81: The Hidden Power of Fascia with Lauren Roxburgh: The Key to Healing, Alignment, and Emotional Freedom

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Hello and welcome. I'm Dr. Jen Simmons, a breast cancer surgeon turned integrative oncologist on a groundbreaking mission to transform the conversation around breast health. If you're seeking to redefine the way that you think about breast health, you're in the right place. Breast health isn't just an aspect of well being. It is health, integral and indispensable. Here on the Keeping Abreast podcast, we delve deep into the innovative ways to diagnose, treat, screen for, and prevent breast cancer. But it's more than that. It's about having the crucial conversations that empower, enlighten, and drive us all to a healthier place. As someone who has navigated the front lines of breast cancer treatment and now champions an integrative approach, I bring a unique perspective to these discussions, blending rigorous science with holistic health principles. Health is a journey, not a destination, and I am truly honored to accompany you on this path. Each episode aims to provide you with actionable insights and cutting edge strategies to take charge of your breast health and.

Your overall well being.

So whether you're here to learn about the latest in medical advancements or seeking tips on lifestyle changes that foster real health, then the Keeping Abreast podcast is your go to resource. Let's embark on this journey together, because when we talk health, every conversation matters. And now, stay tuned for this week's episode.

Hi there, it's Dr. Jen. Thank you so much for being here today. You are not going to be disappointed because today I have definitely a girl crush, um, and someone who is doing something so great and so beautiful. And I know that you are going to find today's conversation of tremendous value, because what we're really doing is shining a great light of hope for everyone who is struggling with illness or just struggling to give you the tools and the empowerment and the enlightenment you need to put your diagnosis behind you to get out of that space and to move into a new space of hope and health and healing. So I have low rocks with me today. So I have Lauren Roxburgh, and I'm sure that you have heard of her because she is literally all over the place. But she is an internationally renowned author. She's a wellness educator, a leader and inspirational speaker. She's dubbed the Body Whisperer, and she regularly contributes to GOOP to women's health magazine, Mindbody Green. I'm sure you have heard her, seen her on the Broken Brain. Ben Greenfield, Be well by Kelly the Genius Life. So many places. She is absolutely amazing. And she is here to share her Genius with us today. So, Lorax, welcome.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm such a fan of your work and I'm so inspired by your story and also all the women that you're really helping shed light on understanding how much of a miracle they are to walk this earth and finding that again, so beautiful. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much. Thank you for saying that. And I'm really, I'm inspired by your books and I want, I want people to know and understand that you, you come from a little bit of a different perspective. Now. Having been a surgeon, I am very familiar with fascia. Right. And so, but this is not a term that most people know. Most people understand. They don't know what it is, they don't know why it's important, they don't know what the function is. So can you just start off, body whisperer by educating us as to what is fascia? Why is it so important? Why have you chosen to focus on this?

Oh, I would love to. I am a fascia nerd and fascia is my love language. So yes, let's explain it what it is. So give, give people a bit of a visual so they can kind of understand it and realize that they're kind of feeling it all day, every day. And so essentially what fascia is is this, you know, body wide network of connective tissue that wraps around the entire body, kind of like a full body wetsuit. But it also, you know, it's like the tissue that's right underneath your skin, it wraps around the muscles, it also wraps around the organs. And it actually, now we know it touches every cell of your body. But what's really inspiring, you know, back in the day they used to throw away fascia and cadaver studies and they thought it was just the pack wrapping. Oh, we can just disregard this. Let's get to the bones, the organs, oh, the ligaments, those kinds of things. And so essentially what happened was we started, you know, now we have such amazing medical technology. So now we can actually study fascia not just in a dead body, on a cadaver, but in a living body, which is what in the last very few years has really transformed and catapulted fascia medicine is what I like to call it into really realizing that fascia is a communication network within the body that's sending and receiving information. Light, sound frequency, nutrients, water, and also emotions. So many people are starting to realize that we hold and store a lot of our emotional memories, actually all of them, we record them and we store them in our tissue, our connective tissue. So it's such a parallel to what you do, because it's also helping people realize that they can move emotions through the body when they work with their fascia. So energy and motion is emotions. And that's what I love about it too, because it has such an impact physically on the shape of your body, because it is the glue of the body. But it also has an impact on your emotional well being and your energetic well being, because we, we now know that the meridians from Chinese medicine live in the fascia and they actually line up with the fascial planes, which was discovered by Thomas Myers in the 90s. So what I love is, you know, bridging kind of ancient wisdom with modern medicine, you know, science and spirit, if we want to call it that. And what I love is that when you can get your fascia to not be scarred up and thick and dense, you have such a sense of vitality and flexibility and fluidity and just joy and also this sense of youth, it's a youthfulness, it's a real sense of kind of hydration and like, you know, aging is kind of a form of dehydration. And as we get dehydrated and our tissue gets thick and brittle and dense, there's more susceptibility to, you know, dis ease, inflammation, tumors, fibroids, which are really all like an accumulation of, you know, what. Whatever it is, energy, toxins, emotions. So when you get your fascia flowing, you get your cells glowing, which I love. Oh, I love that.

You know, it's interesting that you talk about that, the thickness and the rigidity and the lack of flexibility, because we know that that is one major marker of aging and people that maintain flexibility. When we talk about exercise and talk about movement, we of course talk about cardiovascular exercise, we talk about strength training. And we all know and understand that. But we spend so little time talking about the importance of flexibility. And when and when we maintain flexibility, we actually maintain youth and we maintain connection between the body and the mind.

You bet that's right.

Yeah. That's why flexibility and, and balance end up being so very important, because that is demonstrative of a proper connection between your body and your mind. And I love it is absolutely one of the marks of aging the body.

To the mind, rather than just the mind to the body, because the body does communicate with the mind as much, maybe more than the mind communicates with the body body. So that's a profound paradigm shift when people realize that the body has a language and it speaks to us through sensations. And that's why now fascia is being considered the sixth sense. It's being considered the sense of feeling. So as skin is to touch, fascia is to feeling. And we feel through the number of sensory receptors in our body, which I think the new research out of Germany is that there's about 250 million sensory receptors that line the fascial tissue. And so that in a lot of those are in the gut, which is where a lot of the lymph nodes are. So it's a really profound connection when we start to realize that the body does speak to us through disease, through inflammation, through pain, through, you know, issues, any of the issues. That's the body speaking to us and communicating to us and asking us to pay attention, to regulate our nervous system, to get deeper sleep, to eat better, to drink cleaner water, Whatever it is, it's the body communicating to us. It speaks to us through energy, not, not words. It doesn't speak English, it speaks sensations.

Yeah, but it's a universal language. Right? And it's really amazing because this is an organ in and of itself. Right. It's the body's hidden organization. So why do you think it's been so overlooked in traditional health and wellness conversations? I mean, I know about it because I'm a surgeon, but I'm not sure that the average medical doctor would even be able to have an intelligent conversation about fascia other than, you know, it was maybe a layer that they had to cut through when they did their cadaver dissection in the first year of medical school. And then they probably never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought about it again. And yet it is one of the keys to health, to alignment, to resilience.

Yeah, it really is. I think the reason why they haven't or haven't given it credit is because it is hard to study because it is so malleable and it's so. It's like a shape shifter and it's, you know, basically they have to look at it under a microscope in a living body because the life force energy is in there. And that's when you can really see, you know, the energy and the light, you know, the infrared light and the water. And then we now know that fascia is, you know, basically the pump for the lymphatic system as well. So when it is bound, the lymph system is going to get really stagnant, they're going to get more congestion. You get a lot of those issues around the lymph Nodes, you know, like a big pooling of energy and emotions around the lymph nodes as well. So the reason why I think it hasn't been really studied is because. Because of the way they, you know, did the dissections and they just eliminated it. I know that really, I think it was in the 1800s, Dr. Andrew still, who was the father of osteopathy, he became very, very, very excited and inspired by fascia. So there's been doctors and then he created his own, you know, modality, basically as a doctor. But there was a bit of a, a split with church and state during that time where church was like, we're going to take anything that has to do with spirituality. Because Andrew still started realizing, he thinks that the, the soul of a man's being resides in the fascia. So he discovered that in the 1800s and, you know, and then there was this division between church and state. And then the medical community just was like, well, we can't deal with that. That's too much. We need to look at the chemical, mechanical, you know, biomechanical world. So there was, yeah, it was an interesting kind of, I think, deviation. Like, I don't know, people just left. They were like, that's not working. We're just going to look at pharmaceuticals and look at the body or, you know, kind of like a robot, like a machine and separate parts.

Yeah, well. And this has affected thinking across the board in that most people believe that the mental, emotional, spiritual part of recovery is not necessary and that treatment should be the things that you can scientifically prove on paper. And all the other stuff is woo woo or nonsense or whatever you want to call it. And yet this is because they're not taking that into account. This is why they can't understand or appreciate people who have undergone radical remissions. You know, Kelly Turner wrote that whole book, two books actually, on. She wrote Radical Remission and she wrote Radical Hope. And it's a collection of stories and she has thousands of them at this point because she has a huge database. And these are stories of people who, despite having what our society deems as incurable illness, are surviving and well and thriving decades later. Because they're not taking this spiritual, this mental, emotional, spiritual part into account. And at the end of the day, we all have to remember that there is no disease for which, like in, in the case of cancer, cancer is not a surgery deficiency, it's not a chemotherapy deficiency, it's not a radiation deficiency, it's not a hormonal blockade deficiency.

Right.

It Is the body telling us that it does not feel safe, that it's in survival mode. Cancer's a normal response to an abnormal environment. And this is our body telling us that we are out of balance, we have needs that are not being met. We are in a state of dysfunction. Right. Or disease. And a major problem is that we are not right recognizing the totality of it all. Because breast cancer is not dysfunction in the breast.

Exactly.

Breast cancer is dysfunction.

Systematically too. Yeah. And that's the other thing about fascia is that, you know Dr. Helen Langbein, who's out of Harvard, she also is at n. NIH as well, and she coined fascia as the meta system of the body, which means that it connects and communicates with every other system of the body, which means it's incredibly important for our endocrine system, our digestive system, obviously our limb system, and our nervous system, because we know the nervous system is the big boss to the rest of the systems in the body. And so when we are in that survival and in that fight or flight, then our body finally gets exhausted and it says, I, yeah, I need you to rest, I need you to stretch, I need you to breathe, I need you to nourish. I need you to, you know, change your job, change your relationship, whatever it is. And so it is. It can be a wake up call and it can be a beautiful message from the body. Any type of disease, I believe, and any type of pain can be a portal to transformation as well.

Absolutely. And I talk about that all the time, that if you can see past what you are feeling in terms of your body betraying you or. Or illness being a punishment of some kind, if you can see past that and instead see the opportunity you have, then the opportunity to really create something that is great and wonderful. And while no one is grateful for their breast cancer. Right. It's not a blessing. It is a blessed opportunity. And there are so many people who have taken that opportunity to create a life that they would have never had before if not faced with that obstacle.

Yes, exactly. I mean, I have a friend who is dealing with breast cancer and she calls it her breast guest. And so she's her relationship to what it is. And it's sort of like the horror that we've painted in our lives in the belief system around it with the, you know, traditional medical paradigm. But, you know, we can. That's evolving right now. Like, I'm sure you know about histotripsy that how the FDA approved sound healing, basically, sound waves to disintegrate cancer in liver. So I'm like, I mean, I know it's expensive, but the fact that that technology has been approved, they're going to be able to use that in other way in other cancers very soon. So it's a beautiful sound healing in my, you know, inside my membership app. And sound healing is also, you know, the traditional Tibetan sound bowls are. That has been known to also disintegrate tumors as well and also prevent them. So it's pretty profound, I think, where medicine is going and the way the medical paradigm can evolve. But we also have to be like, you are so good at this. Like, we have to be informed. We have to know what's available, and we have to know what's best for our situation and what we need and how we can hopefully get to the root cause and not just sort of like, try to fix it by, you know, just superficially, like, getting to the root cause is really what my work is about too, is like helping people understand why this is happening and looking at the body holistically and connected. And that's why I love connective tissue, because it's helping you reconnect to the connections within and then help rewire the communication. And then you'll. Your actual world on the outside will also reconnect as, as, as within. So without, right as above, so below. So you start to create that shift within and the belief system around it. And then you bring in these incredible practice, like the rebounder or rolling or using sound healing or even like humming, right? Humming and oming has been scientifically proven to stimulate the vagus nerve. So there's so many amazing ways to kind of use your own inner technology to help with your healing process, whether it's trying to prevent or even try, you know, after having, you know, any type of treatment. Also you want to get some of those, some of the, you know, the meds out of your body, too. I've worked with a lot of women actually. I worked at a surgery center in Santa Monica with a. Actually plastic surgeon who was doing a lot of reconstruction after mastectomies, and they were getting reconstructed. And I worked with a lot of women that had hands, you know, hands on fascia work that had like, frozen shoulder. And a lot of that was left over from the medicine being stuck in the body, the pharmaceuticals. And so we were able to move that out. And all of a sudden they were getting the mobility back and they can move their spine again and their posture started becoming more fluid. So your body just is so incredible and how it Regenerates itself and how it can eliminate, you know, even if we do have to take the drugs, you know, so I'm all, I'm like you, I'm all about integrative. Like we're so lucky in this time right now that we have access to both the regular medical paradigm and these other kind of forward thinking, you know, frequency medicine, I like to call it, or, you know, just working with the, working with the body instead of trying to attack it.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'm a big fan of sound. And in fact, this, this imaging technique that I talk about, which is QT imaging, which will ultimately replace everything for the screening of breast cancer. And this is sound waves transmitted through a water bath. Right. So we know that sound is capable of great, great, tremendous, amazing things because in, in using this technique with, with QT imaging, we're actually collecting 200,000 times more data points than MRI and creating images with 40 times the resolution of MRI without pain, without compression, without radiation, and without gadolinium. Just utilizing this, this speed of sound.

And it's actually probably giving you a healing session while it's, you know, while you're at it.

So many people have said to me after coming to my center, after coming to Perfection Imaging and having this study, they have told me that it's the best map that they have had in. They can't even remember how long. One woman told me that she actually felt God in the room, that she actually felt a connection to God in the room. Wow. Most people fall asleep because it is actually therapeutic for them that they, they so rarely have the opportunity to be in this peaceful place and your breast is just submerged in a warm water bath. I mean, like, I don't want to sound like a commercial, but it is a, a deeply spiritual experience.

Wow.

And yeah, it's really, really amazing. I can't wait for it to come to where you are.

Oh my.

So I, I, I do believe.

I.

Do believe in the power of sound. I'm just curious because what you do is so incredibly insightful and so far outside of what, what we are exposed to as, as all of us in the health and wellness space. How did you even get here? How did this start for you?

I love this question. Well, actually, it's very close to my heart because it's, you know, 16, when I was 16, similar, I think something happened to you when you were 16. I, if I remember properly.

But yes, I did remember properly, breast cancer.

And it was stage four and we were living in Northern California and I Just got my driver's license and I was driving her to go get her chemo at Stanford. And I pulled one of the doctors aside and I just said, where does cancer come from? I really want to understand this. And he said humbly, he said, well, you know, it's environmental and it's genetic, but there's a whole other piece of the piece that we do not understand. And something happened inside of me. And I was like, that, that. That's my life's mission to figure out. And obviously I knew I didn't want to be a doctor because that's what they knew. And we were at Stanford, one of the best places for medicine. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I just went on a journey from that day on. So I got. First got into nutrition and I was an athlete myself, an all American swimmer, very competitive, almost went to the Olympics, like, really, really talented, just, you know, athletically. And then I got into the physicality of it, of course, and started studying. I became a trainer. I studied nutrition and exercise physiology at UC Santa Barbara and then played water polo there. And then I ended up going and actually wanting to learn more about the mind body connection and studied Pilates. But then it was basically in my late 20s is when I studied the work of Ida Rolfe. And that's Rolfe in structural integration. And Ida Rolfe was essentially a rocket scientist in the 1960s, and she was studying the human body and gravity, and she sort of discovered fascia in the modern world. I mean, the ancient wisdoms have been talking about it for obviously thousands of years, but they didn't use the same language that she came up with. And she studied osteopathy and yoga and all kinds of different types of healing arts. And so I went and got myself into that program. It was maybe back in 2008. So that was right when the first fascial congress was established. I think it was 2007. And that was at Harvard. And they brought together the medical community and the holistic healing people, like acupuncturists and body workers. And so I was lucky to come in when they started to do some more of this research. And I just got, like I mentioned earlier, I just love this whole merging of science with the healing arts. I just think that also gives it a real groundedness. And I like. I like to look at the data, I like to look at the research and read through that stuff too. So anyway, I ended up. When I decided to go to that school, my friends were like, what are you thinking? Who cares about fascia? And something side, there was something in my gut. I listened to my heart, I listened to my gut and I knew I had this kinesthetic intelligence. And so I went to the school and it just was like, boom. That's when it clicked. And then that first year out of school, I started working with Gwyneth and LeBron and some crazy movie stars. And a bunch of surgeons were my clients too, because they were like, I don't want to have surgery. I want to get work from you because you do surgery without a knife. And so, yeah, so I learned a ton through my hands and through mastery of just being, you know, really long, like wait list, basically. And so I was. Didn't have kids at the time. I was working with clients from morning till night. And then, yeah, so I put my time in and then I really was like, you know what? I can't just work with the rich and famous. Basically, I was like, I've got to get this message to amplify it and to get it to anyone and everyone because. And that's when I wrote my first book. And that was on the foam roller. And that was a really big breakthrough for me because basically I was, you know, teaching. I was teaching people how to give themselves the 10 series of Rolfing that we learn in the program and they could give it to themselves, which was a huge deal. And so that was quite a few years ago. And now I'm writing my curriculum to certify people to basically do that type of program as well. So they can teach my class in yoga studios or in their own, you know, platforms as well.

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That's amazing. So you mentioned osteopathy and yoga and these things focus a lot on posture.

Yeah.

And I would like for you to talk about why posture is so important.

Yes. So posture, you know, Ida Rolf's, her methodology is all about, it's called the line. So when you get yourself like your joints stacked up on top of each other and you get the tissue and the muscles balanced and you get some of the kind of as I'm slouching.

Over in my chair.

Way back, you reduce the sway back, you reduce the hunchback, you know, you align the neck curves as well the cervical spine, what happens is the she. Her theory is that when the body gets into alignment, spontaneous healing can happen. And the reason that is is because the chi, the life force energy starts to flow through you more efficiently. The organs start work, working better. You know, you get this sense of lightness. This, you know, like a lot of my teachers will say, we're basically liquid light. We have liquid light within us. And when we, you know, the areas of the body that maybe would have a tumor or density or thickness would be where there's darkness. So we want to just bring the light and the essence and the embodiment back into those areas. So we've. A lot of times the areas like that people have blockages are areas that have been bypassed or disembodied, so they've sort of just kind of forgotten about that part of themselves. And so what we do is we. We help people come back into living in their body again and kind of clearing out the cobwebs so they can feel what's really happening and, like, start to enjoy the sensuality of living in a physical body.

So I know you've written two books. I just want to talk about Power Source for a second, because you describe the pelvic floor as the foundation for our physical and emotional health.

So I would love for you to.

Talk about why this is so critical. And then what are some simple steps that people can start today to start to strengthen that pelvic floor?

Well, so in the training, we go through the whole body, which is what my first book is about. So we work through each area of the body, but we think about it holistically and progressively. And then what happens is you go into the deeper layers of the fascia. So the pelvic floor is sort of the area of the body, which is why it's my second book. But it's the area of the body where you start to go into the deeper containers of the body. So you have these, you know, you've got your diaphragm and you've got your jaw and you've got your pelvic floor. And those are all basically pumps in the body, and they help us to kind of wring ourselves out. Whether it's emotionally, physically, it's also really important for breath. And what's. What happens is many of us live. We don't really realize it, but subconsciously we are doing a lot of clean clutching and bearing down and locking the pelvic floor, which then also locks the diaphragm and the jaw. There's a fascial plane that connects from the pelvic floor all the way up to the jaw. So as we start to unwind that clutch in the pelvic floor, I like to call it the on off stress button. So you can even do it right now while we're sitting here, and anyone that's listening can just do a little contraction. I like to call it the rose bud. So kind of pull, squeeze in and up, and then slowly release and feel it kind of blossom like a flower. And you'll feel, when you open it like that, actually, you'll feel like your hips start to relax, your jaw starts to relax, your belly starts to relax a little bit. But many of us are living in kind of, you know, like we were saying earlier, the state of fight or flight, we're in reactionary mode, we're in protection mode, you know, and we need that sometimes. So I'm not mad at that. It's just that we don't want to always be stuck in the clutch and the kind of control. So what I like to teach is that, of course, we need to control, we need to force, sometimes we need to push. But also we need to create the balance of that, which is more about, like, doing and being. Force and flow, control and surrender. Right. So there's. That's way more of human. How human beings actually thrive. So we're not human doings, we're human beings. And how we thrive is to have balance with both of those things, which is very ancient wisdom, too, with kind of Chinese medicine and yin and yang. And so essentially, when we start to realize that we're clutching in our pelvic floor all the time, and we start to soften the pelvic floor and do the. The practices that I teach in my book, or even on the rebounder, on the squishy ball, those types of things, you start to unwind some of that buildup and congestion, and then you start to feel your hips start to soften and open. And then flow is happening through the gut as well. And you're taking a better breath, too, because when the pelvic floor is. Is tight, like I said, it's going to tighten up the diaphragm. And so when the diaphragm is tight, then obviously you're not going to be able to take a full breath and be able to really rinse yourself out. Like, breathing is also hygienic, too. It's getting out not only physical toxins, but emotional toxins as well. So when you breathe in, let's do it together, actually. So take a big inhale through your nose and then an exhale with a little sigh, just to do a little clearing. Now, this time when you inhale, I want you to visualize. Inhale through the nose. Visualize your diaphragm pressing down into your organs, your organs dropping down into your pelvic floor, your pelvic floor expanding like a flower. Hold it and then exhale. You'll feel everything just naturally pulling in and up to help that diaphragm push up into the lungs to flush out that CO2 air. So that is happening autonomically without us having to think about it. Now, when we do think about it and enhance it a bit more, then we. We create more of that elasticity and more of that. Less of that rigidity.

So.

So that's a really simple thing, like just visualizing and connecting, rewiring the neuromuscular connection from the brain to the pelvic floor. Another one, I love to. I gave this one to Gwyneth back in the day is when you're at a stop sign, just do a little contraction and then a relaxation and notice, because when you're like, let's say you're rushing somewhere or you're in traffic, you know, you're gonna. You're. You'll notice that you're. You're clutching your pelvic floor or your jaw or your guts maybe all like. Because it's all connected, right? So when you feel that awareness, the clutching doesn't actually change the outcome of where you're going. So you can actually soften and relax and kind of ride those waves a little bit more and not hold that energy so tight. So I think it's just about having that ability to contract and expand and feel the elasticity of the body. Right? Because, yeah, that's really what we're doing.

And we all need more opportunities to get us out of that fight or flight state because we spend way, way, way too much time in it. And so I love, I love this stop sign trick because, I mean, I'm just sitting here listening to you. And I did three or four rounds of that contract and relaxation, and my body literally feels different than it did two minutes ago before I did it. Amazing. So that really works. That's amazing. And, like, probably nearly all, if not all of my breast cancer population, I forgot how important an element that is. I was recently reminded of it when I did some energy work last week and my energy healer put his hand on my abdomen and he was like, whoa, you are totally shut. And so I know I have an awareness of how clutched I am all the time. I just forget to relax. And I think that it's so important. And I'm sure that, you know, God sends me these people in my path and in my way to remind Me that, you know, it's what we all need to do because we cannot survive if all we're doing is living in survival mode.

That's right. Yeah. And the body does not like that. It wants you to relax, it wants you to enjoy, it wants you to live and be.

To feel safe. Right. That is safety. We only understand safety and danger. So if you're clutched all the time, your body thinks you're in danger.

That's right. That's.

That's the signal you're giving to your body.

Can I give you one more for you, the audience is. And what I love is like, I like to call these kind of movements stop being the cautionary tale. But it's just what I love is that you can actually do this anytime, anywhere. That's the beauty. Like we're doing it right now as we're talking. You can do it while you're driving. It's so simple. It's like. But it's just, it's using your inner technology. So like we said, you can use your voice, you can hum, you can. Ohm. But what I love, and this has actually been really scientifically validated, I think it was Stanford again that did the research on the physiological sigh, which is where you take a double inhale and then you do an exhale. But you have to make noise when you exhale. So the sigh sigh is like, you have to like vibrationally make noise. So it's a double inhale. And that vibrates out any blocked swallowed emotions. It also helps relax the jaw and it's helping you when you take that double inhale, it's helping you really get that diaphragm to push down. And then that opens up the pelvic floor. So it just immediately. And all you need is three of them, three physical size to discharge the accumulated stress. The other thing that's really helpful too, for people that are like feeling like what you're saying, this kind of overwhelm or this clutch. I mean the fact that you have the awareness is absolutely key. But really all you need to do is, and I use this with my kids a lot too, which is you're feeling the overwhelm or the stress or the reactionary is take a beat and find your feet, take a breath and discharge your stress. Create some space to embody grace so that you can be the change you want to see in the world. And like, it's like a little mantra that just My kids, you know, you get it on a little rewiring their subconscious and then little by Little. They become less reactionary. They. They become. They can actually self regulate. It's really incredible.

Okay, I want you to say that again.

Okay. So take a beat and find your feet. So that helps bring you into the moment, into your body. Take a breath to discharge your stress. Create some space to embody grace so that you can be the change you want to see in our world. Those are the things that it takes, though, because when you change your energy, you change your body, you change your community, you change your life, you change the world. It's a ripple effect. When you do the work within, it shows up in the collective as well.

That was amazing.

Yeah. It's very simple, right? Bringing you. If I find my feet right now, I'm like, okay, here I am, I'm on the ground. Then I'm less in my head. Right. I'm less in my explosionary anger, like reaction.

Reactive.

Yeah, reactive. We can respond. We can respond. Yeah. So beautiful. Absolutely.

You talked about the rebounder a little bit. And this is a therapy that I recommend to all of my breast cancer patients because cause of all of the known benefits.

Yeah.

So I would love for you to talk about that a little bit and also talk about who it's not for, because I get a lot of questions about can I do the rebounder? I. Blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.

Yes. Okay. So I, you know, pregnancy definitely is a. No, no, no jumping on a trampoline with. During pregnancy at all. Obviously, certain injuries can be an issue or if you get dizzy, any type of dizziness, those types of things definitely you want to avoid. But most people up to, honestly, any age, because, you know, Bellicon, who is my partner, and we created a signature model together. They have a very much an older demographic, so it's a lot of people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. I mean, it's incredible what people can do on the rebounder. But what I love about it is that NASA did all that research on it. Right. So there's that scientific validation. It's quality over quantity. So I'd rather jump on a rebounder or even just bounce on a rebounder.

Okay, so you were talking about rebounding.

So rebounding. What I love about it is NASA's done a bunch of research. They obviously were studying it for astronauts going up to space. And they were using. They were experimenting with what were the best options for regenerating the astronauts after, you know, basically not being in gravity. So you lose a lot of muscle mass, you lose bone mass, all of those things. So they found it really regenerated the astronauts very quickly after they got back from space. And that's one of the things I love for women. Aging is like, it's low impact on your joints, but it also really helps you to discharge some of the excess hormones that we build up in our system from life from. Could be even from, you know, going through drugs, treatments, things like that. And also just it's a great thing for women going through perimenopause or menopause. It's also great. I used it, I discovered it after having my first baby, she's going to be 12 this year. And I used it to get back, you know, strengthen my pelvic floor and bring my body back to balance after having babies. So I find it's an amazing rehabilitation tool. But it's also great for weight loss, for obviously lymphatic support, for building the immune system. I love like the idea of doing it just in the morning for like two minutes when you wake up after you've slept and your body has done all that deep healing. You know, I do the tongue scraping in the morning and then going and bouncing for two minutes. Just opens up those lymph nodes for the rest of the day too. So it's not like you have to do so many minutes. It's really like if you can do two minutes in the morning or two minutes in the evening, snacks, or maybe you're doing two or five minutes between podcasts, between seeing patients. It's a great thing to do when you have a few minutes for yourself. I really do feel that it's energy medicine. It's clearing out the system of emotions and energy blockages too.

What do you think the ideal amount of time to spend on a rebounder is?

Well, anywhere between two to maybe 10 or 15 minutes, but no more than that. We have people that come into the community, they're like, I want you more. I'm like, honestly, you'll end up getting bulky if you do too much. Like you'll end up feeling like your thighs get too thick.

Thick.

And so there is like a middle ground. I wouldn't do more than 20 minutes. So. But you can get benefits in one minute. So cuz you're opening up the lymph nodes and you're working with the gravitational force, so it's really helping you get that. Remember we were saying how important it is to get the contract and the contraction and expansion. That's what it naturally does. You actually don't have to do it. It just makes your body go open and then close, open and close. And that's kind of what we all need. So I do think it kind of shakes out. And it also helps your organs become less dense and it moves because it makes your organs kind of get a little bit of space. It's also great for getting the diaphragm to kind of get out of being in that stagnant clutch. So.

Your work connects physical health and emotional health and spiritual well being. So how do you see all of these dimensions working together? Especially for women who are trying to rebuild their sense of self and rebuild their confidence after a health crisis or a breast cancer diagnosis. How. How do you, how do you connect all of that for them?

I love this question. That's so beautiful. I mean, I, my. I guess my gift is to be able to educate people while we're doing these flows so that they can understand how their bodies work and so they can remember to trust their bodies and that their bodies are doing incredible things for them every day. Even if they've been sick, even if they're not feeling great, even if they're feeling overweight or out of alignment still, every day they wake up and that life force energy that created your life is now still pulsing through you. So it's kind of helping people remember that and to be able to listen to their body, to trust their body, to come back home to their body. And also I do that through educating them from, you know, an anatomical perspective, a biological, physiological, but also, you know, explaining how much their belief systems will affect, you know, their thoughts and their feelings will affect their vibration and kind of how they show up in the world and how much they heal. Like, one of my favorite things, which would be great for your audience and your patience is the mantra or the affirmation or sometimes people like to call it the declaration. Every little cell in my body is well. Every little cell in my body is well. And I just love that we use it with our kids and family and inside my community and our membership. And people just, they love it because anytime, even if you feel a sore throat or anything, you just start saying that to yourself over and over again. It has a vibration. You can either say it out loud, you can say it internally, but those are the types of things we bring a lot of that, you know, affirmations, things that, you know, you want to imprint into your subconscious.

Yeah, I mean, the words we use matter and the story we tell matters.

Right?

And so this, this is especially helpful. I think that there's a time and a place for conventional treatments. I think that I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water. I think that there are some times when, if people have a lot of disease burden, the body needs assistance. But the story you tell yourself as you embark on these treatments and therapies really matters. And if you tell yourself that this is probably not gonna work for me, I can guarantee you that's not gonna work for you. The words that you use and the story that you tell yourself matters. And if you're going to embark on a treatment and you go in saying, I don't think this is gonna work for me, I can guarantee you it's not gonna work for you. And conversely, if you go in and tell yourself a story that this is helping me, this is healing me, and you create that visual because I think visualization is really important. And picture the reality that you want. So picture your cells healing, picture your self health, being well. This is really impactful.

Absolutely. It's so true. And you know, there's going to be certain things that people resonate with more than others. You know, people will. And so I think it's really important to have the discernment to be able to tune into your own intuition and to really feel into what, what would. Because some people will be like, rebounding, that's not going to heal me. So that's fine. But some people will be like, wow, I can totally understand how that could make a big difference because I can feel that shift when I get on there. Or it looks like that would, you know, you sort of, you can have that intuition of like, that looks like it would help me too. So I think it's also going to trusted resources as well, and trusted sources that have done a lot of research and kind of. Yeah. Having that groundedness too, for sure.

And getting back to the rebounding. A lot of people say to me, oh my God, I jump on there for two minutes and I have to go to the bathroom. And I, I just want to tell everyone that that is normal. As you increase your circulation and flow through the kidneys, of course you're going to have to go to the bathroom. So that is normal. And that's a good thing. That means that you're detoxing. And the fact that you said that really two minutes, even two minutes is beneficial. You, everyone can get through two minutes on there without, without having to use the back bathroom. So like, let's, let's set a, an achievable bar for people and know that you're getting great benefit from it.

Yeah. And if there, if there are people that are having that feeling right away. A lot of people will say, I can't go in there. I'll just pee myself. And I've seen clients that actually, you know, that are at that extreme. And the. The key to it is that you don't actually have to jump. That's the beauty. You can literally just stand on it and twist first or do the natural health bounce, which is just a very gentle bounce. So kind of if you can walk, you can most likely do the health bounce. And then little by little, you might feel the pressure. And then what I recommend is if you do feel like you have to pee, go eliminate, clear it out, and then go back for maybe another minute and start to regenerate. And little by little, you'll see how quickly the body will start to regenerate because of that gravitational force. It's really profoundly healing. It's beyond, you know, a lot of the other things. Like, you know, people go and have pelvic floor physical therapy and all of that stuff. But actually, when you do the rebounder, it's because it's working with all those diaphragms, I mean, domes, the jaw, the diaphragm, the guts, and the pelvic floor. It's helping holistic, More holistically move. Whatever the blockages are, are out. Because when you spot treat, which I'm not a big fan of for anything, then you're not really getting to the root cause. Right. You're not getting to the real issue.

It's why I left surgery. Right. Because taking out the tumor doesn't solve the problem. Right. Because unless you. Unless you figure out why the tumor was there, you're not changing the trajectory of that person's life. Yeah. And it's the same thing there you go. Throughout the body. Any disease state, if all you're doing is focusing on the symptom.

Yeah.

You're never going to solve the problem.

Yes. And that's what I always. I'm. So that's what inspires me every day to do the work that I do and to share. My method is that when we, you know, people come for certain things, whether it's weight loss or pain management or healing from a disease, but they always get so much more out of it because they get the physical, the emotional, the energetic or the spiritual aspects, and then that helps them become a more whole being again. You know, it's that wholeness. So it's. It's. It's pretty awesome. I mean, a lot of people are not really there yet in Understanding that, you know, but they're getting there. And I'm really excited to have these conversations with people like you, especially in the medical world. And I love that you're bridging this gap. It's so inspiring and I'm so grateful.

For the work that you're doing and important and necessary.

Right.

Because if all you're doing is walking blindly down that tunnel and not appreciating the landscape, you're never going to be.

Well, that's just not presence. That's right.

So beyond rebounding, you, you've actually developed a signature approach to movement to fascia release through foam rolling. So for someone who is new to this, doesn't know what it is, what's the most impactful area to start with and how does it specifically if, if it does benefit breast cancer survivors?

Oh, I love this. Okay. So because, you know, I've done so much hands on body work, I feel like I've created some sort of X ray vision through, you know, movement and realizing that you can actually do a lot of this stuff without a practitioner. So I created. Obviously my first methodology was with the roller. And essentially when you ask which is the best, like area of the body to work with? Well, obviously, you know, we want to work with the whole body, but if there was one area, it would be the upper back and the lungs. So this region here, so getting the diaphragm opened up and releasing some of the armor in the back body. So there's a move called the upper back roll, which I'm sure you've seen. And then you can do a lot of different variations, the diaphragm release and kind of you can do circular moves to release some of that kyphosis, the hunched overness in the spine. And then that really helps getting the diaphragm and the lungs working. Because if we're not breathing properly, then we can't actually eliminate properly as well. So if there's one place to start, it is definitely the upper body, like the heart, the heart chamber here, the lungs, the heart. Because that will help basically get more circulation and blood flow and energy and also help your body discharge a lot of the stuff that we need to clear out, like declutter. And so that's the area, but specifically the roller itself. What's so beautiful about it is that it's so simple. And what happens is when you apply the pressure of the roller to the body, firstly you're actually creating what's called piezoelectricity, which is pressure, electricity. So that actually brings in the electricity that's coming through the fascia, there's actually, you know, fascia is kind of considered like the circuitry of the body. So when the fascia is bundled up, brittle, thick and dense and holding, know, scar tissue and toxins, it's not going to be very efficient. Right. Of having that electricity go through. So when you apply the pressure of the roller Blocked. Yeah, exactly. You're bringing in the electricity, which brings in the flow back into the body. So the roller we work, we use the roller throughout the entire body, holistically and progressively through the entire body. And that's what my method is about. And that's what I'm going to be training people how to do. So we don't just believe in like rolling out your IT bands. That's actually very old school. And that's also looking at the body more kind of like separate parts. So my program is, if you think about, if you've ever gone to a Pilates class, you know, when you go to a Pilates class, you're going to work the whole body. You're going to work all the different planes of movement. You're going to twist, you're going to invert, you're going to go upside down, you're going to, you know, work your body in different dimensions. And so that's what we do with the roller. And, and so we have this beautiful ability to free up and kind of mobilize and get that fluidity in the tissue. And then we also do the moves that strengthen and build tone and musculature to actually help regenerate the body as well. So I have a theory that you don't actually have to lift heavy weights. If you get your fascia flowing, then your muscles start showing. So actually your muscles will actually come to the surface and be fluffed up with you. Get rid of the rigidity that happens in the buildup and the calcification and the sediment that builds up in the tissue. So when you free up the tissue, the muscles can come back to the surface and then you can utilize them throughout your day. So it's not just what you do on the mat or on the roller, it's how you change your biomechanics and your physiological reactions and take that with you throughout your day. So you're in more of that self regulation all the time. Time. Yeah.

And when you're doing that, if your fascia is thick and dense and tense, Right. It's not allowing for the expansion of that muscle, so it's actually holding them down and dampening them down.

And you know that because of the surgery that you've done, you actually could see it like fully surgery?

Absolutely. Without question. And this is especially relevant, especially in the era of QT where we can see this and we actually see unhealthy fascia in the breast because the fascia like envelops the breast, like it envelops everything in the body. And when we see a lot of calcifications in the fascia of the breast, these are different than the calcifications that are in the breast tissue that are associated sometimes with DCIS or Dr. Carcinoma in situ. But when I see a lot of calcifications in the fascia of the breast, it's not an indication of disease in the breast, but it is an indication of systemic dysfunction. And that someone that I know needs to start doing the work.

That's right.

Now I would love for you to talk about your training program because I think that it's going to be wonderful and will change a lot of lives. I also want to get a sense to people of how much time you're talking about every day because I'm pretty sure that I read in your book that all you need is 15 minutes a day. Am I, am I wrong or did I remember that correctly?

No, that's exactly right. And that's, you know, I'm the kind of person that does not want to spend hours at the gym. I don't want to do a two hour workout just counting reps. That is really boring to me. So my mission in life is to be quality over quantity and to make, help people like not have to do as much but get amazing benefits. Because I, that's what I love to do is discover the things that are the most efficient but also can be enjoyable and pleasurable and give you the most incredible results. So yeah, anywhere between if you can give yourself five minutes to 20 minutes a day of committing to a ritual. And that means that you need to make yourself a priority and commit to yourself and make it your non negotiable. So for me the minimum is a lot of times I'll do. I call it my 5 minute fascia flow which we can share with your community. And I go outside, stand on the earth, get that natural light in the morning and I open up the five fascial planes that essentially are going to help reboot your cellular metabolism and also help you kind of deal with the emotional waves of the day. Right. The challenges. So realizing that, you know, when you kind of clear out Those blockages, and you do a little bit of Marie Kondo, you declutter yourself from the inside out. You're not going to be carrying around a backlog of emotions that's going to make you more reactionary. So you can find your feet, you can be more present, you can kind of go. Go through the day and realize that those obstacles are always opportunities. And so by setting yourself up for the day, I find that's super, incredibly important. And if you can, you know, do a few roller moves, you can do those in the morning, you can do those in the evening. Whenever you can squeeze them in. A lot of times people ask to. Like, I have a lot of people that love doing a lot of cardio or they go for runs or hikes or whatever. I always say you must do your rolling before you do your cardio. So if you're going to go to a yoga class, for instance, roll out before you work out. I like to say you roll it out before you work it out. So if you are a workout addict, then definitely do some rolling first because it opens up the fascia, it opens up flexibility, and it gets proprioception online, and it helps you be more connected to your body.

Wait, so rebound first or roll out first?

Okay, so if you. I have. It's called the. There's. Well, there's a few different protocols, but the. The method that I have is combining all of these different modalities, and the modalities are rolling. So you have the big roller. Then you also have, you know, the ones that I put in the Power Source book, which is more about getting into the deeper visceral fascia. So we've got the infinity roller, the body sphere, and the spiky domes. So that's getting into the deeper layers of the fascia in the gut, which are really amazing. So roll now. It. You don't have to do this every day, but these are the modalities that I've created that people want to learn how to teach, essentially. But for people that want to do five to 10, to 15 to 20 minutes a day, the best thing you can do is roll first, then rebound, and then, you know, essentially whatever else you want to do. So rolling and then rebounding is such an amazing combo. And even if you rolled for five minutes or 10 minutes, and then you bounce for five to 10 minutes, that is amazing medicine that will set you up for the day, and it will give you, like, you don't have to do an hour because it's. It works so well and so deeply that it clears out. You know, it is kind of like going to therapy too. It's like physical therapy and emotional therapy. So you're getting so much for that focus. The most important thing though, and I'm sure you know this, is that you've got to be present. So don't be on your phone, don't be scrolling, don't try to have a phone call, like be present, be in your body. Because when you come into your body through embodiment, then you start to feel your body. You feel the messages of your body again. You feel the sense of true hunger. Are you actually hungry or are you just swallowing and eating your feelings? You know what I mean? So it helps you really tune into your instincts and your intuition and your interoception. Yeah.

And it is also an opportunity for you to invoke all of your senses. And I know that you, you talk about that as well. And you specifically mention smell.

Oh, yeah.

Because this is, this is really a forgotten sense. And you know, so many times. And we have the opportunity to capitalize on that. And Jody Cohen of Vibrant Blue Oils recently talked about this. This is the quickest way to your brain is through what you take in through your nose. So you can really create an environment of healing by diffusing oils while you're doing this. Right. And really take advantage of all of your senses. And who doesn't have 15 minutes a day to dedicate to themselves and to dedicate to their health and healing? And if you think that you don't have 15 minutes a day to dedicate to your health and healing, you really have to think about what you're prioritizing and what, what message you are putting out there to the world and to God and to your family. Because if you don't have 15 minutes to, to focus on creating the healthiest, best version of you.

Yeah.

Something's deeply and desperately wrong.

It's so true. It's so. I mean, yeah, something needs to be reevaluated. Because I think a lot of times, maybe in our culture or society, we've been taught that, you know, self care is selfish, but it really is. I mean, we need it in order to be the best version of ourselves and to be a greatest service. Yes. We need to look after ourselves. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, no one likes that adage, but you do have to put your oxygen mask on first and not just in emergency situations. Like if you're not taking care of you first of all, you're not, you're not putting the best version of you out into the world. And we are all put here for great purpose without question. And everyone's purpose is very individual. And if you are not doing the things that you need to do so that you can serve your purpose, you're going to be out of alignment. And one, if you're out of alignment, so is everything else.

Yes.

You know, we think about a machine and the importance, importance of one screw and you see the one screw by itself and you think like, oh, it's just a screw, like it's not that big a deal. But if losing that one screw makes the whole machine fall apart and dysfunction, then that one screw suddenly became very important. This is what we all are. We are all that small piece of the universe that makes the universe function correctly. And we have to do what we have to do to prioritize ourselves so that we can continue to serve our purpose. Because everyone has one. And no one's is more important than anyone else's.

So beautiful. So true. And sometimes it does take illness or disease to help people figure out what that is.

Yes.

You know. Yeah.

So how can people train to do what you do? How can people learn your method? Where do they go? What do they do? How do, how do they, how do they figure out what to do for their 15 or 20 minutes every day to, to be the best version of themselves?

So at this point I've been, you know, all the things that I've studied and the modalities that I've been playing with and kind of been in this crazy creative mode are all in my app which is called the Low Rocks Aligned Life Studio. So we are actually going through a rebrand and everything is going to come under Low Rocks because it's just easy, it rolls off the tongue, it's fun. And so the methodology I'll be launching at the end of this year 25 and it's just going to be called the Low Rocks method. And so right now though, people can enjoy going in there and exploring. We have all kinds of different guided ways, guided tours through the app. There's over 500 flows in there. It incorporates obviously rolling, rebounding, even sound, healing, meditations, yoga. We have bar method in there as well. So people are looking for strength training, physical conditioning, also obviously mental and emotional well being as well. So it's kind of a one stop shop. It definitely is not just a workout place. I like to call it working in. So we not, we don't just work out, we work in and we work in by, you know, so that we can create that shift within and it really is a healing space and it's an incredible community and the women in there support each other and I go in there quite often, I do office hours, I answer questions, I go deep with people and it's just a really beautiful community of like minded people who are on a journey and wanting to continue to learn and continue to kind of evolve and grow together. So it's a really fun space to come together.

I love it. I love it. Well, I thank you so much for being here with me today, for sharing your brilliance, your wisdom and I'm so grateful for the light that you're shining on the world because I know that you're making a huge difference and my community in particular will have some such great benefit from having heard this conversation and more importantly, incorporated it into their lives. So thank you, thank you.

I'm so honored and I'm so excited to share your work and everything that you offer with our community as well. I think we're going to have an incredible co creative connection here and be.

Able to sure are without question.

New paradigm is here. Yes. So with that I will say goodbye.

For today and if you liked this episode, please follow like share it, give it to someone that you know that you love, that would benefit from hearing it and know that I will be back next week same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now.

Thank you for joining me on this episode of the Keeping a breast podcast with Dr. Jen. I hope you found the discussion informative and empowering. Remember, breast health is health, so by staying informed and taking proactive steps, you have the power to optimize your well being. My team and I encourage you to apply the knowledge gained from today's episode to make positive changes in your life and share what you've learned with others. If you enjoyed this episode episode please subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review. Your feedback and support mean the world to us and help us to reach more people who can benefit from these conversations. Stay connected with me on social media where I share additional resources, advice, updates and announcements related to breast health. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Dr. Jensimmons and remember MyGen has two M's so until next time, remember to stay proactive, informed and confident in your breast health journey. The key to your health is you.