Brian is on a mission to help millions of people learn how to live healthier, pain-free lives and achieve complete fitness. A frequent speaker at industry events, he presents, consults, and conducts training with corporations, organizations, and nonprofits on the topics of chronic pain, healthy living, and high-level performance. His clients include the Tony Robbins Companies, Bulletproof Radio, YPO, the Seattle Study Club, and the NFL.
Brian has been studying “true” biomechanics and human anatomy using The Egoscue Method for more than 25 years. As the Posture-Pain-Performance coach and motivational speaker, he has spoken in more than 15 countries, promoting a myriad of healthy principles for achieving success in all areas of personal and professional life. Brian believes that real and lasting change can happen when we commit to health as a lifestyle. His postural training, fitness experience and engaging personality get people of all ages moving and digging deep to get their best results.
Four stretches to revolutionize sitting from Brian: egoscuecollectiveinsights.com
In This Episode We Discussed:
Childlike mobility at age 50
The worst possible position for sitting
Physical consequences radiating up the kinetic chain
Seeing pain as a signal for what's actually going on in the body
For most people Psoas muscle is asleep; this is a key disfunction
Four minutes of posture training may double workout results
Compensation in the body
Three posture types and their associated psychology
Changing negative perspectives physiologically
The importance of neck & body alignment in brain health
Intermittent fasting the right way
Show Notes:
0:00 Intro
0:52 The Egoscue method, a BioMechanical approach to combat pain.
6:59 Sitting is here to stay, train for it.
10:28 Headache relief via calf stretches.
14:41 How posture stacks up to symmetry.
16:55 A training strategy to combat the impacts of prolonged sitting.
26:00 Five major muscles.
28:09 Bunions and balance.
36:24 Personalized posture therapy in person or over video chat.
40:05 A game changing exercise in posture driven mood change.
52:17 Predicting specific injury by observing dysfunction in posture.
59:01 Egoscue therapy as an alternative to surgery.
1:14:15 Long-term strategy to maintaining good posture.
1:06:38 Diet and nutrition advice from Brian.
1:11:37 Inflammatory foods and cognitive focus.
1:14:46 Brian's reading list.
Mentioned in This Episode:
Pain Free Living, by Pete Egoscue
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor E. Frankel
The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruíz
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach
Multipliers, by Liz Wiseman, with Greg McKeown
Complete Episode Transcript:
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:00:37Welcome to Collective Insights, my name is Doctor Dr. Heather Sandison Sandison. I'll be your host today and I am so excited to be welcoming, not only my friend but a colleague, Brian Bradley, who is with the Egoscue Method.
I feel really fortunate to be introducing Brian to you today because I got a chance to work with Brian and Pete Egoscue about 10 or 12 years ago in San Diego. I was blown away by how helpful the Egoscue Method is in combating pain and helping people get back to their lives free of pain and free from the limitations that pain can often involve whether it's being on meds or just having to deal day to day with debilitating headaches or joint pain. This method has just been phenomenal for so many people. I refer a ton of patients down to the Egoscue Method and want everyone to know about his method and how powerful it can be in terms of getting out of pain.
So, Brian is on a mission to help millions of people learn how to live healthier, pain-free lives and achieve complete fitness. He's a frequent industry speaker at events. He presents, consults, and conducts training with corporations, organizations, and nonprofits on the topic of chronic pain, healthy living, and the highest level performance. His clients include the Tony Robbins Companies, Bulletproof Radio, YPO, the Seattle Study Club, and the NFL.
Brian has been studying true biomechanics and human anatomy using the Egoscue Method for more than 25 years. As the posture, pain, performance coach and motivational speaker, he has spoken in more than 15 countries promoting a myriad of health principles for achieving success in all areas of personal and professional life. Brian believes that real and lasting change can happen when we commit to health as a lifestyle. His postural training, fitness experience, and engaging personality get people of all ages moving and digging deep to get their best results.
So, you can see why I'm excited to have Brian. Brian, welcome to the show.
Brian Bradley:00:02:36Thank you so much, doc. Listen, Dr. Heather Sandison, it's so uncomfortable when people read bios because you know how weird those kinds of things are? It's like here, "Read my resume. It's almost all true."
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:02:48You kind of nailed it. I think that describes you very well and knowing you personally, I would say, the engaging personality especially.
Brian Bradley:00:02:55Yeah, to me, that's number one because it shifts a ... We all know this. If a client doesn't trust you or they don't believe you're authentic, then they're not going to get the result that you would like them to get from the work that you're providing them, which means they really are, in my business, they're really not tapping into that compelling future. That's my job is to try to, today, get people to understand that this isn't the Brian Bradley show, this is all about empowering them to understand what Egoscue's all about and understanding the freedom that it provides.
I've seen it over the last 26, 27 years with Pete Egoscue when I was given the privilege to learn this method, which was why I say true biomechanics because you can be a biomechanical expert, you can understand the knee joint in and out, even better than what I understand it, but I can tell you that if you're looking at the knee and that's all you're looking at then that's a problem.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:03:48Right. If you're not connecting it to the rest of the kinetic chain up to the hip and down to the ankles, then the knee in and of itself ...
Brian Bradley:00:03:55[crosstalk 00:03:55]
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:03:55Right.
Brian Bradley:00:03:55Yep.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:03:56Also, back to the brain. What you just said was such a great point. I first really learned that with you and Pete, is that whether or not you're going to get a therapeutic response for anyone whether they're coming to a doctor, a therapist, whoever you might see, a massage therapist, any kind of development that you're going to do whether it's physical or relationship-based or mental, you have to connect. You really have to be able to connect and get people on board in a way that's really authentic and you guys do a great job of that.
Yeah, tell me how you got started with Pete. How did you learn about the method and what is your experience there?
Brian Bradley:00:04:35Back in 91, I was working for HealthSouth Physical Therapy and well, we all know what happened to HealthSouth. I wasn't the cause of that. Let's just be clear. I was heading back to do some more work in the PT world and I ran into a physical therapist that I worked with and he said, "Listen, I just interviewed for this company over at PGA National that Jack Nicklaus is partnering with." Jack Nicklaus being the greatest golfer ever. I was like, "yeah, okay. I like golf just enough. Let me go see what it was about." When I ran into what the method was about, it instantly made sense to my belief system which is whole body connection, get the client to understand a compelling future, tie those two together, mind, body, and we'll see where it goes. Honestly, it really came down to getting Pete Egoscue to realize that there's not enough of him to go around.
Starting from 92 on, we said, "Look, we've got to make this expansion and start giving this information away, training people, shift the paradigm of allopathic health care, which is stuck in the ... This is no judgment, by the way, stuck in their mentality ... I'm going to take stuck out of there because that's a judgment statement. They're in a mentality of here's the symptom, let's go after the symptom. Let's make the person feel better.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:05:53It's like a fix-
Brian Bradley:00:05:53That's not-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:05:53... a fix it mentality more like a mechanic.
Brian Bradley:00:05:56Correct. Well, if the mechanic was really interested in fixing my wheel and why it was crooked, they'd start looking at the rest of the car. That's what really turned me on with Pete when he said, "Look, Brian, you're real strong peripherally, but on the structural end, let's talk about that."
I went, "Okay, wait a second. I bench press this. I squatted this. I did this and I golf and I play this and I can do anything that I want." Now, at the age of 50 versus 27 years ago, it's no joke. It's no joke as it relates to where I'm at now at 50, the things I'm able to do as you'll see on my Instagram accounts and things like that. I don't do that to go, "Look how cool Brian is." It's to empower the AARP generation to say, "I can get back to my childlike behavior even though I sit behind a desk all day."
Let me talk about that for a second because people look at sitting as a cancer.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:06:52Yeah, what do you think-
Brian Bradley:00:06:52You and I are going to be sitting here for a minute of ... We're going to be here 60 or more minutes sitting down and they're going, "well, sitting is the new smoking. It's so negative. It's this. It's this. It's this." Well, let me ask you, Dr. Heather Sandison, is sitting going anywhere?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:07:03No, that is here to stay. Well, unless you have a standing desk.
Brian Bradley:00:07:08But, you're still taking the postural dysfunction to the standing position. So, why don't we say, sitting is a sport. Let's train for it.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:07:17Oh, I like that.
Brian Bradley:00:07:18Because it's not going away, so let's just get stronger so that I can sit all day long.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:07:23Well, should we start there?
Brian Bradley:00:07:23Think about how long ...
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:07:24Should we start there? Tell us the training. How do we train to sit?
Brian Bradley:00:07:29You change your shoulder position and you link it up to your hip because all movement comes from hip stability. If I sat here and I was discussing this with you going, "Hey, how are you?" I'm sitting in the worst flexion posture position if we were judging sitting as a problem. But, I should be able always to sit here for an hour, seriously, talking to you like this, forcing my body over here like this, compressing on all these discs, but at the same time be able to stand up and my body goes back to bilateral shoulder, bilateral hip, bilateral knee, bilateral ankle.
Hey, Brian, how did you get that to happen? Great question, Dr. Heather Sandison, I'm glad you asked. Because that's what your podcast person's thinking.
Excuse me one second, I have to plug in.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:08:18Yeah, so Brian tell me, what would somebody be experiencing if they were not trained to sit all day. So, they got an office job. They're not doing the training outside of that. Would they be feeling fatigued? I'm going to guess here, so correct me where I'm wrong, but this is what I see in my clinical practice, is fatigued. They got some pain, maybe neck, shoulder pain, maybe some low back pain, headaches potentially, poor mood, of course, because of all of that. Tell me what else you might see?
Brian Bradley:00:08:48Well, the minute somebody looks in the mirror ... In fact, your podcast listeners if they're at home, pause this after we say this, go to a mirror, stand up, take your clothes off, whatever you're comfortable in your house, shut the drapes, of course, because your neighbors will get a show, but relax your shoulders and you'll see them kind of being here. One shoulder's rounded forward. Turn sideways and you'll see this [inaudible 00:09:10] in their upper back. Their pelvis is tilted posterior, which we call overdosing on noassatall, then your head going like this.
Well, explain the noassatall statement later, but once they do that, once they take a pelvis and tilt it in a different direction, especially one side versus the other, the compensation goes here. Your body's very smart. The minute the pelvis becomes less of a driver, something has to take over neurologically. So, it's going to come from here.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:09:40From the rest of the spine.
Brian Bradley:00:09:40Go ahead.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:09:44So, you're saying here, the rest of the spine above the pelvis?
Brian Bradley:00:09:47Especially, bra line and up.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:09:50Aw! So upper thoracic?
Brian Bradley:00:09:52The upper thoracic and especially this big muscle right here called trap, the trapezius one and two. Like the roof of a house, that upper trapezius becomes the driver instead of the passenger.
Look, Egoscue very simply only cares about five muscles. Think about 600 plus muscles in the body. I'm looking at it going, "I only care about five." One of them is-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:10:15That seems like an oversimplification.
Brian Bradley:00:10:17Exactly, but once you get the customer to understand it from that standpoint, true anatomy comes down to how the muscles link together not via the fascia, but via the work.
For example, if I put you on a calf stretch and I pulled your toes back like this. If I have you stand on a slant board at the wall and pull your toes back, that alone gastroc-wise, this big muscle here because it attaches to this bone, the stretch on that muscle could rotate this bone.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:10:45The femur, so your thigh bone.
Brian Bradley:00:10:47Which means the thigh bone connects to the ...
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:10:50Hipbone.
Brian Bradley:00:10:51Then, if you're changing the thigh bone position, that could cause a reaction and the hip which then could cause a segmental spine changes and all of a sudden your headache or your brain fog goes away because we put a stretch on your calf on a slant board and kept you there for a time frame to allow all this adjustment to happen.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:11:10Aw, so it takes a little bit of patience. It's really not as complicated as it seems. We don't have to think about all 600 muscles. We can think about some of the big movers, make some big changes by taking our time, understanding how it all works, put it back together, and get some real ... Do you call it a release? What's happening there exactly as the body change and shifts with that movement?
Brian Bradley:00:11:32Release is a ... Let's talk to your listeners again. How many people out there, let me see a show of hands, if we could see them, how many people stretch because they have tight muscles? Probably 90% of the people would say that stretching is good.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:11:47Right.
Brian Bradley:00:11:48To be honest with you, stretching is a complete waste of your time if you're going at it without asking this question, hey, why is my muscle tight in the first place? Because maybe the leverage that's happening up here at the big trapezius muscle on one side versus the other, maybe that leverage of tightness is happening up here because the one hip down here is reacting to a sprained ankle that happened in basketball 10 years ago and was never rehabbed correctly. So, the glutes shut down over here, the hip flexors shut down, and then the trap on the opposite side take over and the person comes in and goes, "Yeah, I'm not sure why my neck hurts."
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:12:24Okay, so these are like compensatory is how I think of them. There's a compensation pattern that happens after an injury or after an event or after maybe prolonged sitting or repeated activities. Would those also lead to that? Then, with that repeated activity, this prolonged exposure, whatever the injury is, then now the body is trying to help. It's trying to keep you functional, right? But, over time, that leads to pain and dysfunction.
Brian Bradley:00:12:51That's why a symptom, and I know this is a tough sell, you have thousands of listeners hearing this ... The tough sell is this, you're telling me that my sciatic symptom or my neck pain that's just excruciating to where I have to carry my arm like this because my disc is herniated, did I just hear Brian say it's an opportunity because all it is is a signal for what's actually going on?
Yeah, so instead of judging the injury or the pain site, let's come away from judgment and go back to this: what's my body trying to tell me?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:13:25That's really interesting. It's not about the headache being bad or the shoulder being bad or something being a bad knee, it's more that that's the communication from your body trying to get you to change your behavior.
Brian Bradley:00:13:37That's correct.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:13:38Got it. Okay, yet tell me more about how you would approach ... If somebody comes in and they say, "I've had these debilitating headaches or I'm scheduled for surgery," take us through what one of your Egoscue postural therapists would do with them.
Brian Bradley:00:13:56Well, very simply, 80% of the population is visual, so right away we take posture photographs of them or I request it from them digitally before the appointment. All that is is having somebody or set the timer on your iPhone. I want to see your front side comfortably standing in the least amount of clothing you're comfortable with. Now, I want to put a caveat in there to my European listeners, wear some clothes. Let's just be clear. Because in the U.S. we get shocked at the human body, "Oh, my God."
I want them in no shoes, maybe a pair of shorts, a jog bra or some top that a guy's comfortable with, whatever. I want front, back, left, and right views just standing normally so, if I'm standing here and I was doing this and I'm trying to ... Okay, I'm doing this. I don't care if you're posing, we're going to find certain points that you're not really posing.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:14:45But, you don't want anybody posing, right? You want everybody as relaxed as possible.
Brian Bradley:00:14:48I want the truth so I can give you the truth.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:14:50Gotcha. What you're looking for on there is symmetry, right? So, what's going on front to back, left to right. Is it equal on both sides? Is that the goal, primarily?
Brian Bradley:00:15:01That's the blueprint that I'm comparing it to and then ultimately feet straight, knees right above the ankles, hips right above the knees and level across from each other, the spine centered, and the shoulders right above the hips and centered. So, everything's in a 90-degree angle. That's the blueprint.
Hey, we live in a society that takes you in automatic vehicles alone. Your left legs not doing anything. At least in a manual transmission car, you have to use your left leg, but I know high-end sports car companies, supercar companies, that don't even make manual transmissions anymore. So, it's slowly going away.
That's okay, but we have to now look at it as, driving is a sport, sitting is a sport. Let's train for it so our body doesn't give in to the no movement dysfunction that takes over. So, when we take these photographs of somebody, I'm then going to compare it to the blueprint without judgment and say, "Do you see where your body is right now?" Then, I ask them, "So, what do you think about that?" "Oh, God. I'm a mess and, by the way, I'm overweight."
Okay, let's take both of those and let's rename them a little bit. What's my body trying to tell me because I'm out of alignment, maybe that explains my pain? Maybe my overweight is my lymph system not doing its job and I'm confusing that with being F-A-T. It's not a fat issue. It's a P-H-A-T, lymphatic issue.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:16:25Got it. Yeah, so toxins. We talk about that a lot in my clinic. Getting the toxins out is so important to losing weight because really, again, just like what we talked about with the compensation patterns, it's your body trying to protect you. If you're exposed to a bunch of toxins, you can't get them out, then they're going to go into fat and that's really the best thing that your body could possibly do because, otherwise, they're going to go to your brain and your thyroid, all over and affect your immune function, your hormones.
Brian Bradley:00:16:49Knowing that and our trusty little skeleton here, movement of this leg-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:16:55The femur.
Brian Bradley:00:16:55... movement of the pelvis, movement of the spine, and movement of this long muscle, the psoas and a true functional balance of that, not doing movement that's going to tighten it up, but a true releasing and tightening and a releasing and an engaging and all that movement. This is just a normal muscle, but it's usually asleep on people because they're not training to sit. They're just sitting.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:17:17Let's go back to that. How would you propose training to sit?
Brian Bradley:00:17:23Well, I'm going to give you guys and Qualia's going to give you a gift as a listener from Egoscue, these Egoscue anywhere exercises. They're four exercises that will take you less than four minutes to do. I'd said it on the Bulletproof Coffee podcast. While your coffee is in the hot water and you're waiting for the grinds to set in the coffee press, that's four minutes they're in that water, that's four minutes we could be doing arm circles, elbow curls, overhead extension, the greatest abdominal exercise ever.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:17:55Love it.
Brian Bradley:00:17:55I'll give you the link to that and they can just opt-in to make sure that it's okay that they receive it from us. I think it's Egoscue and your podcast name again?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:18:10Collective Insight.
Brian Bradley:00:18:11Collective Insight. Only because I see your Qualia and I remember we were playing with which one to use, so it's egoscuecollectiveinsights.com. They'll go to that link. It will take them to a page to say, "Look, I need your email to get the okay to sign this up," and we're going to give you the exercises from there.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:18:26Excellent. So, say there's somebody who works in an office, they're there 40 hours a week, sitting from nine to five most days. Then, they get in the car, they're commuting. How often should they be doing these? Every day? Multiple times a day? On the weekends? Take a day off? What does that look like?
Brian Bradley:00:18:41Well, I like to equate this to only brush and floss the teeth you want to keep. So, it's the same thing with your joints. Only move and floss the joints you want to keep. To me, it's eight days a week gets something done.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:18:54Okay.
Brian Bradley:00:18:55Then, because they're only four minutes long, experiment a little bit. Hey, I'm going to go walk or do my hike and then the next day do the exercises first, then go walk and do your hike and notice the difference. Because even though you're going to be a little tired after, like, "Whew, okay. Yeah, my body feels energized but I'm a little fatigued because my shoulders are in a new position and my hip is now driving my movement." Your hiked could end harder that day because you're actually using your hip to do your hike instead of using your shoulder to do your hike and then wondering why you're running out of oxygen and you're breathing harder and your shoulder hurts post your hike.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:19:31Okay, so if you do these exercises first, you're going to get more functional movement out of whatever the exercises you do after. So, if you are going to the gym at the end of your workday, you'd want to do these four minutes of exercise before your workout? Would that also be a good time?
Brian Bradley:00:19:46If you want to put in less effort and double your results, you do Egoscue first.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:19:52I want that.
Brian Bradley:00:19:53Yeah, me too.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:19:54Okay. All right, so these four minutes of exercise before every workout, before sitting down ... Any other time?
Brian Bradley:00:20:04Well, let's not consume your life with Egoscue, but let's say just once a day or whenever your body calls for it.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:20:10All right.
Brian Bradley:00:20:10Look, I've been sitting for four hours on my computer and I just made a million dollars trading stocks. Okay, it's time to take a break and they want to stand up and do an overhead extension, no problem. Take it out of order. The key to it, listening to these videos, I'm about getting your feet straight and this is not straight, this is not straight, this is not straight, wide is not straight. Get your feet fist-width apart and basically ...
Here's the thing. This is straight. I want you to turn your feet slightly in five to 10 degrees and we'll call that straight.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:20:41Almost like duck-footed.
Brian Bradley:00:20:43Well, duck would work. Talk with ... we always say duck-footed, people would go, "It's with my feet out." Let's go the opposite, slightly.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:20:49Opposite, so your toes are a little closer together than your heels.
Brian Bradley:00:20:53Yep, and really, the true ankle joint in that position, five to 10 degrees turned in, the true ankle joint is really straight. That's the true biomechanics in our understanding.
I watched a video the other day where there this doctor on there was saying, "These are the greatest neck exercises possible." He said, "Don't do them with your feet straight." His feet were like this. He goes, "Don't do them with your feet straight like mine." I'm like, "Bro, you're at least 20 degrees out. That is not straight."
Even our medical world is going, "This is straight," because that's where their central nervous system understanding is for straight.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:21:26Right. We probably also see that more commonly in the population. If more and more people are coming in with feet turned out, so toes further apart than heels, that that becomes our normal. But, you're saying, "Nope. Not normal. Needs to be fixed."
Brian Bradley:00:21:41Only do the exercises with your feet straight. Do not walk with your feet straight. Let it happen when you hip tells your foot to straighten the foot up.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:21:48I see, okay. So, don't try to over correct.
Brian Bradley:00:21:52That's correct.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:21:52Do the exercises.
I'd love to get into the nuts and bolts now of the anatomy of what's going on. You mentioned the psoas. You mentioned that the gastroc is another one of those five muscles. Could you talk about those five muscles that Pete really focuses in on and how they work and how they're affecting your posture, your focus, your mood, your energy levels, your human potential?
Brian Bradley:00:22:18I'm going to take you over here to the whiteboard.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:22:18So, if you're listening then we're going to have pictures available, so you'll be able to go to the website and take a look at the pictures. If you can get this on YouTube or Vimeo, that's the best place to get a sense of what Brian's about to say here.
Brian Bradley:00:22:33Yeah, and I'll actually move you a little closer. Let's see here. I know looking at my face that close, that's going to cause some headaches in itself, but that's okay, you have to deal with that.
So, let's say we take a typical yoga exercise like a triangle. Or, let's say a crocodile twist where they have ... Actually, I'm sorry. Let's just go with cat-dog right now. So, a person is in this position.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:22:56So, cat-cow. Hands on the floor, knees on the floor.
Brian Bradley:00:23:00Yep.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:23:02Spine is pretty much neutral, so pretty much flat to begin with and then you're going to arch in both directions.
Brian Bradley:00:23:10We call this cat-dog, but I know you guys may call this cat-cow. I'm not concerned about what animal we're calling it. What I'm concerned about it this. If we take just that exercise alone, and we say, "Look, where's the action right now, Dr. Heather Sandison? In a cat and a dog, where would you say the action is?"
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:23:28In the spine.
Brian Bradley:00:23:30Spine is actually moving up and down. We're trying to get our customers to say drive from here first at the hip. That will move the spine, blah, blah, blah. What I really want in the cat position is your abdominal wall is going to engage, your back's going to be pushed up to the ceiling this way. In this position, everything's dropping this direction.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:23:52In the cow, everything's dropping towards the floor.
Brian Bradley:00:23:54Correct. Ideally, your shoulder blades would come together and, ideally, there's this big muscle up here called the psoas or the king. That would actually be engaging after we do so many of these. The gastroc isn't really doing anything because it's knees bent, whatever. Okay, so let's just put an X through that. That's not even really doing anything.
Once we do enough of this pelvic-driven movement, and then the spine can make its adjustment, then that big trap muscle that compensates when the psoas is asleep, that big trap muscle can go, "Let me release," because now we have a release up here, and engagement here at the rhomboid, and then we have another engagement down here at the psoas. Now, the person stands up and says, "Wait a second. I just did cat-cow, cat-dog, and all of a sudden, my jaw pain's gone. My chronic headaches are less."
If you want to solve a chronic headache, you've got to become hip driven to do it. If you remain trap driven, that headache's coming back and you're making your job as the naturopathic physician and going to be doing even some acupuncture treatments and some holistic health care. That person's going to walk in with symptom relief, but the biomechanical noxious movement is still present making your job harder.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:25:17Right, and that's what we're about. Treat the cause. So, figure out what's causing this and, I think, structure, of course. Whenever Daniel and I talk about what causes disease, structure is one of the primary drivers of disease. We talk a bit about molecular structure at the genetic level, but really the structure in terms of the spine, in terms of what muscles are firing, where the nerves are, what blood flow can do, all of that is causal.
Whether it's headaches or joint pain, the need for carpal tunnel surgery, all of that can come back to where are things lining up? What's the anatomy doing with the physiology? Then, what is the physiology doing secondary to that?
Yeah, Brian, talk a bit more. Tell me the main five muscles. We have the gastroc, starting at the bottom, gastric, psoas, you said rhomboids?
Brian Bradley:00:25:17Glutes.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:26:08Glutes.
Brian Bradley:00:26:09So, there's your king and queen.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:26:12Psoas and glutes.
Brian Bradley:00:26:13Remember what I told you. I don't care what gender you make the king either. This is genderless. When the king is asleep, the queen is pissed.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:26:22All right, so the psoas is in charge.
Brian Bradley:00:26:25Supposed to be.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:26:26Supposed to be in charge but falls asleep.
Brian Bradley:00:26:28Just like most kings, "Ah, let everybody else do the work. I'll just do this." It's mainly on one side versus the other, which creates a torsion in the spine and then the body comes in and says, "I don't really know why my jaw is killing me, but my head's torqued over here." My dental world people, they're always like this working over patients for 25 years and they come in and go, "Yeah, I'm a dentist." I'm like, "Yeah, I can tell."
You go, gastroc, psoas, glute, rhomboid, which is between your shoulder blades, then your traps, one and two.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:26:57Okay.
Brian Bradley:00:26:57I want to release your traps, engage your rhomboid, find and facilitate, engage your psoas, give the ...
Brian Bradley:00:27:00... rhomboid. Find and facilitate, engage your psoas, give the glute a little bit of a break. Instead of overworking, now it's gonna balance work and a lot of that can happen just by changing the gastroc 'cause if I step ... and here's how you do it. You get somebody to do something like the exercises that I told you that are Egoscue anywhere. I'm gonna show you guys a balance test here in a second that I'm gonna have them do. Then, they do those four exercises. Then, they stand still and say, "Wait a second. Something's completely different about my balance and my walking."
So, let's say this. If we had a show of hands again against everybody who's listening, and I know if you're driving do not raise your hand, if you were to stand up, no shoes on, clothes your eyes, where's your body weight left to right? Where's your body weight from front to back in each foot and one foot could be different than the other. You may feel, "I'm loaded way heavier on my right and my left foot is in the ball of the foot. My right foot's in the heel," and yet you're expecting to be balanced throughout the rest of the day.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:28:07Right. Okay, so this might be something that we're not always cognizant of, but if we close our eyes, stand straight, maybe take a few steps in place, and then become really conscious of where our body weight is centered, then we'll feel that asymmetry that you're looking for in those pictures.
Brian Bradley:00:28:23Yeah and it's critical that you, if you can get somebody to tap into their kinesthetic awareness and understand how they feel in their body, then it's an absolute game changer. So, all of a sudden, if the person closes their eyes and feels, "Wait a second. I have a headache," or, "I'm an Olympic level swimmer and I've missed the Olympic trials by two tenths of a second two Olympic trial times in a row, maybe it's because I can't turn my head one direction versus the other or my right shoulder's up like this and I can't reach as far over here and as freely as I can on this side." They're wasting lateral energy in the swimming pool to get it done, just like the person who suffers from a headache.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:28:59I see.
Brian Bradley:00:29:00So, the [inaudible 00:29:01] is meant to make those rotational and flexion compensations, so we should congratulate it and here's a perfect example. How many people do you think listening have a bunion on the base of the big toe, that part that sticks out like its own little joint off the side of the inside of the foot. There's a lot of people that have that and then they say to me, "Well, Brian, it's 'cause I wear high heels." Well, that's interesting. You wear high heels on both feet. Why don't you have the bunion on the other foot? "Hey, you're right."
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:29:29Yeah, why don't you?
Brian Bradley:00:29:30Well, because when they walk, instead of it being a heel, ball, toe walking pattern, they're going heel, ball, lateral heel. It's coming now over a diagonal. The foot turns out and smears like you're smearing organic peanut butter on to some healthy bread or something. I'm only using that analogy for that reason. I love organic peanut butter. So, if you're here, here, then the foot turns out, then you're rolling off the inside of the foot and the body says, "Hey, I'm getting a lot of pressure here at this big toe. I better put up some bony tissue to protect it." So, really what-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:30:03Again, it's compensation.
Brian Bradley:00:30:05... What is a bunion? A bunion is nothing more than a bone callus to protect the joint, so congratulations, my human body, for not failing me. Thank you for laying down bone tissue. Unfortunately, it sucks because it hurts.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:30:20Right. Okay and so how do we get those bunions to go away or stop forming them? Prevent us from forming them.
Brian Bradley:00:30:26[crosstalk 00:30:26] Here's a little thing that we can do. The people already felt their balance, left to right, front to back in each foot. Now, have them walk barefoot across their room, feel what their heel strike is doing, feel what their toe-off is. The normal should be center of the heel, center of all the forefoot, and then a propulsion off of all five toes center, center, center.
Don't change the way you walk. Just notice how you are against center, center, center. Now, put your hands, interlace them together all the way, back of your head, pull your elbows back, and walk like that. Then, come back and say, "The same is not an option. I'm not walking the same because my hands are above my head. There's no way, so I either feel better or I feel worse and how did my foot strike change?"
That should let them know that the body's connected from top to bottom and bottom to top. So, instead of putting in an orthotic that's gonna move the weight away from that bunion and only make you worse 'cause it's gonna rotate your lower leg bone, rotate your upper bone, and now all of a sudden I put an orthotic in and a year later, I have TMJ. We gotta start thinking about this from the cause and tie the body together as a whole unit.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:31:35I couldn't agree more. So, tell me again, tying the body together, not only that, but the mind. So, Pete also wrote a book about the time I was working with you guys, actually. Pete wrote a book called Let's Lighten Up and that was a lot about how your mood, how you show up in the world is affected by your posture. Can you go into that?
Brian Bradley:00:31:55Yeah, we actually rewrote it and it's now under this title.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:31:58Pain Free Living.
Brian Bradley:00:32:00Yep and I'll get you a picture of the book and all that stuff and that came from the whole Pain Free series from ... Pain Free was the big book and then we went to Pain Free Women and you know Pain Free Women had to be successful 'cause two men wrote it. I mean, come on.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:32:16And isn't there one Pain Free at Your PC for all our computer users?
Brian Bradley:00:32:20Yes and that has a picture of me with my hair slicked back and suspenders, so I don't wanna hear any laughing. That was shot in the '90s, early 2000s. Those were in and so was the mullet. Okay, so here's the Pain Free Living book and, by the way, it just says, "Are you in chronic musculoskeletal pain, searching for a new way to treat it without drugs, surgery or expensive therapy techniques?" Look, you could get a book for, for example, what's the cost on this? Probably ... Oh, here we go, $17.95 US.
Let's say you found it used on Amazon for a dollar. Literally, you could do Egoscue therapy out of these books by going to Amazon and if you have questions about it, then contact your local clinic and say, "I'm not sure that I'm doing one of these exercises right. Can I come in and just have you guys look at it?" Well, my clinic owners are in the mindset of, "Any opportunity to build a relationship with a potential customer can only help build the footprint that Egoscue's taking and be the catalyst for growth for the company."
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:33:27And change all over, yeah, that's what Qualia and Collective Insights, our goal here and why we're so aligned with what you guys are doing. If we can help people achieve their full potential, then the whole world can change and whether that's by preventing Alzheimer's and giving people back the last 40 years of their life, the last decades of their life by getting their posture on straight so that they can get blood flow to their brain and they can get toxins out of it or if it means helping with someone's mood or getting rid of the pain so that they can fully engage in their relationships and their communities, that is what we are all about, so I'm so happy to hear that you guys are available to people who have maybe read the book, looked at it, and they're not quite sure that they're doing it right.
I feel really fortunate 'cause I can give people a little bit of that feedback having worked with you guys, but I can't tell you how many times someone has said, "Oh, yeah. The book is great. I just do the Supine Groin Stretch on my left side every day," and I go, "Oh, no, only if you wanna walk in circles, right? You've gotta do it on both sides," so a lot of that-
Brian Bradley:00:34:28Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on, Dr. Heather Sandison. Hold on. Hold on.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:34:29Correct me, Brian. You're the expert here.
Brian Bradley:00:34:31Not even gonna correct you because I would have been in the same, I would've stepped into the same pothole. You just told a client who feels amazing from just doing exercises from this book on one side that they're doing it wrong.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:34:44That's a good point.
Brian Bradley:00:34:45One thing I would say to them is this. "You're teaching me something now and I am in the book," and now, all of a sudden, that customer says, "Hey, I just taught Brian something," because nobody knows their body better than the person living in it and you and I are there to provide them a gift and say, "Look, do this and you know what? I don't really want you doing it on one side because that's the rule system that I live in."
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:35:13Right, no, that's absolutely true that people are experts on their own body. None of us can appreciate that experience as fully as they can, so I thank you for that reminder. So, yeah, tell me a little bit about what some of the feedback that you guys end up providing for clients so that they can get the most out of the book. What are some of the questions that come up?
Brian Bradley:00:35:34So, basically, a customer will say, "I don't know if I'm doing the exercises right." "Well, how do you feel?" "I feel so much better." "Okay. I agree that you wanna be a perfectionist at this, but we're not building the space shuttle here. Nobody dies if something goes wrong, right? So, let's just think you might be a little rotated here and there," so instead what I'll say, "Why don't you come into the clinic, bring the book," run it to it that way to build the relationship. "Well, I live in the middle of New Mexico, Brian. You don't have a clinic there." "Let's get on Skype or FaceTime. Let's do 10, 15 minutes. Let me take a look at it, whatever it might be."
For example, you have listeners who might be interested in, "I'd like to have a phone consultation with a therapist." "Fine. Tell them I said it. Phone consultations are zero dollars, but here's what I expect from you first. During the phone call or preceding the phone call, email that clinic director or therapist some photos that we talked about before, front, back, left, and right, so they're armed with something that says, 'When you're hitting me with all these symptom questions, I have what I know in front of me.'"
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:36:40You can look at that pattern of what does their posture look like and relate it back to those symptoms.
Brian Bradley:00:36:46That's right.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:36:46Okay and give them some guidance.
Brian Bradley:00:36:48And by the way, this book that you were talking about that goes into the psychological, emotional tie to this, we go into three different types of postures that go with it. Well, if you're in condition one and you're here, you're up here like this, like those guys, "Hey, [inaudible 00:37:05] doing-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:37:06Can you describe that a little bit more? So, your pelvis is tilted forward.
Brian Bradley:00:37:10Forward, putting a huge arch in your back, which by the way, almost doesn't exist anymore. It used to be in the '80s and '90s it did because people did, actually, more work physically, but now that we've adopted sitting as a sport, instead of somebody having too much of an arch in their back, what's really happening is their body is forward like this into sway back.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:37:32Okay, so there's not as much of an arch in the back and if you looked from the side, your hips would be in front of your ankles and probably in front of your shoulders as well.
Brian Bradley:00:37:41Yep and that's why when we look at somebody we say, "If your ankles and your knees and your hips and your shoulders are not aligned, then that's where the disfunction comes from-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:37:53Got it.
Brian Bradley:00:37:54... and that's the blueprint we compare it to." So, for example-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:37:56Okay, so go back to those three types. So, one is the one that's going extinct. The stereotype would be a man usually, right, who does a lot of physical labor?
Brian Bradley:00:38:07Yeah, so for example, this is the blueprint that we're comparing it against.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:38:11Okay. Start with the blueprint.
Brian Bradley:00:38:11Oh, ankle knee, hip, and shoulder and ear and, again, I'll get you a picture of this that you can put up or whatever to show the people who are driving. Ideally, if we get them to a point where their ankle and their knee and their hip and their shoulder are aligned, then I'm comparing them to one of those three out of that book that say, "Okay. Which one of these conditions are they?"
Well, they're either stuck in that hard interior tilt, shoulder thoracic, shoulders rounded, head forward like some of the guys you'd see in the gym, but I get a lot of females like this, too, by the way, and those people are people that we call fact finders, like, "I'm gonna do everything I can before I buy that product." They stress about it. They're so much into their head and not into trusting their heart it's unbelievable, so they become tighter and tighter and tighter. Our condition two is when somebody does this.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:39:04So, they're twisted, so a right or left shoulder in front of the other.
Brian Bradley:00:39:08Or like this or ... Look, what am I protecting if I do this?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:39:14So, very asymmetrical.
Brian Bradley:00:39:16Yep, that's a condition, too.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:39:17One shoulder higher than the other.
Brian Bradley:00:39:19Very skeptical and then you have your condition three who walks in and says posterior, butt under, shoulders rounded, head like this and they come in and they go, "Hello, Dr. [inaudible 00:39:33], Dr. Dr. Heather Sandison. How are you gonna help me today and I'm a special case and I don't really know ..." Well, we tied the term victim to that, but a lot of times, Pete and I were talking about it. We don't really like the word victim because, again, it sounds like it's judgment, so take that term and put non-judgment around it.
The question I have is, if we bring you out of either one of those three and get you back to that symmetrical build, something's going to be different. So, here's another thing your listeners can do. Stand up, close your eyes, standing in a normal posture, think of the worst event that's ever happened in your life. Cancer, Mom died and I didn't get to talk to her before I did or I fought with her a week before and then, all of a sudden, she passed away and you know the PTSD tied with that kind of stuff. Car wreck, son or daughter passing away before we did as parents, which crushes us, whatever it might be, which I have my own belief system as it relates to why those things happened to change us, but as it relates to ... putting a color around it.
Keep your eyes closed. Give that event a color, so paint it in any color or what color comes to mind when you're thinking about that event. So, somebody may come in and they're gonna go, "Okay, I've got the color." "Great. Now, I'm gonna run you through a couple exercises. So, for example, standing, turn your toes all the way together pigeon-toed," so I'm gonna give you a view of my feet.
"So, you're gonna stand like this. You're gonna tighten up your thighs by pushing them back, which will put your back and your hips into a new position and it'll arch you, but it's bilateral and you'll notice that one foot may want to turn in more than the other. Then, I'm gonna have you stand like that with your hands behind your head, elbows pulled back like that, and just let your stomach hang and breathe. Hold that for one minute. Now, your body's saying, 'Wow, this is tough, a lot tougher than I thought. When's the one minute up? This is the longest minute of my life,'" and by the time they're done, we have them walk it back out. Okay, so because of the internal femur rotation, we pulled on this big muscle. It woke up the king.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:41:58And so it is the-
Brian Bradley:00:41:58We got a reaction or engagement out of the rhomboid, a release of the trap, and all the sudden, now I want you to stand up, close your eyes, think of that bad situation again and I dare you to make it the same color.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:42:11Interesting, so it's-
Brian Bradley:00:42:12It's not gonna happen.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:42:13... a shift in perspective just from changing the muscles that are firing throughout your body.
Brian Bradley:00:42:18Because now it changed the skeleton, fired your diaphragm for the first time in 20 years. You're actually breathing with 40% increase in oxygen capacity and much more efficient to your lower lobes of your lungs and now it's a game changer because everything's better. What you can-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:42:35Imagine if we could all be showing up this way every day in our lives.
Brian Bradley:00:42:40But instead, we look at blue light through a phone, a computer or something all day long without our Qualia glasses on, stuff like that, and we stare at that screen all day and expect to sleep well that night, not happening. The reason why people don't sleep well, a decrease in oxygen based on thoracic flexion and rotation. It's that simple.
They lay down and their back never laid down with them. Their back stayed like this and then they're worrying all night, "God, I hope my son is gonna be okay without me. I mean, I'm a mother or father. I've been around him for 18 years. Now, he's away on college," stuff that you have no control over takes over, has and manifests itself in our physical disfunction and then we go to this book and we go, "I'm one of these three conditions." Again, don't judge it. Change it.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:43:28It's just information. It's just information, right?
Brian Bradley:00:43:31That's correct.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:43:32Yeah and I'm sure you've seen the Ted Talk that talks about posture and how that relates to both hormones and neurotransmitters. Do you guys have any insights on that, on how you can stand in certain positions or do certain exercises to help you feel more confident or change your attitude?
Brian Bradley:00:43:51Well, let's put it this way. You know I've been a main stage speaker with Tony Robbins for the past, I don't know, 20 years and he's been a client of mine for 25. Nobody's bigger than that 700 million dollar guy, soon to be a billionaire. I only say that because his business has gone from here, huge, to bankrupt to huge to problems to explosion. Everybody wants their business to be better. Well, he surrounded himself with people, the power of proximity to help him do that, but in order for him to open to surround himself and accept people in, he couldn't be like this like he was when I first met him-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:43:51Hunched forward.
Brian Bradley:00:44:29... and he would just spin on his heels. Oh, his pelvis was here. His shoulders were there and he didn't like it, but once he got kicked off that polo horse, which I wanna see the horse 'cause he's 6'7", whatever he weighs and he's on some horse. I pity the horse, right, but the horse had him thrown off there or whatever. He hits the ground at 250, 300 pounds, 6'7", big guy, and he's in a back spasm and we put him in three exercises and he's out of the back spasm, shoots his infomercial the next day, and his life changed.
The reason I bring this up is that I'm behind stage last week in Chicago with 9,000 people and they're going, "We only bring you the best, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let me introduce you to Brian Bradley from Egoscue. He's been working with Tony for 25 years." Boom, I walk out and the crowd explodes.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:45:18That's a nice reception.
Brian Bradley:00:45:20It very much is, but I better be able to deliver.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:45:24So, what do you do to make sure that you can deliver?
Brian Bradley:00:45:27I'm backstage and it's no longer a mindset that I'm just doing something. It's actually a physical change also. I will go through the exercises that will reposition my body and at the same time, it changes my mantra that I say to myself. I could be walking back there going, "Wow, okay. This is a lot of people. I'm nervous, blah, blah, blah." I just happen to love it. I think that I like the sound of my voice, which I know a lot of people it may be causing some shrieking pain in there, but ideally, if we can change your hip to control your spine, open your diaphragm, it's endless the opportunities that you're gonna have on the emotional side and my decision for me-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:46:08And the freedom, I think the freedom from the limitations of anxiety, depression, of your emotions controlling you, right, and so I think what we're trying to say here is that those emotions control a lot of our behaviors, but one step behind that, taking a bigger picture view is that your posture has an influence on your emotions.
Brian Bradley:00:46:29It has a direct, direct impact and I will give you this. The next time that you're in a fight with your partner, get down on your back into Static Back. Just lay there on your back with legs up over the ottoman at 90 degrees in your house, so your legs are at 90 degrees. Your back's on the floor. You're staring at the ceiling and try to have the same emotional freak out that you were when you were standing, not happening. You're in a more vulnerable state. Your heart is more open and your decision-making comes from here rather than up here.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:47:04From your heart rather than your brain.
Brian Bradley:00:47:06You get into your head, you're in trouble. You get into your heart, you're fine, but that can't happen if somebody's rotated, offset, disfunction has taken over at work. You make bad decisions. You have brain fog. Your chemistry's off. Your hormones have absolutely ... The hormones are releasing by the bazillions to try to equalize your internals, starting-
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:47:28Right, again, this compensation. The body's trying to do the best it can just sending you signals, asking you to change your behavior. So, tell me a little bit more about how the brain ... We talked about all muscles that were below the neck, so can you talk about how the brain might be directly influenced with the anatomy connects it, connects the traps and the rhomboids up to the brain stem?
Brian Bradley:00:47:52So, let's talk about the NFL.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:47:57Okay.
Brian Bradley:00:47:58In your eyes, from the professional world, or your listeners' eyes from the, maybe not even the healthcare. They're trading stocks or something, but in their eyes and ears, they've heard it on the news that the head's here and the guys are killing themselves 'cause football's so bad for them. Well, I don't believe that football's bad for you unless your brain is not given the opportunity to clean itself, so let's talk about the cerebral spinal fluid pump or the pulsing.
You guys, in the MD, acupuncture world, you're all about the pulsing. So, if this person has a flat spine, a pelvis tuck posterior, an increase in thoracic flexion, a hyperextension at one and two here, that cerebral spinal fluid's supposed to be able to pulse up and around the brain, clean things, move toxic proteins away from the brain and instead, because the brain attaches to the brain stem, we have a kink in the hose right here, so the fluid gets pumped up, but it's not allowed to come back down.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:49:12So, that's a great visual, a kink in the hose. So, what's trying to happen is fluid motion of fluid, right? It's easy. It flows. It goes from all the way down at the pelvis up to the brain, washes around the brain, goes through the entire spinal cord, and if you have a kink in that hose, you're not gonna get the toxins out of the brain.
Brian Bradley:00:49:34So, Dr. Heather Sandison, how much football have you played in your life?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:49:37Zero.
Brian Bradley:00:49:38Are you a huge NFL fan and watch it every weekend it's on?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:49:41Not at all.
Brian Bradley:00:49:43Okay. Since you're a football expert, where do you fix CTE? Where do you fix the brain issue?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:49:51I would go straight to the brain.
Brian Bradley:00:49:54You would go straight to the brain?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:49:56Tell me how to do it better.
Brian Bradley:00:49:58I would go straight to here.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:50:00To the pelvis.
Brian Bradley:00:50:01I would wake up the king, reposition the tilt, get the spinal curve to go a little flatter here, change the C spine, take the kink out of the house.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:50:11Gotcha. Down the spinal cord, okay, and then all of a sudden, everything in the brain, whether we're talking about the cerebellum and movement patterns or speech patterns or anything that's going on in the brain, sensation, behaviors, all of that is going to get better?
Brian Bradley:00:50:28That's correct and we're not gonna know until the global response to this is, "Let's just see," and you know how I do it? Put the athlete on their back, reposition their spine, let the floor do the work, give them the active exercise that I'm gonna provide for your users, and let them experience it on their own. Now, I'm already in the NFL and we're launching stuff like this. The NFL just hasn't experienced it across 32 teams yet.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:50:55Gotcha. Well, yeah, when I was working with you guys, we were working with NFL players. You were working with Major League Baseball players. What I love about what's going on at Egoscue is that you guys aren't only focused on the 90-year-old who's scheduled for hip surgery and is trying to get their life back, but you're also focused on optimization. So, how do we get that function as high as possible, so not just people with problems, but people who are looking to get the most out of their bodies and their lives.
So, the NFL, obviously, professional sports is a big place to do that and then also with entrepreneurs, people who are trying to get the most out of their day at work, training to sit, other great place to apply this work. So, tell me a little bit more about your work with the Major League sports. How did you guys get into that?
Brian Bradley:00:51:40Well, it used to be player by player by player. Now, I have organizations jumping onboard to get involved with it, which is now I'm affecting 53 players, 99 that show up for OTAs, something like that, so we're now affecting at a much higher level and then out of 40 players that leave that team, before they make the roster, they may go to other teams and now it's just being spread up.
They can't help it and I can tell you flat out, it's gonna cross to baseball. My baseball players that are doing this, the way that our business is built and our strategy to go into these places is Egoscue therapy in your facility will take your metrics of injuries so far down compared to where they normally are, which is why the end of the season some teams are so, their roster's so empty because they have so many people on the injury list.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:52:34Right, well, and when I was working with you guys, I remember Pete, can I Justin Tuck?
Brian Bradley:00:52:39No, you can't say Justin Tuck. Yeah.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:52:40Pete was working with Justin Tuck who was playing for the New York Giants and the way that Pete engaged him was he predicted his next injury. He said, "I can see the way your body is moving, what your function is and what your disfunction is and I think you're going to have," I don't remember what the injury was, but he predicted it and then sure enough, Justin was out on it with an injury and so the whole next summer he spent in San Diego with us and I held his feet down while he did a bunch of sit ups.
It was a lot of fun, shared some good stories, and he was much more functional and he also, I think, was influenced because John Lynch, who was one of the longest NFL players of all time, his ... Does he have the record? Correct me. You know these guys way better than I do, but I remember hearing the story that he played for longer than the vast majority of other football players because he didn't get hurt and it was because of the work he did with Pete.
Brian Bradley:00:53:38Yeah and his 15 years, 11 in the Pro Bowl, the number 10 hitter of all time and I have conversations with him and I'm 50 and he's, let's call him 40-something now. He's the GM of one of these NFL teams and, by the way, Pete Egoscue in this book predicted Tiger Woods' injuries.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:53:56Oh, wow, in Pain Free?
Brian Bradley:00:53:58Because he wasn't saying, "Tiger's a problem."
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:54:00I wasn't saying Tiger's a problem. Golf's gonna become a problem to Tiger, and Tiger's a good kid. I'm telling you he is a good kid. We've met him, okay, so I can tell you that flat out. Jack Nicklaus has been trying everything to get him in, but he's got to commit here, not here.
Brian Bradley:00:54:22Okay, gotcha, yeah. It's a lot of both, right, and that's what we're talking about is it's that mind, body, heart, centered connection. That really authentic way of showing up and being in the world. That is a great segue into you guys have worked with Tony Robbins, as you mentioned, NFL, Deepak Chopra. You have this great community of other providers who really compliment the structural piece that you're doing. Tell me about how you guys integrate the mind, body, spiritual connection at egoscue.
Brian Bradley:00:54:54For as much as we can, I refer most of those out to the experts, because we are the posture pain performance, but it has to start with posture, being an expert in posture. Our software system, the EPEET[inaudible 00:55:07] system, the upgrades we've done in that are unbelievable with the 3D camera systems, and all that. So, I want to take the thinking away from my therapist and any other therapist that we certify, as a posture layman specialist, I want to take the thinking away, so they have more time to connect with the customer. So, our whole collective can work together to say, "Stand in front of that camera, let's see what the camera says." The camera takes a picture all of a sudden the computer says, "Based on what we see from a 3D image, here's what we think should happen first." Wow, that's very interesting. I wouldn't have gone that way, but I'm going to see what happens.
The customer will tell you ... Let's say you gave me three options, standing, sitting, or on your back. "Hey customer, my computer's telling me to give you standing arm circles, kneeling or cats and dogs, or static back on your back." "Well, I'd feel more comfortable starting on my back." If I really care about that customer, I'm gonna trust their instinct and make them part of the therapy. Help them like the exercises with me.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:56:12So, the postural therapists their job at this point is basically to interface with the AI, and the client, and say, "Okay, what's gonna work best for you? We don't have to work too hard to figure out how your body's gonna get better, but you have some options here, so how do we fit this? How do we individualize this for you?"
Brian Bradley:00:56:28Yeah.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:56:29Great, I love it.
Brian Bradley:00:56:29Your [inaudible 00:56:30], Dr. Heather Sandison. Having the client write their own protocol, how much buy-in that they would get if they wrote the protocol?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:56:37Right. They would be so much more likely to do the exercises, right. That's probably the hardest part, right, is getting somebody to do this and commit to it, and do it long term. So, what does a typical course of treatment look like with you guys?
Brian Bradley:00:56:50Well, we have 8 or 16 visit packages done in person, or over Skype, which is really in person, or I can see them digitally just from photographs. Look, and I had people work from the book for $17.00. It doesn't bother me. I'm not a book person. I read 22 books last year, because I finally started eating the right types of fats and my brain woke up, but you look at it and say, "What type of learner are you? Do you want to be coached? Do you need coached, or do you want to work from the book? The Tony Robbins guys, yeah, he's gonna read the book, but he wants to have that practitioner in from of him. That's where I come in.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:57:27Gotcha.
Brian Bradley:00:57:27Fine. Brian Bradley wants the practitioner. I like being coached. Let's do it that way. Somebody else may say, "I'm good with you sending me ... I send you the pictures, and you send me the exercises digitally, and I can do them myself, follow the videos, follow the pictures, follow the order, update them in a week or two, and we'll be okay.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:57:45Okay, so you've got options for just about everybody.
Brian Bradley:00:57:48Look, I have a free option. Go to the library, Get the pain free book, photocopy it. If somebody argues tell them that I said it was okay.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:57:57Got it. All right, so something for anybody. How long does it take for people to typically notice a difference? You're describing just doing a minute of exercise, and feeling different after that. How long is that going to be sustained, or do people need to be doing this every day? What does that look like?
Brian Bradley:00:58:13Yeah. That's the thing is you opened up a window of function, but it could close very quickly based on your overall environment. Don't change your environment. Do the exercises, and that will automatically change your environment eventually. Remember, emotions react to the motion, so once the motion increases your emotion ... once your motion gets more effective, your emotional response will be more effected, which means your environment's gonna change.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:58:35Great.
Brian Bradley:00:58:36We can do it more organically, so just get the exercises done. Let a two-hour window of living pain free open up. My pain came back. Do it again tomorrow two hours and 15 minutes opened up. Do it a week from. Hey, four hours opened up. Wow, this is amazing that it's happening like this.
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:58:50Amazing. Yeah, when I was working with you guys, I was a postural therapist before I went to medical school, and I remember the reason I still send people to you guys and why I was so excited to have you on the podcast is because I distinctly remember several patients coming in, clients coming in, and saying, "Hey, I'm scheduled for hip surgery. It's happening in 10 days," and in those 10 days they saw the potential what this work could do, and they were either completely pain free, or they were having those glimpses that were getting longer and longer and longer. Maybe it was three minutes the first time that they did a set of menu exercises, and maybe it was three hours the next time, and then it was starting to last a whole day. They could get through their workday, and that happened within about 10 to 14 days, and that was so impressive to me.
Brian Bradley:00:59:35Hey, let me ask you, as a postural therapist at that point, how did that feel being part of that?
Dr. Heather Sandison:00:59:41Oh, it was incredible. It was so amazing to have someone have the option to not have to have surgery, especially if they didn't want to take the time off work. They had kids that they were needing to shuttle around, and they didn't want to not be able to drive. It's so limiting. Then there's the recovery time. You've got to be exposed to all the drugs, whether it's antibiotics, or the narcotics, and all of those things. It can be really a big problem, and then not to mention the cost, right, of you have to have health insurance if you're gonna get surgery. It just can be such a ... It feels so limiting, I think for people to be at the end of the rope and have surgery be the only option, and then to be a part of a team where you could say, "Hey do these exercises and see how you feel," and for them to walk away going wow, I do have other options.
Brian Bradley:01:00:28Yeah. That's a transformative response, because I asked you how it felt to be a practitioner, because I almost take it for granted now. I literally, somebody will call me, "Oh, my neck," I go, "Yeah," and they're going, "Yeah, but it's my neck," and I go, "Yeah, your body's giving you a signal. You need to applaud your body, accept the signal, I know it hurts, so don't discount it, but now let's move beyond it and think about why," and once you empower them with a way out, that the pain doesn't control them anymore, they control the pain, that's a whole different standpoint. By the way, I don't have to be on Oxy and then eventually on heroin.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:01:13Right, and the pain is just information.
Brian Bradley:01:01:17That's correct.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:01:18A way to get us there. So then tell us how do people find you guys? egoscue.com I'm going to assume.
Brian Bradley:01:01:29Yeah, escuguo.com E-G-O-S-C-U-E but ideally, if they just google pain free, if they don't remember how to spell egoscue, go to the Google search bar and type in pain free, there are maybe some things come here, because people love to jump on board to stuff that works, but find the egoscue version, look at the pain free booklet, look at all that stuff. But ideally, they'll find us when they're ready.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:01:57Yep, it'll come up and I hear that from my patients now as well, I'll mention you guys and they'll say, "Oh, yeah, my neighbor said that," or, "My cousin said that. Somebody gave me the pain free book," and so once you hear it a few times, "Oh, we're on to something here, right?" Another question I have is how is this different, so somebody has physical therapy covered by their insurance when would they go there versus coming to see an egoscue therapist?
Brian Bradley:01:02:25Well, our job is to make the physical therapist job easier.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:02:30Or the chiropractor, or the acupuncturist, everybody, right?
Brian Bradley:01:02:33Anybody. You do egoscue first all other modalities just get easier. When people say they comparing as well, you know my chiropractor hurt me and I was, "Really, your chiropractor hurt you?" "My physical therapist hurt me," "Really, your physical therapist hurt you? Or did you take a body in that did not respond to the therapy that they provide?" For example, how many of your listeners go to CrossFit and I don't know how many there are, but I see this at a 15 thousand person Tony Robbins event. And I say, "Okay, 15 thousand people, how many people have been hurt by CrossFit?" A thousand hands go up.
Then I hear a couple boos from the crowd, and I go, "Guys, the people that are booing I guarantee you they own CrossFit boxes." And I said, "Hold on, how many people in here own a CrossFit box?" One or two people raise their hand, three, four, five, six, seven, whatever it might be, and I said, "Listen to me and listen to me closely, none of you have been hurt by CrossFit. You took the wrong alignment going in to CrossFit and you expected CrossFit to make you healthier."
Our job is to have you do your egoscue first and then everything else around that will have such better results that even the physical therapist job walks in and says, "Wow, that tissue is reacting way differently than two days ago, what did you do?" "Well, I did this," well, whatever it's doing, and all that really comes down to is turn on the hip, wake up the king. We have to wake up the king, it comes down to that. You got to get your hip to drive the movement.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:03:59Wake up the psoas, all right. And for different people with these different types of postures that might mean a little bit different path to get there.
Brian Bradley:01:04:08Egoscue exercises are different, every one of our programs are personalized and that's where we go.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:04:12Okay. So tell me what is a good strategy, long-term, to maintaining posture? Is there some certainly training to sit, if we had to summarize this train to fit it's okay if you sit at your desk all day, but you just have to train to do it and then exercise, diet, what else do you tell people in terms of health advice?
Brian Bradley:01:04:36Go to the acupuncturist, honestly go to the acupuncturist just because it's good for you. Don't wait until you hurt, because now you made his or her job so much harder and there's a roadblock somewhere.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:04:50So take some time to do that, the prevention side.
Brian Bradley:01:04:53Yeah, but people don't want to do that. It's like right now, the global economy, let's just say the United States economy is the highest it's ever been, for whatever reason, people aren't really looking to better their lives as much as they use to. In a down market, you're always looking for a better way out. Self-help people sell a bazillion things when it's a down market, not as many when it's a great market, because it's a great market, "I don't need self-help, I'm doing great, look at my stock portfolio. When I'm not in pain I'm okay, I look in the mirror, I'm decently happy."
You put on 20 pounds and your knee hurts you wake up with chronic pain that's the down market physically. Then you say, "Oh, Dr. Dr. Heather Sandison please you've got to get me out of this," "Well, yeah, how much are you willing to commit to this?" "Well, I don't want to do anything, you have to fix me." "You need to go find somebody else, because that's not how my business runs." I've literally kicked people out of egoscue, as a favor to them instead of having them spend the money with us, and I said, "Listen, the door's always open, I'm not judging you," and I promise you this, they always come back, because they eventually understand it.
They weren't ready at that moment and I can hear by the way they were talking, which is why any of your listeners who say, "I think I'm ready, I'd like to know what's going on with my posture," "Great, send the pictures, let's do a phone consult," no problem. But, they're going to be listening and you're going to be listening to see if there's a good fit.
And the good fit might be, "Go to Amazon and get the pain free book," the other fit might be, "I have 25 centers in the US, two in Japan, two in Mexico with 10 other ones, international and national coming. I want to make this as easy as possible. So you got to just make that little switch mentally. Another thing is I tell them to drink as much water as possible.
You know I have my own idea on diet, right?
Brian Bradley:01:10:31Hello? So I'll do a Tony Robbins event on a Sunday, I'm on stage twice, I do a Bullet Proof Coffee in the morning and I start drinking water from that point out. Sometimes there are days where I won't' eat until 10:30 that night. It's okay not to eat. The soccer kids that were just caught up in the cave went how many days without eating, and by the way they're fine.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:10:54I don't know if that's healthy all the time, don't get stuck in caves, okay Brad.
Brian Bradley:01:10:59[inaudible 01:10:59] I'm not a dieter, I'm not a faster, I only do the intermittent fasting when I do my BulletProof Coffee three days a week.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:11:07Yeah, and I would agree, I think intermittent fasting is a great call for a lot of people. I think anybody under too much stress, fasting can be stressful and so you don't want to add to the cortisol imbalance, the blood sugar imbalances by fasting and not doing it quite the right way. I would argue that what you eat is very important, if you're going to be doing intermittent fasting. You want to be going into ketosis and not having while blood sugar fluctuations, but this is maybe another podcast.
Brian Bradley:01:11:38Heater, I read 22 books last year, when I started doing this. I maybe read 10 books before that in my life and I couldn't tell you what was them. My attention deficit, the inability to focus, you'd give me something to read I'd go, "Oh, no, do I have to do a book report, oh God,"
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:11:56What changed?
Brian Bradley:01:11:58At the age of 49, I learned how to read.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:12:00And it was because you learned how to eat.
Brian Bradley:01:12:03I really learned how to eat, yeah, let me change that. I got rid of the inflammatory foods, for example, 100% vegetarian fed chicken that lays an egg has a yellow yolk, hormone free, antibiotic free, whatever free, cage free. A chicken that's allowed to roam the pasture, forage for its own food and given a vegetarian food, hormone free, cage free, antibiotic free has an orange yolk. What's the difference?
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:12:49What the chicken ate and the nutrient content?
Brian Bradley:01:12:51That's correct, one of them was fully vegetarian on the yellow and the orange one wasn't, the huge difference between the two is this one has so many anti-inflammatories in it, the orange one, because the chicken was allowed to go out and forage and how many birds do you know are fully vegetarian? I dare you?
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:13:08I don't know, too many birds? But, of the ones I know, they eat some bugs.
Brian Bradley:01:13:14Yeah, or the one over the top that's going like this, "I can't wait to find that little rabbit that doesn't see me." In general, they're going to be a predator and when that chicken walks over and eats worms and bugs and then eats some grass or whatever it's going to eat, just like the cow, grass fed, fully grass fed is not allowed to eat corn and wheat and all this other stuff that's basically killing us. We're going to find out in years where all this stuff is coming from and it's what we put in our mouth.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:14:45And then you were able to read 22 books.
Brian Bradley:01:14:47Unbelievable and I can tell you number one, Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl, unbelievable book. Second book, The Four Agreements, third book Johnathan Living Seagull, unbelievable book. And my fourth one, one of my favorites is called Multipliers, that one's a great one for your business people to read, because they are either a multiplier or a diminisher if they're in the management position or they work for a multiplier or diminisher who's in the management position. And then, of course, I'm telling you get this book and read it, it will change your life.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:15:22Pain free, Pete Egoscue.
Brian Bradley:01:15:24Thank you. It will flat out change your life. Read the first three chapters, if you don't like it send it back.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:15:29Brian, it's always a pleasure. Always so much fun to talk to you. I learned tons and I'm always entertained. I so appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with us, tell us your musings on diet, but especially on posture. Thank you so much. Anything else you want to add before we sign off?
Brian Bradley:01:15:50Dr. Heather Sandison has made it too easy, because I'm not going to blow smoke up your butt, because I know you have that done every day, whatever, people they love you because you're so good. Your one of my favorite people that I've ever worked within 26 years. I was heartbroken when you were leaving, but I'm so glad you stayed in the field and went into something even bigger, where you're actually making [inaudible 01:16:08] collective much better, because if you're on the advisory board and you're helping them grow, they'd better be careful, I may try to take you back.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:16:16Oh, thanks Brian, it was so much fun working with you guys and I just feel so, I can't tell you how grateful I am to have egoscue as a resource, because my patients get so much out of it. So many people come back pain free and we work on the diet, we work on the lifestyle, we check the blood levels, we do all that at my office, but what you guys do I can't be doing. I have got to send them back to you guys. I need your expertise and I'm just so grateful that it's available.
Brian Bradley:01:16:44Well, just remember and you and I can sit here and talk about how great we are and what we do for a living but I'm telling you, your clients will do this and these clients listening to this podcast will do this if they just give in to a little bit of doing something different for themselves, become selfish for something. Spend some time working on your own self and by the way you'll make better decision down the road, because your body's in the right place, which is why I'm telling you, if you have questions about what we really do, take the pictures, get a hold of the client and say, "Can I do a phone consultation, can I send you the photographs and you can tell me what you see." Even if you don't buy anything from us, but it's going to be hard for you not to.
Dr. Heather Sandison:01:17:25Its such a great reminder and a motivation for me to get back on my menu. Thank you Brain.
Brian Bradley:01:17:31Do the egoscue exercise anywhere, it's going to be on this list, you guys provide the link, it's for free, get it done, nothing prices out better than free. It'll take you four minutes and wait 'til you do the egoscue version of the greatest abdominal exercises ever, that'll be exercise number four in there, it's a game changer.
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