The Knowledge Summit Series. Rewiring Safety with Alanna Thompson

Chapters

• 0:19 Introduction to the Knowledge Summit
• 1:38 Meet Alana: From Wilderness Guide to RMT
• 9:57 Teaching Journey and Massage School During COVID
• 21:37 Nervous System Regulation and Massage
• 38:20 Beyond "Deep Tissue": Rethinking Pressure
• 48:11 The Impact of Intentional Touch on Pain
• 59:34 A Case Study in Nervous System Regulation

Transcript

Eric: 0:19

Thank you. I'm excited for the next series of episodes where I'll be featuring the lineup of speakers for my upcoming online conference, the Knowledge Summit. This will be presented live over Zoom on October 5th. In this conference, we're going to feature five different presenters, including me, who are from across Canada and the United Kingdom. Each presenter will be sharing their knowledge and clinical advice on a variety of important topics. In today's episode, I'm going to have a discussion with Alana Thompson of important topics. In today's episode, I'm going to have a discussion with Alana Thompson. Alana is an RMT from just outside of Calgary, alberta, and she recently finished my nine-month course creator's program, where she completed her course Rewiring Safety. Massage for Nervous System Regulation. I hope you enjoy this episode and thanks for listening. Hello, alana, and welcome to an episode of Massage Science. Is this your first ever podcast?

Alanna: 1:07

It is my first ever podcast. I'm very excited, so exciting.

Eric: 1:10

I've had so many first ever people lately, and so thank you for being here. Why don't you just quickly tell all of our listeners a little bit about you? Where are you and what are you all about?

Alanna: 1:20

Yeah, great. So I'm a massage therapist in Alberta. I live in Cochrane, which is close to Calgary, if people aren't familiar with Cochrane, but it's a lot nicer than Calgary, it's smaller and a little less intense. I came to massage pretty late in life. I didn't go to massage school until I was almost 41. So background's pretty diverse. Before that I have a bachelor's degree in kinesiology, which I took at the UFC because they had an outdoor pursuits program and I wanted to work in the outdoor industry. I took at the U of C because they had an outdoor pursuits program and I wanted to work in the outdoor industry. So that was my first career. I did that first and then I switched around a bunch Like I worked as well. I spent a year living in Sri Lanka doing some international element work. I was an event coordinator and then I taught wilderness first aid for about a decade and a couple of things.

Alanna: 2:02

When I look back over that career path, I've always been an educator. Like can't turn it off in probably a pretty annoying way, like when I was a hiking guide. It was educational, it was trees and rocks and flowers and I couldn't go for a hike with my friends without being like do you want to know something really cool about aspen trees? Of course they humor me still. Of course we do, milana. So I, yeah, I teach. That's at the heart of what I do. I like to joke that I come from a teaching dynasty. Both my parents are teachers. My grandma was a teacher. My great-grandma was one of the first women to get a master's degree in Alberta in education. Almost all of my cousins are teachers. Just some people are like law or medicine, but we went for the big money.

Eric: 2:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alanna: 2:48

And then the other.

Eric: 2:49

Thing is not a place for people to get rich right.

Alanna: 2:52

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the other thing that becomes very clear when I look back over that career path is I was diagnosed with ADHD shortly after I went to massage school about 41, which I think becomes apparent when you see that I do something for four or five years and then I get bored and then I have to refresh it and do something else. And I went to massage school because I couldn't make money making custom canoe paddles. That's what I really wanted to do and I'm not a very good woodworker. I'd have to sell a paddle for like $3,000 if I was going to make any money on it. So I thought, well, I just I want to do something with my hands, because everything I'd done had been sort of more brainy cerebral stuff and it was COVID.

Alanna: 3:32

Everyone's stress was very high, my stress was very high. That was probably a big part of what prompted the ADHD diagnosis. And it was also ironic. A friend of mine said so no one's supposed to be close to anybody and you're going to touching people school. Yeah, I'm going to touching people school in the middle of a pandemic, but yeah, so that's the background. And leading up to being a massage therapist who wants to educate and cannot stop answering the curious questions in my brain. That was the same way when I was teaching first aid. I got to I gotta go.

Eric: 4:04

I gotta go understand it so I can remember it, so I can tell someone else yes, yeah, teaching can become this addictive thing where, if you have this constant pursuit of knowledge, you all we, some of us tend to want to just like share that with others because we're so passionate about it. Yeah, and that was my journey as well, too, as I've been. If I look back, like my first job, which I start telling people now been. If I look back at like my first job which I start telling people now in the courses that I teach is my first job was as a guitar instructor oh cool, I didn't know that yeah, yeah, a lot of people don't know well, people that knew me you grew up with know that.

Eric: 4:35

But most people now have no idea that I play or played, and so I just loved it and I had the opportunity. Like so many things in life, you get these, you get a bit lucky, you get a bit fortunate. Opportunities come and the guy that was my instructor was looking for someone to take on new learners, so not like people that knew nothing. And so that was my job, because I wasn't great, but I was okay. I was good enough to teach and I knew the basics really well. I could teach chords and I could teach technique and whatnot, but anyway, so yeah, I got an opportunity to do that and I said sure, and at the time it was, I was in grade. I was grade 12.

Eric: 5:12

And it was like the best job ever because I went in one evening after school and Saturday mornings for a few hours and to me at the time it was like ridiculously good money, I thought, and I enjoyed it and I enjoyed being able to teach. I don't know if I was any good at it, but I did that for about three years, two and a half years or so and yeah, and then moving on to teaching, continuing education and to coaching soccer, which is teaching, it's just that's what I love to do, and so it can. It's kind of addicting in some ways when you're passionate about something you really want to share with others because you are convinced that what you know is going to make their life better.

Alanna: 5:52

Exactly, that's exactly it and that's the theme for me here, that this is why I'm a massage therapist, it's why I want to teach, because I'm confident that the little thing that I know is it's been great for me, so for sure it's going to be great for somebody else.

Alanna: 6:04

And I actually have to be careful with that sometimes, because people don't always want to be taught. But I think, yeah, it's that I can't turn it off. Like I was out for a hike with friends a couple of weeks ago and when my friend works in construction and I was like you want to know something really cool about your brain, he's like, okay, obviously, like, your somatosensory cortex maps your whole body. It knows where your hand is when you're holding a tool. It extends the map of your hand to the tool. So if the tool is hit by something like, you know where that is visually, but you also know where it is in your brain. And he's like, okay, yeah, cool. People just humor me and they're like, yeah, that's fascinating, let's keep talking about whatever we were talking about before. But it is, yeah, and I bet you were a great guitar teacher, because I think you're a natural teacher and I think you can be a natural teacher. I also think you can be. You can learn to get better at it.

Eric: 6:55

But I think some people just are yeah, well, thanks for saying that, yeah, thanks, yeah, the for me teaching. If I think back to the first ever like pain science lecture I did, which was, I'm pretty sure it was like October, november of 2015, maybe, maybe even earlier than that. It was the fall, earlier in the fall. Anyway, it was around somewhere in 2015. And if I think back to that, as some of the first ones I did, I was like, oh my God, they were awful. I'm so embarrassed. I remember the first like big one I did, which was October 2016. I think I had 27 people and I was like, oh my God, this is huge. And I look back to that course and I think I would never teach anything in that course ever again. And if I did, it would be completely. I would do it completely differently. So, yeah, it's some of it is you have to have this, you have to know your knowledge. You also have to have, you have to be aware that you can. You're going to probably suck or not be great.

Alanna: 7:57

Yeah.

Eric: 7:57

But if you just push and persevere and you're gonna have good days and bad days, sometimes you'll teach a course. I'm sure it was like that with you in first aid You'll teach a course. I'm sure it was like that with you in first aid. You'll teach a course and it'll and you're like freaking, nailed it. That was so good and sometimes you could teach the exact same content and you leave and you think that was powerful. I did. I want to redo. You can't those impressions you made on those people, however many were there. You may never get that other chance. So it's tough.

Alanna: 8:24

There's a huge mental game you have to play with yourself, I think when you're a teacher as well nothing left to say, because I'd been through my PowerPoint that I was using to make sure I remembered what to say. And I talked with my boss about it afterwards I was like, is that okay? We covered all the material that. And he was like I mean, you're going to get better at this, alana. No, we're not going to stop courses at 2.30. And then I got to the point where my struggle. I had to keep using a PowerPoint so that I stayed on track enough that I didn't go over every single day because I just had so much more to say and I had so many more examples or scenarios or whatever.

Alanna: 9:09

And I think the other thing that relates to both teaching and massage is I've always understood people well and it is part of the sort of ADHD constellation of symptoms. We tend to be empathetic and we tend to see connections and see people really well. And so with teaching, I even remember being a student when I was in university. I could tell if someone was asking a question in the class and the prof wasn't answering the question that was asked, I'd be like that's not what he asked, that's not what he meant, and so I'd kind of wait and then if it didn't get answered, I put my hand up and I'd be like follow up, and then I would just rephrase the question in a different way and then the prof would answer what the initial person meant. And I remember one time I feel like my brain does fairly easily, which is a huge advantage to me as an instructor, but it's also a huge advantage as a massage therapist.

Eric: 10:13

Yeah, and to kind of rewind for a second, I was curious about what you said. You went to massage school during the pandemic. Did you actually were you in school during lockdown stuff, or was it just coming out of that? Were you in school during lockdown stuff or was it just coming out of that?

Alanna: 10:25

It was. We had a couple of lockdowns so I started. Oh my gosh, I wish I could remember dates. It was not right at the start Like we'd been through the initial, like full lockdown, and then it would have been like January after that, so it would have been almost a year into the pandemic, but it was still when I started. We were masked and we only worked with one other student throughout the four day module. It was a blended program, so we were in person for four days and we only had direct contact with that one other students. So it was just keeping that contamination pool small.

Alanna: 11:05

But it was actually I think it was a huge advantage for me because the class ahead of me, like the class six months ahead of me, they went through. They were like Zoom classes only and then most of their clinical was only on other students. They didn't get any public access until the very end of their two-year program and they I think they had to open the clinic at one at some point because they're like we got to be able to do this. We have to get these students some actual experience. And so my class we worked on only other students for maybe it was a good three or four months, I think. So you would go to clinic for your clinic shift. You would give a massage and receive a massage. So we were learning so much because we had students ahead of us giving us massages and we were giving massages to students ahead of us and you just you learn so much by receiving massage. So that was fantastic. But then the vast majority of our clinical experience was with actual public.

Eric: 12:04

Okay, yeah, I was so curious how that worked for those that went to school during the pandemic, because I know, yeah, there was certain cohorts that just barely had any hands-on stuff? Yeah, and that would be difficult.

Alanna: 12:20

You went to Vickers, I was at Vickers.

Eric: 12:22

Yeah, I think. Yeah, you would have started there, just as I was beginning to do the Crickham Consultant with them. I think I started in 2021 or 2022, maybe Maybe 2022 it was Okay.

Alanna: 12:35

Yeah, because I graduated almost three years ago, so it'll be three years ago in October.

Eric: 12:40

Okay.

Alanna: 12:40

So like October 2022, I guess, yeah, yeah, and I didn't know about you then no. So you were doing behind the scenes stuff at that point, which is too bad. I would have loved to have been there Like well-known Consulting. That would have been really cool.

Eric: 12:54

Yeah, the program that they have now is fantastic, from what I've seen and from the work I put input in. But the people that did all the work were primarily Alyssa and Linda and some other faculty that were there. I'm just using these names. People are like who the hell are you talking about?

Alanna: 13:09

But the people that are running the program they're the ones that did all the work.

Eric: 13:12

I just gave them information and helped guide them towards different ways of doing it. But what I've seen, speaking of education the theme of this today is I had an opportunity a few months ago to do like a zoom presentation to the class where we it was more of a conversation about stuff and it was so validating to me to see these students that were in their last term of school, who were skeptical, who were asking good questions, who were aware of the history and traditions of the profession and like the belief-based stuff that got us to where we got us, from point A to point B and the way things were, and they were very much aware of that. But they were also extremely aware of the current evidence, the current science, current best practices, knowing that a lot of the old stuff that was out there was nonsense, but being able to understand that it's like a blend, like we can still have the history and the tradition of what massage is, but we can update it with current science, understandings and narratives and why that's important and how that actually makes you a better therapist by adopting these newer ideas, which is stuff I know that you're going to we'll talk about shortly in your course or your talk that you're going to be doing. It was really.

Eric: 14:29

I really loved that to see, because stuff that I've been railing on about for the last decade I I knew it was possible, I believed in it, and then now I've seen it firsthand with them and I think, okay, this is, this should be the way for the way they do things, should be a model for other places that other institutions that are looking to change, and I know there's another school that's just opened up in BC that I know has got a very good updated curriculum as well. Good, yeah, yeah.

Alanna: 14:57

I've got a friend who comes to my nerd club, who's graduating from Vickers in a couple of weeks and if she's a reflection of what's going on there, she is excellent. She's curious and just wants all the info all the time. So she's curious, she just wants all the information all the time and she's very open to what does this actually look like on the table in front of you, which is, yeah, and that was part of my transition. I went to school. I have a kines degree, so I went in thinking I was going to be very biomechanical and very technical. I wanted to work like a physiotherapist, I wanted to do all the orthopedic testing and I didn't know about that before I started. Once I sort of started looking at the curriculum, I went oh yeah, this is going to be great. I'm going to work on athletic injury and be very like science-based air quotes, science-based air quotes, science-based. And then, because I am such a nerd and also because it was COVID and I had nothing to do, I was barely teaching at the time when you registered they gave you access to some resources first so I could do it like A&P before I started, and I don't remember whether it was through that or at the first module. But I was just.

Alanna: 15:59

I was looking through everything that was available on the on the Moodle shell and there was something there was like a blog post article about these myths about massage right Like releases toxins and improved circulation, and this person had written like you know, here's how this is problematic and these aren't really real. And so I didn't know that those myths existed, and when I was introduced to them, I was introduced by this article that the school had provided. That was shears, why this is wrong. And then I went down that rabbit hole and I ran across Paul Ingram's site pain science and then I read everything that he wrote, and so I went into school very skeptical of a lot of the science that I was learning, and it was a really interesting transition.

Alanna: 16:44

So that confluence of being diagnosed with ADHD, my stress being high, everyone's stress being high, because it was COVID I was very intrigued by this. Some of the stuff you're going to learn is probably not real, and so I very quickly switched my focus to I want to help with stress, I want to work with mental health symptoms, I want to do really, really good relaxation massage from the perspective of actually giving people a bit of a break from their stress and it was such a dramatic shift for me and it happened very quickly. And then I also I did a case study on ADHD and depression and massage.

Alanna: 17:22

That was my second year case study and I worked with a really good friend of mine who has very severe depression and I ended up thinking like, is there anything better I could be doing with my time and energy and skills than allowing somebody to set it down for a bit, to feel like they're not alone, to feel that release in their body and in their nervous system? I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing with my time. So that that was a huge transition for me and it's been really gratifying. I've had people, like clients, say I'm so glad you went to massage school, I needed this. But I've also had friends say you're doing the right thing, like you're energized, you're passionate, you're literally never shutting up about massage, and so it's been really rewarding to have that. This is the right thing at the right time for me, yeah.

Eric: 18:12

It's so important to. I think it's obviously a bias of mine but to recognize that the orthopedic kind of physio light type approach that is common in massage. Like some people like to practice away, I know for me I practiced like that for that way for a long time and because I came into the profession, as in athletics and in sport and wanting to work with athletes and wanting to know all the tests and all the fix it type things. But then, yeah, over time you realize, as my practice started to transition to come more this chronic pain and more facilitating or coaching kind of support, self-management type stuff, which was completely actually opposite but just a very different approach from the way I used to work. It says I was learning more.

Eric: 18:59

I realized that and started reading the research is that massage from a sport rehab perspective isn't nearly as effective as it is in mental health and in relaxation and stress management. And unfortunately, whether people want to believe that or not, that is where a lot of the evidence is and I think that we could really, even though it's the whole mental health thing, people get worried that we're getting out of our scope of practice, which I think is a bad argument. I think that's a bit of a straw man argument. The weakening, providing massage that feels good and invokes is that the right word A feeling of relaxation or just awareness of what you're experiencing, that kind of interoceptive like what are you feeling in your body, is extremely powerful, and for reasons that maybe a lot of people aren't aware of.

Alanna: 19:58

Yes, exactly, and I think I like what you said there about the out of scope thing, because I think it's important that we're not trying to step into the role of a psychologist or a psychotherapist At the same time. We all know that people are going to show up on our table looking for that, and at school we were taught how to not enter that, like how to stay in our scope and bring it back to the body, but we weren't given any tools to say let's talk about your stress from a physical perspective. Let's talk about how the body impacts the stress response and what can, what could we do in this session that you can then carry forward that allows your nervous system to feel safe, and whether that impacts the mental health symptoms, the overall stress response, the happiness, or whether it impacts their sport performance. Right, some people they have a great massage and they go and perform better, maybe because their nervous system was a little bit more relaxed and was able to feel safer in. Whatever muscular stuff is going on isn't as painful right now, so then I can go in and perform a little bit better.

Alanna: 21:05

So that's what I'm really interested in and that's what the course is about is we can absolutely engage in people's stress responses in a way that keeps us in scope, as long as we're talking about physiology and the body and the nervous system, and keeping it away from counseling and advice and trying to direct people towards a particular path, but just saying to people how does this feel in your body? Does it feel better? Does it feel as painful? Is your movement feeling better? And I use the term safety nervous system safety a lot and that can be confusing because people go. I didn't feel unsafe before and so then I have to say, well, here's what I mean by safety. I need a better word for it, but in any case, I think there's I know because I do it all the time there's so much we can do that actually changes the symptoms of stress and mental health and it's appropriate.

Eric: 21:58

It's necessary, it's absolutely necessary.

Alanna: 22:02

It's absolutely necessary and that's the passion that keeps me going is the we could spend. How many episodes do we have? Because we could spend all of the episodes talking about the different people that you and I have seen on our tables, who leave the massage different on our tables, who leave the massage different, who leave the massage empowered or feeling peaceful or like back in their bodies or hopeful, and then have some skills to carry that forward. It's absolutely transformational and I know that sounds like a little egotistical, but honestly it's absolutely transformational for people's lives to have this type of care in a way that makes them feel, yeah, empowered, hopeful, yeah and that should be the goal of all of us.

Eric: 22:43

I'm sure a lot of people the majority of massage therapists are gonna, are gonna have those experiences, if not all right, or that, were you treat somebody and they leave feeling empowered, they feel different, but sometimes we don't know why. Yes, and I think that the key thing is to know why and how and to learn some skills and knowledge on how to be better at that, to maximize those effects, and which is, I think, where your course comes in. And let's talk about that, because part of these episodes that we're doing is to promote your stuff, to promote the Knowledge Summit which is coming up. Your talk is going to be at 10.15 am Pacific on October 5th, called Rewiring Safety. Massage Therapy for Nervous System Regulation. And a little plug as well for this is that you went through my last course creators group, which is where the information and the process of creating this course happened. So why don't you share? I'm just curious to hear your perspective in about your creation of this course, your process for it, why you chose it and also why is this information so important?

Alanna: 23:52

Yeah, okay, that was a lot of questions. So the process was so much more than I thought I really thought, okay, I've been teaching for a decade. Like putting together a course on stuff that I teach to my clients all the time, this isn't gonna be difficult. I need Eric's expertise on putting it online and the website stuff and the payment gateways and all those things that I find really overwhelming. But I falsely thought that putting together a course was gonna be pretty simple and I think if I had just written down all of the things that I thought were important, it would have been okay, like it would have been. It still would have been helpful. But the the encouragements that you had in the course to say how do you know what you know? So, as an instructor, you're going to be teaching people. I and I agree with you. It's our responsibility to make sure that what we're teaching is as accurate as it can be. We know that evidence evolves and changes and I like the way you always say let's try and be less wrong with what we're teaching people. So that was a huge burden isn't the right word. But that feeling of yeah, I got to be as correct as I can be and I have to make sure I'm not making these logical leaps and presenting them as evidence. If I'm making a logical leap, I'm going to say here's what I know, here's what the evidence says, here's the assumption I'm making based on that, here's why it makes sense to me and here's what I see clinically. So that process of finding the research was all-consuming and and fascinating, like the kind of stuff I run.

Alanna: 25:26

I ran across an article the other day on the on the vestibular system and how vestibular dysfunction can present for people in this sense of they call it unrealization or unpersonalization. I don't feel like a real person. I don't feel like I'm going about my life, I'm not in my body. And I've got a patient I've seen for a very long time. He's got multiple concussions. He was telling me he's got this vestibular dysfunction. He said I'm scared of heights. I said what's that? Like? He said I can't go more than two steps up on a ladder. And I went oh okay, this isn't scared of heights, like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff. This is your vestibular system has no idea how high you actually are. And so I asked him about this depersonalization, derealization thing and he said oh yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. He said I call it watching a movie. I'm watching a movie of my life. That's what it feels like. He said I'm missing massive gaps. I have massive memory gaps of years. I just don't remember.

Alanna: 26:20

So I'm in the research, I'm reading it, I'm like, oh, this is so fascinating. And then the next day somebody shows up who starts talking about that thing. And because I have spent all this time in the research, I know that I should ask about it, and I also know that I might be able to do something that would help with that. I might be able to provide some vestibular stimulation in a treatment that feels good to his vestibular system. Maybe we find something on the table that feels great and we can translate that into a little exercise he can do before he climbed a ladder. So he's stimulating his vestibular system in a very safe way that maybe he can get four rungs up on a ladder, which makes washing his windows easier.

Alanna: 27:03

And so I think part of the importance of this knowledge is my coworkers will often say where do you find these people? I have top-notch weirdos on my table, and I say that in the most loving way possible. I love the weird stuff, like the stuff that just doesn't fit in a normal box, and if I'm not like super metaphysical about this, is the universe sending me people who have weird things, who knows? But I think I'm just asking. So when somebody says they're laying face down on my table and they seem really congested and I say, oh, your sinus is feeling really clogged, and I say, oh, your sinus is feeling really clogged, and they say, yeah, I have had sinus congestion nonstop for 16 months, I'm like, oh, what happened 16 months ago?

Alanna: 27:49

Concussion? Oh, okay, I wonder if we're looking at some neuroinflammation in some cranial nerve that's connected to the sinuses. Why don't we try to see if we can make some change for that? So I think I'm just I'm in the information, so I'm more willing to ask and I'm more willing to say if you're willing to explore it, maybe we can find something that helps. I don't remember the questions you asked. Now, what was the process of creating the course?

Eric: 28:18

Yeah, that was the first one and I can't remember. And so we'll release and be like you missed questions. Yeah, so the process and also just the importance of the knowledge. That's the key thing. Why is the content you're teaching important? How does it make life better?

Alanna: 28:37

So, without overstating it, it's foundational knowledge that makes everything better the entire world, I think so. The nervous system affects everything about our experience of the world and the state of the nervous system. And I mean that how close are we to feeling threatened or how close are we to feeling safe in our nervous system? That impacts everything that happens within our bodies, between us and other people, between us and our environment. So if our nervous system is feeling more threatened by, maybe, a lack of information or an actual stressful event, we're going to go more towards a stress response, maybe a full-blown stress response or maybe somewhere in between, and that's going to impact our pain, our movement quality, our cognition, our ability to intake sensory input and integrate that. So if we can use the body to shift the nervous system state more towards feeling safe and feeling relaxed, then we get the benefit of better movement, less pain, better cognition, better sensory intake and integration, which then translates to this person leaves my table and they are. They're moving better for the rest of the day, they're happier for the rest of the day, their ability to remember things is better because their nervous system isn't functioning in a stress state anymore. So that's the way I look at things. What are the symptoms of stress that are in front of me? How do I see that present and can we find something in this session that feels powerful and significant to the person on the table? If so, great. We have a good session. But also also we can then hopefully translate that into some tool or exercise, like the homework kind of stuff that they can continue to use that to get a little bit of that benefit. So it's great that you feel relaxed on the massage table.

Alanna: 30:32

I have a trauma informed practice and I treat a lot of people who have PTSD or going through some significant stuff, and I've had a couple people tell me this is the only place I feel safe, this is the only place I feel relaxed, and that, of course, is like really gratifying but also really terrible at the same time, and so my goal with that person is always, as we continue to work together, to find little things that connect them to that sense of safety later in their own lives, in their own environment. So if I can give them a little bit of like, here's how your stress system works. What could you do that that makes this feel? Makes you feel like you do right now, but like at home or when you leave the grocery store or where, wherever it is that you're feeling that intense stress.

Eric: 31:20

I love it. Do you think that the this kind of like nervous system focused ideas knowledge? I guess not ideas knowledge. Do you feel that what you are offering is different from other kind of similar type courses that are out there?

Alanna: 31:41

Yes and no. So I took a course on the vagus nerve, the nervous system, how the vagus nerve interacts with everything, and that was the start of the journey for me and it was really interesting. But then I went okay, the vagus nerve does interoception, amongst other things. But here's a sense that we have this perception of our interior selves. But we've got a bunch of other senses vision, touch, taste, smell, balance, proprioception. So if we could, all of those senses are ways into the nervous system safety. So working with the vagus nerve is great and I love it and I do it all the time, but that's only one way in. So I have somebody on my table regularly now who is very hypermobile. She's pursuing an iris-damo diagnosis, she's highly anxious and she has off-the-charts interoception. She can feel everything that happens in her body, which is quite common in hypermobile conditions and it can be a threat. So for her, I want her interoception to feel safe, but maybe what would be more helpful is better exteroception. So a vision exercise makes her feel better in her environment, gives her more accurate information about what's going on around her and allows her environment, gives her more accurate information about what's going on around her and allows her nervous system to feel safe in a way that isn't about. Well, what was that weird sensation? Or what was that weird pain? Or did my joint just slip out again?

Alanna: 33:10

We're using other pathways to impact nervous system safety that are creative, different. I think we're always working with the nervous system. Like every time we do anything to anyone, we're impacting their nervous system. The way I see my course is teaching people how to do it more deliberately and more creatively and also, I really hope, more simply. So the question I'm always asking myself is does this seem better for the person on the table?

Alanna: 33:46

So if I try something, I was doing something the other day on somebody. I was working on their jaw and I really thought it was going to help and she went well, we need to stop. She put her hand up, which is the signal that we have to communicate. She put her hand up and I stopped right away and she said that's giving me really sharp pain right where you are, but it's also making the pain. She has chronic pain in her leg. It's also making the pain in my leg worse and I went okay, that's not the thing for you, at least not yet. We might come back to it later, but right now, let's back off of that.

Eric: 34:23

Let's soothe that whole area of the face and the trigeminal nerve and then let's reevaluate how the body feels after five minutes of being nice. What I like about this idea, or your ideas for how you teach this course and I've seen some of the videos that you've made, where it's yeah, you use more than just touch but use movement and use visualization and use other sensory tools to try to bring awareness, whether that's to help range of motion or functional tasks, bringing in different sensory cues, rather than just touching the area and passively moving it or actively moving it, which is a traditional approach. And I think that that's a little bit unique and I know some people do that. But I think that, from what I've seen, your approach is subtly different in a good way.

Alanna: 35:07

Thank you, I think so. My goal is as a massage therapist. People just want to be on the table. They want your hands on as much as possible. Not a lot of people come into my room and are willing to do a bunch of sort of nervous system drills in order to see what feels better or not, at least not until they've bought into the concept. So there's some of this the sort of applied neurology is what people term it and there's trainers out there that do this, but it's more physical trainers, physiotherapists, that kind of stuff, and so it's a lot of working with athletes or working with people in an off-the-table way.

Alanna: 35:49

I want this stuff to be. You know, if I do an eye exercise on the table, it takes me 30 seconds of not hands-on work and really I still have one hand because I'm holding their head still and I can do a little nice whatever gout massage maybe, but it's integrated. So often what I'll do is I'll say, okay, we don't seem to be making very good change with my hands and with movement and with breath. So are you interested in trying something different? And usually people say yes, maybe because they're just being nice or maybe because they think I know what I'm talking about If I say, okay, let's just try this eye exercise and see if that changes. Specifically, I'm almost always starting this with suboccipitals, because the suboccipitals are so connected to the way we move our head, in response to the way we move our eyes. I'm not making change with my hands. This is still sore for you. We don't seem to be getting much better. Let's try an eye exercise. I try an eye exercise and then I go back and repalpate and I say does that feel better, same or worse? And I love that phrase I learned that on your course because I think it allows people to say actually that's terrible, that got worse or no, yeah, it feels exactly the same with that specific suboccipitals and eye exercises.

Alanna: 37:01

I'd say this is not research. Anecdotally, 80% of the time people go wow, that's way better after I've been working on it for five minutes trying to get change happening. So what I try to do in the course is emphasize ways that you can include this in your treatments. You're not going to get somebody up off the table. They're not clothed. You can get somebody up off the table to try something, so do it in your treatment. And then the other thing that I think that I do. That's unique is, instead of emphasizing, this nerve works with this nerve, and if you're trying to benefit, trying to benefit the balance, make sure you're always doing eye stuff Okay Maybe, and that's a great place to start, but really, if their nervous system feels better, we'll notice a change. They'll notice a change. So is it better? Did it work? And sometimes they're like nope, and I got to go try something else or say okay, let's just keep massaging, we'll do what we can, and then maybe next session we'll try something else.

Eric: 38:03

And I love how you use better same worse. I don't think I made that up, I think I got that from somebody that just really resonated with me, so whether it was a course or a colleague, I can't remember. But the better same worse, I think is great, because so often what happens when we're doing something with people and we're trying to elicit or inspire change in the person, how does that feel?

Alanna: 38:24

Yeah.

Eric: 38:25

It's usually this kind of yes, no type thing or good, bad type thing. It's just very black and white and I think that's not giving an option to say nothing or to let you know that it's feeling worse. I think you better say more. You should give them that option. These are three things. This is what it could be.

Alanna: 38:40

Absolutely. I think it reduces the power dynamic between you and your patient. I think, especially for me, because I really I deal with people who have very elevated nervous systems, very sensitive nervous systems, and something that quote unquote should work on them sometimes just doesn't, and I need to know that so that I don't send them off into the rest of their day actually feeling provoked and in pain. One of the questions I ask often with people is do you ever feel worse after massage? And when it's the first time I'm treating somebody, have you ever felt worse after massage?

Alanna: 39:12

And at the start it shocked me how many people said, yes, yeah, like you could be sore for 24 to 48 hours because I dug my elbow into your glutes for 15 minutes. But I had somebody say, oh yeah, I made sure I had leftovers prepped for supper tonight. There's no way I could go home and cook a meal. I'll be fatigued for days. And then I say why are you getting massage pens? Like what? Why? And often people will say, well, it's good for me, right. Why? And often people will say, well, it's good for me, right? I'm like, is it Like doesn't sound like it's good for you, but maybe we could try working differently so that you don't feel like that after massage.

Eric: 39:49

There's this kind of social, cultural belief that we have about massage and how it usually has to hurt to feel better, or people need to feel it. They need to feel that soreness or that fatigue after, and that's a belief and there's no evidence to support that. That's just what people think and it's perpetuated, I believe, by our profession, where it almost validates us. Oh yeah, like I really dug my elbows in there and, yeah, you were sore, weren't you? It's the sense of pride and that's a narrative that I think we really need to move away from, because I don't think it's helpful for a lot of people, particularly for people that are suffering and in chronic pain. There's different strokes for different folks. There's certain people.

Eric: 40:37

Yeah, if you're going to treat some athlete who really believes and wants that elbows ripping through their hamstrings and that's what works for them and that doesn't impact them in a negative way, then why would you say no? Okay, sure, if that's going to work for you and if they don't want to do a different approach, that's fine. But if someone's suffering, if someone's living in pain every day, or they're in extreme stress or whatever it might be, and we go in there and we give them a massage which is just so overstimulating to their system that they feel pain after they feel exhausted, after. That's not a good thing, despite some people might be listening, thinking you know what you're talking about. Well, you're just making that up because there's no evidence to support that that's what you should be doing. Yeah, it might work for some people. Some of that should not be the go-to okay. My experience as well say that we're working with people that are hurting a lot.

Alanna: 41:32

That's the last thing you should be doing for them, because it doesn't make you feel good, I have this conversation a lot because people will come to me and I found this with. So I had this. Just a couple of weeks ago this woman came to me and I had treated her a couple of times before and then she'd sort of disappeared and she was back and she was seeing one of the chiropractors I work with and he had asked her you know, what other kind of treatment do you do? And she said I get deep tissue massages. And he said how does that feel? And she said well, I don't get a lot of change from them. We said maybe you should try something else. Why don't you go see Helena? And she'd already seen me, so she knew a little bit of what I did and I probably didn't give her enough pressure when I first saw her for her. So she came in and I could you know, I know you tend to like deep tissue massage. Here's my, my. Obviously deep tissue is a whole other thing.

Eric: 42:27

Like you can be whatever without necessarily injuring people it's this really weird terms again that's used but there's no standard definition for it and it's another term that I think. Anyway, it's a whole other conversation. I agree with you that should be really reevaluated and there should be a phrase. For what that? No one even knows, what that means.

Alanna: 42:47

I'm touching your skin Like I'm not touching your multifidus, right, let's lay it all down. But in any case, so I said to her, here's my perspective. I don't think my hands are squishing tension out of your muscles. I think when we get change, it's because your nervous system allows it. I think the nervous system gets changed better and we keep it for longer when it feels safe. So I don't use pain arbitrarily in my treatments. I never want you gritting your teeth and curling up your toes and hoping I'm going to stop doing what I'm doing real soon.

Alanna: 43:14

I know you want to feel this, you want to feel something, and I think there are a whole group of people and her stress was very high. I think there are a whole group of people who are asking for that level of sensation because it's what they need to overwhelm the rumination or the. They need something that makes their brain stop. And so I think for some people and like I had my friend who was treating in school with the depression she said I spend so much time feeling completely dead. Nothing, she goes, I just want to feel something. And I was like OK, like we have a purpose for this. So let's explore how much pressure it takes for you to feel connected to your body.

Alanna: 43:54

So I had a conversation with this woman. I said what do you like about deep tissue massage or having that deep pressure? And she said I feel like I need that to get the knots out. And I said does it help? And she said sometimes. And I said OK, when. What do you think's going on when it doesn't help? And she said when the therapist is like telling me a lot about their life and talking a lot, and then I don't feel like it's really helpful. And so I said do you feel like something's being done to you as opposed to with you? And she said yeah. I said I think what you need is intention. What if we work together to find a level of sensation where you feel like I am paying attention to your body and I'm being deliberate with the amount of pressure? She said yeah, okay.

Alanna: 44:36

So we experimented with a little bit. I used really like firm pressure with her, but not in a way that I couldn't tell what was happening with the tissue. She's not tensing up against it. She fell asleep at one point and then afterwards I said OK, how'd you feel Like? Was that enough pressure for you? Did you spend the whole massage going? Oh man, I wish you'd work harder. She said no, she's like I feel great. I said OK. So maybe we need a sense of. Maybe it's more about the pacing than the pressure, maybe it's more about intention can be also that sort of metaphysical thing. But you want to feel like I am deliberate in my engagement with your body. I can do that.

Eric: 45:20

That's such a key point there, that deliberate, you're focusing on what you're doing. You're focusing on what you're doing and this is something that I see and hear a lot just from teaching and having conversations with people is that they mistake when I, if I say something like it doesn't need to, you shouldn't have to hurt somebody to be helpful, they think that, oh it just your treatment should be soft and that's. I've never said that. I jokingly use TPM like touching people nicely, making them feel good, but that can be heavier and air quotes that can be more forceful if that's what works for that person on that day.

Eric: 45:57

But it's this idea that we have that deeper is better, more aggressive can be better, or these ideas that we need to work knots out or we need to break things down, and I see this all the time in courses and at conferences and you see all over social media and people are having the same conversations for the last 30 years that they just it's all this kind of this is what I think.

Eric: 46:21

This is all this belief. But if we look at understanding the evidence and what massage or manual therapy does versus doesn't do, and we look at some of those interoceptive ideas, we realize that we can't talked about being principles over protocols. So if we understand the principles of working in, let's say, trauma, or working in safety, or working with intentional or focused depth and speed, and those are just principles that we can work under, rather than this is the protocol I have to follow in order to be effective, that is such a shift that I really wish that more of us were having, like those conversations I wish more of us were having in the profession. Because if you understand the knowledge and the principles, then it's up to you and this is all a purpose of evidence-based practice it's up to you to take the stuff and figure out how do I apply this with the person in front of me today.

Alanna: 47:28

And I think that with the person in front of me today and I think that with the person in front of me today is so key I think a lot of. And what I try to get to in my course is this course should make you more confident. This course should give you the confidence to say to somebody is that better, same or worse? Because if they tell you it's better, and especially if you can also see that in their demeanor or in their breathing or in how the tissue actually feels Because of course we do feel tissue change it's just not because I dug my elbow into a knot and destroyed it. But if I'm asking the person, how does this feel to you? I'm confident enough for them to say bad. And then I go, ok, do you want to try something else? Like maybe we could do this or maybe we could do that.

Alanna: 48:07

I had one guy it was like he was referred to me by another RMT that I know and it was probably 53 minutes out of 60 minutes. How does this feel Worse? How does this feel Worse? What if we try this Worse? What if we try this Worse? And I was like, oh, so bad. And then in the end he told me he had lots of jaw tension. I said if you want to try something on the face, that's just a little bit more relaxing. He said, sure, worked on his face, for a little bit Everything felt better. Was his jaw responsible for his hip and his shoulder tension? No, well, maybe I don't know, but his nervous system was connected to this incredible tension he had in his face and jaw and when that resolved, changed whatever everything else was like. The pain just went down everywhere in his body.

Eric: 48:53

I went.

Alanna: 48:53

I could have just given you a scalp massage for 50 minutes and saved my body, and you would have felt the pain for the end of this. But I think we don't ask because complexity scares us, because we don't have the tools to deal with complexity and that's what I want to get to with people is complexity doesn't have to scare you Because, first of all, mostly we just don't know anything Like. We think we're doing this and we're really doing something else. We don't know, like you say, does it work for the reasons you think it works? Maybe we should forget about the reasons we think it works and just try some stuff. So complexity doesn't need to be scary if you honor the person in front of you and say what do you need today?

Eric: 49:33

Yeah.

Alanna: 49:34

Does this feel better? And that's where I'm really into. One of the questions you asked in the pre-chat or in that email was like what's the consequences of not knowing this information? And so I think we have that both from like a more global.

Alanna: 49:50

I think everyone is so dysregulated right now. Everyone is so angry and stressed and worried and scared, and if we can get just a little bit of change into the nervous system, those little breaks from the stress response actually matter. Our stress responses are great at stress, relax, stress, relax, stress, relax. We're very, very bad at stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, stress and living in that. So I think the consequences for the public of not knowing this information is we persist in a really awful, scary state in our nervous system.

Alanna: 50:24

For massage therapists, I think the consequences of not knowing this information is we never go to the real questions. We never go to the complexity. So the people who show up with all the autoimmune things going on, all the inflammatory stuff going on, we're just like, well, I'm just not going to ask about their digestion because I can't do anything about that anyway. But then if we understand the nervous system from a basic perspective, there's tons you can do to help people with these symptoms if you're willing to get creative exploratory. But really it's so simple. Is this better for you? Do you feel any better? Is your pain better? Is your movement better? How do you feel post-massage?

Eric: 51:04

Yeah, Going back to what you said earlier about how do you know what you know and where does your knowledge come from and avoid making logical leaps. I love that because that's basically regurgitating what that is.

Alanna: 51:17

It's so great when somebody says your stuff back.

Eric: 51:19

Yeah, it's great, as long as it comes back to the right context. A lot of times things come back. I did say that, but you've taken it.

Alanna: 51:24

Yeah, yeah.

Eric: 51:25

Anyway, it can be good when it's good, it can be bad when it's bad. But what I like, what you're saying too, is using that patient example with you were on the guy for a long time and it wasn't until you worked on his jaw and then felt better. And sometimes we don't know, we don't know why something worked. But I think that when we have the knowledge and we understand just at the basic level, pain is multifactorial, pain is understand just at the basic level. Pain is multifactorial. Pain is complex. People hurt.

Eric: 51:51

When someone hurts, there's something going on in their nociceptive system or nociceptive apparatus, depending on who or what. You read same idea and the person experiences pain. Why is it that I can work on their jaw and their head and their back pain goes away. Now the logical leap or the illogical leap that kind of a lot of people make is oh well, there's some connection there. There's this mechanical connection between your low back and your jaw or your shoulder, and people make these huge connections between these things that don't exist, because you could say that your baby toe is connected to your left earlobe well, as long as it's your right baby toe, then that's correct.

Eric: 52:30

Yeah, sarcasm like yeah, yeah, I get it, but you can say you can make any of these things, but people will do, they'll make these big leaps, these big things to try to understand. And that's I think we're. And I used to get really angry, so I get so frustrated because people make up these things. I think, well, no, that's you, that's, you're just making shit up. But I've gotten to the point now where people are making stuff up to try to make sense of what they see.

Alanna: 52:52

Yes.

Eric: 52:52

And it's just, it's a process and this is our profession. All the different modalities, all the different techniques, all the different acronyms that are out, there are people who have seen things clinically and have tried and have kind of put together a story to try and make sense of it.

Alanna: 53:09

And you know why? It's because their nervous system doesn't feel safe. Uncertainty is a math of crisis for our brain, and so we're all going to go to explain it, understand it, reduce the uncertainty so that I have a black and white thing to put this in because our brain hates uncertainty. And so there's some of this that you like. The nuance in this is to go like maybe it's working for the reason that you think it's working, and as long as you're not telling people you need to come and see me once a week to work on your jaw so that your ankle is better, then I don't really care what you believe about how it's working, as long as you're not giving people harmful messages about their body or selling treatments based on this faulty premise. What I like to say is I don't really know why this connects. Here's what I think might be happening, and I had this happen with a guy the other day. This was so funny he's so. He's a longtime client of mine. I've seen him lots. He came in with back pain. I've never worked on his jaw before because he's never had any jaw issues, but I do. Everybody gets like face at the end of a treatment relaxing stuff. So we've done some direct work around the hip and the back and blah, blah, blah. And so at the end I'm working on his face, I run my fingers down his mass or his both sides, he goes oh yeah, man, my jaw has been so sore and I said tell me about it. He goes started the same day as my back pain. I'm like, oh interesting. I said he's, I'm going to the dentist on Monday. That's as soon as I can get in.

Alanna: 54:37

This was like a Wednesday or something. I said do you want me to take a look at this right now? And he looks at me and I go this is I did get actual consent from him. But I turn around, put a glove on, turn around with a glove on my hand and I go open up and he looks at me. He goes okay, I mean, we've known each other for a while now, so there's some trust here. Well, we've never done whatever. This is what this is. I'm going to fish, hook your face and it's going to feel good. And he's okay.

Alanna: 55:04

Again, we've known each other for a while, so we've got some trust. And I said okay. Then I explained it and I got actual consent from him. So I did this technique I use all the time. I hang onto this cheek hook for like 90 seconds and I finish. I'm like what was that? Like he looks at me. He goes that was weird. I felt that in my back. I'm like that's not weird, but again, I'm not going to try and tell you like why. Or I'm like so there's a connection, and she goes yeah, it felt like my body was telling me that something about my jaw is something about my back and I'm like okay, cool, let's make sure the jaw feels great before you leave and I'll give you some tools to keep this going and see you next time. But it was fun.

Eric: 55:45

Yeah, I like that. There's that connection that's being felt, that's being noticed, but it's not being sold as something that's not. We're like we don't really know, and so many times we don't know why things, why someone hurts in one area, or why you work on something and they feel it somewhere else and we don't. I don't think there's a good answer for that. But what we do know and this is something that I'm sure you'll cover, I'm sure when you get a bigger course, because stuff I always try to cover is that if you have pain in one area, it's a risk-backdriving pain. In another area, it's like a chronic thing. If you have chronic, nonspecific low back pain which that's a term which, whatever, some people might not like or not, but we have pain in your low back, we're not sure what the causative thing is. Sure what the causative thing is, you're more likely to have pain somewhere else. Yep, and jaw pain is a common thing. So common things are common for a reason because they're common.

Alanna: 56:34

Yeah.

Eric: 56:34

I have this physician friend that said to me before and they said that the first rule of when you see a client at least what they were telling me was that you're looking for the common things, because that's most likely what it is. If it doesn't seem common, that's when you start to investigate and say maybe something more serious, the idea that, yeah, you've got pain in one area and pain in multiple areas that maybe don't seem directly connected. That's fine, because we know if you are susceptible to having pain in an area, you're more likely to have pain in a different area, and that's normal. The thing that's not normal is trying to sell treatments on these connections that don't exist. And one thing I always teach in in in my classes I just did a this upon recording a few days ago I spoke at a conference for nhpc and the digital conference and one thing I was talking about was it was a course on crying pain and basically talking about all the different pain mechanisms or the nociceptive mechanisms, and when we understand those so speaking of nervous system stuff when we understand, have a better idea of how those mechanisms work and how they influence our overall system, it helps to make more sense about why people have these pain experiences in multiple areas?

Eric: 57:46

Because a lot of the pain stuff out there could be from some type of neuroinflammatory thing coming from your nervous system. Neuroinflammatory and this can, for some reason, can manifest as sensitizing nociceptors in various parts of the body where things might already be more. Those nociceptors might be more sensitive to external stimuli or internal stimuli. So we understand that.

Alanna: 58:09

It helps to make sense Like, oh okay that's a way less wrong understanding than some mechanical connection. Yeah, and so your jaw pain is connected to your back pain, but it doesn't have to be. I don't have to go hunting for an explanation that's structural or biomechanical, and there might be one, but I don't have to go in and find it or pretend that I know. Yeah, we have time for one more story.

Eric: 58:32

One more story, yep.

Alanna: 58:34

One more story. Okay, on that note that pain magnifies other pain. I had a really interesting experience with someone the other day. She had come to see me on recommendation from somebody else and she's a chronic pain patient. She has endometriosis and so she has what's been diagnosed or told to her as a pudendal nerve entrapment. So she has this groin and genital pain all the time. She also has this chronic pain in her leg. She fell and hit her leg on something in 2019. And so there's nothing structurally wrong. Everything is quote unquote healed, but that pain is there all the time.

Alanna: 59:07

So she came in. The pain in the leg was seven out of 10, pudendal nerve pain was four out of 10. And she's someone who has felt worse after massage. She said I used to just go and I would get massage and I just it was. The whole thing was bad and painful and I felt so bad afterwards and I was like we face, I was working on her jaw. I did one side and she said that actually feels really nice. I did the other side and this is the lady who's. We have to stop that giving me sharp pains and it's hurting my leg and I said, okay. So without that understanding of the nociceptive system and how this chronic pain is manifesting. I might've gone oh my gosh, I can't touch your jaw now because I'm making things worse and this is connected to your leg. But I went. Okay, we got to calm down this system. So I took my hand out of her mouth and did a bunch of like nice face trigeminal nerve stimulus. It felt really good. I said how's that feeling in the leg? She said better, yeah, and the face feels better. I said, okay, let's go work on the leg directly. And so I tried some basically just still compressions around the leg. This is feeling okay. Yeah, this is feeling fine. I said what does nice touch feel like to you? And she said I think it would be fine.

Alanna: 1:00:11

And so I was doing the like the C tactile, affective touch stuff, basically just lotion, free effleurage, this stroking that is connected to more limbic system structures than necessarily the same pain processing as everything else has, and I just I did it for a couple minutes. I said what does that feel like? And she said I don't know. And I said, okay, is it bad? And she said no, and then she started crying and she said I don't get a lot of human touch. I said okay, is it okay if I keep doing this for a while? And she said yeah. So I basically stroked her leg for 10 minutes and then I worked on her feet a little bit and finished up with a scalp massage, whatever, and then I left.

Alanna: 1:00:48

I came back in I said how are you feeling? She said good, she goes. The leg is like four out of 10 and it feels almost numb Like I iced it. She said the pudendal nerve pain is gone. I've had that nerve pain since I was 26. And, without being too like, I was like you know it's going to come back. Right, we didn't just fix 26 years of chronic pain by being nice to your leg, but she got.

Alanna: 1:01:13

When I saw her next, I said how long did that relief last?

Alanna: 1:01:15

And she goes oh, like two days.

Alanna: 1:01:17

And I'm thinking, oh my God, that's horrible.

Alanna: 1:01:19

She only got two days of relief, but for her that was two days that she didn't have that same level of chronic pain and she knew that it was possible to feel better in her body.

Alanna: 1:01:29

And I mean there's another example of I was reading this research paper on the C-tactile system and how cool it is and I was like I'm going to start trying this in my treatments and for her, super effective. She might come back another time and we might try the same thing and it might be really aggravating. So I have to be ready to say how does this feel to you today? Try the same thing and it might be really aggravating. So I have to be ready to say how does this feel to you today? Maybe that nerve feels more like superficial irritation and not like light stroking, is feeling really burny and I got it back off of it. So, anyway, that's the kind of stuff that I just I'm so excited about, because when somebody walks out feeling like she just she looked like a different person when she walked out that relief was so evident. And that's what I live for, that's what I'm all about.

Eric: 1:02:08

Yeah, that's a great story, alana, and thanks for sharing that. It's a good way to end this. I think it's a really good way to emphasize that nervous system understanding and working with kind of neurophysiology and the human focus rather than the tissue focus. I think it's such a powerful message, so thanks for that, thanks for being here today.

Eric: 1:02:30

We didn't get a chance to talk about the silly videos they watch at the massage world massage championships, but maybe we'll have to do that next time, because that is definitely worthy of a discussion and some laughs. Some of the things we saw on that one.

Alanna: 1:02:44

Absolutely. There's so much weird stuff out there. Yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff out there.

Eric: 1:02:51

Yeah, so, anyway. So thanks a lot for that today. It's great we will see you or hopefully people will see you on October 5th at 10, 15 am Pacific. On rewiring safety massage therapy for nervous system regulation for the second annual knowledge summit. So that'll be fun.

Eric: 1:03:15

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