Episode 72 - Are All Your Problems in Your Head, or Because of Your Head?

In this episode of Three Questions, I challenge the idea that movement problems are always about weak muscles or poor technique. Instead, we dive into how your brain builds a map of your head using information from your skin, jaw, tongue, eyes, neck, and inner ear.  And we also talk about what happens when those systems stop agreeing with each other…

In This Episode You'll Hear:

• Why sensory mismatches can make your brain choose protection over performance
• How simple changes in head awareness can improve movement quality and confidence
• Practical ways to improve proprioception so your brain can make better movement decisions

If you enjoy understanding the why behind movement instead of memorizing another list of exercises, this episode will leave you seeing your body, and your head, from an entirely different perspective.

Links & Resources For This Episode:
Episode 69 - Stress Is Undefeated, Your Body Doesn't Have to Be
Episode 45 - The Neck Pain Episode: Let’s Talk About What You Might Be Missing
Episode 26 - Vision Check: How Your Eyes Shape Movement, Strength, and Awareness
Episode 7 - What's The Deal With Your Tongue?
Find a Neuro Studio Teacher Near You
Connect with me on Instagram
Connect with me on Threads

Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Before we get into this week's episode, there's two things I wanna touch base about. Number one, throughout the episode, I am going to be describing exercises I want you to try. But let's be honest, listening to a podcast and following directions can be tricky. So if you're having trouble following me, just hang tight or go over to YouTube so you can see what I'm doing when I'm doing it.

And number two, if you're a movement professional and interested in some of the techniques I'm talking about and wanna learn more, well, I've got great news. Coming up in October, I'm gonna be teaching live my Advanced Neuro Techniques workshop for the Neuro Studio. I teach this course once a year. It's my favorite course to teach.

I update it yearly with research, and man, I'll be honest, we have a lot of fun. So enjoy today's episode. I want you to figure out where your head is in space, and if you have any questions, you know where to find me

Welcome to Three Questions, where critical thinking is king and my opinions and research are only here to support your learning and deeper understanding. Hey, I'm your host, Meghann, and I'm so honored you clicked on Three Questions today, so we can talk about if all our problems are in our head or potentially because of our head.

Now, that might seem like a vague title or like, "What?" Let's kind of dig into this a little bit. So what I want everybody to do right now, provided you're in a safe place to do this, touch the top of your head. Just feel the top of your head. Does it feel even from right to left? Maybe put both your hands up there.

Does the right side of your head feel different than the left side? Come down and touch your ears. Kind of put your hands around your ears. Touch your ears. Pull on your ears. Touch your cheekbones Touch your jaw. Now notice when you're touching your cheekbones and jaw, just right now, does your jaw seem the same distance away from your left cheekbone as it does from your right?

Now turn your head to the right. Did that distance change? Turn your head to the left. Did that distance change or stay, stay the same? Now take your two hands and maybe touch your right ear and, like, your right arm. So I'm, like, kinda making an L with my hands. Then take your left hand and touch your ear and your shoulder.

What do those feel like? Does one feel closer than the other? Does one ear feel further forward than the other? And I want you to right now just try to get weird. Can you get your head evenly on your shoulders? Move your head around, figure it out. And in that exploration, do you feel better or worse? Just answer that.

So sometimes when we know things about our body, we tend to micromanage them or think, "Ah, I know better than what my brain and body need right now." Maybe you noticed your right ear was closer to your shoulder than your left, so you go the other way, but now you've got this, like, stretch in the back of your neck, or maybe you feel so much better.

Or maybe your pelvis shifted in your seat. Maybe back pain came back. Maybe back pain went away. Now what I want everybody to do is bring your head forward, as far forward as you can, and as far back as you can, like a chicken head. Forward and back. Now take one of your hands and bring it on your chest.

Can you move your head a lot without your body moving? Okay, move your head around. Be curious. Now take your two hands kind of, like, to your, um, right on your belly button or, like, the thinnest part of your waist and just hold there, and now move your head. What do you notice there? So for me, my upper body didn't feel like it was moving, but when I've got my hands down here, when I move my head, oh, I'm feeling a lot of shifting at my hands.

Now, what I want you to do right now is, does any of this matter? Mm, I guess yes, and everything matters. But what I wanna really talk about today is our human inability or struggle of actually knowing where our head is in space. Now, we know where our head is in space because it's attached to the rest of our body.

Many times people don't realize they're moving their head in specific directions and how that's disconnecting or pulling the whole body with. Now, I really got a little obsessed with this, um, working with maybe higher level athletes. I noticed this also with my husband of how he always likes to wear a hoodie or something on his head, and I'm thinking, "Why is that?"

Now, he played football most of his life with a heavy helmet on his head. So when you have a heavy helmet on your head, you know where your head is in space. Now, I want you to think right now, do you hate things on your head? Do you love wearing a hat? Do you love headbands? Do you hate headbands? All these things matter because sometimes bringing attention to something can become distracting, disarming, disorienting to our brain, and sometimes bringing sensation or attention to something can really calm our brain and body down.

And this is what fascinates me about the human condition. We are all so different, and everybody is trying to just, "Hey, do this for that," without understanding the why of why that actually helped you. Because it's awesome when something really helps you, right? It's like, "Oh my God, Meghann had me use a weighted headband, and oh my God, all my exercises were better.

My headaches went away. My foot pain went away." So you tell your friend, your friend puts the weighted headband on, she feels like crap Now, this person's gonna think something's wrong with them, except for the fact they didn't understand why the weighted headband worked. So let's just talk about proprioception for a minute.

I'm gonna get a little technical. Stay with me here. Proprioception is our brain and body's ability to know where we are in space. How do we know where we are in space? Well, number one, through our skin, our largest sensory organ. So if you touch your skin right now, move it around, all those sensory receptors on our skin that deal with pressure, temperature, um, all...

There's a ten, uh, not ten million, there's a ton of them that gives us all different sensations. That's gonna give our brain feedback of where we are in space. So we've got this skin around all of our bones and our muscles, and what's so cool about our skin is it moves, it adjusts. But as you know, I mean, say you've gained weight or lost weight or were pregnant and not pregnant anymore, or you age, our skin does change, and over time it loses that elasticity.

It loses that, um, that ability to respond immediately when there's a threat or an excessive stretch. And also, maybe you've got a condition that makes your skin less responsive. Maybe you've got a connective tissue disorder. So like when I'm overstretching my arm, I'm gonna feel discomfort at my skin first.

And you're like, "Really?" Yeah. I have a lot of sensory issues with my skin. I'm very picky about what I wear. You might... If you're watching me on YouTube, these are my favorite pants to wear when I first put them on, but they get so stretched out so fast, you're probably gonna see me kind of adjust them throughout the session because they'll be annoying me.

Now, if your skin doesn't respond to stretch or temperature or stuff like that, your brain is not getting that signal. It's gonna get the signal other ways. What are other ways? Well, through our muscles, our tendons, our joints. Also, our fascial system, which kind of connects everything. So we're pretty much one big connective blob of stuff that moves us based off joints and previous experience and what our brain thinks is the most efficient.

So what's so cool is we, most of us, like everybody's gonna be a little different, like some people have extra joints, some people are missing joints, some people are missing limbs, some people have injuries, but our bodies are technically all designed to move the same. But based off how we choose to move and how our brain perceives our environment, we're all gonna have really different movement patterns.

So what I want you to think right back, now let's go back to our head. So how are we gonna really know where our head is in space? Well, right now everybody massage your scalp. Does that feel good or bad? And notice where the scalp is really moving or where it's not moving. Other ways, our neck. So when you move your neck around, we're gonna get tension at our muscles, our tendons, our joints of our neck.

We're gonna feel some fascial stretching. We're gonna feel some skin stretching. We might feel a hair pull. All of those are gonna help us know where our head is in space. Okay? So where is your head right now is very important. So however you're sitting, what I want you to do is notice where your crotch is.

Feel free to touch your own crotch. It is your crotch. Touch your pubic bone. Touch your butthole. Notice the space between them. Notice how you're sitting on the seat. From here, I want you to notice the pressure exactly. Now rock your pelvis back and forward a little bit. So notice how that pressure is changing.

Okay? Now kinda pick a spot. Now what I want you to do is tilt your head back and down. So like you're saying yes really big and slow. And I just want you to notice, is the pressure changing at your crotch? What if you really pay attention to your crotch and move your head almost kind of like around your crotch?

Not that will resonate for everybody, but basically keeping the pressure at your crotch still as you move your head. Now, does that make your body feel calm? Does that make your body feel agitated? Maybe bring your head forward, kinda circle it around, and kind of go big first so you can feel the pressure shifts at your pelvis, and now try to go slower with the head Keeping the pressure at your own crotch

And you might notice, man, I feel like my head's going to the left. Maybe yours is going to the right. And we assume that the going to the left or the right is bad, except after doing that, my whole pelvis settled down. I didn't realize my left hip was tight until I did that. Okay? So I want you to kind of think when you're feeling disconnected, when you're feeling like crap, I want the first thing you to do is where is your head in reference to your crotch?

So is it forward of your crotch? Is it behind? Is it left or right? And not try to fix it, but just establish where my crotch is, and then see if I can move my head without moving my crotch. Or maybe you hated that. Maybe put your hands on your head. Now try to move your crotch around. Do you feel your head moving?

I do. All right. Now try to keep your head still. And I love using peripheral vision. So I've got my hands on my head. I can see my elbows in front. So I'm gonna look at the computer here, and I'm gonna try to move my crotch without changing my head position in my hands or letting my elbows get closer or further away from what I'm looking at.

I'll repeat that. So I'm just kinda like circling my crotch around and I'm trying not to move my head and my hands, and I'm gonna close my eyes Or I can look at my elbows and try not to let my elbows move in relation to whatever I'm looking at. I think that was harder. So what did you do better? Were you better at stabilizing your hips and lumbar lower back and move your head?

I like that better. Or did you do better kind of stabilizing your, the, um, the sutures and cranial joints and your neck while moving your hips and your lumbar spine? Which felt better to you? And if neither, no drama. You'll get to, to question number two and feel better. So I just want you to think about that now and use a strategy.

So I haven't even gotten into question one yet. I just wanted you to kind of experience and understand how important our head is in relation to our body. Because question one is when you're working out or you're moving or you're walking, I want you to ask yourself, where is your head at the beginning of the movement versus where it is at the end?

Okay? So maybe pick an exercise. I'm going to pick one for you. I like to use a sit to stand. Okay? So a sit to stand is we just stand up and sit down. Now, I'm not gonna do this on screen because I will go out of the frame, and I'll probably hit my microphone and screw up the whole thing. But what I want everybody to do is notice where your head is right now.

Okay? Now, how do you know where your head is? You just guessing? Well, maybe you're looking at something in front of you, but I want you to touch your ears in relation to your shoulders. Okay? Maybe notice where it is in reference to another point of your body. Now, I just want you to stand up And then sit back down.

Did your head move throughout that range of motion? And I can guarantee almost nobody feels this, and what I do with a lot of my clients, I will actually record them to show them. So when we're looking straight ahead and we stand up, in order to keep our head up or to look at what we're looking at, we have to tilt our head back.

So what I want everybody to do right now, put your feet on the ground, look at something in front of you, and lean towards it. And then come back. Now take your two fingers, making an L, touching your chin and your sternum. Now just do the same thing again. Don't overthink it. Move towards the target naturally.

Now you'll notice if you didn't force it, your chin will probably come away from your sternum, your chest, in order to keep your visual-- whatever you're looking at in your visual field. Now, that's not wrong. But why this is important, my friends, is our brain knows where our head is in space, not just proprioceptively, which I've been talking about, not just visually with what we just used, but our vestibular system.

That's our inner eel-- inner ear that's made up of three semi-circular canals and other two joints and sensory receptors, that when we move our head around, the fluid in our ear and the movement gives our brain a signal of where our head is in space. So I work with a lot of people with neurological conditions or injuries, and they'll be like, "I can't get up out of a chair.

I'm just too weak." And every single time they get-- try to get out of the chair, they lean forward. So they're looking at a target and moving towards it. However, they always, always, always, literally always tilt their head back a little bit. Okay? I just want you to hear that. So this is what's called a sensory mismatch.

If your brain says visually, we're moving forward, proprioceptively, we're moving forward, but vestibularly, we're going backwards. Well, the vestibular system talks to a lot of parts of the brain, the cerebellum especially, directly. And if proprioception isn't great because you've had a stroke or an injury or who knows what, or the chair sucks, your brain is gonna prioritize vestibular.

So I ask you this: If you are-- have balance issues or afraid of falling, and your brain is telling you you're going backwards, do you think the brain is going to allow you to stand up? Think about that. If your head is tilting backwards, so right now I want everybody, sit wherever you are, tilt your head backwards, and now try to stand up.

I guarantee every single one of you, as you stood up, you brought your head forward. Okay? Now, maybe you're a trained gymnast or your brain can deal with vestibular challenges like that, fine, but you're the exception, not the rule. So our head position is critical, but here's where it gets dicey. Stay with me A lot of us are guessing where our head is proprioceptively based off what we're feeling.

What I'm telling you right now is your proprioception of your head might not be very accurate. Okay? Now, if our vestibular system is giving our brain a different signal, our brain is going to get very confused. Can you see how much processing the brain is going to need to be doing here? Now, I am not saying that neuro-based movement is gonna fix all your problems, but if you've got hypermobility or connective tissue disorder or neck pain or foot pain, right?

Your brain is already kind of struggling to manage all these things. Now, your brain has to get all this new information in trying to figure out where you are in space. Your brain is gonna pick safety first, so it's gonna inhibit and force you to move in different positions based off your head. Okay? So what I want you to do, let's go back to our sit to stand.

I'm gonna give you two different varieties to try, and if you work with people, try this with them. If you've got a parent who's having balance issues, try this with them. Okay? First, just ask them to sit up... Stand up and sit down. Now, what is really critical, guys, is sometimes you miss the head movement because it doesn't look like their head's moving big.

But what I want you to look at is the distance between their chin and their sternum and chest or the back of their head, their occiput, and kind of like C7. So see how my head's tilting back if you're watching me on YouTube? Now, if you're not watching me on YouTube, put your hand at your neck and tilt your head back.

Okay, so can you see how that distance is getting shorter? Now touch the front of your neck and bring your chin down towards your chest. See how that's getting shorter? Okay. So when you're watching them stand up, I want you to look and see if that distance is changing. Now, the first, which is kind of simple but doesn't always work, is having the person touch their chin and sternum, or you can wrap a towel around their neck.

So if you grab kind of a white fluffy towel and you bring it around their neck. What I love to do is I like to take a hair tie so it's almost like I've created a neck brace for my client. Now I'll ask them when they stand up to try not to squish the towel in the front or the back, or try to stand up without changing the distance between the fingers.

Now, the first time they do it, they're gonna overthink. The first rep is not what we're assessing. The first rep is to see if the brain senses the movement error. The second and the third rep is critical. So try this, try to go up and you'll be like, "Oh my God, that's weird. Now let me see if I can do it again."

So two things will happen. They'll stand up, and they'll be like, "Okay, that felt so much better." But people always say, "I feel like my head's very low." Now, think about it. If you normally tilt your head back when you stand up, and now I'm asking you not to do that, it's gonna feel like you're dropping your head, okay?

If you're used to the head up, and now I'm bringing you here, it's gonna feel low. So what I always do is I record them so they can see it, and clients always go, "That's so weird. That looks so much better, but it felt weird." I'm like, "Weird? Don't think weird is bad. Think weird is new." I don't wanna say weird is good, though.

There's a big difference. Weird is new. I don't know if that new is good or bad yet. Okay? Now, the other one is we can use kind of a vestibular-based cue. I kind of like this one. So what I'm gonna have you do is just sit with both feet on the ground and tilt your head back. Now, you have two options. You can think your head is filled with sand or filled with a martini, your choice.

But as we tilt the head back, I like sand 'cause I like feeling heaviness in my head. So I'm tilting the sand back to the back of my skull, which is kind of our occiput. So tilt that head back. Get all that sand in the back of your head. Feel that.

Good. Now stand up without the sand going to the back of your head. Try that. And peop- Good. Sit back down, tilt your head again, and then do it again. Sometimes I'll say to clients, "Okay, tilt the sand back and forward." Now, when you stand up, we should hinge forward. It's almost like I want the sand in the front of their forehead.

So as you stand up, find heaviness in the front of your head So I'm teaching their vestibular system that that's back, and we don't wanna do that when we stand up. So I'm giving the brain different information and allowing my client, family member, whoever's brain to be like, "Oh shit, that's different.

Cool. That was better." Now we did it once. Great. We have to then replicate that and continue, but we don't wanna just stand up. We want to use the same kind of cue so the client can replicate it. I might have them do another vestibular head tilt or none. I might not bring the vestibular head tilt or the fingers to the chest back until my client makes a mistake My job to help you really know where your head is in space is not by telling you your head's in the wrong place.

This is my biggest pet peeve with the movement industry. Teachers think they're geniuses because they can point out what's wrong with somebody. It's like the arrogance. "Okay, you stand in front of me. Let me point out everything that's wrong with your body." How do you think that feels? But here's the other part of it.

People come to us because they need help because they don't know what's going on with them. So they want to know. But we don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We don't have to tell people what's wrong. We can show their brain they're making a technical movement error that is making things worse.

So if I can create that shift and adjust to their head position, we can make things better. So let me just wrap question one up in a bow. Now, if you're thinking, "Well, Megh, what if I'm mobilizing my cervical spine? What if I'm moving my head through space?" It's gonna be at a different place at the beginning of the movement where it is at the end.

That's a different thing. I'm asking you to use this idea when we need the spine to reflexively stabilize or not move. So if we're trying to avoid neck movement or if we're trying to do a specific neck movement, make sure we're actually doing that neck movement. It's not wrong to tilt your head back when you stand up, guys.

We're designed to do that. But if your brain perceives it as a threat, we need to show their brain there's another way to do it. And the biggest i-- the biggest threats are caused because people don't realize they're tilting their head back. You can tell them they're tilting their head back. That is giving them an auditory cue.

They believe you, but they don't know how to change that. Okay? So try it with a sit to stand, try it with a pushup, try it with a bench press, try it with a leg press. Try it with exercises where there's no spinal movement just yet, so that you can introduce that slowly. Now, another way you can do it is kind of with rotation, which we're gonna look at in question two.

So before I go to question two, I want question one to get you curious. Where is my head when I started? Where is my head when I finished? Did I want it to move? Was it bad that it moved? Remember, there's not definitive answers. I want you to get curious. Got it? And the reason this is important, proprioceptively, if that's confusing what the vestibular system is actually doing, we're gonna have a sensory mismatch.

The brain and the body are gonna be very confused. We don't want confusion, we want clarity. So question two, how can you better know proprioceptively where your head is during movement? Okay, so we talked about where is your head at the beginning of the movement and where it is at the end. But how can we better know proprioceptively where our head is during movement?

And this I think is a lot harder, guys. So say you're lying on your back and you're rolling up, or you're standing and you're rolling down, or we're laterally flexing to the side. Well, we want to move our spine. We wanna move our head. How much? Did we do too much? Did we shear? Did we rotate? Did we laterally flex?

This can all be confusing, and touching it isn't always helpful because sometimes we need to use our hands. So what I wanna introduce to you here, and we've looked at this in different episodes, is how our tongue and jaw can be helpful to know where our head is in space. Okay? So right now, move your tongue inside your mouth Move it around.

Feel all your teeth

Anything interesting there? I'm always as-- Like I'm, I know I have a small jaw, and I always joke, uh, Mariska, my business partner at The Nervous Studio, we have like a rule when we take pictures, I always have to be in front of her because I have a really tiny head. You might not, you might not be able to tell, or maybe you're like, "Uh, yeah, it's obvious."

And she doesn't have a large head, but we did this photo shoot once where she was slightly in front of me because she's a smaller person. She's very, very slim, so she was kind of in front of me, and she was like, "I hate these pictures." I'm like, "Why? I look great." She's like, "Yep." Her head looked so big. I didn't realize it, probably 'cause I was looking at myself, but so now we have switched it.

So when I clean my teeth, I'm like, "Oh my God, I have such a small jaw." What do you notice? Do you notice the left teeth feel different than the right? Now, what if you take your tongue, suction it to the roof of your mouth How does that feel? Does it feel natural? Is your whole tongue up there? Is your tongue touching your teeth?

Is it butting up to your teeth? Now I want everybody to swallow normal. Did your head and body move like mine did? Now, after you swallow, where is your tongue right now? Don't do anything, just swallow

Okay. The tip of my tongue is at the roof of the mouth. The rest of my tongue is not Okay? So that's actually my resting tongue position right now based off how I'm sitting and what I'm doing. So our tongue is really helpful for a few reasons. Now, our tongue, it gives us signals about taste. It helps us with talking, chewing.

And did you know digestion starts in your mouth? So if you're like a smoothie person, like chewing is very important. Moving your tongue around your mouth, that's kind of where carbohydrate breakdown starts, in your mouth. So I have like a terrible stomach, many of you know this, and like smoothies, ugh, kill my stomach.

And it was so interesting 'cause a naturopath was like, "Yeah, all of a sudden you're taking this cold liquid, it goes right down your throat. Your stomach's like, 'Whoop. What's that?'" It's like my stomach is surprised that there's stuff down there because it didn't, didn't get that prep. So I had a doctor once say, "Oh, there's a very easy fix to that.

Just chew your smoothie." And I was like, "Huh? Chew my smoothie?" And I'm like, "Well, that's stupid." And it actually like annoyed me. I didn't like that sensation. I'm like, or I can just eat normal food and not drink a smoothie. That was the easy solution. Or chew something. Like sometimes I'll have like a little piece of mango, um, dried mango 'cause it's chewy, before I have a smoothie to kind of prep my body for the digestion that's gonna be about to come.

Also, our cranial nerves. So we have 12 cranial nerves. A lot of you guys know about the vagus nerve, but there's a lot of other cranial nerves that help with facial expression, movement, talking, elevating our shoulders, and all those cranial nerves activate the different parts of our face, okay? This is also why anything you're putting in your face is important to think about it.

It's going to affect the sensation of our skin, and our skin on the front of our face is giving us a lot of proprioception of where we are in space, right? And as we age, we all know this changes. Now, think about where our skin gets the crepiest and the saggiest, okay? It's often like our neck, our hands.

There are certain areas. Now, again, a lot of people do things for their neck, and again, my comments come from zero judgment. I'm 44, so it's very easy for-- to s- say what I, you know, "Oh, I should never do that," but like maybe when I'm 65 or 80, I might have a different opinion. But what I always go back to is how are these things going to affect my brain's and body ability to move and be who I am?

I actually just saw, I think she's so funny, her name is Hannah Berner, um, and they have a podcast called Giggly Squad, her and Paige. I love Bravo TV. They were on the show Summer House, and she got, um, a filler or something in her, uh, masseter for TMJ, and it was kind of hysterical 'cause she can't smile now and her like mouth just opened.

And she was being very funny about it, and she's like, "I can't believe the thing I put in my face for it to look better is now gonna destroy my face." And sh- again, she will recover from that, but it's just so interesting how much facial expression is important. And again, that's going to affect the ability for her to move her neck, her lumbar spine.

So Hannah, if you're listening to this, make sure you do some of these pelvic and head movement and foot exercises to make sure while your face is really stiff, your body doesn't have to adjust to that. Okay? Now, moving on. With our tongue, what I want everybody to do right now is push your tongue into your left cheek and turn your head to the left.

Now, keep your tongue in your left cheek and turn your head to the right. Now, notice what you're looking at right now. Remember that spot, come back to center. Tongue to the left cheek, turn to the left. Tongue to the center of your mouth, turn back to the right. Were you able to move past your original target?

Just notice. Come back to center. Tongue to the left cheek, move to the left. Now tongue to the right cheek and move to the right Which gave you the better range of motion? Now, leave your tongue alone. Take your hand, kind of make an L, and I want you to touch your right cheekbone and your right jaw. Okay?

Now just turn your head to the left. Now notice, did they shift? So for me, this is a thing post my concussion because my jaw was kind of really shifted to the right. So when I'm-- my head is turned to the left, my jaw shifts a little to the right, nothing major, but I'm gonna stay here. Now notice the distance between your jaw and your cheekbone, and try to maintain that distance as you come back to center and then go to the right

And come back to center. I'm gonna have you do that again, but I'm gonna have you do it on the other side. So turn your head to the right as far as you can comfortably. Don't worry if the rest of your body shifts. Now touch your jaw and your cheekbone. Excuse me. Now come back to center without that distance changing

And turn to the left And back to center. Now let's put this all together. So what I want you to do, swallow, get your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Keep it there. Decide which side of your jaw you wanna touch. I'm gonna touch my right. Now can you tell the distance between your tongue and your fingers?

So we're kinda triangulating our tongue and our fingers. Okay? Now I just want you to turn your head to the left and the right, and notice if you feel any nuance or shift there

Now notice if you can make adjustments as you go. And if you get to your end range and you feel sticky, try to adjust, kind of swallow again, get that tongue up there

Let's see if you can move further. Now, I know this is kind of like, "Seriously, Meg?" Yes, seriously. Our jaw, if it cannot stabilize reflexively, meaning if it's moving all over the place, it's gonna affect the movement of your neck. So everybody's neck gets stiff or their neck gets tight, and they blame the neck except for the fact that your jaw is doing weird shit.

But here's the problem. I guarantee nobody was moving their jaw a ton. It was very subtle. So now for me, I can feel that subtlety in my jaw. Why? Because it's very critical to me. So if you're watching me on YouTube or if you're listening to me, I'm gonna describe to you what's happening. So when I turn my jaw to the right...

I mean my head to the right, my tongue, everything gets crammed into this w- right upper quadrant here. Like, I feel like my tongue is almost touching my fingers. Obviously, it's not, and I can't move my head any further than it is right now. But I'm gonna swallow again, set my tongue, almost try to create space between all those points I'm touching, and then try to turn my head more

And my head will then keep going. So again, my neck wasn't the problem. My brain was getting a red light at my jaw. My jaw was at its end range of motion, so the brain's like, "We're not going any further." Now, you might have been the other way. Maybe your jaw was locked, and it was stiff, and your tongue was moving all over the place.

Everybody's going to have a different response. Do not think this is magic just because it worked for me. Why did it work for me? I've had a few major concussions where the major one, there was compression to the back side of my skull Okay? Now, because of that, I have a little bit of lack of mobility there.

Also, I talk a lot, so my jaw is always moving all over the damn place. Okay? That seems efficient to my brain. So if my jaw is moving more than necessary, my neck won't have to. Okay? You might be the opposite. Your jaw might be able not to be not-- might not be able to move at all. Easy for me to say. Your neck might be over-mobilizing.

If you go back to the previous episode, I talked about stress. We looked at kind of the tongue and its effect on the neck. So I'm not gonna beat a dead horse here. If you're interested more about the tongue, there are other episodes about that, let me know. Um, maybe Joe, in the notes. Um, uh, two weeks ago, we did an episode of stress.

I feel like there was another episode I talked about the tongue. I talk about the tongue a lot. Um, and we can link them into the notes so you can kinda get a little bit more on that. Okay? So keep in mind, when you're moving your head through movement, decide what's moving and decide what shouldn't be moving.

So notice I'm not touching my jaw and my clavicle because I want my neck to move. Now, people get confused like, "How much should it move? Should it move..." Don't overthink shit. Touch the things where the joint angle shouldn't be changing or is isometrically contracting, which means it doesn't change joint angles.

Touch there. Touch the things that shouldn't be shifting while your head is moving. It is going to give your brain feedback of where that head is in space and where the different parts of the head are in its-- in space. Okay? Our eyes are gonna kinda give our brain feedback of where kinda from our nose up is.

Our jaw and cheekbones are gonna give the bottom part of our face. So although the top part of our head is a little bit more stable, there's less joints that move, there's still stuff going on that we're gonna talk about in question three. But this bottom part of the head, the jaw, the tongue, the neck, ugh, there's a lot going on that we need to know about.

And if you have TMJ, if you get headaches and stuff like this, we need to look at it. But here's the caveat with that. This is not gonna fix the TMJ. Oftentimes, we clench our jaw, we clench our teeth because that's what we're using to stabilize. So here's what I want you to finish question two with. If you're like, "Okay, I've got a big problem here," well, number one, reach out.

I got your back. We'll talk through it. But often there is not a quick s- fix to a big problem. Like think about in the history of life, has there any-- ever been like a quick fix that like worked long term? And trust me, I love a quick fix. I mean, who doesn't? But it never really works. We've gotta do the work it takes to change the movement pattern, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I know. I hate the sound of my voice too, but it's the truth I could sell you a quick fix. I could make a lot more money selling you on quick fixes. I could sell you a workshop on fixing TMJ, except it'll work for like half the people and not the other people, and I'd rather not do that. So instead, think about how you can support your jaw.

Can you get other big parts of your body, like your shoulders... Your glenohumeral, this ball and socket, is the most mobile joint in the body and the most in- unstable. So what if you were able to get better control of that shoulder joint? And a lot of times people move their spine when they think they're moving their shoulders, and they move their shoulders when they think they're moving their spine, vice versa.

So if you clear that up, there'll be more support in your body that your jaw won't have to do that much. So again, there's all this stuff we have to do. It is actually not that complicated, but the secret is somebody who ne- knows how to assess your whole body needs to assess it. I have a rule. I don't guess, we assess.

When students ask me a question, I'll be like, "I'm not gonna lead you down a rabbit hole." Well, it could be this, this, this, this, this, this, this, or this. How about we look at the client, actually assess them, look at our assessments, what are our goals, and then decide the, um, how we're going to address it. And if we make the wrong assessment, use that as the assessment to tell us what to do next.

So there's never really any right or wrong answers, but that's why this shit is fun, keeps it interesting. Which brings me to question three. We talked about the bottom part of our head, our jaw. Now let's talk about the top. Are your eyes pulling your head in places you don't want to go? Okay? So here's what I want everybody to do.

Put your hand on your chest and have your feet flat on the floor. All right, here's where the pants are starting to annoy me. Now, just look your eyes to the left. Hold it there. Now touch your chin or your left cheekbone. Okay? Now bring your eyes back to the right. Look your eyes to the right. Bring your eyes back to center.

Look your eyes down and to the left, up to the left, over to the right, down to the right. Did you notice anything under your hands? Now, two things could have happened. "No, I didn't move at all." Yes, because you were giving your brain proprioceptive feedback of where your head was in relation to your body.

So as soon as you went to move your eyes, if your brain felt movement, it would adjust to what it sensed. That might indicate that your cerebellum is getting great quality sensory input through what you just touched, and that's great. Or you might've been like, "Holy shit, my cheek's moving a little bit when I move my eyes around," or, "My sternum's moving."

Okay? Now touch kind of like your low belly or your belly button. Now just hold down there and look your eyes to the left and right. Left, right, up to the left, down to the right, up to the right, down to the left. Did you notice anything there? Now, I didn't call your attention to it, but for me, when I was looking my eyes around, I could feel my right foot shifting on the ground.

But what's cool about that is my brain couldn't adjust to that It just kept doing it. But if I put my left foot on my right foot and touch my belly, now I'm gonna look left and right Now my foot's not moving 'cause I gave my brain extra feedback, but the difference is my eyes are moving way less than they did before.

But what's so cool is I feel like my left ear just popped. Now you're like, "What?" Again, I get a lot of aural fil- fullness and tension in my left ear. It causes problems in my marriage because I can't hear very well. And it's not that I can't hear well, I can't process, um, if there's too much noise at once.

So I'll give you an example. This just happened two days ago. Brian always likes a fan on, and I hate repetitive noise like that, like uhhh. I hate spa music. It makes me wanna punch somebody. It's like that melody that keeps repeating. So the TV was on, his fan was on, he was in the kitchen, and he was talking to me from the kitchen.

Now, we have an open kind of floor plan, but, like, I could hear him, but, like, I couldn't really, like, fully process the words he was saying. I was like, "What? Brian, I can't hear you." And he got, like, so mad at me, and I was like, "Bro, I cannot hear you. If you want to speak to me, come in here. You've got your fan on, you've got the TV on.

I can't... My brain can't prioritize all the sound." Okay? Now, again, if I turned off the TV or the fan, I would be able to hear him better What happened when I just did that, why I'm explaining this to you, is when I move my eyes, my body tends to shift in the direction my eyes go. And that shift is not bad, but because I'm shifting when I move my eyes, my neck, jaw kind of over-stabilizes and grips there.

So when I had my left foot on my right foot and I moved my eyes around, my left side of my jaw and neck didn't have to grip to hold me still. I was still, and it feels like this quiet calm in my body. And I'm like, "Oh, my God, that feels so much better." This is also why you'll see me when I'm lecturing, I often wear shoes, okay?

I wear shoes because I need to know where my feet are in space at all times, not just from the bottom of the feet, but where my entire foot is at all times. Okay? Now, you're probably thinking, "Meghann, you are going off on tangents." Hello, have you not listened to my podcast before? These tangents are important because if our eyes are pulling our head or our body in places it doesn't want to go, the body's going to have to respond.

So here's what I want you to think about. In your workouts, I feel like this is the best place to do this, guys, because our body's active. Like, sitting in a chair and just moving your eyes around to me ain't that interesting to the brain, and I'm telling you, your body is going to be shifting somewhere, and you probably have no awareness to it.

Okay? Do this in, like, a plank. I love doing this in a Pilates class. So you know when you kinda do rollbacks or you're feeling your abs working? You're lying on your back, you're rolling up. Get to the place where you feel your abs working. But now here's the thing. You need to touch something. So get with me.

Maybe get on the ground right now, or I'm gonna talk you through it. You're lying on your back. Your legs are straight. Your arms are reaching out. I want you to roll up until that sweet spot where you can kinda feel your body going to go, "Oh, shit." From there, I want you to take both of your hands or one of your hands down to your belly, and I want you to try to touch your pelvis and one of your ribs or your low belly and your sternum.

So you need to touch a part past your belly button on your pelvis and your rib cage. Okay? Just notice how far apart they are, and don't you pull your abs in. Just hold it. You feel it? Okay, roll back down. Now, you're gonna roll up again to that spot. You're gonna bring your hand to that spot again. Hold it.

Your goal is to not change the distance or pressure between your fingers. And now look your eyes up and down. Now, if you notice your body or fingers are moving, focus on that, make your eyes smaller up and down. Maybe do left and right. Okay? Do a few of those, and then roll back down. Now, if you're like, "Damn, I really felt my abs working more there," good, because in that flexed position, your spine was then stabilizing that position.

So you're getting an ab workout, you're stabilizing your spine, and we found a moment to isolate the eyes. Now, if you're like, "Ah, I, I didn't... actually didn't feel my abs at all there, Meg," well, that's telling me, number one, we- you were doing what I call a fascial fold. So think of, like, the six-pack muscles.

You know that little white line between? A lot of times we just over-flex at certain vertebral segments, so you actually don't need to use your abs to roll up at all. We can-- Because the, uh, the whole body's connected, you can reach your arms really long, and because we're fascially connected, eventually because of physics and the lever load of your arms, you'll end up rolling up.

Okay? So what I'm gonna say to you now, come up from a seated position. My people who felt their abs, you do it from the ground up. Other people, I want you to sit up, and I want you to think, rather than tucking your pelvis to roll back, I want you to bring your head straight back. Find a visual target. Move your head back away from that target as much as you can.

Keep going until your body starts rolling backwards. Once it does, stop where you feel your abs. Okay? Then instead of touching your rib and pelvis, you're gonna touch your head and sternum. Now, come back up to your seated position, like full up. So you're either starting from the ground up or seated.

You're either initiating with your head rolling up or pulling your head backwards in space. So think about the sand. Bring that sand to the back of our occiput. Keep bringing it back until you roll back. Now, some of you are gonna need to touch your chin and sternum to help give proprioceptive feedback for your neck.

Some are gonna have to give for your lower back, because when we move our eyes around, it can move our lumbar spine or our cervical. So try them both. Now get in that position where your abs are working again. Bring a hand to your head and a hand... or a hand to your belly, or both, one and one. Now try to isolate your eyes like a clock.

We're gonna look to one o'clock, seven o'clock, four o'clock, three o'clock, seven, eleven, noon, six, one, sit up. How did that feel? Okay? Now, you could also do this kind of in a plank position. Get in a plank. The problem with the plank is you're gonna be too close to the ground, and most people's eyes can't converge.

So I prefer you to do this in a pushup position. Now, last thing I'm gonna teach you today, 'cause we're at the e-end of our episode. When you're in your pushup position, stick your tongue out. If you can see your tongue, I want you to see it in your peripheral vision. Don't look down at your tongue. Just look between your hands, and if you can see your tongue in your peripheral vision, just notice.

If you can't, gently bite your tongue. Now, don't change the distance between your tongue and your hands, and move your eyes around like a clock. Make sure your teeth aren't scratching your tongue if you're biting it, and if your tongue is out, don't let your tongue move closer or further from one of your hands, and just keep moving your eyes around.

Please take notice if there's any shifts to your feet. If there are, adjust, and then rest. Now, get back into your seated position, how we were before. Put a hand on your belly or touch your head and your sternum, and just look your eyes around. I've gotta keep my left foot on my right foot, and we're just gonna look our eyes around without moving our head.

And I want you to just notice how far things are away from you. Okay, that's five inches. That one's six, four, three. Bring a finger close to your nose. How close is that? Now touch your nose or touch your chin, and now I want you to look your eyes around and notice that your eyes are moving away or closer to your chin based off what you're looking at

And if your chin is moving, well, we know we've gotta give your brain better feedback. So all your problems might feel like they're in your head because you know what? Your brain kind of controls everything, and your brain is constantly getting information from your body. So all the sensory input, temperature, pressure, joint movement, fascial movement, skin stretch, all that information is being sent up to our brain, and our brain is sending information down to know what to do with that information.

So all our problems are technically in our head, but not because we're making them up. But we now know that our head position, where it is in relation to the rest of our body matters. Because if we're moving our head and not know we're moving our head, our body could be protecting us from where it thinks we're moving.

We've learned today that a lot of people tilt their head back when they stand up, and they have no idea. A lot of people when they walk bring their head backwards. And a lot of people when they walk bring their head backwards because convergence is an issue. That's when our eyes-- like if you bring your thumb out and bring it to your nose, when we walk towards something, our eyes have to converge on that item, and if we can't, our head's gonna go back.

So if your client's having trouble walking and they're doing weird things with their head, stop cueing their feet. Adjust their head position. We need to address proprioceptive issues with the head and make sure they are sensory matching with the visual and vestibular. We also know that we need better feedback of where our head, when it's moving through space, because a lot of times I'll see clients do a roll down in Pilates, standing and they roll down.

I watch Pilates teachers do hundreds and teasers, and they'll do, um, you know, on the Pilates chair, have you ever seen where they pike their hips up? Literally nine and a half out of ten of them are in cervical extension when they're doing that. So if you're at your end range cervical extension, you're not going to be able to move your hips and spine anymore.

But when people bring their head into flexion, it feels like it's really far forward and they're gonna fall, so it gets scary. That's because their brain doesn't know where their head is in space. So rather than cueing them abs more, we have to address the head position. And last but not least, our eyes could be pulling our head in places it doesn't want to go or needs to go So I hope by the end of this episode, you might be like, "Okay, she just threw a lot of information at me.

I need to listen to that again." Cool. So I try to keep these episodes short. Recognize it's not one thing. The thing that resonated with you the most in this episode, I just would like you to try to do that every day after you brush your teeth. Okay? Focus on your head in a movement where the head isn't moving.

Focus on your jaw and tongue when you're moving your head through space. And then, number three, once you've moved your head and spine through space, maybe hold it in a specific position where your brain is challenged in paying attention, and work to open up your visual field. Working on these skills will help your senses match, help you know better where your head is in space, and when our head is on top of our body, everything functions better.

So remember, if you are having problems in your body, you are. Don't let anybody tell you you're fine or you're doing something that's working for you that isn't. I find my clients that have the real ahas are the ones that get curious. Don't take no for an a- They're-- Don't take no for an answer, and I need you to understand that you are the expert at your own body.

The problem is, sometimes you're believing your proprioception when you should be focusing on the other senses that are more reliable. That doesn't mean you're a bad mover. That doesn't mean you don't know what you feel. But if you're getting signals from your skin, your muscles, your tendons, or your joints too late, the brain doesn't have the ability to respond as fast.

We don't have to change things, but we do need to maximize the ability to know where our head is at all times. Thanks, guys, and I'll see you on the next episode