Welcome to season 2 of The Curiosity Cure podcast from Pain Coach Deb. It's going to be an incredible season of interviews, insights and expansion of understanding the mindbody experience, pain recovery and how YOU can feel more better in the body you have today. This is my kick off in my off the cuff style with an intro or a reintro to me and what my work is all about. I'm so glad you're here!
Here's all the important links for this episode:
Website - https://www.thecuriositycure.coach/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/curiositycure.coach/
Book a Free Curiosity Call - https://calendly.com/paincoachdeb
Article referenced in podcast - https://thelavinagency.com/we-live-in-the-past-david-eagleman-on-our-perception-of-time-video/
[00:00:00] Deb: Welcome to The Curiosity Cure Podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker, hypnotist trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder, fat human on planet earth here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame free curiosity so you can feel more better.
[00:00:31] more of the time in the body you have today and build the rich, full life that you want to live. A quick disclaimer, this podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey, but always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:56] Hi, it's Deb and I'm just going to improv this because one thing that I've noticed is like, I've been meaning to start season two of this podcast and been meaning to, and been meaning to, and been meaning to, and it keeps being something that I'm doing in the future.
[00:01:15] And the future is now, because one thing I noticed is I have this great. Interview that I did with Dr. Joan Chan from the other human in the room, one of my coaching colleagues. And we got into this great conversation about curiosity and I wanted to post it. And then I was like, Oh, but I want to put it on my new season.
[00:01:34] And then I was like, I didn't record anything, an intro for this new season. And I'm not going to write it, I'm just going to do it and maybe be another iteration of the introduction to me, Deb Malkin, your host of the Curiosity Cure. And I will tell you a little bit about who I am. So I am a mind body pain recovery coach.
[00:01:59] I'm a former massage therapist, body worker, restorative exercise specialist, like trained in biomechanics and a fat human. Thank And in like 2019, I had chronic knee pain and it was bothering me and bothering me and not getting better. And I was using all my kind of like biomechanics tools and it was not getting better and in my mind I was like, I'm 50.
[00:02:26] I think I was turning 50 that year. And I was like, this is just how bodies go. Like it's going downhill. And, you know, may starting to think about like, Oh, maybe it's time for a knee replacement. And, and just everything was heading in that direction because it was using all of my tools that I had around.
[00:02:48] physical pain from a physiological point of view. And what ended up happening was I discovered both the curable app and the work of Dr. Sarno through a friend of mine, Susan Brown, who had cured her migraines through using curable. And I was like, Hmm, here's something that like. Obstensively shouldn't have happened, but has happened.
[00:03:13] And so I kind of cracked open that information and I was like, okay, how do I apply this to myself? I like dove into the work and one thing I realized was, you know, my approach to this was very much about kind of like, how do I get my body to do what I want it to do? And it was very fear based because if you've ever been.
[00:03:40] A person of size, uh, you're not often given messages like your body is strong. You're often given messages like you're destroying your knees and you're going to have a decline that you won't be able to recover from. There's a lot of negative future predicting around larger bodies. There was just a lot of fear.
[00:04:03] Like when I was able to scratch under the surface. of what was happening and get out of my restorative exercise fixing mind, what I actually understood was my body is communicating something and I'm not listening. And so I took my leg, myself. Right. Which includes my leg out for a walk. And I, instead of thinking about the rotation of my femurs and where my, you know, patella is and like walking in a particular kind of way that I was told was good for me was the right kind of alignment, like what I should be doing.
[00:04:45] To not be in pain. I threw all of that out. I realized for me, all that was doing was triggering this intense perfectionism and a lot of fear. When I got this information from a, from an expert who I really loved and valued and was a beloved teacher of mine, but I was like me and my body and my brain, like.
[00:05:14] And there's a, there's more nuance in this, and maybe I'm going to get into this in future podcasts, kind of like how we metabolize, how we internalize things that we learn. Right. So my body and brain was like, there is a right way to have a body without pain and you're not doing it. Like you, yourself, your humanness is intrinsically linked to pain and what, and there's like, unless you are not you, and unless you have a completely different body, you will not be able to relieve yourself of pain.
[00:05:48] And I was like, Oh, okay. I really see that there's this underlying belief and this kind of identity crisis going on. The way that I was even thinking about my knee and relating to it. And like, you know, knee pain really sucks. It's not like, Oh, it was a little annoyance. It was the thing I woke up with and the thing I went to bed with, and it was scary and unpleasant, but I was like, I'm going to try something different.
[00:06:17] And also like. There's, there's no side effects to mind body work per se, right? Going to take a walk with a different attitude doesn't come with anything negative. So I took this walk and I was like, let's start to listen. It was this very slow, deliberate walk in my neighborhood and I was looking at people's gardens and, and really just slowing everything down and also walking slowly on purpose as a fat person, also very uncomfortable, you know, thinking about like other people's judgments about whether I'm breathing hard or whether I'm walking slowly.
[00:06:59] And so all of that came up and it's so uncomfortable. And I just met it. I met that discomfort. And then I started to like even talk to my knee almost as if it was. scared puppy. Actually, it was walking my neighbor's dog. So even I had this like dog and I had my knee. I was talking to like a dog and I was like, you know, it's okay.
[00:07:27] And my knee was like, yeah, I don't feel okay. I was like, okay. So instead of just telling it what it should be feeling, I asked my knee like, well, what do you need to feel safe? And it was like, I need you to stop judging me, like I need you to stop trying to fix me. I need you to start to listen to me. And you know, I listened and as I listened, I was also working on creating safety.
[00:07:58] And so on this walk, I was like just walking slowly, feeling secure with each step, even if there was pain and discomfort. Starting to just open the door to, I am safe, there's nothing wrong with my knee. Like there is maybe this possibility that there's nothing wrong with my knee. And as I walked, I could feel muscles that had been holding that I thought were necessary.
[00:08:31] I thought that tension kind of was necessary. And what I realized is that tension was like, a representation of the internal me. And so as that softened and relaxed, my walking got better. And I just let this be something that carried me through my day. So when I was doing my body work and my massage work, I noticed how many times my mind wanted to take me into my body and think about like the rotation again of my femurs and the location of my knee pits and like the rotation of my feet.
[00:09:07] And I got really into like feet architecture and I was really into like strengthening my feet. I have nothing against strengthening muscles and body parts, but it became this kind of obsession. And so every time I noticed my mind wanting to take me into my body to fix things or do it right, I would transition into the most important thing is this feeling of safety.
[00:09:33] And it was constant throughout the day, but what I noticed is by the end of the day, I felt like 85 percent better. And then I went to bed and I woke up the next morning and I didn't have pain. I did not wake up with pain and I felt like 95 percent better. And that to me was like, this is not what's supposed to be happening.
[00:09:57] I am not supposed to at 50. And fat and having knee pain and osteoarthritis have pain change overnight. It's just not anything that I was ever told or taught or believed or trained in. And then I was like, all right, well, what, I guess I'm wrong. Like I guess I am wrong about pain. And so as a body worker, I was like, I have to serve my clients and my job is to know more.
[00:10:34] And also for me, it was hugely transformative experience. And, and what I do know about myself is something really ticks that curiosity when something just like. Goes like, follow me down this path. Uh, I'm going to follow it. And that led me to studying with Charlie Merrill and Dr. Howard Schubiner from Unlearn Your Pain.
[00:10:57] And Charlie had a hands on, um, program for like physical therapists or massage therapists, or, and then the like pandemic happened and then it turned online and whatever. But Charlie is this. Beloved teacher of mine because he also came from this kind of hands on like we, you know, we apply something to the body.
[00:11:17] And create change and then turning that into evolving this mind body connection and the work of, you know, that Dr. Sarno really started, um, at least in Western medicine, right? I don't want to discount that there are other roots of pain recovery and this type of thought in other cultures, at least in the United States, our medical system is based on.
[00:11:43] Certain principles, and this is what people are taught in med schools and nursing schools. And when you enter the medical system, there's not really treatment options around a mind body approach to chronic pain. Well, there is now, but there used to not be. And it's very, very recent. And you know, with recent science, things don't actually filter down into actual medical practices overnight.
[00:12:10] Very quickly, they take time. So we're in this interesting time and nexus the work of the boulder back pain study That has been very profound and changed What is a evidence based treatment plan for chronic pain really talks about pain? Reprocessing therapy as the most effective treatment for chronic pain and that work is about changing our relationship And ship to our physiological experiences.
[00:12:42] And to do that, we need to become curious. And so this is why this podcast is called the curiosity cure, because in both all of the life coaching work that I've done, and particularly in the pain reprocessing work that I've done, curiosity. Curiosity is, is the therapeutic base from which we operate. It's not just like, Oh, we're getting curious cause like, that's just a nice thing to do.
[00:13:12] Curiosity is a mechanism for how we approach any experience. Whether it's in our mind, in our body, in the world around us, and what we are doing is retraining our nervous system and our brain to understand and experience things differently. And I will get more into the science. As I, this is off the cuff.
[00:13:37] I did not prepare and I would like to be really accurate. I have a bunch of interviews with different people, but I trained with Charlie Merrill. I trained with Dr. Howard Shubiner. I trained, um, with Alan Gordon's Pain Psychology Center and their pain reprocessing therapy. I went through the training for the PPDA, which is the Psychophysiological Disorders Association training.
[00:14:01] I've now become a hypnotist. And there's a kind of a whole branch of pain work that's done in hypnotism. And there's lots of overlap and branches and there's a little bit more like creativity and fun and hypnotism, which has really spoken to me and I've helped people overcome migraines, back pains, fibromyalgia, all kinds of.
[00:14:28] Different mind body disorders I've had clients who've gone from, you know, barely being able to stand or walk for 10 minutes to going back to running. I've helped people after they've gone through surgery. So not even, uh, you know, that's acute pain, but helping people recover well, so that we actually prevent any chronic pain, any learned perpetuated pain.
[00:14:54] So helping people reorient. Their perception of their body through a lens of safety, and that is complex because safety is not a simple equation, and there are many biopsychosocial factors, determinants of health and well being that aren't even just about our own personal physical body, but they're about the world that our bodies inhabit, which are different depending on your, your race, your gender, your creed.
[00:15:28] Socio economic status, we have all kinds of science around epigenetics, so things that our parents and grandparents and generations back have been through and experienced. And then there's all the kinds of influences of medical care, uh, and how we're taught about our bodies. Yeah. I was. Having breakfast today with a friend who's a nurse.
[00:15:51] And I was like, yeah, we don't actually, I was talking about digestion. I went to the bathroom. This is, this is what it's going to be like to listen to this podcast. I'll tell you about going to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom and then I came out and I was like, peristalsis is so cool. Um, and before I became a mind, body coach, I liked.
[00:16:09] I never really thought about digestion all that much. Like I didn't think about the mechanisms of it, and it's always so amazing to me that we can have a body, that we can be alive. I am 54 years old and there's not a lot I need to do to keep my body working. Like it's got its own wisdom. I have to know more about my car than I have to really know about my body to stay alive.
[00:16:36] There's a way. Perceiving and looking and understanding about both the brain and its role in keeping us alive. And so we want to kind of locate ourselves within both our own physiological system, within our belief system, within the way that we relate to our sensory experiences, because some people were now learning about like certain types of neurodivergence or autism where people might have more.
[00:17:07] Um, neuronal connections. So we, there might be a biological reason for heightened sensitivity. And then there's also the learn sensitivity. We can control that volume dial. We can have it up or bring it down and working with coaches or doctors or therapists or people who understand this work or just people who do it on their own.
[00:17:31] I created that change in my body on my own. I mean, I also had a decade. of experience as a massage therapist. But that first experience I did. So I did with a book and an app and you know, I was like, Hey, this is something really, really powerful. So my intention with this podcast is to cast both a really wide net of understanding, curiosity, cure, like what is even possible for human beings and human bodies who are experiencing negative.
[00:18:14] physiological and even emotional experiences. What is possible around healing and how we create the best environment for healing? What kind of knowledge do we need to apply? What kind of beliefs do we need to get into? What kinds of actions do we need to be taking? Um, and then I want to talk about things that aren't often talked about in mind, body medicine, which are the effects of.
[00:18:44] Different systems that we live in, so I'm, it's going to be kind of everything I really want to talk about all of it and so that's my ambition for this next season of my podcast is to have some more speakers, other experts, people who have, who have recovered from COVID 19. Chronic pain conditions or mind body syndrome, like we're, we're still coming up with the language and the naming for it and talk about both the, the mechanisms and the process of pain reprocessing and why it works and talking about how.
[00:19:25] You, because this is in service to you, how you can take these concepts and apply them to yourself so you can feel better and feel better is a broad category. It's going to mean lots of different things for different people. I'm going to talk about the role of emotions and childhood versus experiences.
[00:19:47] The whole gamut was listening to David Eagleman, who wrote a few books on neuroplasticity. And he's a cool guy. His podcast is called Inner Cosmos. I like his podcast because he's a very good storyteller and for me, a good. Storyteller about the body, like about our human physical experience is somebody who is able to communicate a sense of optimism because what we do now know.
[00:20:29] We used to think the brain was like, it's set and that's it. And that's what you got. And we actually know that the brain is always changing and that neuroplasticity and bioplasticity are foundational to our experiences as a human. They are our birthright healing is our birthright. And so sometimes it is.
[00:20:53] Uh, the lack of knowledge or the lack of understanding how to apply neuroplasticity and bioplasticity to our individual lives. So what I love about David Eagleman is that he takes complex science and he makes it simple and entertaining. And one of the things that I love about my My current vocation is that I get to study neuroscience, but I'm not in school.
[00:21:25] I am not getting a PhD, but I'm learning from people who have PhDs. And then it is my job to help further translate and help my clients embody this information In a way that benefits them so that they can feel better and start to unwire your mind body from the negative or unpleasant physiological and emotional experiences you're having through this lens.
[00:21:57] He's got a great thing about. That we live in the past, that our brain actually, like our conscious mind is telling us a story of what has already happened. And we're not really perceiving that because when we are experiencing things, we're perceiving that it's happening in real time. And one of the really interesting things when we are working on mind body work and why my podcast is called the curiosity cure, when we get curious, what we're actually doing is.
[00:22:38] It's like almost like if you're driving down a road that you're always driving down, you're used to driving down this road, you're kind of not even perceiving anything. You know how you can drive down a road and like you get to work and you didn't even like you were like, was I driving? I'm, I don't even remember any of it, or that you could like drive and put on makeup and like talk to a friend or listen to a podcast or do whatever, like while you're driving down this road that you've been down a million times, right?
[00:23:09] It becomes automated and habituated in our brain. And then our brain. Is it and then our body, right? Because if you can like drive and put on makeup, that's not just your brain. Your brain is not putting on makeup. Your body is putting on makeup, right? That's a thing that we're doing with our hands and our face and our eyes.
[00:23:27] Um, so our brain is more available to do something else. But when we slow down and get curious and actually take our attention and look at the space around us and actually ask our brain, okay. to do something different, to get curious, you're not going to be able to put your makeup on or do something else and be curious.
[00:23:51] What we're actually doing is asking our brain to have a different experience. And I love how he explains this perception of event. So I'm just going to read this. So he talks about the way that our brains perceive time, and this is from an article from the Levin Agency, and I'll post that in the transcript.
[00:24:17] So he says, our perception of time of an event depends on what happens next. We live in the past, he explains, because. By the time our brain pieces together an event, it has already happened. Your brain takes in the information, processes it, and then delivers it to your consciousness. But by the time you are perceiving it and are conscious of it, the event has already passed.
[00:24:42] Since conscious thinking operates with a bit of a lag, how far in the past are we living? So thanks to some of Eagleman's research, he found that we are at least one 10th of a second. behind real time. Part of the reason for this lag is that the brain needs to sync up all the different cues that it's being given from the body.
[00:25:04] We hear, touch, smell things at different times. And however, the brain coordinates all the senses to present to you, to your conscious mind with a unified picture of what's happening or more accurately, what has already happened. And So, this goes on to talk about his keynote, in one of his podcasts, he goes into even more explanation, and I think it's the one that's like, why do runners, why do they like set off a starter pistol instead of using a flash of light?
[00:25:40] So, he goes into the fun brain science. So one, so we take that information, right? That's like, cool. So why, but why should I care? And the reason why we care is. When we understand how the brain is delivering to us a cohesive and coherent understanding of what we're experiencing, when we know that it's constructed.
[00:26:06] Then we are like, where are the places that I can go in and interfere with that construction, that understanding and shake it up, mess it up. We want to mess up that kind of neuronal pathways, right? That automatic processed of like, you know, I start here and I go here, I get in my car and I just go right.
[00:26:30] But when we. Interfere with that and curiosity is really my favorite way because when we add in curiosity with self compassion, it brings into this whole field, a very loving and self referential process. I will get more into this, but I just. Really wanted to get this done. I want to start. And that is me meeting my desire and like my perfectly imperfect delivery.
[00:27:03] So welcome to season two of the curiosity cure, my podcast that used to be known as move with Deb. And I am really, really happy that you're here. And I am hoping that these conversations and what I teach will. Enrich your life and we'll give you hope and help you understand the relationship between your mind, your body, your nervous system, your physiology, yourself, that self, that you inside of all of this to help you feel empowered.
[00:27:40] and help you build the future that you want to be experiencing has less pain. So that is my ambition and hopes and desires. And thank you for listening. And also I am available for one on one coaching. I want to offer this podcast as a free resource. I am excited to share my knowledge. If there's something that I could talk about forever ad nauseum, it is.
[00:28:10] Pain. It is pain reprocessing. It is my own experiences as my client zero, and also the experiences of my clients and other people around me. I see miraculous things. I love talking about the science behind it, kind of how we make this possible for ourselves, because I really believe that like, when we understand things, we experience them differently.
[00:28:34] And this is why Dr. Sarno's work affected millions of people just through a book. Like his treatment plan was three hour lectures. Like I know that we don't have the attention span for three hour lectures anymore, but that's how he delivered his treatment was a three hour lecture. About the mind body condition and people got better from it.
[00:28:58] If you want to know like how we work together, please book a curiosity call. I'm happy to share with you how I help people, what I teach you, the work that we do together in our coaching sessions, like what is possible for you. Every person is different. I think the, the mechanisms are the same, right? Like in general, we all have a brain and a body and a nervous system.
[00:29:20] And then the work is very personal to you. I'm here to make your journey be about you and about the things that you want to be different in your life. Thanks for sticking around and I am so excited to get to work with you and teach you and share with you in the future. Thanks.