In 20...16? I made a choice that changed my life and my understanding of myself and how things worked.
I had a vision of helping people feel better and get amazing results.
I chased down two methodologies to see if they were going to be the next step for me.
One left me feeling "meh" despite spending thousands of dollars to try it.
The other one taught me that more was possible, and I ran with it for the next 4 or 5 years of training because I just knew that it was right.
This morning I was thinking about the greatest lesson I got from it, from Functional Range Conditioning, starting from the very first course I took.
Dr. Andreo Spina is yelling/mocking the group,
"Most of you are staring at your toes like you have NEVER seen them before!"
The first time Spina asked me (in the group) to lift my big toe separate from my little toes zero things happened.
And THEN he had Dewey Nielsen demonstrate that humans can articulate their spines one vertebrae at a time, on command, like a wave, while on all 4's.
My eyes got huge! WTF. People can do that?
For whatever reason it struck me more than watching people do flips and stuff and being like yeah yeah humans can do that. For me this was like the 4-minute mile, blowing open the door that if I wanted to I could connect to my body in such a way that I could move my fucking big toe and wave my spine like a snake.
Now I can do both of those things no problem.
The first WEEK of trying to move just my big toe every day it looked like nothing was happening. Zilch. And for some reason I kept trying. I learned different ways to provide inputs and send the signals. And the first time my big toe moved on its own I almost cried. It was quite shocking what a moving experience it was. 😏
Connecting with my spine took longer, often felt like getting high on drugs, and is still incredibly satisfying to do now that I can do it. Like wavy butter. Mmmf. That kind of connection to my central self just feels so good.
Now my favorite thing to tell people the first time they try to move their big toes and nothing happens is, "I promise that just the effort of trying is making progress."
The intention and effort is sending signals. The body is building the connection. If you just keep going eventually you get to the point where you can physically see it happening. Sometimes I dig into my bag of tricks to help you get there faster that I did, of course, but the point is that I know you will regain connection to your body.
There's a story from probably over a decade ago now about 13 people that were paralyzed from at least the waist down. They were brought into a virtual reality study to see if the scientists could improve exosuit potential to help them move around. Every day they were put into a VR system and their brain firing was tracked as they "walked" around in the video game. I want to say there were gold coins they collected or something too. After a really short amount of time some things happened the researchers didn't expect, part of a long line of humans underestimating what we can do. They regained a significant amount of actual function in their legs. (By significant I don't mean that they were walking, but that they had ANY signalling going through to incredibly atrophied networks of muscle, nerve, and tissue in their legs.) Some of the people in the study had been paralyzed for over ten years. Every single person regained some of their bowel and urinary function, improving their independence for life.
Neuroplasticity and the ability to connect to things we think are impossible for us.
1. Starts with believing it on our own or by seeing someone else show us that what we want is possible.
2. Begins with us trying for a long time while holding onto that belief with zero visible results.
3. Ends in miracles. Maybe for you that's a big toe moving or maybe it's something else.
I love to help people believe in things and hold them there while they do the work to make it real for them. It's incredible how much accounting with a coach can speed this along simply through the recaps every week and looking out for progress as it comes. Having that weekly meeting keeps you on track and trying and trying makes progress even when it doesn't seem like it at first.
I'm not the coach to hire for everything. God, that's for sure. But when it comes to helping you to connect to deeper parts of yourself in your physical or spiritual body in order to feel and be more capable and whole - those kinds of coaching are my jammy jams. Helping people re-connect to their big toes, their backs, and their imaginations is a method of coming home and claiming the power to move forward in you future.
Something less intense? Get 1-2 sessions of bodywork with me per month if you’re around Garner, NC or within 30 minutes of driving there.