Episode 77: Body Ties: The Full Body Connection with Ron Hruska, MPA, PT

Hi and welcome to episode 77 of the Untethered Podcast. Today we have Ron Ruska joining us. Ron has a strong interest in myokinematic and biomechanical influences on postural and peripheral adaptation patterns. His 40 years of clinical experience assists him with direct patient interventions based on specific examination and evaluation data that best reflects neuromechanical stability, trunk symmetry and respiratory balance. He lectures extensively and consults regularly with physicians, physical therapists, optometrists, dentists, and other healthcare providers across the United States and internationally on patterned postural position and pathology and his approach of restoring symmetrical balance using PRI principles. He is a graduate of the University of Nebraska Medical Center Division of Physical Therapy. He is a member of the American Physical Therapy Association. Ron is the founder of the Postural Restoration Institute, where he continues to teach around 20 courses each year across the country and internationally. He currently consults at the Ruska Clinic, Restorative Physical Therapy Services and Whole Orthodontics in Lincoln, Nebraska and IPA Manhattan in New York City. In addition, Ron serves as a biomechanical Consultant to the University of Nebraska, Lincoln through the Division of Athletic Medicine. Quick Disclaimer all information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of a qualified health care provider. Welcome to the Untouched. Welcome to Tethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified orofacial myologist, feeding specialist and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the Orofacial myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissue and airway space. I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to get this information out to the masses. Let's get started. Well, Ron, I want to thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast.

It's good to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Absolutely. I am really looking forward to this conversation. You know, just to give everybody a little bit of a backstory on how I even came to find out about you and the Postural Restoration Institute. One we had a shared patient, but even prior to that I was a patient myself. And so everybody who listens to this podcast knows what I do. They know I'm a myofunctional therapist with a background as a feeding specialist and speech language pathologist. But you know, all that aside, I became the patient and I was working with a local physical therapist Manny Kim, who I've spoken about on the podcast before, and he, you know, he and I worked together before I got pregnant with my second child, really on a lot of chest work, opening up, you know, my chest and helping me, you know, breathe well, and just really getting everything, the entire body functioning, working together, everything flowing was really very cool. And so when it came time for me to go into expansion and use a DNA appliance, my dentist office actually has him in office, and it's part of the treatment plan. Very interdisciplinary, and it was amazing. It wasn't until I was about a year into my appliance work with him that I realized how impactful that work was because I noticed that I would hit a wall. So I would go see him and they would check everything, make sure that as my palate was dropping slightly or expanding, growing forward, growing laterally, they would make sure the appliance still fit properly in my mouth. But I noticed I couldn't crank that appliance unless I had recently seen Manny. And so it was really, really telling about the impact of the body work that he was doing on me and that he was doing with me, and how my body was responding, bonding and expanding and just everything working together was just so fascinating to have experienced that firsthand. So I'm really excited to dive a bit deeper into that conversation today and really just give our listeners a better understanding of, you know, they know from listening to me that treating a tongue tie and doing expansion, they are not standalone treatments and that we really need to take that interdisciplinary approach. But I don't think they fully appreciate what, why we have to do that. And I'm hoping that maybe we can shed some light on, you know, the ties amongst us, the ties that exist throughout the entire body. So on that note, I'll turn it over to you.

Well, and I appreciate your opening and I appreciate your remarks and just a little bit of conversation we had before we went on the air makes me feel very, very comfortable. In terms of who you personally are, Haley. I think that the head is a very unique part of our body for very obvious reasons. It's how we read people, it's the language center, it's where we make our language, it's where we express ourselves, it's how we feed ourselves, it's how we bring in air and how we move air out and, you know, it's our control center. And so when you look at oral mechanics and you look at facial mechanics and you look at the in depthness to what disciplines like dentists do and optometrists do, and audiologists do, and your ents and your. I mean, if you just look at the amount of disciplinary study, the head and all of the function associated with it, all the cranial nervous function and the autonomic nervous system, and you wrap your head around the head, it's. It's mind blowing. And then you have, you have for some reason, some of what, of a delineation between the head and arms and legs and, and a pelvis and a chest wall or abdominal cavity. And they all. We know, we all know that they are all interconnected and they're all interconnected by two halves. Hemispheric connections are really important. And I know this may not make a lot of sense, but I think it's a good way to start the conversation this afternoon from just the reminding, the reminder that all of us need to know that each one of us is utilizing one half of our bodies and one half of our head a little differently than our neighbors and our colleagues. However, the way that we put that information together and the outcome is reflected in language. It's expression, it's how we look, it's how we look at how we look when we look in the mirror at each other. It's the selfies that we take. It's the angulation of the lips, where the canti, where the canthuses are, where your eyebrows and how your hair falls and where's your cheekbone, your zygoma? And does that tooth cross that tooth on this side and not on that side? We really become very detailed, oriented. And as I look at what's going on in our lives as humans, we're becoming more and more detailed, oriented. Everything from cosmetic surgery to releases of tongues to intraoral surgery to elongate or shorten ramuses of jawbones, the list just goes on and on. How much and how willing we are to allow all that to happen without ever considering the things that really control the head. And the one thing that controls the head is the neck. And the neck is the stick that the lollipop is sitting on. And when you see a face that has mid face under development, or you see these horizontal growth issues where the face is not expanding and the face isn't set an angle or I call it like a curvature of the head. Scoliosis of the face, you can call it curvature of the head and in many different ways. And there's lots of different ways you can look at. But when you look at the. When you look at the face and you look at all the function around it. The underlying element with all this is flow. And so today, when I look at, you know, when I look at tethered tissue, tethered tissue tells me that there is a degree of pattern flow that you either like or don't like. In other words, there's either air restricted somewhere going into your body, there's fluid restricted somewhere in your body, and your inability to move and regulate that through what I would call alternating function between the two sides of your body and the two sides of your head with what you sense, the input that you're receiving. If that's restricted, you're probably going to be tethered. And you could do myofascial release activities, which sometimes work and sometimes don't. You can do surgery. You can do all sorts of procedures to expand and to, if you will, decompress. But the reality is the body will always go back to the form that it wants to neurologically function function in when the information it's receiving isn't understood between those two hemispheres. And I think that's who you are, Haley, by listening to you and talking to you a few minutes ago. With that in mind, I appreciate that you and I are built the same way. We have a heart on one side and we have a liver on the other, and we have one hemisphere in our head. That's more logic. And we have one more hemisphere in our head that's very creative. I think we're expressive people. I think we're social people. I think that there's people out there that's the reverse of us. And you take in considerations, all these people that you're working with, if you can't put together a pattern picture of that individual, it's really difficult to sit there and think that you're going to release something in a head. When that head is on a body that has one of the strongest set of hip flexors or plantar flexors or cervical flexors that you're ever going to find. There are muscles that go between the shoulder blade and our hyoid called omohyoid muscles. There are muscles that are balancing these little sesamoid bones called patellas, and these little hyoid bones and these little mandibles, these little jaw bones that are embedded in muscle. They're hanging on your face. They're not in your face. They're hanging from your face. And that regulatory function requires a good interdisciplinary understanding of the things that enhance what I would call freedom of flight from side to side. And that freedom of flight begins with our three sets of wings, our temporal bones, our scapula, and our anomalous of our hip. And if we can appreciate that, then I think the tethered situations that we see would be reduced naturally and probably would stay reduced even if you do unnatural things. You know, we're sometimes born with these tethered issues. I totally understand that. And surgery may be necessary, but I think you get a picture that I look at appendages and I look at appendicular activities to help restructure this balance needed for our axial asymmetry that exists in everybody. And if you understand that axial asymmetry, then it's kind of fun to look at an arm on the right side a little differently than the human arm on the left, and the set of molars on one side a little differently than the set of molars on the other side. Because a neurologist would say the set of, you know, basal ganglia synaptic activity on one side, it's going to be a little bit different than on the other side. And if we all appreciated that, I think all of us would be more interdisciplinary minded because we'd start going to other sources to eradicate those issues that we, as a single discipline, a single entity, will not be able to do without that help. So that's kind of an overview of how I look at tethered activity.

I love that. And I think using myself as an example, you know, one thing that you said that really stuck out to me was our hips as a base. And I. That was definitely a source of the issue for me. You know, my hips were always misaligned. I went to multiple different practitioners over the course of my life because at one point I was a runner. I have flat feet. I've had knee injury and ankle injuries on my left leg and knee, my left ankle in me. And I think that really what's come out of all of that was, you know, I was told, oh, well, stop running or you won't be able to walk when you're 40. You'll need, like, knee replacements by the time you're 40. Oh, don't do this, don't do that. You know, go to a chiro, have them adjust you. And, you know, what I noticed was every time, and I did go to some chiropractors in my past, but I noticed nothing ever held because it was being. For me, it seemed like it was being treated as a siloed treatment. It wasn't really an interdisciplinary approach. Like, okay, well, now that we've done this adjustment, what else can we do to support that? So it actually holds. And so I think for me, what's been really fascinating is working with Manny. We've worked on my hips, we worked on my chest. We worked in my mouth. We worked. He does full body, and he really works on this. He says unlocking your body so that all systems are working, almost like my systems are interdisciplinary and all working together. But that's really supported the work that I've done. My experience expansion work in my mouth that supported, you know, my. I did have a tongue tie release prior to expansion, and I noticed now that my tongue, while I have decent range of motion, it definitely is more restricted for the mouth that I have now. Now that everything else is working well compared to two years ago. So it's a very interesting conversation just understanding how the body works as a unit, but it's, you know, in all the separate units together. So I really appreciate that.

The hips, you know, the hips are, you know, are communicating with each other through a pelvis floor called the geniohyoid of your. Of your pelvis floor. The geniohyoid is the genioglossus of your tongue, your pelvic floor in your mouth knows what the mouth in the pelvis is doing at all times. And so when we start looking at pressure gradients, that gradient of activities going between, you know, the lower part of your body with the upper part of the body, that pressure is produced by regulatory function of what we would call floors, and the floor of our head and the floor of the pelvis are in constant communication. Haley, it would be very difficult for me to believe that you're ever going to work with an individual that does not have pelvis floor dysfunctional problems. Because if you're seeing them for a tethered oral issue, I know they've got pelvis issues. Very difficult for me to tell you that that person does not have a scapular problem, because I'm pretty sure their sternal junction, where their muscles that come from their head down to their breastbone, that they used to breathe with when their diaphragm can't breathe, is probably going to be also pretty overact now. You know, we could go into a lot of different regions, and I could go to one of those areas and show you the magic, but it really doesn't matter if this doesn't happen. That would be this need for compression and decompression expansion and, you know, contraction, you know, something that's going to push things and pull things. When our body on one side is Pushing, the other side's receiving. And when the other body is pulling, the other side is going to be pushing. And that's a constant, constant, variable variability that our autonomic nervous system requires. Otherwise, your tongue is going to be stabilizing the orientation of your body through the head and the neck. And once the neck becomes, you know, locked up, if you will, or it doesn't allow, it's not allowed to laterally flex or rotate, you know, that you don't have, really, a neck issue. The neck did not create that problem. A whiplash or vomiting might have, but it didn't create the problem. On most of us, that problem was not even created. We were designed to use it when we sit too much, and we were designed when we don't do activities that keep our feet pronating and supinating and our arms rotating and our mandibles rotating from sun to side to side. The best hips we have are our cusps of our teeth. They were made to grind, and they were made to rotate and shift and intrusively designed to move our bodies back and forth. You know, a lot of dentists do a lot of good work with teeth, but they're forgetting that they're really orthopedic surgeons. I mean, they're moving bodies with them. And so I could take every single discipline and relate it to. To a discipline that maybe you don't even ever think about. The vocal cords is your best visual system you've got. When they relax and contract, your binocularity will either, you know, be near or close. Excuse me, Far or near. It all has to do with how we regulate that tension that we have all to deal with, and that would be this thing called gravity and our body weight. So I love when you say to me that the hips are an issue. I love chiropractors because they really do have a respect for the word alignment, Haley. They really, truly do. Some of my closest friends are chiropractors, and when they get into a state and they say, you know, Ron, T1 and T2 need to be freed up today, and T6 and T7 are locked up. They're so good at knowing what's locked, but they're also very, very good at knowing. Because of that, they're still symptomology. So our goal is to keep that spine free. Keep the spine free means that you got to really use everything you have for range that we were given. And that range for that spine to stay unlocked has to come from things that you and your cohorts and colleagues look at how do you breathe, how do you get air in? And how do you regulate that tension? And so one of the things that I noticed that you sent here was somebody wrote, it said, how can tots impact hands and feet? And how does scoliosis play into things? Curvatures of spines. Chiropractors understand. They understand a lot more than that, but they understand that when you have a curved spine, something is not lined up. Okay, that we all get. What I appreciate that when I saw that first question that you sent over to the institute, was that what I liked about it was a question that was asked after they said, how does tetheredness impact hands and feet? Well, it's kind of the other way around. How does hands and feet affect people that get tight? And that would not only include the tongue, that would include pec muscles, lat muscles, lateral traps, upper traps, all sorts of muscles in the ankles that get tight and that really need to be stretched out and released, if you will. The number one reflection of tetheredness in my mind, Haley, is scoliosis. Curvature of the spine is probably the best reflection of people that are over tethered, over restricted. And when you look at a tongue, and I hope the listener will understand this, when I look at a tongue that's deviated in one direction on a mouth that's canted or buccal, lingual activity that's limited, or not doing the same thing on the other side, or any asymmetry you may find with tori in the mouth, or with gag reflexing, or with. With mucus production or even with speech, Any asymmetry you tell me you're looking at. I'm looking at a scoliotic mouth, a mouth that is definitely in a curvature state. And that mouth, until it gets more aligned, it's probably going to go right back to that old pattern. So I'm only reminding us that the way we have to really look at this oral ness and this ability to regulate our bodies with the only thing we really produce our voice and gas, is to make sure that the head, the body language that's speaking to you, is aligned at the bottom of that head on a thing called the cervical spine. And so a lot of the work that we do in this institute reflects the relationship. That neck has two chambers of the chest wall, the abdomen and the pelvis, and two proximal joints called the temporal bones, temporomandibular joints and scapular bones, scapular humeral joints and hip bones, innominate femoral joints. And if we can appreciate that each one of those sides are completely different than their counterparts. And you understand the differences, then the word alignment will make more sense. Now, what we thought existed, that is an aligned human, really an unaligned human. And when you see the scoliosis of the neck or the spine or the mouth, what you're really looking at is a human that is trying to become lined up when God did not want you lined up with the stars. And so when I see the malalignment and the malocclusions, I have to go against all the other trout and salmon in the sea and say, you know, my water's flowing a little differently. I'm seeing body language that says you're working with a human that's going to a natural pattern of alignment because someone told them to do something to straighten themselves out. And when they did that, their spine got straighter, they got really stiff. And when they get really stiff, things start to twist. And when they get really twisted, things start to tab. And now their neurological synaptic activity is following course. So the more freedom we have and the more we recognize the asymmetries of our body. A right arm will never do what a left arm can do. And a left arm will never do what a right arm is capable of doing. For fine motor control, neither will your two legs. But that's just an offshoot. There's a lot of other things going on with our hemispheric activity, on how we think, how we design things based, even our computers know it, on how well we use our two hemispheres. So the thing that I think that most people have to understand is the body will take care of itself if we allow it to. And to allow it to, we have to give it some guidance. And the guidance that usually is going to shut down. Tetheredness is sense of something. What do you see? What do you feel? How does it taste? How does that sound, sound? Can you feel a sense of your. Of your heel? Can you feel a sense of a molar or a tooth? It's sensory processing that's really cool, really needed. And that sensory processing is an oral and intraoral and an extra oral process. And the more sensory activities that your listener can provide an intraoral issue, the better off you are with the design of a program that's going to stay so. I loved the first question. Curvature. Curvature of the body exists in many, many areas of our body, including the cranium. And when it comes to the head, I think that often many people have curvatures of the spine. It was, first of all, that curvature of the spine occurred with orientation by a head. Where does my body belong? What do I see? Which eye am I going to use? What space is more important to me, the left or the right? Where is there more space? Where is there less? What do I like to do with my one ear versus my other ear? How do I listen? How do I not listen? What do I do to make sure that I swallow correctly? How do I not swallow correctly? The ambidextrous activities in our life are leaving us. We are, you know, we are doing everything is given to us, including the keyboard we're using with the mouse. We don't have the ambidextrous activity that we used to have. And so these tethered issues I only think are going to get worse. And when I say worse mean designed. I mean better designed. Not worse, better designed because we're occupationally ergonomically implementing it. It's called safety and speed. And these are all things that contribute to the psychosocial dynamics of what you see when you work with oral activity. So that's a long discussion, but it kind of pulls in a lot of. Lot of. I would say. I would say more of a realistic picture of what's really going on with a lot of patients that we're working with. The more people you can have on your team. I mean, Haley, I have. I have close, close relationships with dentists, orthodontists, athletic trainers, speech therapists, oral myologist, oral people, oral functional people. I love working with podiatrists. I love to talk to anybody who's an occupational therapist any day of the week. Podiatrist and pediatric people. Podiatrist and pediatric people should be working in the same room. It's called growth and development. I came from a place where I started off in a VA medical center. We had a lot of those people working in the same room and had the ability to work with a lot of rehab patients that, you know, including burn patients that really had to have multi, multiple disciplines involved for them to get where they, where they really could, where they really could go in their life. So it's not new to me. I'm the oldest of 13 children. I know how system integration works. And when I see, you know, one or two people working with these individuals and promising things that probably are not going to happen without that collaborative effort, I get a little concerned. And so that's why this institute exists. That's why we do what we do. But I really love the questions that were asked of me. And I think the mouth is a major influencer when it comes to how our necks work. Whether you use the mouth to express yourself with, breathe with, tense up with, clench with, get angry with or smile with it is really one of the best body controllers and body language instruments we have.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's very helpful because I know. I think a lot of our questions did tie back to that initial question. They were all semi related, really, with the understanding of how do tetheral tissues impact, you know, not just our hands and our feet, but really the entire body. And I know, like you said, that's a much longer conversation, conversation to be had. It could be like a, you know, 30 week course on that. But so I think what some of our listeners might wonder, like what's coming to mind for me is, so what about all of these patients who are going for tongue tie releases, frenectomies, granuloplasties, you know, do you have any opinions on that, whether the procedure itself and. Or just the interdisciplinary team needed to really support that when that is a next step for a patient?

You know, Haley, here's the thing. The clinician that thinks someone's tongue needs to be released is never a clinician who wants ill will. Nobody does. And when they suggest that that tongue needs to be released and there's lots more smart people out there and lots smarter people than I am, than I am, I just know that the conditions and the situations are unique to every single patient. And I believe that as I get older, I try to live by that principle. I try not to. I try not to interfere with. With what I would call Genesis, with what I would call body. What's the word I want to use here? Not when you're really balanced, Haley. I'm having a tough time here, but.

The homeostasis.

I try not to bother it. And when I look at someone who needs a tongue tied release by. If it's something I feel need to be released, it would be because that tongue is not allowing us to move forward with other integrated, integrated processes or that tongue with the timing, the time that it took to get that tongue in that state means that there's other issues going on along with it that will not be reduced, if you will, without that release. I don't believe if you take a web of a burn patient from scarring and you release and cut it, that it will not grow back if the purpose of the release wasn't addressed. In other words, it's no different than any parts of our body, that scar up, that want to come together. Fascia is wonderful material. It's what keeps our tensegrity alive. But when you start stretching it and releasing it without acknowledging the activity, that should complement that activity of release or stretch or surgery. If you don't look at the. Don't look at some of the contributing issues, and it may not be things you and I can touch. It may be frequencies, it may be auditory, it may be sight and sound. It may be sense, it may be smell. There's things that are turning on that cortical function of dominance. And if you can't disrupt that cortical function of dominance, More than likely that tethered oral tissue is going to come back. And we don't have to put the word oral there. The tethered tissue is going to come back, Because I doubt very much God created just tethered oral tissue. Do you follow me? I'm. When I saw this, and Jen told me you wanted to talk about some of this. When I see tethered oral tissue, I think of, you know, tightness of tissue, tightness of necks, tightness of, you know, our sights. I call it convergence. We talked a little bit about it before we went on the air. Everything I see is a degree of convergence. Things being pulled towards what, Haley? The center. Everything coming towards the center. One side may be coming a little bit more than the other. One side may be a little slower than the other, Depending on what you're looking at. But when you ask that question to me, the first thing that I will tell you is I've seen some really cool things by having tongues released. I've seen some really needed additional activity when tongues were released because symptoms in other areas increased. And then I've seen tongues grow back sometimes five, six times. And you would think by the fifth or sixth time, some people would get a clue. And I'm not pointing at anybody's fingers. They just don't have maybe the ability to think outside that mouth. And I'm not pointing fingers at anybody. They have their reasons. But I do believe that there is a place for it, and I believe that everybody is so unique that it can help most people if it's complemented with outside activity that's engaging with it. But most importantly, I would like the message of what I'm sending to your listener be that, you know, the more you as a. A speech therapist, as a. As a voice instructor, as an oral myologist, as a pediatric feeding specialist, whatever you might be, the more you're looking at appendicular structure, appendicular activity, swing and stance and activities that require alternation, alternating activities. I think the better off you're going to be whenever you do a tongue tie rod release. So that's. That's kind of an overall view. And again, I'm sorry if I didn't answer it. Better, but that's kind of how I feel.

No, I mean, I think that very much so is in alignment with my own thoughts on the process. I don't think that everybody is a candidate for a tongue tie release. You know, I've had parents come to me and say, well, just because we're sitting in your office and you're like the tongue tie lady in this, you know, area, are you going to tell us that we have to have one, too? Like, how do we know that we can trust what you tell us? And I'm very frankly with my patients and I tell them, look, just because you're sitting in front of me does not mean I'm going to send you for a consult. Like, if I don't think you need it. I will tell you that if I refer you to our oral surgeon, he will also tell you if he doesn't think you need one, like, we don't want to cut tissue if we can avoid it.

I don't think most people do. Honestly, I really don't. I don't believe I've ever met a surgeon who really wants to sit there and cut tongues.

By the time some of these patients land in my office, they've been through nine years of therapy. They've been through, you know, and so considering their history, considering the specialists they have worked with, when they start to work with my team, and then, okay, now we're hitting a wall. Let's bring Hallie in because maybe we can see. Like, let's do some mayo. Let's see if myo helps. And if we can't, do you know, if there's really a restriction preventing the tongue because it is so tethered to the floor of the mouth, you know, then we start to look at, okay, we. We may need to do this procedure. Let's pull in the oral surgeon or the dentist or the ENT or whoever is going to be that provider for this patient. But, yeah, it's an interesting conversation because I think so many just assume that's always step one. And, hey, how do we do the before and the after therapy for that? And I'm over here going, oh, pump the brakes. We don't just dive right into a frenectomy or A frenuloplasty right away. We have many other routes that we need to consider. Consider first, maybe try first. You know, things that. Because like you said, if we just go and release that tissue, even if they're prepped properly with some pre op therapy, if the other issue, if the root issue, the root cause is not dealt with, we're going to end up with a tongue that's released and is still just laying on the floor of the mouth and is completely dysfunctional. And that's not going to help anybody if they don't have the supports from the rest of the body to help that tongue do what it needs to do. So, you know, I really try myself to look at it holistically and look at it from a full body perspective. I look at, I've been, you know, very well trained by some of my colleagues. I don't just look in the mouth and on the face. I'm looking at full body symmetry. I'm looking at posture. I'm taking photos. You know, when they're in my, in here for an assessment, what, what does their spine look like? And I'm not the one who's diagnosing or treating anything, but I'm going, ooh, we need to refer them out to somebody who can do that. Because I see something that here that's really alarming to me, and I don't feel that my therapy is going to be that successful until we bring this person in. And I'm the first person to tell my patients, we're not starting therapy right now. You got to go talk to this person first and talk to this specialist, and then let's all come together and figure out what plan is right for you.

Well, Haley, I love you already. And I got to tell you, one of the things that I listened to your passion and I would encourage you and some of your listeners, if not all, to consider diving into what influences the alignment of the mouth below it. And that would be your neck and your chest. And I know you know a lot about that. But, you know, just taking a course called postural respiration through the institute, you can even take it online to help understand the differences between the base of the mouth on the right side versus the left side, the floors that you build pressure with, these slings, this hyoid, and these arytenoid cartilages, and really get a good understanding on how the scalenes on one side of our body are completely different than the other. So that you, you know, a lot of these things that we're talking About Haley can be actually addressed by people like you right there in your clinic, without necessarily referring them on right away to another physical therapist or athletic trainer or chiropractor. There's simple things that we just put out. The institute just put out a guide on how to live with your body. You know, a little guide on how to stand and how to sit and how to acknowledge that your body is built differently on two sides, just to respect the fact that your body has not curvatures, scoliosis. Your body is built full of neuromechanical differences. And by respecting those neuromechanical differences, you can ward off tethered activity. You can ward off something coming back once you release it, you can actually resume things that you never had. But we resume it because, you know, you were born with it, you just didn't develop it. And so the more you understand, the more any of us understand, how do our ribs function? How does our chest wall open? The last thing. And I know we're running out of time, but the thing I think that's really important to understand is, is that our bodies were made to open up. They were made to open up. And the chest wall has two sides. We have one side that doesn't like to open up. God put nothing in there. It's just a bunch of beautiful bronchial arterial tissue. Parachyma, parietal tissue. It was made for the plural, was made to expand and contract. There's nothing over there. And if it's not used correctly, it will collapse. And when that clamp starts, you're going to immediately see it in the orbit of an eye. You're going to see it in the tympani of an eardrum. You're going to see it on a palate. You're going to see in the oropharynx. You're going to see it in the velum, you're going to see it in the tongue's base. It's not like you're not going to see it. You're going to see it, but you don't understand that because the base that the head is on is a bigger issue than what you see. And so the more you have an understanding of how to put the head between two shoulders, with the functional work that you and your colleagues do, the more operative you're going to be. It will literally, it'll shock some of you on what you can do by managing airflow, not by managing an airway, but by managing the flow, because the flow will manage the airway. And to manage the flow you have to appreciate this, discuss this discussion we're having about acknowledging that our bodies are different on one side than the other. And if you understand the basic premise of that, a lot of the activities that we do in this institute can be done right there in the clinical. At a clinical level. And then if you do need to refer on to. If you do need to move on to other areas with people that understand the same concepts, like Manny or Louise, or you have a team that's saying, maybe this is a person that needs a splint. Maybe this person needs an optometrist. This one shoe that we used didn't work because the team is there, but they all have the same cognitive construction. You know what I mean? Everybody that walks in that room is a unique individual, and they have two tongues. I always get a little weary on this. When they say that I released your tongue, I got to tell you, you've got two. You've got a base on the right side and you got a base on the left side. And no matter how good that surgeon is releasing just perfectly the tissue right down the middle, trust me, that there's one tongue that's been released more than the other. So I'm just trying to help you all appreciate. That's how I see it. I think that's a perspective. That's an honest one. And it's. Just because it's not dealt with in our interdisciplinary mindedness in schools that we go to, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It does exist. So those are kind of things that I think people should, pardon pun, chew on a little bit. Just, just, just, just think about it. Just, just relay on it. There's one course I would invite you, you to consider as it. Because of your passion and the people that you worked with and the things you've shared with me in this afternoon's visit, I would hurry. I would encourage you to take that postural respiration course. And I really want you to take. And if you call the institute, I'm sure, I'm sure they'll give it to you because you're awesome. But I really want you to. I want you to listen to it. And if you. The more you can spread that more you can spread, spread that out there in terms of those issues, I think then that you'll be. This conversation we had this afternoon will make a lot more sense.

Yeah. No, and thank you for that. And we will definitely include that in the show notes. We will grab the link to that course. So anybody who's listening will Put link to the course in the show notes. They'll have access to your website as well. But we'll specifically link that you had mentioned a guide that you recently put out. So we'll look to see if we can find the link for that as well. Make sure that's in the show notes. Is there anything else that you would like to add or share with the listeners?

You know, the only thing is I just want to tell you this. Well, really I'm really. I've been around a while. I really appreciate the. I appreciate your passion, Haley. I appreciate you. I also appreciate people. It wasn't until recently in my life I even knew that people like you existed. You know, up until about maybe eight, seven, eight years ago, I didn't even know people like you existed. And that, that's being honest, I just did not even know that. And I wish I would have. I truly truthfully wish I would have. It's a big void. There's a void out there. And, and I know you got a lot of work to do along with your colleagues and getting that void understood. But I like I. And Jen said this. Well, she's not here today, but she said, well, she goes, ron, I think you should talk to this organization. They have a lot of the same thought processes we have. And I can see that listening to you. So I want to compliment you on that. I'm not saying we're always right, but I want to compliment you on that. And I, and I just want to stress the importance of really not. I don't want anybody. I told you when we started this, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. I'm not opposed to anybody using a knife for, you know, to reduce, relieve a frenulum, for that matter. I'm not opposed to anybody even using a knife when needs to be used or what thinks it needs to be used. What I really get concerned about is that there's that degree when you take a knife and cut, something's been cut and it has to be sewed back. Okay. If you're going to put it back together. I look at the intensity of that discussion and just as I would if somebody was to put somebody on a program where they strengthen the wrong muscle. I hope that made sense because I see people every day doing a lot more unsatisfactory, not disgusting, but disappointing activities to me by strengthening and stretching and doing things to systems that they fully don't appreciate. The universal need for that system to really not want that or need that but really need something. That's completely far removed from that site that you got your eyes on. So as we started this discussion today, the body language is the face. I mean, in the COVID times, when you put a face mask on, one half of that face is gone. And it really disrupts me personally when we see facial. When we see facial language and we start adapting or we start addressing what's really created, how that language is created, what's the body under it doing. We got to be mindful that if you touch one side of the body, which you can't, you know, there is no such thing as a clean midline of the body. But when you touch one side of the body, you know that there is another side that's going to feel the consequences more than the side that you just released. And if we all just had a little more respect for the other side. Do you follow me as we end this? The world would be a lot better place. And I mean that sincerely. Neck tension on the left side doesn't mean the right side has nothing to do with it. I want to make sure you all understand that. So that would be my last thing. I want to make sure everybody appreciates because we're hemispheric, lateralized creatures, and it starts with the diaphragm. So I want to thank you, Haley. You're wonderful. You're a lovely lady. Thank you for the opportunity you gave me and for sharing what my life is kind of all about and what we do in this institute. And please direct people to our website. We've got some people out here that love to help them out. And you're an organization that I think we. We really, really would appreciate getting to know and work with more.

Yes, I look forward to that. Thank you so much for your time and for, you know, sharing all of your wisdom with us. I know our listeners are gonna love this episode, so I can't wait to hear the feedback from them. I'd be glad to share it with you. And I look forward to working again, working together again in the future.

Well, I love your smile and I hope we meet in person someday, Haley.

Yes, absolutely.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to hear more, more of these Myo Tots Airway and feeding related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple podcasts or pledge a small amount on patreon.com forward/the untethered podcast. If you found value, others, you know in this space will too. So be sure to share this episode on your social media platforms and join us over on Facebook, on my Facebook page at Haliebulcan, Biz on Instagram @halliebulcan and you can head over to the Untouched Heatherpodcast.com to grab a copy of the Show Notes, where you can also subscribe to be kept up to date on the latest podcast episodes.