Correcting hyper-kyphosis & scoliosis with neuro-myofascial alignment.

Great. We are live. Thank you for joining Sam. Excited to have you on. That'd be her. Yeah. So I found you Instagram and you had a quite an interesting healing journey. And so I'd love to hear more about where you started, what the conditions that or symptoms that you were dealing with. and then we can kind of dive into what led you, on your path and how things are evolving. Sure. Yeah, I mean, when you're asking, When you asked me like, what am I healing, it kind of opened up something I've been really thinking hard about recently, because, you know, as I go deeper on understanding what what I'd been through, is always the most accurate and precise word to describe what's been happening. And I guess I'll circle back to that, but I will start by giving people context to what they want to know. What happened? I have an 85 degree structural Kyphoscholiosis, so mostly ford-neck kyphosis with some scoliotic curve in there as well. That started appearing in my teenage years. went to the doctors in what you would call the Western medical system in Australia. I went from a GP and from there you get a referral to a spine specialist who happens to be the orthopedic surgeon, which is quite a big leap in process there. I thought that the surgeon's job was to tell me about my situation, but now I know his job is to really decide if I'm a candidate for surgery or not. that I consider now to be the best person to represent my best interests at that time. But when I did go through the process, he said that, I was not a candidate for surgery. At 18 years old, the pain that had wasn't enough to justify the very risky surgery and the surgery is essentially opening up the back and adjusting the spine into a straighter direction, a strater trajectory, and then placing metal rods which are held in place with screws and bolts, which is a very aggressive surgery obviously. You know, at 18, I had tried a couple alternative for a few years, right? Doing alternative things with my mom. But when I was 18 on my own, facing life with a very severe posture, especially in those years where I'm very concerned about how you look, it was a lot. And I said, okay, if there's a surgery, we'll do it. you know, fortunately, he was, yeah, you said, like, based on your situation, I'm not going to recommend surgery. And so it kind of sunk in at that time that I was going live like this. I walked out of that office like pretty, pretty sad and without a plan. From what he said I just kind had to live with it and just manage it. that developed or became worse over time or initially started at a certain age or? Yeah, so from how I look at it now, because most scoliosis and mine as well wasn't really given a specific, oh, it happened because of this. And it's called idiopathic because it is of unknown origin. So idio means unknown and pathic origin, So it literally comes from 80% of cases. And so it took some really kind of thinking and going through and it turns out I had just the perfect storm of factors that led to this around, you know, around 10, 11, 12, I have a lot of sprained ankles, which can obviously gave me a bit of a limp. I didn't rehab those too well. Then at 13, I had a near drowning accident. Got caught in a flooded river with a rope around my ankle that accidentally got slip knotted and I got my groin kind of torn there. And then I spent those teenage years escaping the family chaos on the computer, playing video games and ignoring my posture and just kind of ignoring the sensations that my body was sending me. And I believe that's when I really cemented in that curve and it became part of my structural curve as well. So that means there's very limited malleability in the spine for about seven Vauterbray there. and not they're locked in place, essentially. And so you talk a lot about fascia on your Instagram as well, and that locking in-place. Any insights into the fasci and locking-in- place and possibly the emotions? Yeah, yeah, I mean, The fascia is that connective webbing that I think is part of our nervous system and part our structure. And it responds. It supports whatever strategy is being chosen by the nervous systems. So if the system is, OK, we need to protect. We need stabilize here. If the nerve system deploying a strategy, the fascial will be like, whatever it is. If we're going to be spending time here, let's lay down more collagen and make this more efficient to hold. Let's use less energy to whole this by lying down these fascia collagen cables. That's just the magic of the body. But if we are in a poor posture for many, many hours, for years, that can cement in our posture. Um, the good news is it's all changeable and the body is very malleable. The cells are constantly, constantly being replenished. Obviously the more denser and hotter the cells, it takes longer. Um but it, its mallable, and that's kind of the, that, been the focus of, of what, where I've been putting my attention. So at 18 the doctor said you have to live with this. Obviously that's a very, you know, hard thing to accept. So. Yep. And of course you next stages to go to college or, et cetera, how did, what were, where did you take? Cause the next step. I started off more insecure about it. When I wouldn't bend over in public, to show that show my back, I couldn't take my shirt off in pool. Like at a pool or the beach. Um, over the years I'm like, okay, I got to live with it. I'll just, you know, just uh, You know just just live it right. So I just developed like okay I don't I Don't care what other people think that was a that Was a good part of that process, right? Just to be I am who I Am. This is it That was it that released me from that type of uh um mental stress um And I did normal gym workouts. Um I I until I was I was pretty active. I had, I, had aches and pains, um, here and there, but I pretty, like, it was, uh, was functional. And at 33 I woke up, actually I felt like I hung over, and I hadn't drunk, And I like was weak, tired, that began this eight month journey of like trying to figure out why I was being choked out essentially. I didn't know it at the time, but the compression that had set into me at that time because my lower belly was inflamed. So I had IBS, I'd had acid reflux, had constipation, and I've had short, sharper kind of abdominal pangs. Had chronic fatigue, my immune system just started shutting down. Digestive issues, what else? It was everything. Everything was like going offline and it was a pretty desperate situation. I tried going vegan and went raw and that got worse because it turns out it's quite a lot of fiber to be passing through the system. When there's a structurally compromised spine, you've got your, your psoas muscles, um, diaphragm, they all are dysfunctional and they're right next to your digestive and lymphatic systems. And so if you got severe compression or dysfunction in those areas, You're essentially getting choked up from the inside and that's what was happening. It took me eight months to figure it out. I looked at my posture, like I was doing yoga, but I really didn't prioritize. Oh, it's my poster. Obviously it so obvious when I look back at it about what I needed. do with what I know now, but when you truly don't believe that you can do anything, and you just, you know, about it, that it kind of removes it creates a blind spot in your mind, it prevents you from really putting effort into doing something about So, you know, it was just, yeah, I realized the dangerous power of what beliefs are on this process. You know that belief that was given, because I thought I went to the people who knew everything about it. Turns out that wasn't the case. Eventually, I was listening to a book by David Goggins can't hurt me. He was in hospital, telling the story of being in a hospital with a similar situation and oh, he just needed to stretch and I'm like, Oh, okay, cool. So I looked at that and it did the diaphragm and Mainly the psoas and the hip flexors, that was really the part that had choked me out. I just thought I wasn't mobile in that area, but no, there was just severe compression that I had numbed out, I kind of just trained my body to ignore the sensations happening there. So once I unlocked that, all of the good habits that I had built through those eight months of desperately trying everything, and I did everything. I breath work and colonics and cacao and ayahuasca and all the things. And yeah, it was getting in and releasing that deeply held chronic tension that unchilled me. I unraveled, I increased two inches of my height as I continued the journey and I got curious about like, well, okay, how far can I go with this? Like I can do something about it. I'm empowered now. How far Can I Go with This? And that's been a process. That was at 33, and now I'm at 41. It's a been process of eight years looking at what can I do? And I've stumbled across some pretty fascinating things. Yes, I want to dive into what you discovered. Can we go back to 33? I am curious, you said it was a choking point, right? Where you just started having plethora symptoms on top of what where you were already at and it signaled a chance a sign that you needed to change or do something about this and was there any reason for the onset at that particular age you said you're pretty active at the time and you had aches and pains here and there and your functional and so all of a sudden Yeah, all of a sudden. Yeah. I'd gone on a horseback riding trip like two days before. And I think that had something to do it because I realized a while, a couple of years before that a horseriding trip kind of threw me off a little bit, but I hadn't connected it. Just in that seated posture, that balancing, Right, it just really kind of got in there. Yeah, I mean, at 33 and you know with the people that I'm working with now I find around that age, around the early 30s is when gravity starts sinking in. It made me realize that flow is health. Flow is a priority. And yes, like you realize you think you have two lives until you realized you only have one. Or no, you two have lives, but the second life begins when you realise you've only got one, that's that. That's the saying. And that was truly that moment for me. I realized, wow, this is the only life I have. This is only body I had. It's now a priority. There was always kind of like a number two or three priority, but now it's a level one priority So that's kicked off. Have to do something about this. How did you discover the ways or the modalities that you currently are using today? Just a lifetime. I mean, there's just been, like I've just always kind of, you know, I grew up in alternative kind hippie circles in Australia a little bit. And then I was living in Columbia for a while and saw more ancestral and ceremonial things, some somatic things. So that got me involved with some breath work things but I guess more directly with the postural stuff, that really began with learning the Schroth method and in particular their breathing technique, which is called the rotational angular breathing, Which is where you essentially expand into the concave parts of your curves in order to de-rotate the rib cage which will happen in a scoliosis. So that was powerful for me to realize, oh, okay, I can start remodeling myself from the inside out. So, that definitely was a significant part of the journey. From there, a lot of different kind of, like I'd already done Budokan, which is a mixture of martial arts and animal fighting. Um, some body weight calisthenics, gymnastic rings. I was already kind of leaning into that, um, and just spending a lot of time going in and listening to the body, developing intuition about, okay, what is my body need here? Um. From there. I was on a pretty good track. Then I came across functional patterns. And so I went through their system. I found benefit in that to learn force distribution as well as how to generate rotational torque through the body. That was really helpful. And foundation training, a little bit of that. A lot from everywhere. At this point now I have a posture dojo where I invite different practitioners to come and share their skills. And so that's really helped me take it to another level. at this Point, there's a few techniques that I'm that I'm developing to be able to teach them. I don't think I am quite there to say, OK, this is the way to do it. But they'll come when the time is ready. Until then, I've I've actually recently worked with a kinesiologist who is narrowing in on the same things. It helps clarify and confirm where I'm currently at in terms of understanding how posture is organized in the body. And I can share that, which Essentially, the Western medical system that I went through is founded on the mechanical model. It began in the industrial area when they looked at the body as a machine, as parts that can be fixed. And the whole system is optimized for very urgent emergency issues, surgery, like trauma, infections, go in. They're not really designed for six months of movement retraining, which is something that I think is more effective for, should be offered more for postural decline and postual issues. Because I look at posture now, how it's developed in babies when we take our first cry in the world, our diaphragm is activated, or our nervous system is using its eyes to look around. That's all we can do is just move our eyes and cry. And so we're starting to learn and develop Neuro kinetic ability the the neuro movement the brain movement ability and from there we go on a tummy and we don't want to crawl and go in a stand. So we're essentially Revealing in that process, how posture is actually formed and how we can actually retrain posture, which begins by establishing safety in the nervous system. We can do that by using our eyes and our breath through the diaphragm. With that, we develop that mind-body connection, that sensory awareness. And with that, we can begin to regulate the tone that is the tension that's being distributed in our myofascial webbing and the pressure that being regulated primarily by the thoracic diaphragm. And when that sequence is followed and we're practicing those things in order, in a progressive way, which graduates our system and walks it through, holds its hands through those steps, we can transform the body. Yeah, I've seen some of the posts that you have on Instagram and they're the keyword there. It really is transformed. You have transformed your body over time. If you see the before and after photos, that I would love for you to share, share those, um, there are the ones on. But can you talk a little bit about that transformation kind of where you started at 33 and, uh, where do you've ended up through that full? I will call it, like you said, healing maybe is not the right word. Maybe it's just a journey. Yeah, it's been a journey of attention and intention in a certain area of my body and ability. Because now I look at And this, you know, it's a graduation, right? Because when you don't know what scoliosis is, a lot of people still say, oh, It's disease. Can you cure it? And it is like, okay, scoliosis just means bent. And now we know the spine is just an expression of what's happening. So it s a very misleading label. Not a lot of sense like healing a band. Okay, is the bend is a bend mean it's broken? Not necessarily. The spine in my case was curving as a strategy of protection of of like, it said, okay, this is how we need to survive. This is How we Need to Breathe. There's no the pressure was leaking. Right, because I've got misalignment in my in, my hips and pelvis, I'm dropping pressure there. I have got protective tone going on. That was a strategy at the time. So essentially I am updating my astral strategy as opposed to healing something that's broken or a disease of some kind. So that's just an important way to look at it because the thoughts that we're creating, the beliefs that have are super important. And so it's like the more accurate and precise and surgical we get with the words that were using to describe these situations, The more we can be intentional about the transformation that are creating with our thoughts and our mindfulness, our mind-body connection. Right? Right. Is it fair to say that at 18 you were unaware of for sure impact that it had because nobody gave you essentially hope because they did nobody was there who had gone through something similar. And so that's very impactful that here you are on Instagram sharing that so, that other people who are going through, something, similar can say, Hey, maybe I need to look through those thoughts and emotions that are, going, through me right now, because it's not going to be helpful in, in my journey. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, that guides a lot of what I put out there is like, what did I need to know in that situation? And I think primarily what needed to is that sensation in my back, like one, I could have done something about it. And two, my body communicating to me, it was telling me something really important and I needed it to listen to that. and ignored it, whatever. So I chose to escape, chose avoid the work. And I felt that. I did know that there's like, I didn't feel it was a calling for work, but I'm like no, going to avoid the work and I am just going escape. And you know, that's the decision that I made and dealing with the consequences of that decision ultimately. So to help people make better decisions at that time is what I hope to do with with content for sure. Well, I wouldn't beat yourself up too much because I mean you didn't have the information that you have now. So that's it's hard to in that situation, you know. Yeah, yeah. I don't hold that grudge for myself because I know that the energy that I'm creating with my thoughts and perspective is really important and forgiveness and self-love is extremely important in this process. That's how we're able to bring our attention through our nervous system to those areas of our body that are in fear, protective states, right? They're in a protective status. So essentially they're either bracing for physical protection or sometimes it's a psychological protection. Sometimes it is a mixture of both, but that's essentially fear. And so I look at, well, what's the opposite of fear? It's love. So the real question is, when you have a partial strategy built in a fearful bracing way, the healing process is Don't using your mind body connection to become a bring your awareness and attention to that part of your body, to the place, To that memory, that strategy, situation, sensation, and bring forgiveness and love. I go with the Hono Pono, right? I'm sorry, please forgive me. Love you. Right? Wherever I'm in the body, that, Honopono, feeling those things, not just saying those, things feeling, those when your attention is in that part of your body. I think that's, healing. Is that healing? Is, is that what you define as healing because like, I, think, definitely a part, of the process, right? Because you can be so frustrated and hopeless during a situation such as that. Yeah, if transmuting fear held in the body into love is healing, then then yeah, that's healing. And that that self-healing. That's how it's done. If somebody else was going through the same thing that you went through at 18 or 33, at whatever age during your journey, is there any particular advice that would give to that person? Yeah, a lot. What's the advice? I mean, at 18, What's done is done, you've only got one life. Here's the one that does work for most people, or like everyone can resonate with, because some people won't be ready for the work. Some people... Different ideas, different words for everything, Different understandings of everything. But the thing that I think everyone could understand is that your greatest purpose to me, to you, everyone else is your wellness. Your greatest purpose is being well. If you're not well, if you are causing interruptions to the flow of your body, your energy is down, you in pain, the greatest thing you could do for me is to help yourself to pay attention to that and heal yourself. Don't worry about all the other things that you're trying to do and go out there and do the first thing that that and the First and greatest thing you can do for me is take care of you. I like that message. And so through your journey, you tried quite a few different things, functional patterns, rotational angular breathing, which is now what you said is a core part of your practice. and you have created Posture Dojo. So maybe you can speak to what didn't work for you that is, you know, no longer, or didn' really move the needle, so to speak, in the direction that you wanted. And then what you ended up, kind of what's your recommendation now for somebody who's going through the same thing that, that You've had the most success with. Yeah. Well, okay. First of all, just doing random, three ways to fix your posture stuff or like 10 ways, you know, all that stuff doesn't change your nervous system. Therefore it doesn' change the way your body is responding and holding itself. So you'll wake up the same the next day. Group classes around just like generic, let's say yoga, generic breath work, especially group classes. that aren't focused on posture, they don't really move the needle. They can provide some just like general maintenance to ensure. And like I was doing some yoga during those eight months when I really, really bad. I think that was kind of keeping my flow at least active. but it certainly wasn't more targeted. And that would be what I would suggest people do is to develop their mind-body connection, which is their greatest ally in this journey. Because being able to understand the sensations of tension and pressure in the body, allow you to become the creator of your body. And it means you're not going to do the same movement that everyone else is doing in there. In the class, it's like it, this is a journey that you like a movement, your buddy will guide you into the movement. That it will, that it is begging you and it begging me because it an energetic system and its intelligent and at once efficiency and once flow. And it will tell you where there is a restriction to that flow. It will guide you through that intuitive intelligence into movements. And so you'll, you know, if you're connected into your body, your paying attention, and you have that sensory awareness, uh, Your, body will, will will guides you. and, um, that's what I would suggest. So that would be, I would say, the number one skill. And then obviously I'm biased to say that the poster dojo is the place to go. I am putting everything into the height maximus protocol. Everyone's curve and compromise is slightly different. So we do share the same journey that over time, gravity and our structures are, you know, it becomes increasingly more challenging to stay upright, to stand tall and strong and confident. Falling becomes a major risk as we age, height decreases, So everything that I do is optimized around that. How can we stand tall and effortlessly? And so what things can invest our effort in the right places so that we can stand effortlessly and move effortless. So that's what I trained for. Following the sequence of establishing safety in nervous system, developing that mind-body connection, and then regulating pressure well in body with the diaphragm and optimizing and training myofascial tensegrity. for all-terrain agility, which I want to enjoy life. I'm going to get around the planet, do sports, hiking, get up, down. So that's what I gear and optimize for. So this is a routine that you do on a daily practice for posture dojo? Daily routines, because I really lean into somatic intuition, I bucket things in three different phases. So beginning with unraveling, most people need to start with unravelling. They're housing a lot of tension, they're protection, embracing because there was some type of threat or physically or psychologically that has locked them up quite a bit. So first phase is unraveling. That's primarily through things like diaphragmatic breath work, myofascial release. I find it's very helpful as well using balls, using your hands, uh, Then we move into alignment. That's where we're starting to learn how to organize pressure in our body, how we are learning how stack. There's some movements like the postural pyramid, the hip hinge, different isometrics are very helpful in that. Graduating obviously from the floor to crawling to standing and movement. And then fortification is where were really training or what we want to do, whether we're gearing towards a sport, towards gardening, to just being functional around the house, that's where we really kind of build our body in the direction that will take us for like the long road. Thanks, yeah that makes a lot of sense. So if people want Would you like to share any details for them to be able to interact with the Posture Dojo? Sure, yeah. So find me on Instagram, The Flow Wolf, or head over to the PosterDojo and we have a community there, posturedojo.com. There's free entry there but we also have tiers where you can join our weekly live workshops or apply for coaching as well. So we can do like more six month personalized programs as Well, fantastic. Yeah, I've seen you've made it quite a few visually. You can tell immediately in your Instagram post the changes that it's made to your kyphosis. It's remarkable. And also some ASMR inside some of the Instagram, right? Yeah. Yeah, and so my spine is structural. Some people have functional scoliosis, so each vertebrae is still malleable. I've certainly got some spinal gains. Haven't specifically measured the cob angles, the first ones. Because the curve was so severe, it wasn't as visible. But I'd say about 20% of my gains have actually been spinal. But even if there's a lot of like ossification or a very dense structural part of your spine that's very rigid, there is still so much you can do. And I would say that makes up about 80% percent of the gains that I've had, the increased height, as well as just having less pains and aches and having more flow movement ability in my body as The vast majority has been by remodeling the myofascial membrane on top of the spine. Ideally, our spine and all of our bones are floating in this web of tensegrity. So I just want to make sure that even if people have that structural or more of a fixed spinal curve, there's still a lot that they can do and a of gains that can be had by doing this work. Absolutely. I've heard in Chinese medicine that there's a lot of meridians and that each one of these meridian have the tension. Any opinions there as you've been on your journey? Yeah, yeah, so they've mapped it thousands of years ago. They've map these lines, these energetic meridians. I see the brain, the nervous system and the fascia as one. I think there was a, you know, whoever did the anatomy textbooks, they take the scalpel and they make a cut and say that's the brain. That's nervous system and that is the fascia. Until recently the fascia was thrown out but now it's like, oh, now, it is not just packing material. It is like it communicates and it was part of this web. Yeah, the legs of the brains, essentially. And yeah, Eastern medicine is definitely already been into that. The way that the needles interact with fascia is interesting. I know cupping as well as showing some interesting things for helping release adhesions as Well, there's definitely some merit to what they do as Eastern medicine, I guess Qigong would also be in that, and I have found benefit from that. I didn't mention that more recently over the last year. We've been doing rope flow. Very good for generating movement and getting that spinal engine moving, then QIGONG. a lot of mindfulness as well, very aware of the facial nervous system, by the way, the angles that you move with the positions of their hands, they're very facially aware. So absolutely, I am, yeah, in the future I'd like to dive in even deeper, but I know there's a good stuff that I've already found on the Eastern perspective. Excellent. Did I miss any questions that I should have asked you about your journey? I tried to be as thorough as possible to make sure I got everything. Yeah, you get the good stuff. I would just reiterate to watch our beliefs and question our The two, there's two. So I guess I'll share the two biggest dangers, right? The first danger is believing that one particular, like the conventional medical system has all the answers, especially the way it's set up in a very specialized way, where just know the job of who you're speaking to. I think that was a, very important lesson to realize, okay, the surgeon's job is to decide whether he's doing surgery or not. And so then once you have, So maybe you do have the belief that you can do something about it. And maybe your health isn't quite that priority yet. Maybe you have pains. I remember this perspective where it's just like, okay, you had pains, but you just want the pains to be gone so you go back to doing whatever you're doing. And so that's why I'm like, your wellness is your greatest priority. I'd say the biggest danger that people have is that when they start this work, they get out of pain. And that removes their biggest motivator to do the work. That's where the danger is because the cousin of death is complacency. So as soon as you're out of pain and your motivation is gone, because if pain is your motivator, you are in a delicate place. Look deeper into why you want to be in good health, whether it's for your family, to play with your kids, be able to do what you love to in the world. Start really connecting with that purpose. Because if it is the only thing that sends you in, as the pain's gone you'll be like, I'm good for now. But under the hood, everything's still boiling, the issues are still kind of compounding, that vasha is still cementing. And your scaffolding is getting more and more dense, but it's just, you've just provided just enough flow, But the structure is so compromised. So just be careful of that. Watch out for complacency on this journey, because that can take a lot of people off and it just kicks the can down the road and the problems get deeper and better embedded as they go. That's great insights, because if you just do enough to get out of pain, then there's a high probability, probably maybe that the I don't want to speculate. But if. You haven't addressed the root cause. It could come back. I don't know. Or you've helped quite a few people. So maybe that's an insight you could share as you help other people? Well, the longer you wait, more effort you'll have to invest to undo it. Right. Yeah. And on the root cause, Like, what is my root cause? It's kind of a combination of things, right? And do I need to know? Kinda, it definitely helps. But I do know that the way in is through the nervous system, through that mind-body connection. And I think that starts in the diaphragm. think the diaphragm governs our nervous system state and our structure. And that's just such a powerful way in and it's a way for us to get global results in the body, no matter what, what thing happened to treat the system as a whole, the nervous and the diagram is where you begin the journey. That's great insights. So thank you for your time, Sam. We'll add the link for people who want to check out your Instagram. I highly encourage that. There's a lot to learn from there. And then through your instagram, they can find the posture dojo. That's the way. Yeah. If there's anything else you'd like to add, as we can call it a wrap. All good, all good. I wish everyone well on their journeys. Feel free to reach out. Um, I'd say doing it, uh, together is a great way to do it. Showing up and being present would be something that I would say is, um, it's part of this process because this is. Uh, nervous, the roots are the nervous system and we know we have our. Our dorsal vagal shut down frozen state, we have our parasympathetic flight of flight, and then we in a socially connected state. So if we're avoiding eye contact or avoiding social connection, that's a sign we may not be fully in our ventral vagal state, our social connected. And in that state that is when we can actually co-regulate with other people. When it comes to improving your nervous system tone, showing up, being present, connecting with other people and developing a mind body connection, I think is a great way to go about it. And so everyone is welcome to show up and feel what that's like in the posture dojo. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on. Great. Okay, we'll call it a wrap.