only like do this specific stretch and do it this way. But what if I just rub that area and brought more awareness and

[00:43:31] feedback to that area so that I had more just kind of confidence in that area? I felt more empowered to move in that area because I have more connection to it now. Like that's such a cool

[00:43:45] thing for people to just be able to take away and have that, you know, everlasting. I think that's really, really cool. We talk about this a lot whenever we talk about passive modalities or what

[00:43:57] we would call passive modalities in the physical therapy realm. Some of the podcasts Jen and I do together. We talk about massage. We talk about Graston work. We talk about use with all these

[00:44:06] other tools and how people in the industry would like to hate on them because they say that, you know, oh, they're not that beneficial or they're just a passive modality. But again, it's helping to tap into some of these things that you're talking about with the power

[00:44:22] of touch and how it can help us open up and see an area that much more. People like to hate on lymphatic massages. But again, how much that can just wake up and brighten up the nervous system

[00:44:33] everywhere that you use it. So, I think that these are some very powerful techniques. Yes. Again, like we said that you're speaking your brain's language. It can't ignore you and you're waking up and helping your body feel something a little bit different. Yeah. Now, if someone is

[00:44:50] wanting to understand and learn more from you, where could they come and learn especially if they felt like, you know, I've been doing a lot of rehab and I haven't. I've been told everything's

[00:45:03] normal. I've been told MRIs are fine. So, how can I get extra help with my body? Where would you guide them? Yeah. Yeah. So, this is a huge reason I'm passionate about it is because of that

[00:45:14] demographic where all the normal things didn't work. Yeah. I'm so happy for the people that the normal stuff worked for, right? I'm like, yay! You're done. Yeah. Like all you had to do

[00:45:26] was that and you get to live your life, right? There's just all these other people that it didn't work for aka myself, right? So, yeah. My stuff's very easy to find. My name's just Missy

[00:45:37] Bunch. So, it's just on Instagram, Missy Bunch 15. And then my husband and I for the general population, we have a company called Movement IQ. And that's movementiq.co. And all the information from that perspective is for general population, right? So, the way that we speak is for everyone

[00:45:58] versus professionals. My personal stuff on missybunch.com is going to be towards a practitioner. To be honest, I frankly teach it the same if we're being very transparent. But people like

[00:46:13] specific words. So, I say this is for this and this is for that. But I really do teach all the same. I have people that have worked at McDonald's come through my programs, right? And tech and marketing.

[00:46:24] And they're just like, I'm interested in my body and my brain. And I'm like, come along. I teach it all the same. But yeah, if someone was wanting to find more, those are some options that are easy

[00:46:34] to find. Perfect. And we'll have that linked up, of course, so that you guys can dive in more and take a look at all her stuff. And we've loved the conversation. I think this is something that

[00:46:45] doesn't get talked about enough of how it can help and what are some simple things that people can start with. Obviously, it gets more specific if you work with someone specifically. But

[00:46:56] just starting to have more awareness of what else is out there and what else impacts the body in the way that you feel, in the way that you move, I think is really powerful. And I'm shocked that

[00:47:05] we talked cranial nerves and you even brought up the vagus nerve and we didn't talk breath work at all, which is one of Jen and my absolute... We talk about that enough.

[00:47:13] We... Yeah. Our audience gets that plenty, which is why I wanted to focus on other things. But oh, the breath. We could talk for hours, I'm sure. Right? She's like elbowing like... I know.

[00:47:23] We do what we do. You could do a four-day course on that without stopping, right? Yeah. Totally. Totally. But Missy, thank you. But again, if you're talking about helping joint stuff, you can access certain ways to feel better in your joint mobility with vagus stuff, right? Totally. 100%.

[00:47:39] It all feeds down. So... Yes. Sorry to cut you off. No, people ask me, what's the best stretch? That's like people's favorite question for some reason. What's the best stretch? And I say, breathe. Do long, slow breathing for about 60 seconds. Best full body stretch you'll ever do.

[00:47:57] There you go. I love that answer. What's the best stretch? Breathe. Breathe. Yeah. But Missy, again, you're speaking our language, speaking the language of the brain. Loved having you on. Thanks so much for what you do. And I hope people go learn more from you.

[00:48:15] Such a great chat all about that neurology. Jen and I are such nerds when it comes to this about how we can use our nervous system to feel and sense something a little bit different,

[00:48:24] to access and change that pain or the way that we move in a way that we might not have thought about before. That was such a fun conversation with Missy Bunch. If you want to learn more from

[00:48:34] her, go check out some of her links down in the show notes. And remember, we have our own Jen Health community and you can always get a free week trial of the membership to come and move with

[00:48:44] us. Try out some of the plans. So go to Jen.Health backslash free trial and make sure you use code optimal at checkout just in case you decide to continue the membership. You'll get an extra

[00:48:55] discount with code optimal. If you haven't, please consider leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcasting platform. And of course, we'll see you next time on the Optimal Body Podcast. Transcribed by https://otter.ai