In this episode my colleague Alora Kubanek talks about the evolution of her work from dance, to pilates to a mindbody movement centered body dialogue approach. Alora is the founder of ‘Befriend Your Body’ a body-positive online somatic coaching business. Her signature Body Dialogue sessions are designed to help improve the communication between the brain and body. Alora is a trauma-informed movement specialist who understands what its like to live with persistent and invisible conditions. She offers 1-1 support, guest teaching, and also collaborates with life coaches and thought leaders who want develop more embodied experiences. I think a lot of movement professionals will resonate with this conversation. Please enjoy!
In this episode my colleague Alora Kubanek talks about the evolution of her work from dance, to pilates to a mindbody movement centered body dialogue approach.
Alora is the founder of ‘Befriend Your Body’ a body-positive online somatic coaching business. Her signature Body Dialogue sessions are designed to help improve the communication between the brain and body. Alora is a trauma-informed movement specialist who understands what its like to live with persistent and invisible conditions. She offers 1-1 support, guest teaching, and also collaborates with life coaches and thought leaders who want develop more embodied experiences.
You can find their work online here:
www.befriendyourbody.ca
https://www.instagram.com/body_dialogues/
https://www.facebook.com/BefriendYourBodyAsItIs
[00:00:00] 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.
[00:00:29] So you can feel more better. 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.
[00:00:55] Deb: Hello, Alora, thank you for coming on the curiosity cure with me. And I'm excited to have this conversation with you about mind body pain recovery, healing, being a human being in a human body and all the things that we love to nerd out about. Or is there a way to say like somatically nerd out. Is it just the same word?
[00:01:21] Alora: I think it's probably the same. We're body geeks.
[00:01:25] Deb: Or maybe it's like somatically nerd out would be like a movement.
[00:01:28] Alora: We're like, yeah, a little interpretive dance.
[00:01:31] Deb: Okay. I love it.
[00:01:32] Alora: Wiggle and roll.
[00:01:35] Deb: I love some interpretive dance. So fun. Okay. So let's just start with you introducing yourself to my audience and who you are, uh, and what you do.
[00:01:48] Alora: Okay. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me here. It's lovely to be with you. My name is Alora and I am a somatically based practitioner, that recently did the PRT training. I am a body nerd and that goes way back. Like I was born a body nerd, I think. I started off as an interpretive dancer. Did that for quite a while and transitioned into teaching Pilates.
[00:02:16] And for anyone that doesn't know Pilates, it's a pretty structured and can get very intellectual, movement practice. It's Really been adopted by a lot of physiotherapists so it can get used in like a therapeutic kind of way. And so while I was teaching, I did a lot also of like extra, study with physios with other body workers and just kind of couldn't really get enough.
[00:02:47] So I was coming at it from, from lots of different directions. I was Just sort of living and breathing mind body work. Now my practice is I, I have an online practice, which is called befriend your body. And I offer body dialogue sessions with people. My practice now is helping people be in conversation with their body without needing it to be like in the lens of exercise or, any sort of specific, technique or anything like that. But more relational.
[00:03:27] Deb: I love that. I just had a session with a client today, that was exactly about that. And I'll just share a little bit. We were talking about listening to your body, which is like a foundational piece of doing this work, like opening up that inner conversation.
[00:03:45] And so she was kind of coming at it from like, well, if my body says, if my stomach growls, then what I should do is think about like, okay, I'm hungry. What do I feed it? No, it was like, what if we even step back from that approach, which just says like your body does something and you're like, check in with it.
[00:04:05] And you're like, Hey, what do you need without jumping ahead and even assuming that that growl is actually an authentic hunger cue. Or like, maybe you are like. Yeah, we've got a great lunch coming up in a half an hour. Is that a conversation that you can have with your body as opposed to letting your body like boss you around or something like either your choices are be bossed around or completely suppress anything so that like it's kind of not present until it's you know, so loud that it has to be screaming. So,
[00:04:41] Alora: yeah, we really so easily assume what that we know what our body's trying to tell us. Like, so often I see that people get so surprised when they actually get curious, right? And and stop themselves at that moment of assumption, like, okay, well, what if I don't know?
[00:05:04] Deb: What might
[00:05:05] Alora: the answer be?
[00:05:06] Deb: Oh, I love that. Yeah. Tell me more about that quality of being surprised, like, what does that help people with?
[00:05:14] Alora: The surprise opens up a door to possibility, right? It means that you can change directions on a dime, like you can pivot and have capacity. To pivot without being like forced to write, but it's creating more agency and ability to turn and also an ability to see more expansively.
[00:05:41] Right. Well, maybe I've got a palette of choices to choose from, you know, I've got something, uh, light over here and something dark over here and, and like, what do I really want? What's calling me the most and having the agency them to choose.
[00:05:58] Deb: Cool. I like to ask everybody, you know, pain reprocessing is still kind of niche, like it's small and it's growing. So oftentimes people have a very personal reason for having gone through that training. So I was curious to know what led you to add that to your very expansive toolbox of somatic practices.
[00:06:26] Alora: Like I said, I was sort of living and breathing mind body work but still I was hitting walls where I thought, I should be feeling better. It just didn't make sense to me. I was so frustrated and I had a health crisis. I had quite a number of overwhelming and, uh, strange, sort of mysterious symptoms that showed up.
[00:06:53] Things like vertigo and weakness, moving joint pain. I've always dealt with TMJ issues. Well, I mean, for my adult life, um. And had some pretty severe neck and shoulder pain. And I reached a point where I also was like, emotionally tapped out, fully burned out and needed to get a couple of surgeries. That was a point where I. I had already been doing a bunch of trauma and nervous system work, and so I've been layering in the trauma healing, um, and meanwhile, reading a lot of neuroscience books. And it was the layering in of the two where I started to really piece things together in a different kind of way.
[00:07:46] And I was able to I guess, puzzle the pieces together that I had been missing all the time before. I find the message that, you know, we can rewire our brains so empowering and that we can really change who we are and how we're, how we express ourselves in the world.
[00:08:08] And through this process, that started to happen to me. Finally, you know, I, I really started to feel like I could tap into who I authentically was and, and so I just wanted more, like, how do I do that more? I want to choose, and I want this to be the life that I die feeling satisfied that I've lived.
[00:08:35] Deb: Ooh. I just got chills. That's amazing. Yeah, that's such an empowering statement and it's hard to get from feeling like you're in pain and there are weird things that are happening in your body or to your body really when you don't understand why it's happening, to get to be then in that place where you feel really empowered and like someone who has agency.
[00:09:04] So what was that piece that Or multiple pieces, right? You're saying it's like a puzzle, this kind of layered puzzle. And I can really see that because also as a body based practitioner, I took so many different trainings and each one had like, you know, one or two things that helped expand this holistic view of the body. What was that piece that feel like it unlocked that puzzle for you or pieces?
[00:09:32] Alora: Well, I would say it started when I was learning about the nervous system and I had some somatic experiencing sessions and really learning, like the first big one was that emotions were a bodily process.
[00:09:48] I was totally stuck in that idea that they were like a mental thing. So then allowing myself to actually like embody emotion and to follow it through to give myself permission to follow it all the way to the end. To complete it, like they say in somatic experiencing, that was really useful for me.
[00:10:14] Deb: Can you give me an idea of what that looks like, sounds like, or feels like you can even, we can even jump into practicing it a little bit.
[00:10:26] Alora: Sure. So. I mean, the hardest one for me to access was anger, because I had really repressed anger from when I was a little kid. So practicing actually just like what's a little bit easier than anger is frustration. And frustration I felt quite a lot like that was something that came up really easily for me. And how could I let myself lean into frustration, knowing that I'm not going to get in trouble. No, one's going to get angry at me and I also had this idea that emotions needed to be in relationship to someone else and that somehow, just giving myself permission to feel it on my own.
[00:11:17] And like, turn it into a bit of a practice, that really changed things for me. So, one of my teachers, one of the first things she taught me was to be grit, to show my teeth.
[00:11:32] Deb: Okay. Yeah.
[00:11:34] Alora: Yeah. It's something I come back to quite a lot where it's, it's finding a little bit of a growl. And being able to
[00:11:48] just let something kind of simmer there for a little bit. Um,
[00:11:54] Deb: are you just getting into that feeling and the growl or are you bringing up any content with it?
[00:12:02] Alora: I think there's value in doing both in terms of for more of a somatic experiencing type experience, you'd want to connect it to a feeling or a person. But there's also just value in letting ourselves, especially something with the face for people who tend to, you know, be people pleasers or perfectionists, anyone who's tends to kind of hold it in to be able to like make a growl with your mouth, it it brings something alive.
[00:12:43] Deb: Yeah. Cause we're animals. Yeah. We're mammals, we're animals. Like, yeah. Um, also nowadays we're on zoom so much and you have to kind of fix your face. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And also different. I just said, fix your face, which is so fascinating because that's actually not like culturally a phrase that I would use, but I've heard black people use that, like fix your face.
[00:13:10] Alora: Okay.
[00:13:11] Deb: And I feel like culturally, there are a lot of communities or, or people who are marginalized, who often have to put on a particular kind of pleasing face. Mm mm-Hmm. for a sense of safety. Mm-Hmm. and I, you know, and, and in neurodivergent and autism communities, people often talk about like unmasking, right?
[00:13:32] Which I don't, I think it's a useful concept there, but I also don't think it's like only a concept that lives over there. I think unmasking is like that process of being able to be ourselves. And so, yeah, like literally our faces get fixed and then actually some, you know, mostly women do things to literally fix their face in place, like put Botox and do all kinds of things.
[00:13:59] And remember hearing a, um I'm taking you on a wild tangent, so please just enjoy it or not, or not. Um, but I remember reading a study where women who had had Botox. Uh, it affected their emotional capacity and they couldn't feel things as deeply as either joyfully or sad, I think because their forehead and their eyes didn't move.
[00:14:26] Alora: Yeah. That's wild.
[00:14:28] Deb: Isn't that amazing? It is. It's like both like top bottom and bottom up and right. Like, so the body communicates to the nervous system. And to the self, what we can feel and then the feelings change our face and so I love this unlocking and befriending experience that you're creating with people.
[00:14:48] It also sounds like it's not quite driven with a specific agenda.
[00:14:55] Alora: That's right.
[00:14:56] Deb: It's all very hard and I mean that in the best way. I feel like I sometimes get clients who are like, okay, and in these like 10 weeks or in this time, like, we're going to fix everything. Yeah. Yes. No, but yes. But no, I, I don't yet feel comfortable in in the work that I do and in the practice that I lead to kind of have like un agenda agenda, but I love that for you.
[00:15:32] So I'm, I'm just jealous basically. I want to hear more like how you sell that to people. Like, what's good about having. a practice that is spacious and open and just works with what arises and also tell if I'm like kind of mislabeling things just correct me please.
[00:15:56] Alora: For sure, for sure. I really like this question, like what, what's useful about having something that's non linear and, Spacious and and kind of unknown.
[00:16:10] Um, I almost feel like the question kind of answers itself in a way because when do we do that? Right. Um, but then you look at, like, going back to the PRT, a lot of pain is exacerbated and put into a loop because of the intensity at which we live life. Right. And the, the desire to nail something and to nail it down, to know what it is, to be certain about it and to do it the best that you can possibly do it.
[00:16:49] And that, that drive, while it has its place when it's taken, when it's dialed up too high, it can just take us into this loop where we, we get a little bit stuck. And, um, you know, for, for people who are dealing with chronic pain, they're like, it's this constant wheel of just feeling that intensity.
[00:17:15] And so to be able to be in a space. Where then we can sort of peel the layers away. And I, I like to do it gently with the, you know, like, I'm really reading the person that I'm working with because I'm not trying to. To shock their system, right? Like I want to ease them in, but in a really creative way where they, where they are surprised, where they surprise themselves and we end up somewhere, it's sort of like opening your eyes and like, how did I get here? And I can do this on my own.
[00:17:55] Deb: Can you give me an example that you feel comfortable sharing, uh, either for yourself or of a client, like a moment like that, that kind of like surprise and awe of like, Oh, I didn't know that this was possible for me. Um,
[00:18:18] Alora: I kind of have a few different and I don't know if I don't know if they fully answer your question, but, um,
[00:18:33] like I really like to work indirectly. Cause I find, so when I was taught about investigating movement and, and like, uh, unraveling physical pain, um, just a purely physical way, it's like you never go directly to the problem, whatever the problem is,
[00:18:56] Deb: your
[00:18:56] Alora: way in is always somewhere that either mirrors that place.
[00:19:03] Also say if it's in the right hip to go to the left hip, right? Or into like the opposite shoulder.
[00:19:10] Deb: Okay.
[00:19:11] Alora: Right. So coming at it from a different direction, and then seeing where the change comes. So I always try to take my clients on this sort of journey where it's like, okay, you tell me where we're starting.
[00:19:25] Deb: What if they say, I don't know.
[00:19:27] Alora: There's always something people are, whether it's something that happened in the week, whether it's something physically that's happening in the moment. There's always something.
[00:19:37] Deb: So say somebody like, you know, they're talking about something that's happening in the moment. I guess let's just practice. Like I'm really curious. I kind of, yeah, I feel like we can talk about things and obviously podcasts are places where you talk about things, but let's just try and see if, we can be more, practicing for people.
[00:19:59] Alora: Yeah. Let's try it.
[00:20:01] Deb: Okay.
[00:20:02] Alora: Do you have something you want to bring?
[00:20:05] Deb: Yeah, I am noticing, kind of tension on my right sits bone, kind of like when I'm sitting in this chair and feel my right tush
[00:20:19] Alora: up
[00:20:19] Deb: more than my left. And it's distracting, like I'm not fearful because I'm rooted in this work. Yeah. So that's useful. Yeah.
[00:20:30] I think if I didn't know, I would be more fearful, like I would be like, what's going on? And I would be fixated, but I do have this, it's like a little light is on it's like a light in your car or something. Like, there's a light on and it's like getting my attention, but I don't. And now I just keep being like, I'm just ignoring you.
[00:20:52] Yeah, because I have things to do. And I know you're not like. Something dangerous. So I'm just gonna ignore you.
[00:20:59] Alora: Yeah. So there's a few things I might do. I might actually, um, start with the feet, get us standing. I like to really, use balls for the feet or some sort of tool. That's an easy way to give yourself some pressure.
[00:21:21] Deb: Yeah. So I have a million balls. Maybe we'll just have to have a session, but I love this. So with the balls sometimes we talk about it as like, massaging the fascia or stretching the tissue, but it's really just that point of feedback.
[00:21:35] Exactly. Right? It's like contact information feedback. Our feet often, unless we're walking or just kind of like. Almost like existing in space without really being here.
[00:21:50] Alora: Yeah, exactly. And the way, if you look at the design of the foot itself, the foot has as many bones in it as does our spine and even more joints.
[00:22:00] It's like around 30 joints. And in each joint, we have extra sensory nerve endings so that we get information from the ground so that we know where we are in space. So by giving it a little bit of input by something that's foreign, it helps to send a message to the brain of, Oh yeah, I'm here.
[00:22:26] Yeah. And then
[00:22:32] Deb: what happens after you're like reconnecting these parts together?
[00:22:37] Alora: Well, you know, I might go through, so sometimes it's just as simple as doing a spot in the foot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the way that your brain starts to perceive your body at that point starts to shift because it's like it's remembering something else.
[00:22:55] Right. Sometimes I might then go into mapping out the rest of the body or certain parts of the body where, again, we're giving an opportunity for the brain to remember all of these parts and how they fit together. And it helps to bring a feeling like just a sense of wholeness.
[00:23:17] Deb: That makes sense.
[00:23:21] Alora: And of course, it also, it's probably calming the nervous system too all of these great things.
[00:23:29] Deb: Yeah. Be working with somebody and you're not being, Oh my God, hysterical. Like what's going on. Right. So you're very relaxed and calm and like, you know, not catastrophizing. So kind of giving somebody this other optional approach, right.
[00:23:48] This approach of curiosity and relaxed affect around something that might feel triggering. I love that idea of working in the feet and reconnecting parts of the body and seeing kind of what shows up. What other things do you do with clients?
[00:24:08] Alora: Well, I love talking to body parts.
[00:24:14] Deb: Okay.
[00:24:15] Alora: So we'll do it in several different ways, right? Like it might be talking to it might mean that you have your hand on it, right? You just pay a special attention to it. But talking to it might actually be using your words and having a literal dialogue with it. And seeing what comes out also talking to it sometimes might be even more creative and unknown where we say, what if we actually free movement right now, and just see what comes out and let's go for 5 minutes or 30 seconds or whatever it is, I might put on music or I might not.
[00:24:59] And we'll just go and see what comes out.
[00:25:02] Deb: Does anybody have resistance to that? I mean, I, I suppose you'll just pick something else, but
[00:25:08] Alora: Usually when I bring it up to people, they're really game. But they know me well enough, it's not something that I would spring on someone in the first session and jump into that, right?
[00:25:20] We like get comfortable with each other where we can actually, put down the fears and put down the nervousness and really like get a little bit vulnerable with ourselves and so that, so that we can know ourselves on a deeper level. Like what, what actually does my body want to tell me today?
[00:25:43] Deb: Yeah. So, like, in pain reprocessing, we talk about, noticing the body or paying attention or getting curious, or like the heart of somatic tracking is, you know, paying attention to sensations in the body with a lens of safety. And that can be complex.
[00:26:04] Like I never liked to say, Oh yeah, that's just easy. That's just what we're going to do today. We're just going to look at our sensations through this lens of safety. No big deal. You know? So for you, what's your approach with that, like, how would you describe that or, or do you even describe it or you just kind of help people create it.
[00:26:31] Alora: I think it's a dance. Like it's a, it's a dance that we're doing together. You know, I'm checking in with them. They're checking in with themselves. And I always invite a change of direction. You know, I invite them to say no. And I think by bringing that invitation and that's also helpful too, to say that, you know, like, we can, we can change direction.
[00:26:56] You won't be bothering me. As interesting how people, when they're in session with someone, they really take the feelings of the person who's helping them sometimes. Like if that's especially like, if that's a habit of theirs, they're also going to bring it into session. Yeah, I guess that's how I try to, mitigate it as best I can.
[00:27:26] Deb: How long do you usually work with people? Is there a set time? Like, do you have a program?
[00:27:33] Alora: I do. Yeah, I do. They sign up for either three months or six months, uh, or a year. Um, and sometimes they just keep adding on. Um, but generally because it's practice based. The more repetition that we get, the more it's going to imprint.
[00:27:55] Deb: Mm hmm. Speaking of practice are there things that you suggest that people practice on their own?
[00:28:02] Alora: So I always like to give people takeaways. It's whatever we did in session that felt like it was the most effective, right? So, with my first session with people, I usually do body mapping.
[00:28:20] And so we go through the different parts of the body and we just name them. Right. And, they get an opportunity to experience, like how the nervous system changes as they're doing that, but also and their perception of their body changes as they do that. And it's a really, really simple practice that you can do sort of anywhere and you can do just one body part where you can do the whole body. It's a really lovely thing to practice
[00:28:48] Deb: So my next question is, there are some people who are more somatically oriented, who are more connected to just their felt senses or feelings. Um, you know, and sometimes that's like inconvenient because the feelings are really loud and overwhelming. And like, you know, we kind of don't know what to do with them.
[00:29:11] And they're just like, show up and like banging on the door. Then there's some people for whom like the connection between the mind and the body is so Disconnected. Like my friend Maureen in the podcast number 14, I believe, she talks about feeling like a head on a stick for a long time.
[00:29:35] So I'm wondering if That you have different approaches that you use with different people.
[00:29:42] Alora: Well, this is actually 1 of the major reasons why I like to use touch is because I found through all of my years of teaching, working with people, 1 on 1 that, um, when it's hard to internally. feel what's happening, then getting a little bit of feedback from something else is really useful.
[00:30:06] And that could be anything. It could be your hands, but it also could be a pencil. It could be a ball. It could be the wall. It could be the floor. Something that's outside of you that you can then have a relationship with, right? And you can use it as a tool to give you that feedback.
[00:30:27] Deb: That's so cool. As somebody who's come from massage therapy and did a lot of like myofascial work and used a lot of tools that still wasn't relational in a same way, or it was relational in a, like, you better work and fix me.
[00:30:46] Like kind of being like demanding of the tool, the one that like, This is the body. It's not a very nice relationship, right? It's definitely a collaborative. It's really aggressive in some ways.
[00:31:03] Alora: I think a lot of people, when they get on the table too, they're like, okay, I'm going to go on vacation now. You do your thing and I'll, I'll meet you back here in an hour.
[00:31:13] Deb: Yeah. I mean that part, I don't even mind that. Cause God knows we all could use a vacation. Yeah. But it's sometimes like, I was thinking more for my, I mean, for myself, or when I had clients that were using a tool to try to Make a symptom or a sensation go away, almost like it was a magic wand.
[00:31:36] It's almost like a misinterpretation of a sales technique, right? Where you get sold this idea. Like if you use this magic ball, it will give you this result rather than What I'm hearing you say, which is this process of using a tool to give you feedback, right? Your approach really takes the brain into consideration as an essential part of communication. We don't often think about our brains role in what we feel when we're thinking about using movement or engaging in movement, or in different healing modalities.
[00:32:12] Alora: Yeah. I started getting really fascinated by how is it possible that some people could come to me and really not be able to distinguish between body parts?
[00:32:25] Right, like they you've probably encountered this too, but you know, they might say, um, oh, my, my back hurts so much. And then you say, show me where and it's actually not their back. It's something else. It's like their hip or right or their shoulder. So it wasn't until I started to puzzle together, like, well, like, how does that happen?
[00:32:49] Exactly. At first I was led to believe that it was just like a, a lack of movement and like a lack of motion. Which I think is part of it, but I think there's other elements that come into play as well. So there's different ways to reeducate the brain and remind it that that it's got all these different parts and the more inputs that you can give the brain, then the easier it is for it to bring those parts of you back online, have access to them, utilize them.
[00:33:24] Deb: That's cool. Yeah I've mentioned on this podcast before the idea of the homunculus, which is the map in the brain of the neuronal connections of different parts of the body. And then they're different size maps. So our eyes are very important. And for people who are sighted, our visual cortex takes up the most of our vision. real estate in our brain. And then next is our hands and our mouth and our tongue. There are parts of our body in our brain that are actually very small, kind of like our back.
[00:34:01] Like in general, you don't really feel your back and like it does stuff, but it's also kind of there not there until like, either when it's hurting, you have a particular kind of attention, but our back, you know, it's not like our hands, which are always doing things or tongues, which are always tasting things or eyes, which are always seeing things.
[00:34:21] I'm almost imagining it like those little connectors, like you're connecting these little neurons together in the brain and being like, right, remember this part and this part and this part and this part, part of you. Did you ever hear, I think it's either in Norman Doidge's book the brain that heals itself, I think is the name of the book, uh, about neuroplasticity or it was in David Eagleman's book.
[00:34:48] Uh, or it was in both of their books, both about the brain and neuroplasticity, but they were talking about mapping the brain and then basically taking somebody, you know, we have, if you have 10 digits and then they were like taping two fingers together or like multiple fingers together, and then that changed the real estate in the brain.
[00:35:11] No longer did you have 10 digits, then you had like seven or eight. Because the two that were wrapped together became one. They were not separate anymore. Based on usage. Like, it wasn't a permanent thing. It was a temporary thing. And then when you would unwrap the The hand, like it was learned over time, like, Oh, Hey, we don't have that many fingers anymore.
[00:35:35] We just got, you know, we got one or two less, so we don't need this real estate. Cause they're operating together. And then when you unwrap them and unravel them and disconnect them, and now they're all separate, those parts of the brain would then readjust to again, having 10 fingers. And I was just like, that is so cool.
[00:35:59] Totally. Because It just shows the relationship of movement with the brain and how we don't need to have radical changes to our body or to our brain for things to become different. And I love in your work, you just go directly there. You're like, we can talk about all this stuff, but let's just.
[00:36:22] Yeah. Let's actually train the brain, like we're talking to the brain through this movement practice.
[00:36:28] Alora: Exactly. And it's all one weird conversation.
[00:36:36] Deb: Yeah. I like weird though, because we have all these stories. Yes. And the stories are not usually helpful.
[00:36:46] Alora: Yes. Yes. I love that. And I do mention to everyone, notice when the story comes up, you know, do what you can to not get involved in it, but notice was it the touch that brought the story up and does the story have like a you know, Feeling to itself and energy behind it.
[00:37:13] Um, is there a wanting behind it? We'll collect them as we go and see what that map looks like of all these stories too. Yeah.
[00:37:25] Deb: There's always some kind of communication and sometimes there's a desire behind it yeah, that we want.
[00:37:33] Alora: I'm always struck by all of the misinformation that I've been taught about my body, um, from teachers over the years, um, or just picking them up.
[00:37:45] Deb: Let's dish. There's nothing that I would love more on this planet is to. Like, have that, that understanding of nocebo like sink into practitioners and doctors and providers and massage therapists, like into people's minds that what a person with authority and expertise says changes the way that we experience our bodies.
[00:38:17] So be careful what you say. Yeah. It's really an opinion most of the time. And sometimes it's a very biased opinion. So yeah, tell me what people have said about you.
[00:38:32] Alora: Um, well the first things that come to mind, I mean there's so many. I really could talk about it for hours.
[00:38:44] But you know, going back, like I've got this history of being in dance, right? So having people tell me that there was a proper way to stand. Right. And that there's rules of posture and that if I sit or stand the wrong way, I'm going to hurt myself. That if I don't use my shoulders properly, I'm gonna hurt myself.
[00:39:05] A lot of it is like fear mongering of, yeah, you will get injured if you don't do this right. Thankfully, I think this is starting to change in the movement world, but, um, it's still in us. And it's still around.
[00:39:24] Deb: Well, some, sometimes it's how people make money. I mean, and not necessarily always like in insidious, like, you know, twirling mustache twirling, like, ha ha, I'm going to fool people, but it's almost like a bad game of telephone.
[00:39:40] Alora: Yeah.
[00:39:40] Deb: Where, like, they learn this one thing and then they notice, like, Oh, that gets a lot of attention or it sounds really good. And then you get clients and then you say, and it is this self perpetuating story.
[00:39:53] Alora: What about you? Like which, uh, which things drive you crazy or which things have you been told?
[00:40:00] Deb: So many things. I mean, I think as a fat person, you just get told your body is wrong. Period. Yeah. Like, you don't really even get a nuanced version of it. I was thinking about Alan Gordon and his back pain and he being told that It was because he was too tall and that was one of the reasons for his back pain.
[00:40:23] And I just think that's hilarious. I was like, yes. Okay. So as a fat person, we either don't like get believed if we're having, if we're having pain it just is blamed on your weight. So you're just like, you're too fat. And then you, and then they're like, well, you should exercise.
[00:40:41] And then you're like, but I'm in pain. So it's just this like circular problem in which just you and your body are the problems. And usually it comes with a sense of, personalized shame, right? That it's, it's really you, there's something wrong with you. Yeah. Um, because we're never differentiated from our body, from our physiology.
[00:41:06] Then, I think there's all those messages, like, if you have plantar fasciitis, if you have pain in your feet, you're told, never walk around barefoot ever. I've had people, Tell me that never walk around barefoot. I came through, a movement practice that did a lot of barefoot work.
[00:41:25] And I was like, yeah, it's like, it is that quieting of information when you're wearing shoes all the time, we're actually muting the body, but there's gotta be also this sense of titration. Sometimes it's hard to be in the middle of a process. So yeah, don't bend your knees or if you have back pain, like don't bend over.
[00:41:54] Yeah. And then there's like, Oh, you shouldn't ever squat. I got this one. I had knee pain. Uh, and I was told by this chiropractor that I should never squat anymore.
[00:42:05] Alora: Oh yeah.
[00:42:07] Deb: I was like, really? And then mostly I remedied it by doing a lot of happy baby pose, like on a bed. I was able to modulate the load on my tissues because I wasn't standing, I wasn't holding up my whole body weight, but I had to basically become my own educator, become a body worker and go through a lot of information and understanding about the body before I felt comfortable kind of having a positive relationship with it.
[00:42:41] With myself and feeling that sense of empowerment of like, Oh, okay. I know how to address this. If I had only ever gone to doctors, medical providers, I think. I don't know what kind of shape that I would be. And I, even as a pain coach, I had an acute experience of pain. I went to a doctor, um, at NYU and.
[00:43:08] He basically was like. You have arthritis look and he pointed out a little x ray and he's like, yep And this is only gonna get worse every year. It's gonna get worse year after year after year Yeah, and I was just like this is what you say to your patients and I It was like, I'm glad that I know not to listen to that.
[00:43:33] Um, and then, you know, I worked with my knee and I talked to it and I allowed it to heal. I changed a few things and I don't have that pain. Hmm. Yeah. He's wrong. Cause I have now what, two or three years older at this point, like it's just bananas and he thinks of himself as the expert.
[00:43:55] Alora: Yeah. We need to have a more conversation.
[00:44:02] Deb: There's
[00:44:02] Alora: so much to say.
[00:44:03] Deb: There is. Okay. I know that I said like, Oh, maybe we'll have this be short. And I lied. So because there's, there is so much to say I like to give people hope or a sense of possibility. So what would you like people to know that is possible for them?
[00:44:24] Alora: Your body loves you. Oh, I
[00:44:29] Deb: Oh I love that. Your body loves you.
[00:44:32] Alora: It's always in your corner.
[00:44:35] Deb: It is always in your corner.
[00:44:38] That's incredible.
[00:44:39] Alora: Yeah. And it always wants the best for you.
[00:44:40] Deb: And it always wants the best for you. Wow. What would be different if we just imagined that every day, if you woke up every day, and this is different than I love my body. It's so interesting. Oh, I love it. Amazing. And, um, I'm going to share in the show notes, how people can find you and all of that information. Is there anything else that you want to say?
[00:45:10] Alora: Oh, it's just a real pleasure to be with you. I always learn so much from you. And, um, it's, it's. I'm, I'm tickled.
[00:45:22] Deb: Thank you.
[00:45:23] I am tickled as well. And I'm glad that you're out here in these mind body streets with me. Oh, thank you. Helping people develop these like really beautiful relationships inside themselves. We need that.
[00:45:40] Alora: We need it. We need it. It really does matter.
[00:45:43] Deb: It really, really does matter.
[00:45:45] Alora: Great.
[00:45:46] Deb: Thank you so much, Alora.
[00:45:47] Alora: Thank you, Deb.