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I'm Hormonal | PCOS, periods, gut + hormone health insights
If you're looking for information on women's hormone health, PCOS, perimenopause, estrogen excess, hormonal acne, gut support, and overall how to feel your best--look no further. I'm Hormonal host, Bridget Walton, provides you with the information you need to get your hormones in balance so you can feel your best. Long-form episodes come out on Tuesdays and you'll get a mini episode on Thursdays.
I'm Hormonal | PCOS, periods, gut + hormone health insights
Exploring Neuromuscular Massage for Pain Relief with Nikki | Ep. 68
Today, Bridget chats with neuromuscular massage therapist, Nicki Mercede. You'll learn about how we experience pain in the body and how discover the surprising ways that pain can present, as well as ways to address pain. If you have pain or cramping but aren't sure if it's strictly period-related, given that you have the pain throughout the month then this will be a good resource for you.
Nicki's massage practice is located in San Diego. She practices craniosacral therapy, neuromuscular massage, and has a degree in medical massage.
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Website - www.massagebook.com/biz/nickimercede
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Welcome to I'm Hormonal, your source of information about women's hormone health and how to support your body. Naturally, I'm your host, Bridget Walton, and I'm a certified functional hormone specialist and menstrual cycle coach. I am on a mission to hold these hormone conversations with as many menstruators as possible, because you deserve easier access to accurate information about what's up with your unruly menstrual cycle and with your fertility mysteries. Don't you think it's time that we figure this out once and for all? Welcome to this week's episode of I'm Hormonal. I'm your host, Bridget Walton, a women's hormone coach. I am so happy to be recording this episode for you today. I love creating these podcasts for you, and today I am bringing you a conversation that I had with Nikki, who is a neuromuscular massage therapist here in the San Diego area. You're going to love it.
Speaker 1:If you are somebody who has period pain or you have some sort of pelvic pain that you are not sure. Okay, is this my period or could this be pain associated with some other tissues going on? Nikki shared some really interesting stuff with me about how our tissues work, how those pain signals are sent through our bodies, so this will be good for you if you have some pelvic pain. Like I said, that you want to kind of investigate. We also talked about nervous system regulation a bit, and she was just really fun to chat with, so I hope you like it.
Speaker 1:If this is your first time listening to I'm Hormonal, then I just want to say a quick welcome to you. I hope that you are here and ready to learn. I've got over 60 episodes for you here where I share about how you can interpret what your body is trying to tell you, what your menstrual cycle is trying to tell you, and what you can do to support balanced hormones. If you are back again, then welcome back. Thank you so much for listening. I know you have a lot of good options out there, so I appreciate you spending some time with me. As always, I'll remind you, guys that the information I share with you is for educational purposes only, should not be used as a replacement for any sort of medical diagnosis, medical advice or other one-on-one support. That being said, though, if you are in the market for some one-on-one support, you can always reach out to me through the link in the show notes or connect with me on Instagram at Bridget Walton, because I do one-on-one coaching and would love to support you in your quest to regulate your cycle, understand your hormones and really get to the root cause of what's causing your period problems.
Speaker 1:Now, all of that being said, let me give you a little bit more intro on Nikki and then I will turn it over so you can hear that conversation. As I mentioned, she's a neuromuscular massage therapist. She's been working in this profession for about four years and has a private massage practice here in San Diego. She is just this week at least the week that we recorded this conversation getting her degree in medical massage, which is really exciting, and she also practices craniosacral therapy. So she brings a lot of different modalities to her work with clients in person to help them overcome their pain and help their bodies really overcome that pain. So enjoy this conversation here and I will see you on the other side. Probably for a handful of people listening, this is their first time hearing about neuromuscular massage and what that is. So do you mind kicking us off by giving us the rundown of what is neuromuscular massage? How does that? What does that mean? What do you do? How do you support clients?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. This is probably my most frequently asked question. So neuromuscular massage is basically taking how the brain and muscles talk to each other, and if there's anything that's disrupting that communication, it can create referral pain patterns in the body. So this is where, when people talk about trigger points and trigger point therapy, it's all the same thing. This is done in many different ways. Right, it can be done by muscles impinging on any type of nerve pathway, so it's sending referral pains in another direction. It's done through myofascial triggers. And actually, to even dig a little bit deeper, when people talk about trigger points and knots and people wonder what the difference is, they're literally the same thing. It's just a hyper irritable spot in the tissue that feels extra sensitive and can either stay local, like right where you're on the trigger point, or travel to any part of the body.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting. So trigger points and knots are the same. Let's come back to that in a second. The first thing I just want to make sure I understand like referral pain is kind of that, I don't know. I want to say reverberating pain, where like you have pain in your gallbladder but you feel it in your shoulder blade, like that kind of thing, where you're sensing it isn't exactly where maybe the inflammation point is. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Exactly yes, so I'll give you a perfect example of that. So a very common one that I see is referral pains that people can feel in their arms. So some people will come in and go, oh, I have carpal tunnel syndrome, like my wrist really, really hurt, but then after doing some exercises to kind of see whether it's truly carpal tunnel syndrome, and it may not be it, and then we'll just keep going up the arm and a lot of times it actually goes all the way up to these little muscles in your neck called the scalenes, so that there's just trigger points in the scalenes. That is basically choking on your brachial plexus, which is the nerve, the nerves that help innervate the arm. So that's just. That's one of my big examples, because no one would ever think, oh, there's something wrong with my wrist. Let me go to my neck.
Speaker 2:There's other referral pains that are not as dramatic as that. The scalenes are very, they're very tiny muscles but they're very dramatic muscles in my opinion. But our legs, for example, the referral patterns are kind of what you would think like a lot of times, like in your quads, depending on which quad right, because there's four little muscle bellies. That's why they're called your quadriceps foreheads. Fun fact. Um, if you feel pain like throughout your leg, it may be really coming from just one section. That's just right at one of the attachments by your knee, or along those lines.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's bring this um to a little closer to the hormone conversation when it comes to pelvic pain. So in this case, right, I guess pain not actually associated with your hormones. If it's has another um trigger point, actually that's not actually associated with your hormones. If it has another trigger point, actually that's not even the term you used. You'll have to correct me on that. Well, you're right. What are some things, presumably low back question mark that you know, maybe it's not actually period pain, it's caused by something else. What comes to mind for that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 1,000%. So you're right. And listen, let me rephrase this. So when we think of period cramps right, what is a period cramp? It's your uterus cramping up, right? That's that's literally the definition of it. Um, and that's all. You feel that in your belly. So you just feel your belly cramping. But what else is in your belly? What's there? There's all of your abs and muscles. You have your rectus femoris, which is the quote unquote six pack muscle that we're always trying to build up. We have our external obliques, our internal obliques, we have our hip flexors. All of that is going on in our belly. So if we do feel those little sensitive trigger points in that same area, it's very easy to misinterpret them as a period cramp coming from your uterus.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That also makes me think too, because when I think of period cramps, I think a lot about inflammation. Like, what are the sources of inflammation in somebody's body? Because you're right, yeah, when, when your period starts, your body releases these prostaglandins, which are that's the actual component I'm losing the word for it that I want but prostaglandins are what cause your uterine lining to shed by having your like, causing your uterus to contract. But when inflammation is high, then that can really exacerbate that pain. So how does inflammation play into everything that you just mentioned and kind of exacerbate things? How does inflammation show up in the work that you do?
Speaker 2:Well, it's kind of the same thing as what you said. It does show up in many ways, right, some people come in with an injury, so there's already that, that edema and that more that swelling, because the body's just trying to protect the area that was injured. Um, that's really the most common that I see it. Um, there's not necessarily the difference with trigger points it's less of inflammation and it's more of lack of blood flow.
Speaker 2:The lack of blood flow to the tissue. That's why it's getting so knotted up, quote unquote. And then that's where neuromuscular therapy or any type of massage therapy really comes in, because just with that manual manipulation you're bringing more blood flow to the surface, basically providing the tissues the oxygen that it needs, and then it's able to disperse. So another thing that you can actually do for any abdominal pain that you're feeling, especially if it's more myofascial related, I typically tell clients to find a soccer ball or anything similar in that nature and rest their belly against it on the floor. So you'll be on your belly on the floor. With the soccer ball. It's good because it almost acts like a foam roller and it's firm enough to get to those trigger points that we talked about, but it's also soft enough to where it's nice on the organs and the tissue. So it's a lot more comfortable.
Speaker 1:So does that look like spending? Setting aside 10 minutes to kind of put the ball in one position, sort of like relax onto it and hang there, for you know, a minute before you kind of move it? Or how does that look when they're going through that exercise?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. This is actually something that I recommend for when you're foam rolling anything, let alone the abdomen right. I do larger rolls to search right it's. You search using the, so in this case the soccer ball, searching around for any of the more tender areas. And once you find that tender spot, that's when you want to just sit with it, that's when you want to just allow yourself to sink into it to where it's comfortable. Well, you can be a tad uncomfortable, just as long as it's not painful. We don't want to be at that painful arc. Yeah, and then that from there, that's where you can. You're basically your own massage therapist. At that point you can do it. You can minimize the rocks or, if it's, if you really just want to sit there and lay there, perfect.
Speaker 1:Okay, that sounds like torture for me, but probably good for me in the long run.
Speaker 2:So well, if it's torturous and this can be a topic for another day, but if it's how does that work?
Speaker 1:when it comes to that, like our deeper sort of muscles, like in our pelvic area, is there a way to do, I mean, yeah, I guess, like use more pressure to do a deeper kind of massage? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:I'm laughing because that's also a huge like misconception. In massage therapy, especially for the work that I do, people tend to think that oh, to really get into something and to break it down, you really got to dig in deep and like rub it out. And that is the last thing that I'm doing, especially when I'm doing abdominal work, because, ouch, and there's so much other stuff, lots of organs. It's already a more sensitive area in general because even on a social aspect, people get very insecure about their frontal region. And it also makes sense on an evolutionary perspective because if all of your organs are in this cavity, you want to protect it, protect it.
Speaker 2:You want to protect it Exactly. You want to, like, hunch over and protect those organs. You don't want someone to just randomly, willy nilly, put their hands and elbows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, play the piano like on your abdomen, exactly, exactly, so where.
Speaker 2:So, in terms of to answer your question about pressure, and that's what's the beautiful thing about doing um trigger point work is because I can be doing such light pressure and if I'm right on the trigger point, the right angle, it's going to feel a lot deeper. So, to kind of put you in the mind frame that I'm usually in during massage, right, I first do some what's called effleurage, which, which is your typical, like Swedish style massage, to really get a feel of the tissue, feel any tension. And then there's always a part where it's less what's the word I want to use it's less pliable, right, and all of a sudden it kind of just feels like a hard stop. Actually, have you ever, um, have you ever played with um cornstarch and water before? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a lot like that, right, where, if there's, if the tissue is all nice and happy, it's just like just sinking your hand into a bowl of cornstarch and water. It's like it's a liquid. But if I feel that trigger point and if there's an adhesion there, it's like when I take that fist and just smack it into the substance which then turns into a solid, I can't put my hand through. So once I feel that I literally just meet the body where it's at, I just kind of say hello and eventually how it works is as I'm putting pressure on it and I'm bringing more blood flow, supplying more blood flow to the area, the trigger point is like oh, you're actually pretty cool, I'll ease up a bit. And then you literally feel it, you feel the body go okay, and then I can just naturally sink into it a little bit more.
Speaker 1:This might be a dumb question, but are there, is there X number of like dedicated trigger points, or there's just an infinite number of potential trigger points that we can have on our bodies?
Speaker 2:It depends on who you talk to. Honestly, at the end of the day, what I, what I've learned through my training, is there's no, no one's the same, no one's going to, no one's really going to build the same trigger point, the same knot in the exact same spot, because everyone's moving differently, like we are. We are all individuals. So that's how I look at trigger points where, like, okay, I can, because I've done these, like, I've done these range of motion tests and I can see you're having, you're struggling with A, b and C. I'm going to look at this area and then it's up to me to find, as I'm searching. Oh yeah, look, this side is a little bit more tender than this side is.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's think about this in terms of, like somebody who's listening, who has period pain and is trying to figure out, you know, like is this something that, yeah, maybe there's more investigating to do? When it comes to a trigger point, like if somebody is having this pelvic pain throughout the month instead of just at the start or just before their period, how would somebody determine, like, what to do?
Speaker 2:Does that make sense? It does, it does. Yeah, and I can break this up into two parts One where, like if you're saying you've been gone through three cycles where your periods have been extremely crampy, typically a period cramp being in your uterus, which is more central in the cavity right.
Speaker 2:In your body. You'll feel it more central when, if it's going to be something myofascial related, it might be more one-sided or does that make sense? Right Like so, instead of just being directly front and center in the belly, it might feel a little bit more to thesided, or does that make sense? Right Like so, instead of just being directly front and center in the belly, I might feel a little bit more to the left or a little bit more to the right maybe, or maybe that even travels a little bit up the belly. Um, cause, if you, I wish I can, I wish I can present to you guys all my, my pretty little trigger point charts that I have, because there's some photos that kind of demonstrate it perfectly, like for like, your obliques right, being more towards the side, based off where they attach to at the pelvis, it's very common for any trigger points in the external oblique to actually travel into the groin, so you feel more groin pain. Um, same thing with the rectus abdominis in the front. Our six, our lovely six-pack guys, right, we can, fat, can shoot straight down towards the pelvis, or it can even shoot up where it kind of feels like heartburn a little bit, because it also attaches up at the rib cage.
Speaker 2:I'm not a pelvic floor physical therapist, so that's actually I'm glad that you mentioned that, because that was going to be.
Speaker 2:The second thing that I was going to mention is that if you start to feel more like something like chronic pelvic pain syndrome right, and that's usually like to get medically diagnosed with that you have to have this extreme pelvic pain for over six months and it's longer than just your period, it goes on throughout the entire month. That's something that I highly recommend looking to a pelvic floor PT so they can actually look at those more inner intricate muscles. I can work in the structures that help support the pelvic floor, so a lot of like hip flexor stuff, your pectineus, it's also kind of more in the groin area, but I can't do the more intricate work like a pelvic floor PT. Yeah, makes sense and it honestly. I love when clients have come to me already going to all of the other options like all the other doctors done all the MRI exams, because if they say those professionals say I can't find anything, then I'm like, okay, this is more in my jurisdiction, let's go. That's the green light for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, what is the combination between the like physical touch, physical manipulation and like energetics of the work that you do? Is that kind of a component, or am I maybe mis kind of interpreting?
Speaker 2:No, I wouldn't say misinterpreting. It's kind of really hard to separate the two. Right, Like I can have all of the knowledge of anatomy, Like I can have like all the things, memorize all of the textbooks, right. But if I don't have, if I don't just sit there energetically and like listen to the tissues and listen to the body and really feel where it's pulling me to go, then that knowledge kind of goes to waste Because the body knows all the. It doesn't matter what I know, your body is going to tell me what's wrong. So yeah, it's hard to separate the two. It really goes hand in hand.
Speaker 1:The work that you do has got to be so impactful in people's lives, because, no surprise to you, no surprise to most listeners, that like pain is a big deal. When you have a lot of pain, that can become really central to your experience. What is that like? I would love to talk about like pain and our nervous systems and what impact pain, whether it's acute or chronic, can have on your nervous system.
Speaker 2:A thousand percent. A thousand percent, I mean there's been many studies out there that show that pain does get exacerbated through extra stress, whether we're talking about extra stress through inflammation and that biomechanical stress on the body, or even just mental stress, emotional stress, just mental stress, emotional stress, because when we break down our central nervous system, right, our autonomic nervous system, we have our main branches that everyone knows about, either our fight, flight, freeze or our rest and digest. Thing is, when we start to go into fight or flight, our bodies don't know the difference between being attacked by a bear and being due to do our taxes. It's going to treat it the exact same way.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So when we're stressed about work, when we're stressed about something in our family, when we're stressed about something in our day-to-day lives and we keep it ruminating, right, Whatever pain we're feeling, it's going to get exacerbated because our body and how our brains are subconsciously talking to the body and vice versa. The pain is going to be felt a lot more.
Speaker 1:So how does that come into play with your work with clients, when it's like, okay, we're going to deal with or not deal with, we're going to work on the pain that you are experiencing physically but also address the stress. Or is that a part of the conversation and like, do you have any? I don't know, do you have any fun tips or tricks for us? Because there's not. There's like not a single episode of this podcast, I think, or it's not, or rather, where I don't mention that stress is bad.
Speaker 2:It's the silent killer, for sure it's the silent killer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely In terms of as a conversation with my clients. It really depends on the client, because some clients are just like I'm not open to talking about this, but the ones that are open to talking about it, I don't. I'm not a psychotherapist so I can't dig in that way, but it it it also looks different to everyone. It can be where I'm in the middle of a session and we find that really sensitive spot and I just ask them, like I, I ask them to just breathe with it, right, and really um, breathe deep in their belly, and just helping that relax, because sometimes, because sometimes clients don't realize how much their breath really impacts not only their mentality but their physical body as well.
Speaker 2:If you actually look at it from a physiological perspective, when we take our lungs like a physiological perspective, when we take our lungs, our sensory neurons that are in our lower lobes, those are actually connected to our rest and digest system and that parasympathetic state, the ones that are in the neurons that are in more of the upper chest, the more in the upper lobes of the lungs. Those are connected to the sympathetic system, our fight or flight. So that's why it's really easy for people to feel panicking if they keep chest breathing and they're breathing fast because you're literally enacting those neurons to set off. So that's why it's super, super important to breathe into the lower lobes. So and people are like, oh, breathe into the belly, really try to breathe into the belly. And I I know there's people that have a hard time even thinking or like like putting that into a concept, like how do I breathe into my belly? And normally that's when I have clients actually put their hands in by their lower lobes, by the bottom of the rib cage, and just say breathe into that.
Speaker 1:And then they feel their ribs expand in their hands and it gives them a little bit more of a of a goal, like somewhere to aim their breath to it is something that a lot of people, a lot of gals in the united states and, I would venture to guess, in many other countries, need to relearn too right, because we're so trained to, um, keep our stomachs sucked in so that we look nice and slim and trim, but like, yeah, actually letting your belly just be normal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let it out and be able to breathe into. It is so important, really good for like breathing into your belly, like letting your pelvic floor muscles relax, because if they're tight all the time too, then that can be yet another source of pain that somebody might mistake for um period pain right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I'm actually so glad that you brought that up, because people and I'm guilty of it too I can find myself like really sucking in throughout my day without even realizing it, cause just over so many years you realize you created a habit, so I'm really really glad that you brought that up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so ingrained, but it takes a long time to well. It takes a long time to correct, but no better time than now.
Speaker 2:No better time than now. And, yeah, your body will thank you. Let the gut out. Your body will thank you.
Speaker 1:I feel really fortunate that we here in Southern California have so many options for, like breathwork classes or yoga classes that incorporate breathwork, but that's a really good one. Or for somebody listening who's like I don't know what breathwork is, who is that there have to be about a billion different guided breathwork videos on YouTube. That could be a good intro to that and, like intro to nervous system regulation, could be a really good tool to support you when you were feeling a little stressed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if I can add on to that too, there's a book that literally changed my entire life and it's literally about breathing. It's called Breath by James Nestor, and it is an incredible book that it's almost like an anthropology because it's almost like an anthropology because he digs into the history of breath and also goes into, dig deeper into the science and the physiology of breath but seeing how it also affects different populations over time and over centuries. But also he goes out and interviews breath workers and people who have also dedicated their life to studying the art of breath and he writes down different techniques for you to try. So there's like a good 10 different variations of breathing techniques within the book. It's a great read, highly highly recommend it, and he even calls it a lost art, because it really is a lost art, people don't breathe correctly anymore?
Speaker 2:No, people don't breathe correctly anymore.
Speaker 1:No, people don't breathe correctly and I know we're getting a little like off topic, but I love this rabbit hole because, yeah, breathing through your nose right Mouth taping is, you know, a thing that people talk about but really breathing through your nose and that's also has so many benefits for your, like oral microbiome, it's just only good things, yeah yes, he talks all about that and I I would love to go down this rabbit hole with you too.
Speaker 2:I'm such a nerd over it. But yeah, it's actually crazy when he, when the author, breaks down just how detrimental mouth breathing is compared to nose breathing and how much like so many health conditions just like vanish once people probably learn to breathe through their nose again.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. Yeah, there must be. Well, there's got to be somebody out there, in addition to this author, who's like just working with people day in, day out, to retrain their breathing. And we need all these people, we need all these different tools and resources. We do Actually. Let me see if I.
Speaker 2:My cousin actually gave me a book very similar. It's called the Oxygen Advantage, but it's very, very similar concept. So the research is getting out. There, the facts are getting out there about how essential it is to breathe through your nose, and it's a super fascinating rabbit hole to get into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Such a good opportunity to take care of your health, but, like, also really investing in your health by not ignoring pain. Coming back to the pain topic of you, know, I think that it can be easy for people, whether it's whether they're just accepting that they have chronic pain like forever, or maybe it's another condition or another. Accepting that they have chronic pain like forever, or maybe it's another condition or another, something that they're like okay, well, this is just my life now. Right, I've certainly had that perspective on some circumstances in my life and in my health. But anyway, being proactive, having this mindset about change, that like, hey, I can change the way that I feel I can invest in my health and by seeing people like you, or actually, maybe that's a good question. Next, who do you like? What do you recommend for people who have pain? Maybe for people who don't have access or aren't familiar with somebody in their area who does neuromuscular massage. But what do you? What do you recommend for people to start as they figure out how to manage some of their pain?
Speaker 2:Sorry to clarify on the question Are you looking for? If a listener is like, I don't even know where to find a neuromuscular massage therapist, or yeah yeah, all right, well, I'll do.
Speaker 2:I'll do a quick plug for a massage book here. Um. So massage book is um, this, um the scheduling software that I use, um, but it acts as a whole directory, um for anyone to just go online, go to massagebookcom, put in your zip code and see who's in your area and then you can check off the boxes of what type of massage you're looking for. If you're looking for more of like a spa, like swedish type, that's absolutely there. Looking for more of like a like a sports clinical type of setting their neuromuscular massage is typically a check that you can um a box that you can check off as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, yeah, I hadn. Yeah, I hadn't heard of that. So that's helpful and just generally, yeah, a good tool when you need to figure out where to go. I like it.
Speaker 2:And all the therapists are verified. Everyone has to put in their license number and say what schools they've gone to, so you don't have to worry about just getting some random person off the street. Honestly, out of any other search engine that I've seen for massage therapists, massage book is the one I definitely trust the most. Okay, and that you're pretty guaranteed to have a good person through massage book.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, well, trust massage book as we get ready to wrap up. Is there anything that we haven't talked about yet that you think? Like that you wish somebody listening who has, you know, pelvic pain or a lot of cramping like that you wish they knew?
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, just know you're not alone. You know many women, um many women feel this, and knowledge is power at the end of the day. Not to get into a deeper subject, because I know you said we wanted to wrap up, but I do want to talk about something about pain coming from neurotags, about pain coming from neurotags. So neurotags you could think about as little like markers that your brain kind of creates for itself, to kind of almost like a little bit of a bookmark in place whenever something in your life has happened. So there's two different types of neurotags. There's one that can create a sense of a danger in me and there's also one that causes like a safe, a feeling of a safety in me, right? So when we're constantly feeling the chronic pain, whether it's from extreme period cramping, from chronic pelvic floor syndrome, um, the longer we feel it, the more and more we tend to dig into this hole of oh my gosh, this is never going to get better, I'm going to be in pain for the rest of my life. And there is science that backs it up, that when we think these thoughts, our body is going to say okay, brain said this, so I'm going to just continue the communication that brain is telling me and it's going to exacerbate the pain. So that's why finding things like I know it's a cliche to say finding the light at the end of the tunnel, but it may not take it away a hundred percent, but finding the light at the end of the tunnel of things, or even just having the hope of hey, I'm, you know what this neuromuscular work sounds really interesting. Maybe, maybe this can work for me. That helps create the safety in me and then helps diminish that pain. There's something else I wanted to go through that, oh, and one of the and this you can also use this as nervous system regulation too, right?
Speaker 2:Um, one of a great way to provide that safety in me feeling is not only taking that deep breath that we were just talking about, but then also really honing into all of your senses, right, okay? What can I touch, how, how? What is the material in my pants feel like? What is the material on my in, on my shirt, the? How smooth are my arms right now? Anything that you can touch, sense that Name, anything that you can see like. Oh, right in front of me I'm looking at a painting of purple flowers and looking at how vibrant the color purple is in that picture, just being very in the moment of that and that helps trigger a response in the brain of oh, I'm not being attacked by a bear right now. I can calm down a bit and then, yeah, you might still feel the residual receptors of, like the pain from the receptors in the area going, hey, something isn't exactly right here, but it's not going to feel as exacerbated because your whole body isn't flooded with signs of, ah, something's wrong. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 1:That makes a million percent sense. Yes, and yeah, that's a really helpful trick. I like that. I've heard of some things kind of similar to that, but not in regards to pain, and that's like. I guess it's just refocusing on what is concrete in front of you, exactly.
Speaker 2:Like, think about when a child trips and falls. Right, they trip and fall and then they go oh my God, I fell, it hurts so bad. And then, once we get them to breathe, and once we get them to recognize that you're not in danger, you're safe, the pain decreases drastically. I mean, they might still feel some of the throbbing because you know bodies, the immune system is doing what it's designed to do, but it's not going to feel as exacerbated.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I think that's a really good spot to close out our conversation for today. I'm really grateful that you joined me, so thanks so much. Would you tell the gang here how they can connect with you after this?
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you for having me. I'm so, so glad to be here. Thank you for giving me this platform to speak. You can find me at Instagram at balancedbodyworksd. That's balanced within ED. I know my list can get in the way sometimes and people can misunderstand that. Yeah, balancedbodyworksd. And then from there you can even contact me just through DMs, or you can even click on my link to get to my website.
Speaker 1:Nikki. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for sharing this conversation with me for the listeners of the podcast here. If you are listening and you liked what you heard, then check out the link in the show notes so you can connect with Nikki. If you ever have a request for an episode on a certain topic, you can always reach out to me through the link in the show notes as well, or hop on over to Instagram. You can find me at Bridget Walton. Thank you again for listening. I can't wait to see you here on the next one.