Timestamp Speaker Transcript
00:00:00.00 Taylor Kruse yeah
00:00:01.56 Tony Fowler And we're rolling.
00:00:04.09 Taylor Kruse Hey welcome back to the Cruise Elite Podcast. What's up Tony?
00:00:07.58 Tony Fowler Good morning Taylor. Happy Friday to you.
00:00:11.06 Taylor Kruse Yeah happy Friday. i always like actually doing recording with you on Fridays because I don't have a lot planned on Friday other than this so everything's kind of built around this and then when we're done it feels like I accomplished something and then it's into the weekend.
00:00:17.14 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:00:25.24 Tony Fowler Yeah I think you did. i think you did.
00:00:27.22 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:00:28.28 Tony Fowler um Yeah I think ah it's interesting because I think for for you perhaps and let me know if this is wrong once you're done recording the work is kind of done on the episode for you.
00:00:42.78 Taylor Kruse Yeah thank goodness speak because of you.
00:00:44.18 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah.
00:00:46.26 Taylor Kruse Thank goodness because yeah no people don't people don't realize the type of like work and editing that goes into something like this. If I had to do it it wouldn't get done. You know?
00:00:58.36 Tony Fowler It takes a lot. And I mean you guys produce so much ah content on social media and on YouTube and whatnot.
00:00:59.45 Taylor Kruse It does. Right. Right.
00:01:05.40 Tony Fowler And I was just thinking by myself like man that that's just a massive amount of time. I can tell like for a short a short video where you're showing off like a visual drill or something.
00:01:16.86 Taylor Kruse Yeah it's the back-end stuff.
00:01:17.66 Tony Fowler Like the cuts and the and making sure you got a good a good shot.
00:01:19.54 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:01:21.72 Tony Fowler And yeah.
00:01:23.35 Taylor Kruse Yeah it's it's forced me to become pretty good at one take.
00:01:29.43 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:01:29.56 Taylor Kruse you know like Early on when I first started creating content oh my gosh it was a disaster.
00:01:35.31 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:01:35.58 Taylor Kruse I mean you care about all the things that don't matter.
00:01:39.53 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:01:40.06 Taylor Kruse You know and and it's like it's very hard to learn how to get for most people. It's very hard to learn how to get in front of a camera. And then I always had a hang up for a long time.
00:01:51.15 Taylor Kruse It's like OK who am I speaking to? Because I could get in a room with you know 10 20 people and run a class.
00:01:53.58 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:01:58.20 Taylor Kruse You know whatever teach exercise educate and and be comfortable. but Then when I switched over to content creation man it was bizarre. i was like didn't have the same feeling and it was hard and I cared about all the things that didn't matter.
00:02:12.69 Taylor Kruse But you know over the years you you start to figure out you know what does matter and what doesn't. And you get better at it. you You get better at it. And then I've sort of just kind of developed the skill of of being kind of a one-take guy most of the time.
00:02:29.06 Taylor Kruse So luckily as far as like editing goes it it never gets too too bad because a couple jump cuts here and there take something out.
00:02:31.83 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:02:38.87 Taylor Kruse um Yeah but that's the that's the secret for for my content creation is because You know we don't outsource any of that. You know you're the only person on our team you know other than Alicia and I.
00:02:48.66 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:02:51.22 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:02:52.61 Taylor Kruse So yeah it's got to be a one take.
00:02:56.31 Tony Fowler Yeah no i've I've been there where you just have piles of footage and you're trying to condense it down to something small and it's just like way more overwhelming than the length of the the piece would seem to indicate.
00:03:02.14 Taylor Kruse Oh yeah totally. it's it
00:03:06.26 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah. And I'm not... Yeah I don't have that skill set. I mean I i could piece something together but what would happen is it just it just wouldn't it wouldn't flow the way that I ultimately would want it to and it's just almost better for me to do like one take and then...
00:03:23.26 Taylor Kruse Go with it you know? um Yeah so it's the backend stuff can be tough even even just one take. I mean you know getting getting the files and all the backend stuff with the editing and publishing and man there's it's a whole boy does it take a lot of time.
00:03:38.33 Tony Fowler Yeah that's a whole world.
00:03:42.31 Taylor Kruse People just think like me when when Alicia and I started transitioning our business to being online I was like yeah I'm just gonna set up the camera and do what I do.
00:03:53.62 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:03:54.04 Taylor Kruse And I didn't realize oh gosh this was a career change.
00:03:54.50 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:03:58.90 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:03:59.05 Taylor Kruse That's what it was. It was 100% career change.
00:03:59.86 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:04:03.58 Taylor Kruse And that was yeah that was not clear to me at the beginning and a difficult process to ah you know work through.
00:04:17.32 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:04:17.66 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:04:19.19 Tony Fowler Yeah. But no I mean I've i've seen it even in in the short time we've been working together. I've seen the the quality increase of like the reels and the stuff and it's just looking sharp.
00:04:27.64 Taylor Kruse Cool thank you.
00:04:30.04 Tony Fowler And yeah I think it's awesome man.
00:04:30.55 Taylor Kruse Nice. Yeah we're were we're definitely like sort of we're greasing the groove now is how i you know how I sort of feel and think about it.
00:04:32.97 Tony Fowler Mm
00:04:37.19 Tony Fowler hmm.
00:04:39.44 Taylor Kruse Whereas before you know several years back we were still sort of like what should we be doing and doing a lot of experimentation? And you have to go through that process. But as soon as you get grounded enough and clear enough of what your offerings are and what you're doing and who your target audience you just grease the groove and you just keep going.
00:05:00.98 Tony Fowler um You said ah you know you're focusing on all the wrong things.
00:05:06.20 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:05:06.55 Tony Fowler Do you have any examples of what what that might be?
00:05:08.98 Taylor Kruse ah but yeah As far as getting but in front of the camera?
00:05:11.80 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:05:12.12 Taylor Kruse Oh yeah so like so some of them are production quality.
00:05:16.98 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:05:17.30 Taylor Kruse right? Because when you're so in order to be in this kind of ah online business and I struggle to even call myself a content creator because even that's not what I am.
00:05:27.77 Taylor Kruse i am just an educator and a coach. I just happen to record it. And the quality is not amazing. And it never will be as as long as I'm in charge of it.
00:05:38.35 Taylor Kruse It'll just be good enough right? And when you first start doing this you care about all the things that don't matter like what you're wearing how you look how you sound.
00:05:52.88 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:05:53.17 Taylor Kruse you're You're really concerned about how like people are going to perceive you and it distracts you from doing what you do best. Right. And so when you're distracted like that it it challenges your delivery in the content.
00:06:09.24 Taylor Kruse It makes you ah make mistakes that you probably shouldn't have made. it It makes you second guess something you said and then want to redo it. And then before you know it you're filming over and over and over again. And then.
00:06:22.20 Taylor Kruse the repetition starts getting you out of flow state you know and it can become a frustrating process.
00:06:26.45 Tony Fowler Right right.
00:06:29.59 Taylor Kruse I mean I remember getting hung up on things like I don't have a good enough camera. you know um you know The lighting's not good enough. you know i said something that wasn't perfect. I stuttered. I stuttered. We have to reshoot.
00:06:45.28 Taylor Kruse know those Those types of things just absolutely crush your your creation of you know your your content. And it just takes a while to get through that part that piece.
00:06:59.25 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:06:59.77 Taylor Kruse And once you do and you stop caring about those things and you start realizing that your your target audience who actually cares what you have to offer and say they don't actually care about the production quality like you think they do.
00:07:15.45 Taylor Kruse They just don't. right It's more about being authentic showing you them you're a real person. If you make a mistake it's okay. the The quality of the production doesn't have to be like you know studio you know team doing it.
00:07:32.34 Taylor Kruse it's and you just You just learn all that little by little.
00:07:35.29 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:39.50 Tony Fowler That's really ah really sage wisdom. and I have a feeling some of the people like in your courses might be trying to do something similar. You know they might be coaches or they might be educators and they might be trying to get online.
00:07:53.13 Tony Fowler So hopefully hopefully someone can take that to heart that's getting started and they can just get going you know.
00:07:54.04 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah I mean it's it's for sure.
00:07:59.70 Taylor Kruse Yeah I hope so. Exactly just get going and do it.
00:08:05.37 Tony Fowler Well today we've got another Q&A our second Q&A episode.
00:08:10.30 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:08:10.52 Tony Fowler um I'm curious did you get ah much feedback from the first one? I think it might have just dropped.
00:08:17.30 Taylor Kruse It just dropped. Yeah i don't think I don't think I've had an opportunity to get much much feedback yet.
00:08:23.35 Tony Fowler Cool. Well if you are...
00:08:23.67 Taylor Kruse But yeah but I'm looking forward to see seeing how people are are enjoying it.
00:08:30.26 Tony Fowler Yeah well if you're if you're listening at home and ah you have any feedback for us by all means reach out to Taylor and let him know what you're thinking.
00:08:36.54 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:08:38.97 Tony Fowler um So yeah I'm just going to grab ah question and we'll get started.
00:08:43.12 Taylor Kruse Let's do it.
00:08:49.81 Tony Fowler This is from Linz Jenkin.
00:08:53.00 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:08:54.29 Tony Fowler How do the vestibular and visual systems get out of whack in the first instance?
00:09:00.57 Taylor Kruse Right. Yeah this is I remember this question actually or this this person had put this in one of my other question it was maybe in a comment and I said hey you hold on to that one and we'll
00:09:14.42 Tony Fowler Yeah nice.
00:09:14.95 Taylor Kruse We'll get that one into the podcast so I'm glad that one that one made it through. So how do vision and vestibular deficits happen is basically right? Like how do they how do they manifest?
00:09:24.98 Tony Fowler Yeah yeah.
00:09:26.46 Taylor Kruse So so there's there's probably there's lots of layers to this. um You know you you can be born with vision and vestibular deficits right?
00:09:39.22 Taylor Kruse You know it's it's ah it's a possibility for sure. um and And there's probably so many factors to that that I really can't even speak on.
00:09:52.54 Taylor Kruse You know I just don't I don't know them all. But But know that it's possible right? And it doesn't mean you can't work with those systems just if you're born with an issue. Born with a vision issue doesn't mean you can't work with it. Born with a vestibular issue doesn't mean you can't work with it and train it.
00:10:09.51 Taylor Kruse That's for sure. But for the general population you know individuals who develop this kind of an issue there is definitely lots of factors to this. So one of the more common ones is head trauma.
00:10:27.06 Taylor Kruse So if you if you have a concussion you know or like a whiplash injury you can basically your your vision and vestibular systems are affected by that through...
00:10:40.73 Taylor Kruse you know the injury and then sort of the aftermath of the injury and how you become highly sensitive to different forms of stimuli. So after people have had a concussion you know they'll report being sensitive to visual input sensitive to vestibular input sensitive to sound
00:11:00.38 Taylor Kruse And all of that really raises your your are sympathetic levels right? As you're getting through that part and you know your your brain and your body compensates like it does and is as well as it can.
00:11:15.22 Taylor Kruse And your it's like your calibration for your eyes and your inner ear can can be off right? And then if that's not restored Then you go on you know to eventually hopefully recover from the concussion but you might be left with some kind of deficits in your vision and vestibular systems. So that's that's fairly common after head trauma which is why both vision and vestibular exercises really need to be a part of concussion rehabilitation.
00:11:47.06 Taylor Kruse And remember a lot of people have had concussions and they don't know it or they didn't think it was a concussion because they weren't knocked unconscious. But that doesn't mean you didn't have a concussion.
00:11:58.55 Taylor Kruse So you can even have you know these issues going on even if you don't didn't have a diagnosed concussion if you know what I mean. So that's one possibility that's somewhat common. And you know you can also develop vision and vestibular issues through disuse.
00:12:18.84 Tony Fowler Right.
00:12:19.64 Taylor Kruse right so and it's It's common. right so Examples would be whilst sitting at a computer for nine hours a day staring at a computer screen.
00:12:33.21 Taylor Kruse Your eyes are essentially locked into convergence So you've got muscles that pull your eyes inward to help you focus on things that are in front of you like the computer screen.
00:12:45.21 Taylor Kruse And if you're in a seated position staring at a screen for nine hours a day you know five days a week or more that's a lot of time to spend in one position with your eyes and your whole body for that matter. And you can develop imbalance in your eye muscles just like you would possibly develop an imbalance if you were doing asymmetric types of well asymmetric types of movement and you didn't know about it right? Like a postural imbalance or you had an injury and you you didn't move the way you used to and you developed the muscle imbalances in your in your body same thing can happen in your eyes.
00:13:28.18 Taylor Kruse So that's one example. It doesn't have to be just nine hours a day staring at a screen. It can be other kinds of tasks too that that cause changes in your vision.
00:13:43.03 Taylor Kruse But a lot of them are based on the idea of doing the same thing over and over and over again. um The vestibular system can become deconditioned from a lack of activation.
00:13:54.84 Taylor Kruse Okay so kind of a more extreme relatable weight or example would be as a person ages if you've you've experienced watching a person age into their 80s and beyond you generally see a very significant change in their posture right?
00:14:18.65 Taylor Kruse they so They start to have a more flexed posture. They start to be more concerned with looking at the ground rather than looking at anything around them.
00:14:29.62 Taylor Kruse And part of the aging process that you're seeing there is decreased sensory input coming in from the eyes and the inner ears because the person's not moving the same way that they used to. Therefore they're not getting the same amount of activation that they used to.
00:14:46.49 Taylor Kruse And the physical consequences to the vestibular system not being as active as it needs to be is a loss of extensor tone.
00:14:58.36 Taylor Kruse And that's because that's what the vestibular system does for us primarily is it it helps us maintain appropriate muscle tone in our anti-gravity muscles that help us stay upright against gravity.
00:15:09.54 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:15:10.42 Taylor Kruse So when the inner ear is not receiving appropriate input one of the consequences to that might be a loss of extensor tone. and you know And the eyes in in the inner ear are not completely separate. They work together.
00:15:26.10 Taylor Kruse um You can have you know different other things going on too decreases in peripheral vision. And there's so many different things names of vision conditions but they all have the ah kind the ah they all have consequences to them if not resolved right? And so yeah disuse overuse head injury um and honestly even like
00:16:01.43 Taylor Kruse Even things things one some of them the ones that go under the radar like ah nutritional issues you know nutritional issues and just being being under high amounts of stress for long periods of time all that can affect you neurologically and and play into some of the deficits that that we might see.
00:16:08.90 Tony Fowler Sure yeah. yeah
00:16:25.36 Taylor Kruse And here's the thing. you know Most of the people that I'm working with and probably even most of the clients that our students are working with have low-grade vestibular problems. so Meaning if they if they go to a vestibular clinic they're they're not going to be told they have an issue.
00:16:50.15 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:16:50.74 Taylor Kruse right so This is low-grade stuff. and You can have low-grade type vision issues vestibular issues. And I guess the point I'm trying to make is it doesn't have to be extreme. you know like Most of the time when I'm testing people you'll find these little things in the vision of vestibular systems. And it just you it makes me ask questions. It's like well how did this manifest?
00:17:19.81 Taylor Kruse And there's so much that goes into it you know with with how a person's moving or not moving. in it and it's a result of all of those things.
00:17:33.08 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned stress. um
00:17:36.89 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:17:37.66 Tony Fowler And I think maybe this can go in the same bucket but also like environmental factors like you you've talked about mold and stuff and and other things.
00:17:42.84 Taylor Kruse Totally. oh Yeah yeah yeah.
00:17:45.58 Tony Fowler So like um those are stressors on the on the body.
00:17:45.94 Taylor Kruse Yeah mold's a big one.
00:17:49.26 Tony Fowler Right. um
00:17:50.14 Taylor Kruse Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:17:51.80 Tony Fowler And then of
00:17:51.95 Taylor Kruse when i When I was at peak mold toxicity I had decreased contrast sensitivity in my vision. um I had also... ah I became sound sensitive to things that were... like All of a sudden i was like what is going on? and i you know I remember it being pretty... pretty like It felt like it had just showed up. you know It probably was building.
00:18:19.48 Taylor Kruse And i and i didn't I wasn't aware of it until I was like whoa. But yeah I mean that's just an example of of stress on top of stress on top of stress and then that affecting me neurologically. And when yourre when your sympathetics become elevated for a long period of time what can happen is your body can start interpreting normal signaling as dangerous.
00:18:40.53 Tony Fowler Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:18:40.97 Taylor Kruse It's a survival mechanism. And so then you start having symptoms from all sorts of things even if they're not necessarily dangerous things.
00:18:52.09 Taylor Kruse There's more to it with mold for sure. I mean the mold's attacking your body you know so it's it's deeper than that. But that's that's how that's what happens on a sensory level.
00:19:04.09 Tony Fowler Yeah. And then the the last bucket which maybe is a form of stress in a similar way but just um you know actual disease. Right. and And that's not something that we really cover so much here.
00:19:12.20 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:19:15.78 Tony Fowler Right. But I'm assuming that there's neurological disease and there's other things that would affect the the vestibular sort inflammation in the brain.
00:19:16.79 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:19:20.15 Taylor Kruse Absolutely.
00:19:24.87 Tony Fowler Right.
00:19:25.21 Taylor Kruse no yeah Absolutely.
00:19:25.27 Tony Fowler Like ah yeah.
00:19:26.37 Taylor Kruse all That stuff is is can absolutely affect those systems no question.
00:19:34.17 Tony Fowler um you know when I'm editing podcasts and it's been a long time like I notice ah part of it's because I'm listening really hard but I think part of it's this conversion thing is my eyes just kind of glaze over when I'm looking at the waveform.
00:19:41.97 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:19:45.47 Taylor Kruse Uh-huh.
00:19:46.32 Tony Fowler So it's like I have to see them enough to know where to make my cuts but I don't have to like really get the detail.
00:19:46.71 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:19:51.97 Tony Fowler And so I noticed they'll like come in and out of focus. And I wonder if that's either like a sign of ah a deficiency or if it's like my brain's way of being like stop focusing on exactly four feet in front of you for a little bit you know?
00:20:06.78 Taylor Kruse Sure. Yeah sometimes it's hard to know but sometimes when you're doing some kind of task like that where it takes a lot of concentration and you're you're watching something you'll actually shift in and out of you'll kind of dilate your gaze and shift in and out of using like foveal vision which is you know the what's right in front of you and actually bringing peripheral vision into it.
00:20:30.33 Taylor Kruse And you shift in and out of that because your your peripheral system is designed to pick up movement better than your foveal system.
00:20:37.11 Tony Fowler Interesting.
00:20:37.82 Taylor Kruse And so as ah as a skill set you might have developed this actually because this is what we teach our students to do during gait assessment. it's It's really the skill of finding the negative space.
00:20:52.70 Taylor Kruse So like with gait assessment when we're watching a person walk there's so much going on with gait that you could get distracted by lots of different biomechanical things.
00:21:02.20 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:21:03.03 Taylor Kruse But if you learn how to essentially stare through the person as they're walking and go in and out there's moments where you're looking directly at their hip or maybe directly at their shoulder or their foot or whatever you want to concentrate on.
00:21:17.72 Taylor Kruse And then you sort of shift your gaze and dilate out into the peripheral system where now you're just picking up negative space. The peripheral system is excellent for foreseeing movement happen.
00:21:30.97 Taylor Kruse So you can so this is this is the people who are best at gait assessment do this versus just look at the right leg because then you miss everything else.
00:21:31.45 Tony Fowler That's so cool. Mm-hmm.
00:21:41.94 Taylor Kruse So I actually wonder if you are sort of doing some of that and sort of picking up on the negative space and using your peripheral system almost to kind of keep track of the wave forms that are coming.
00:21:53.66 Tony Fowler I think that's right because they're moving you know to the left across the screen and usually my cuts are in the negative space between the blocks of of speech essentially right?
00:21:57.11 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:22:02.06 Taylor Kruse Yeah. Yep. Yep. And it can be fatiguing especially if you have to do it for a long time.
00:22:06.46 Tony Fowler Yeah. I have to take breaks. I can't sit there for five hours.
00:22:09.82 Taylor Kruse Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:11.78 Tony Fowler Like I have to take pretty frequent breaks. Yeah.
00:22:14.71 Taylor Kruse Yep. Sure. Sure. Yeah that's interesting.
00:22:18.26 Tony Fowler That's really interesting. I never thought it would be a like a... a What's the word I'm looking for? Like a ah scale I guess. I was just kind of assumed it was a problem.
00:22:28.24 Taylor Kruse it's It's literally... It is yeah it is literally if that is what we're talking about it is literally the ultimate skill to have as a coach who is analyzing movement.
00:22:34.74 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:22:43.11 Tony Fowler That's fascinating.
00:22:43.28 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:22:44.34 Tony Fowler um
00:22:47.73 Tony Fowler That's really cool.
00:22:51.35 Tony Fowler All right next question.
00:22:59.33 Tony Fowler All right. This is from 2018 Ben. Best way to so to stimulate the vagus nerve to help bring the nervous system to parasympathetic state.
00:23:16.57 Taylor Kruse We have an all a whole episode Ben.
00:23:18.54 Tony Fowler That's true.
00:23:19.26 Taylor Kruse Yeah. We have a whole episode so you can hit that up.
00:23:21.34 Tony Fowler Next. Next.
00:23:22.55 Taylor Kruse Yeah. Yes. ah It's it's ah literally on the vagus nerve and in vagus nerve stimulation titled something like what you something like what you really have to know about the vagus nerve.
00:23:34.18 Tony Fowler About the vagus nerve?
00:23:34.78 Taylor Kruse Yeah. I refer a lot of people to that one.
00:23:35.33 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:23:36.61 Taylor Kruse So there's definitely that episode if people want to check that out. But best ways to stimulate the vagus nerve to elicit more of a parasympathetic state. So yeah this is there's there's a lot of options.
00:23:50.90 Taylor Kruse there's I guess before we even get into those options one thing that I want to say about stimulating the vagus nerve is that it takes a heck of a lot more frequency load and intensity than people understand.
00:24:07.74 Taylor Kruse this is This is the gray area right now because there's a lot of conversation in the industry across different spaces different kind of neuro spaces. There's people using vagus nerve activation for lots of different reasons lot of talk about it being good for stimulating parasympathetics so that we can have that down regulatory effect.
00:24:32.12 Taylor Kruse And the the talk is there right now. The application is not. when i When I see this stuff on social media and you know you see a lot of people saying here try this drill for vagus nerve stimulation.
00:24:44.82 Taylor Kruse Basically what you're seeing is the activation of the vagus nerve in a fairly isolated way with certain things that you can do.
00:24:55.06 Taylor Kruse But really all you can expect from that is a fairly temporary result if you get a result at all. You do have to assess to see if you're getting a result.
00:25:07.32 Taylor Kruse But some of the tools are great and you just have to know that most people don't understand how much work you have to do to elicit the changes that we're looking for when it comes to creating a significant enough you know shift in state. You will get immediate changes that cause different reactions in the body that will give you a clue that you're doing the right thing. So sometimes you'll do a drill you'll you'll start to yawn.
00:25:35.61 Tony Fowler Hmm.
00:25:35.83 Taylor Kruse or you'll have a decrease in tension in your body an increase in range of motion. Sometimes after a vagal-type drill you'll notice that your voice is deeper which is really common or that your stomach starts to growl.
00:25:51.32 Taylor Kruse Those are all indications that you're you're getting a vagal type response from from an exercise. So is there a best way? No there's no best way because it's so individual and we do have to test it.
00:26:05.08 Taylor Kruse So there's a lot of ways. And then the question is which ones are working for you the most? So a couple of suggestions would be exhalation-based breathing drills are typically parasympathetic in nature.
00:26:19.77 Taylor Kruse Now they're not good for everybody. Like I want to keep stressing that because there's different reasons why certain people don't do well with exhalation-based breathing drills.
00:26:21.98 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:26:31.16 Taylor Kruse So again we have to test. But generally speaking if the exhale is two to three times longer than the inhale that's what I'm talking about as far as exhalation-based.
00:26:44.25 Taylor Kruse and And that can create a nice shift. So that's kind of one idea. and And we have a lot of different breathing drills that we teach. I particularly like the diaphragm stretch that you can find within our content like over on YouTube and stuff.
00:26:59.19 Taylor Kruse That one can be very vagal in nature because it's an exhalation-based exercise but it also... is useful because of the type of mobilization that occurs during the forced exhalation.
00:27:13.46 Taylor Kruse You get some stretching that ah that happens in the abdomen and around the the diaphragm which is also usually a parasympathetic in in nature because it's activating C fibers which is a nerve receptor that the is basically going to send information to the vagus.
00:27:38.71 Taylor Kruse okay so So that's one idea. Exhalation-based breathing drills and then check out our diaphragm stretch. um Hands-on work is excellent for vagus work too. And that doesn't have to be someone else's hands. It can be a trained professional.
00:27:53.56 Taylor Kruse It also can be you know you can use different tools on your body to do tissue work. And the the piece that is probably most important if you're going to do that is that you don't have to work crazy deep.
00:28:12.34 Taylor Kruse So it can be you know dermal level stuff. Particularly this is the key on the trunk like the abdomen and thorax not the arms and legs.
00:28:28.69 Taylor Kruse This is important not the arms and legs. The trunk and the thorax is going to provide more of a vagal response or a parasympathetic response. And again it has to do with C fibers that nerve ending being more abundant in the midline of the body and thorra or abdomen and thorax.
00:28:48.18 Taylor Kruse so that's So that's a good thing to know if you're if you're doing like hands-on type work. Beyond that
00:28:59.54 Taylor Kruse Another really interesting one that you'll hear about when you listen to the podcast is electrical stimulation of the vagus point on the ear.
00:29:11.38 Taylor Kruse Okay.
00:29:11.54 Tony Fowler This one always trips me out.
00:29:12.95 Taylor Kruse Yeah. now Now this one's interesting. A lot of lot of research on this one is coming out and it's good. like There's a lot of... There's a lot of good conversation happening now and a lot of companies building Vegas Nerve e-STEM devices that go to the ear.
00:29:30.71 Taylor Kruse And it's it's still there's still a lot to learn here. It's not magic. You don't hook one of these things up to you and like you know have this euphoric experience. It's not it's like you you do it and you're like I wonder if this is helping me. And then typically what you see is like over some time of consistently using it you might start to see so some markers shift for you.
00:29:53.46 Taylor Kruse That's been my experience anyway having had clients use these things pretty consistently. I've even you know had people kind of report improvements in like their HRV scores but um you know feeling more relaxed stuff like that. it's not like It's not a tidal wave type of change right? But it it's it's interesting because a lot of the research is pointing to it being useful for decreasing inflammation which makes sense because the vagus nerve is tied to basically our anti-inflammatory pathways.
00:30:27.07 Taylor Kruse There's been some research on it being quite useful for um inflammation markers in individuals with arthritis right? and And it's cool because I think in the study they only did like two or three minutes a day.
00:30:41.88 Taylor Kruse It might have been like two or three minutes of stimulation twice a day or something like that.
00:30:45.70 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:30:46.52 Taylor Kruse And um I've played around with different electrical devices but then also just vibration in in on the ear in that point. It's called the Simba Concha of So you can just look up the ear anatomy.
00:31:00.84 Taylor Kruse It's not hard to find. Anybody can find it. And then yeah you just put some sort of sensory stimulation on it and see if it see if it helps you. See if you notice. It's an interesting one.
00:31:12.02 Taylor Kruse um I've even taken like Tiger Balm. which is you know that gel. it's ah It's like a muscle rub basically that that goes back and forth. It's chemoreception right? It's it's chemical...
00:31:25.50 Taylor Kruse um sensory stimulus that goes like it feels like warm cool warm cool warm cool.
00:31:31.06 Tony Fowler It's like Icy Hot.
00:31:32.15 Taylor Kruse Yeah exactly. You could use yeah something like that.
00:31:33.18 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:31:34.19 Taylor Kruse And I've put that on my ears too in that area. And I had a and good response with a client with that before. it's so easy to do you know and you get you get low grade vagal stimulation for hours by doing that which is sometimes the key right?
00:31:53.28 Taylor Kruse For people that really need that.
00:31:53.62 Tony Fowler Almost like kinesio tape or something.
00:31:56.63 Taylor Kruse Yeah kinesio tape i haven't you know you can't really do that. I mean you might be able to use kinesio tape on the back of the ear and get somewhere with it.
00:32:05.27 Tony Fowler Sure I just mean in terms of like it being something that can work on you.
00:32:05.50 Taylor Kruse um Yeah exactly wear for hours.
00:32:09.47 Tony Fowler Yeah yeah.
00:32:10.30 Taylor Kruse Exactly. Exactly. It's a passive stimulus that now you can just go about your day and receive that stimulus. That can be very important for people that really need the work long-term.
00:32:22.97 Taylor Kruse Right. Um yeah. So those are those are really good ones. And um you know the we've got the breathing the exhalation based breathing. We've got the the um stim on the ear through the auricular point.
00:32:38.20 Taylor Kruse And uh
00:32:41.26 Taylor Kruse let's not forget Let's not forget about like basic strength training right?
00:32:47.14 Tony Fowler Sure. Yeah.
00:32:47.61 Taylor Kruse Because the and the stretching of tissues particularly like the type of stretch that you might feel at end range of motion through like connective tissues and stuff is also very a very strong C-fiber stimulus.
00:33:05.11 Taylor Kruse So sometimes even different forms of strength training can be a can be a good ah good stimulus for the vagus.
00:33:15.47 Tony Fowler Yeah that's cool to hear. Mm-hmm.
00:33:17.72 Taylor Kruse Oh and let me just add real quick because I'll kick myself if I don't add this one. You can also use things like humming and gargling water.
00:33:29.88 Taylor Kruse And in those the the motor activity involved with those actions is also stimulating for the vagus nerve as well as different things that you can do like exercises with the tongue.
00:33:43.16 Taylor Kruse Those are also quite vagal. So yeah you know I'll teach tongue exercises on Instagram. You'll see me gargling water. That's why right? we're We're doing more of a...
00:33:54.46 Taylor Kruse you know going after more of the actual motor components involved like in the in the throat in palate area to to stimulate the vagus nerve. so sometimes that's something you can lean on.
00:34:08.86 Taylor Kruse We like to stack that with other forms of vagus stimulus or doing other exercises to make it a stronger input. But those are very valid and in quite good. So...
00:34:19.61 Tony Fowler Yeah I was literally going to say one of the ones that that seems to work for me or at least that I enjoy is like that humming like kind of deep humming.
00:34:27.82 Taylor Kruse Yeah for sure.
00:34:28.89 Tony Fowler um and um and you you know when you do it you get like this vibration in your throat and in your diaphragm and
00:34:32.97 Taylor Kruse That's right.
00:34:35.13 Tony Fowler I was going to say singing as well like kind of deeper diaphragmatic singing.
00:34:37.46 Taylor Kruse Absolutely.
00:34:39.73 Tony Fowler um think there's a reason why people connect with it not just for the music but for for that kind of stimulus.
00:34:45.30 Taylor Kruse Totally. Totally.
00:34:48.57 Tony Fowler um And then of course my meditation practice is like been really inconsistent. But when I'm doing it like if I can get a few days in a row I do feel just like on on average a little calmer a little less stressed.
00:35:00.66 Taylor Kruse Nice.
00:35:02.10 Tony Fowler um And you know so there's exhalation going on there.
00:35:02.33 Taylor Kruse That's cool.
00:35:04.58 Tony Fowler We talked about this briefly in ah in a previous episode.
00:35:04.66 Taylor Kruse Totally. Yeah.
00:35:07.67 Tony Fowler um You know there's a lot of interoception and just a lot of just kind of inward focus.
00:35:11.29 Taylor Kruse You got it. Yeah the mindfulness.
00:35:13.60 Tony Fowler Yep.
00:35:14.33 Taylor Kruse Absolutely.
00:35:14.38 Tony Fowler Yep.
00:35:15.90 Taylor Kruse those are That goes on the list too.
00:35:18.90 Tony Fowler But but to your kind of I want to underscore what you said at the very beginning and that's that you have to assess and reassess because everybody's different.
00:35:27.51 Taylor Kruse You do.
00:35:29.14 Tony Fowler And so you know I think what I see now it's funny now that I've been working with you I see way more neuro stuff in my algorithms.
00:35:36.60 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:35:36.79 Tony Fowler um And so there's people you know who are like do this to to you know stimulate the vagus nerve or whatever.
00:35:43.51 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:35:43.73 Tony Fowler um And and it's a lot of it's really good stuff. But to your point it's like this might work for you but it might not. you know and And if you're not testing then you're just kind of going blindly into it right?
00:35:53.14 Taylor Kruse Yeah it's... That's right. so Social media things like that that you're seeing you know my stuff included because somebody who's not someone who doesn't understand what I'm teaching is going to put me in the same category.
00:36:09.37 Taylor Kruse it It looks like we're treating the body like a switchboard you know with on and off switches. and and that's that's not At least the the work that we're doing it's not that. Anyone who's taken our courses I mean they come in wondering if it's that and they leave going oh my gosh that was awesome. And now I understand that it's not just about doing a quick activation drill you know?
00:36:36.69 Taylor Kruse So yeah the thing with the vagus nerve is if you're going to change state and do it in a way that is beneficial and provides long-term results if you need that not everybody needs that you have to create autonomic changes through your drilling and it takes more time to do that.
00:37:00.73 Taylor Kruse So just humming is probably not gonna do that as much as a 20-minute breathing routine combined with you know some breath work combined with strength training combined with an insular belt as we call it around the abdomen which is pressure on the abdomen
00:37:21.88 Taylor Kruse with tiger balm in your ears. You know what I mean?
00:37:24.24 Tony Fowler Mm. Mm.
00:37:24.84 Taylor Kruse Like like that's why that's why you have to know different ways to stimulate the vagus nerve in in possibly figure out different stacks that you can put together to get more more of a a stronger stimulus.
00:37:40.31 Tony Fowler Yeah. You know we talked about ah your experiments with binaural beats a long time ago.
00:37:45.21 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:37:46.33 Tony Fowler and And to recap for the listeners um you know you basically said it kind of like it shifted your parasympathetics too much. And that for like a couple of days you were kind of like in a.
00:37:55.74 Taylor Kruse Overdosed me. Yeah for sure. Yeah i was ah I was in a daze.
00:37:59.99 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:38:00.15 Taylor Kruse was like feeling hungover.
00:38:00.25 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah so I just think that's interesting. I haven't personally experienced that but it's kind of like the opposite extreme. It's like there's levels to this. Like you could feel a little better humming right now but like to actually get a shift like there might be more work involved or the right stimulus might might need to be introduced.
00:38:12.77 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:38:19.58 Taylor Kruse Exactly.
00:38:23.19 Tony Fowler All right so I've got a couple of questions that I'm going lump together.
00:38:27.00 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:38:27.19 Tony Fowler um One of them is from TheRealLucio13 or maybe Lucio. Is there anything you have for chronic headaches?
00:38:39.90 Tony Fowler And the other one is from Tarini1 who says this help people with migraines? who says can this help people with migraines
00:38:51.32 Taylor Kruse Yeah so the answer is yes. you can You can use applied neurology to possibly ay improve you know reduce possibly even resolve headaches.
00:39:08.09 Taylor Kruse It may not be headaches or So first of all this is not something that people generally come to me for right?
00:39:17.08 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:39:17.57 Taylor Kruse I'm not the headache guy but Sometimes what happens is I'll work with somebody and I will find out later on when they start to get kind of deep into the work we're doing they're like oh I should tell this guy all sorts of stuff because he's probably got weird drills for me that could help.
00:39:36.89 Taylor Kruse So it's like you know few weeks into the work maybe even more maybe it's a year. I don't know. Someone might go hey so what can I do for migraines? Because they start to pick up on the fact like well you seem like you got a tool for everything.
00:39:49.50 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:39:49.85 Taylor Kruse um And so yeah you can you can use this for migraines. There's probably so not probably there are lots of factors to why somebody might have a migraine but I'll talk very generally and kind of give people an idea.
00:40:05.66 Taylor Kruse If you're going to affect migraines headaches whatever you want to be thinking about the trigeminal nerve for one. and we And we have an episode on the trigeminal nerve.
00:40:17.97 Tony Fowler That's right.
00:40:18.20 Taylor Kruse Whole episode yeah. this is This is starting to flow right? We're starting to starting to have we can back this stuff up with other episodes which is great. So have a whole episode I believe called Training the Trigeminal Nerve.
00:40:31.35 Taylor Kruse And so I talk you know in that episode we go over the specific neuroanatomy. I think headaches and migraines come up in that a little bit. And you want to be thinking about the trigeminal nerve and and things that you can do for it because it's it's largely involved in the experience of a migraine.
00:40:48.02 Taylor Kruse So the short answer is yes. Sometimes you can also use applied neuro to down-regulate or... the language that we use is inhibit other forms of sensory input that could be kind of overloading a person during like the buildup of what turns into a migraine.
00:41:10.71 Taylor Kruse You know so i've I've seen people have success with like wearing earplugs or sunglasses or both at the same time or even colored lenses. And in this actually there's some research on the color green being useful for people who suffer from migraines.
00:41:28.90 Taylor Kruse And so you could buy a pair of $12 plastic green lenses on Amazon and see if it helps you when you're starting to feel the onset of a migraine.
00:41:42.03 Taylor Kruse Because for some people it does. Green can be quite calming and has some kind of inhibition effects on the brain. It's worth a try because it's it's not expensive and um you got to test it right? You just got to test how the glasses are affecting you. Typically we would test range of motion and then if it improves your range of motion and usually when people find the right color it gives them a sense of something good whether it's hey I feel calmer or feel more grounded.
00:42:12.63 Taylor Kruse People will tell you i just i just don't want to take these off. I like this color. And if that is happening plus your movement is improving that's a good sign. And then you could possibly see if the green ones help you for sure.
00:42:27.35 Taylor Kruse um As far as trigeminal nerve goes and doing things that affect it well we've got... We've got different things we can do sensory-wise on the face.
00:42:39.19 Taylor Kruse So there are companies that produce vibration devices that are designed for like the face and the palate and the teeth because all of those areas from a sensory perspective are supplied by trigeminal nerve.
00:42:47.14 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:42:54.33 Taylor Kruse So we can do sensory on the face on the cranium and possibly get some relief there's other exercises you can do with your jaw. I've got some of those. actually have a good piece on TMJ exercises on YouTube.
00:43:09.62 Taylor Kruse And so in that video I'm pretty sure I teach several different jaw mobility exercises including a very powerful exercise called a trigeminal nerve glide.
00:43:22.55 Taylor Kruse So that basically gently tensions the trigeminal nerve. Now again none of this stuff is like foolproof. Like you gotta test it and see does this help me? Like how is my brain perceiving this? But most people that suffer from headaches usually have jaw issues or neck issues. And so learning how to mobilize your neck and your jaw and move it through a full range of motion without building unwanted tension can go a long way.
00:43:47.29 Taylor Kruse So can vision exercises.
00:43:49.23 Tony Fowler I was about to ask about that. Yep.
00:43:50.81 Taylor Kruse Yeah you you had that in your mind? Because you probably remember we talked about this in the trigeminal episode. There are specific vision exercises you can do. Now this is a little bit of a slippery slope because some people have visually induced headaches or migraines.
00:44:08.48 Taylor Kruse where your visual system is fatiguing out and then that is kind of the catalyst for the muscle tension that then starts to build in the neck or the jaw and you know you start to feel it manifest into a headache. So it's a little bit of a for some people have to be cautious there. If you know you have vision problems it could be easy to overdose yourself by accident so you gotta you gotta know that.
00:44:35.67 Tony Fowler Assess reassess.
00:44:35.83 Taylor Kruse ah Yeah assess reassess and then but but for other people there are there are specific vision exercises that might do the opposite all right? It might actually decrease threat and tension and help people with headaches. And some of the convergence-type skills and we talk about this in that trigeminal episode pencil push-ups things like that can actually be useful for affecting trigeminal nerve.
00:45:03.83 Taylor Kruse And that can be again and you know use a useful tool for for dealing with with headaches and stuff. I mean there's tons of stuff because when you look at a headache for some people it's a global response of the nervous system to threat.
00:45:22.16 Taylor Kruse So that essentially means now I can reach into my toolbox and possibly use any tool to decrease threat. Right? And so that's why it's not like it's not like a protocol thing.
00:45:35.60 Taylor Kruse It's not like okay ABC.
00:45:37.58 Tony Fowler Great.
00:45:38.07 Taylor Kruse You know you really have to approach in different ways. And of course there could be nutritional layers to this you know hydration and you know hormonal and just all forms of stress.
00:45:43.78 Tony Fowler was going to say even hydration you know?
00:45:52.15 Taylor Kruse If in fact you're having more of a threat bucket output headache right If your visual system if if it's if it's visually induced headaches well now you have to figure out a way how to improve the stamina of your visual system without overdosing yourself and giving yourself the symptoms. right And so that's a process. right Again back to assess reassess.
00:46:16.47 Taylor Kruse Yeah got to think about trigeminal nerve some of those local exercises sensory on the face. And man if anyone tries the green glasses and has success let us know because that would be cool.
00:46:28.70 Tony Fowler You know I tried to order the green ones and they sent me ah blue instead.
00:46:32.92 Taylor Kruse Oh really?
00:46:33.85 Tony Fowler um So I kept it because I didn't have blue yet. But I was like man i really you reminded me just now.
00:46:36.09 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:46:38.62 Tony Fowler I really want to try green.
00:46:40.28 Taylor Kruse Yep yep.
00:46:41.50 Tony Fowler But yeah that was fun. I got like green red. I've got the like the orange blue light blockers ones. And then I have the the black ones that don't have lenses.
00:46:46.94 Taylor Kruse Yep.
00:46:50.49 Tony Fowler They just have like bars that go across.
00:46:52.73 Taylor Kruse Oh interesting.
00:46:53.50 Tony Fowler um
00:46:54.17 Taylor Kruse Not pinholes but bars.
00:46:55.29 Tony Fowler Oh no no I have pinholes. I have pinholes.
00:46:56.83 Taylor Kruse Pinhoes okay so they got the little yeah little little holes.
00:46:57.45 Tony Fowler Yeah Yeah so it looks like mesh almost.
00:47:00.38 Taylor Kruse So those can actually be those could actually be useful for migraine sufferers in some cases too. It decreases light information coming in through the eyes and can actually affect the midbrain which is where like sympathetics are.
00:47:08.44 Tony Fowler Interesting.
00:47:15.99 Taylor Kruse So yeah that's another another type of like an inhibition tool that that we have a lot of success with. So that's another one to try.
00:47:23.09 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:47:26.52 Tony Fowler Very cool.
00:47:29.37 Tony Fowler All right. This one is from Yuli HRDK. I don't know how to pronounce that.
00:47:37.05 Taylor Kruse Yeah I know. did the the The handles are tough man. Yeah.
00:47:40.06 Tony Fowler um Like a lot of times it's like an abbreviation of a full like last name.
00:47:45.69 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:47:46.18 Tony Fowler and It's like I don't know what the vowels are supposed to be man.
00:47:47.42 Taylor Kruse Yeah I know.
00:47:49.02 Tony Fowler um So this one is blood pressure drills please.
00:47:55.38 Taylor Kruse Oh okay.
00:47:56.18 Tony Fowler And yeah I was just curious because I don't think we've ever really talked about blood pressure at all.
00:48:01.69 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:48:02.74 Tony Fowler And so I'm just kind of curious is that is that something that you think about affecting or that you've seen be affected um using applied neurology?
00:48:12.38 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah. So you you can affect blood pressure right? Because blood pressure is an output right? So anytime we can we can call something an output it means we have the ability to change input to change output.
00:48:27.70 Taylor Kruse So you can absolutely approach blood pressure with with this kind of neuromaterial. In fact we use blood pressure as one of our advanced assessments for...
00:48:41.40 Taylor Kruse just looking at people's autonomics and it's it helps us understand the brainstem better. Because you have ah you have a right brainstem and a left brainstem that are both involved in autonomic balance and blood pressure.
00:48:56.66 Taylor Kruse So we actually will we teach our students to use taking a person's blood pressure on both sides
00:49:05.18 Tony Fowler Oh that's right.
00:49:05.88 Taylor Kruse Yeah to get ah to get a sense of okay is there a difference side to side?
00:49:06.05 Tony Fowler That's right.
00:49:11.16 Taylor Kruse and And typically what we talk about is that a difference of let's just let's just call it like 10 points right on one side generally points at issues that could be happening on that side of the brainstem.
00:49:29.82 Taylor Kruse So brainstem think about it is just the brainstem's not doing its job appropriately. And so it is not regulating blood pressure appropriately. And so you kind of have this lopsided blood pressure higher on one side than the other side.
00:49:45.08 Taylor Kruse So you can have more of like a neurologically generated difference side to side in blood pressure which is important for people to know because most people don't know that. And the thing is when you go to the doctor or you go to the dentist or you go to somebody who's going to take your blood pressure they take it on one side.
00:49:56.49 Tony Fowler Mm-mm.
00:50:01.50 Taylor Kruse I've never had my blood pressure taken on both sides. I have my blood pressure taken on whichever side the person is closest to me on. It's usually my right. right So um this is important. i don't want to go too deep down this rabbit hole but like you can have very large swings in blood pressure and it's more neurologically generated on one side of the body.
00:50:25.46 Taylor Kruse And it's important to know that um because it's likely that a lot of people don't have to be medicated or at least medicated as long as they...
00:50:39.58 Taylor Kruse you know have been or whatever if they only have a neurologically kind of generated blood pressure. Now it's it's also there's like some red flags involved with that too. Like sometimes you can have like such a higher blood pressure on one side that you'd you'd be wanting to bring that to the attention of a of a physician because that can that can mean some different things like actual blockages and stuff. I've never seen that myself but it's a thing.
00:51:06.56 Taylor Kruse we're talking more about like the hey I'm 10 points higher on the right than I am the left. And that that is more indicative of what we would call a PMRF issue on the right side.
00:51:16.21 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:51:17.62 Taylor Kruse So it's the higher side. so So in the work that I do I am often using blood pressure as a reassessment because I'm i'm trying to bring balance back to a person through the right activation or inhibition drills. And one of the changes in output that we can see rather quickly in session is blood pressure becoming more balanced on side to side which indicates that we are approaching a person's cortical or PMRF issues well.
00:51:52.21 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:51:52.31 Taylor Kruse and And it's nice because it's a direct assessment on autonomics.
00:51:52.35 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:51:55.07 Taylor Kruse It's not just a movement assessment anymore. It's now we're we're looking at actual autonomics and getting some data on that. So it's useful. So anyways if we're talking about that type of blood pressure versus like a bilaterally high blood pressure more like cardiovascularly generated it's very different.
00:52:16.50 Taylor Kruse um in In that sense there's actually ah ah there's actually great research that has come out on on this indicating that of all things wall sits and hand grip exercises have been incredibly useful in the literature and different studies for helping people reduce blood pressure.
00:52:35.39 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:52:45.05 Taylor Kruse And it's it's pretty easy to look up I think. It's it's pretty out there. it's It's several minutes at a time of wall sits. But is if I remember correctly what I read was that both the wall sits and the hand grip exercises like the strength like hand gripping you're using your muscles were actually more effective than aerobic exercise.
00:53:09.78 Taylor Kruse And yeah and the sets were shorter.
00:53:10.14 Tony Fowler wild
00:53:13.54 Taylor Kruse Like it was like versus aerobic exercise for don't know 20 30 minutes or something. I don't remember the details but easy to find I think. And this is very fascinating right?
00:53:25.65 Taylor Kruse So the muscular effort. Now so that's so those are two things to look into because if you could just add some wall sits to your your routine or whatever or some hand grip exercises and see that that helps you
00:53:34.62 Tony Fowler Sure.
00:53:38.36 Taylor Kruse with blood pressure well that's great. um Breathing exercises will also have um research behind them to be effective. I think again it kind of depends on the like the person. You gotta test the style of breathing and If the person has dysfunctional breathing patterns that might be a different thing and some things need to improve before they might see the result. But again generally speaking it has been shown that more of the um reduced style breathing that has more of an exhalation focus has been quite useful.
00:54:13.24 Taylor Kruse And you have to build up time with this. This is not like 30 seconds of a breathing exercise.
00:54:18.97 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:54:19.41 Taylor Kruse This is you know you're building up a practice. You're building up a a breathing practice that you know can help you. So those are great things to look into. And then For more of like the PMRF or neurologically generated high blood pressure where it's like on one side there are so many options at that point because we can target the dysfunctional PMRF side with so many different kinds of inputs.
00:54:44.38 Taylor Kruse So it could be vision exercises it could be vestibular exercises. It could be movement drills but on the opposite side of the body is a good place to start. So if I had this is exactly so my presentation early on when I got into all this work was I had a PMRF pattern on my right side and my blood pressure was roughly 10 or 12 points higher on my right all the time.
00:55:09.82 Taylor Kruse And I started doing a lot of left-sided movement. So training the left cerebellum will also train the right cortex and the right PMRF.
00:55:20.70 Taylor Kruse And so I would do a whole mobility practice with the left side of my body. Probably about 70 maybe 80% of the practice was all left-sided.
00:55:31.51 Taylor Kruse And I started seeing lots of shifts changes in my pain levels but then also changes in my blood pressure becoming more balanced. So those are all good things to realize. all Again comes it comes down to assess reassess and and you can know that you can actually and this this should be very empowering for somebody that is trying to find exercises that are affecting their blood pressure.
00:55:56.92 Taylor Kruse You can test your blood pressure as the assessment. You don't have to rely
00:56:01.14 Tony Fowler Great.
00:56:03.38 Taylor Kruse on anyone else. It's just see how it affects you and you can get some really good clues.
00:56:13.92 Tony Fowler I think especially for some people um it takes a while to... you know just trust how how do I feel or to trust like is this range of motion actually different or you know what i mean?
00:56:23.43 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:56:26.46 Taylor Kruse Yes.
00:56:27.04 Tony Fowler Like it it might take some time to kind of build that um fluency
00:56:31.45 Taylor Kruse Yes.
00:56:32.06 Tony Fowler um or that confidence in self-assessing. So with blood pressure you get a number.
00:56:38.39 Taylor Kruse You get some numbers. That's right.
00:56:39.67 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:56:40.41 Taylor Kruse You get some numbers.
00:56:41.04 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:56:41.05 Taylor Kruse that can be really helpful.
00:56:44.82 Tony Fowler This is kind of a nice segue. This is from Mind in Motion. Perform.
00:56:55.00 Tony Fowler And it gets cut off unfortunately. Mind emotion performance I'll just say. Sarah Beller exercises. I've got quite a few patients with one-sided weakness.
00:57:02.71 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:57:05.85 Tony Fowler um And I will also say just off the bat we have an entire episode on this called ah complex movement training or training your cerebellum.
00:57:06.58 Taylor Kruse Yeah nice.
00:57:11.35 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:57:15.86 Tony Fowler um So we probably don't need to go into a lot of detail but I just thought I'd bring it up since you mentioned cerebellar training in the last question.
00:57:19.77 Taylor Kruse Right. Right.
00:57:25.27 Taylor Kruse Yeah and that's that's the key right is complex movement training because in order to engage the cerebellum in training we have to really challenge it with novelty and complexity. We talk about all that stuff in the episode. When the person asked a question they used the word weakness. And I just want to be clear that
00:57:42.23 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:57:42.33 Taylor Kruse um
00:57:42.37 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:57:43.22 Taylor Kruse when we're talking about the cerebellum if we were to say weakness which is totally fine we might be I'm wondering if they are actually referring to weakness as difficulty with coordination and accuracy and rhythm because that's typically the type of movement deficit that we would we would correlate to the cerebellum.
00:58:07.25 Taylor Kruse So challenges with motor control versus challenges with strength.
00:58:12.25 Tony Fowler right Oh my left arm is weaker than my right arm.
00:58:14.42 Taylor Kruse Yeah now you can certainly have strength changes because the cerebellum is also involved in calibrating muscle tone particularly extensor muscle tone um pretty proximally too.
00:58:29.66 Taylor Kruse So there's that. you could If you have a cerebellar deficit you might actually experience weakness in some of your extensor muscles. Could be in the spine could be in the shoulders could be in the hips. You could have a one-sided cerebellar deficit that turns out as kind of presents as as weakness. But so I'm assuming that when they say weakness it's like the deficit side in terms of motor control right?
00:58:54.74 Taylor Kruse So if that's the case and this will depend on the person in front of you and again it's so you always have to assess reassess. The only way to know how the cerebellum is responding to a drill is to test the cerebellum before and after.
00:59:10.04 Taylor Kruse So that means after every single cerebellar drill set we have to have an immediate reassess. And that could be like our students know this so well at this point that has to be some form of coordination assessment.
00:59:24.57 Taylor Kruse And we have a whole cerebellar flow of of assessments that we use. And there's lots of different kinds. um One of them is ah in in balance assessments. One of them is like a Romberg's style balance assessment where you're you're having the person close their eyes and you're looking for postural sway and seeing how they respond to being in different stances with their eyes closed.
00:59:47.10 Taylor Kruse So have an assessment is is the first most important thing and then reassess after each input to figure out whether or not the cerebellum is improving.
00:59:58.58 Taylor Kruse and And there's different reasons to explore different body areas. Now here's here's the first kind of low-hanging fruit. If you have let's say a left cerebellar deficit so the coordination issues are on the left side of the body you're going to approach that ipsilaterally.
01:00:15.19 Taylor Kruse This is at least the the first way of thinking that is very high percentage. So that means I would do coordination exercises on the left. If the deficit was on the right side of the body I would do coordination exercises on the right.
01:00:28.92 Taylor Kruse Pretty easy to remember that. And now I have to challenge the person appropriately challenging their balance their coordination their accuracy their rhythm.
01:00:40.28 Taylor Kruse So we love joint mobility exercises.
01:00:44.07 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:00:44.38 Taylor Kruse teaching people how to move through full ranges of motion with good motor control. Those are very strong cerebellar activations. You can also use different accuracy type drills where the person actually has to target something.
01:00:58.97 Taylor Kruse So one of the common clinical assessments is called a finger-nose assessment where the clinician stands in front of the the patient or client and the the client touches their nose and then touches the coach's finger touches their nose touches their finger and they're going back and forth between the two points trying to be as accurate as possible.
01:01:21.24 Taylor Kruse but the clinician or coach is moving the target around a little bit. And so you're getting a sense for how smooth is the movement path that they're using with their limb. You can even do this with the lower body we and we call it toe targeting.
01:01:36.05 Taylor Kruse That's one thing to be looking at. And then you you also look at what happens in essentially the last two inches the space between the person's finger and the target because if there's a little hesitancy or sort of ratchetiness to the movement in those last two inches that's called a terminal tremor which indicates some cerebellar issues And you got to know your functional zones of the cerebellum because different body areas will correlate to different zones of the cerebellum. So there's different reasons why you might do exercises with the hands and the feet versus the elbows and shoulders or knees and hips.
01:02:17.02 Taylor Kruse So we we teach all this in our course. So the first thing is train it ipsilaterally. Know what you're trying to improve and retest after each input to see what's actually improving.
01:02:29.53 Taylor Kruse Again we like the joint mobility exercises a lot or anything that requires you to target. Now realize targeting could also be punching focus mitts. ah
01:02:43.36 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:02:43.64 Taylor Kruse You know it depends on the person in front of you. Do you want to do something athletic? Okay. Are we doing something a little bit more fine motor I guess you might say where you're turning something like that finger nose or toe targeting drill into the exercise for them?
01:02:58.72 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:02:59.16 Taylor Kruse There's so many options. And then adding balance challenges to that stuff. Balancing in a tandem stance balancing on one leg balancing in a lunge. That really engages the midline cerebellum.
01:03:11.45 Taylor Kruse okay which is a zone that we're interested in training. so So that's kind of like baseline for us. And then we go on to teach our students all about what's called what we call the cerebellar continuum of activation where we bring in different training variables to make the work more challenging.
01:03:31.64 Taylor Kruse So that's like using resistance bands to those drills. That's also like using a metronome for timing. So doing some kind of movement timing it to the metronome trying to be precise.
01:03:44.54 Taylor Kruse You get feedback when you are off rhythm and then it allows you to correct. Because one of the keys you know the cerebellum is very much involved in error correction.
01:03:57.02 Taylor Kruse So it's okay like mistakes are welcomed in the drills. And you want it you want to build a drill for someone that allows them to get feedback that they've made mistake but then actually correct it. And that's where the magic really happens long-term.
01:04:10.90 Taylor Kruse can't be too easy. It can't be too hard. You've got to find kind of that middle ground where the mistakes are welcome but you're you're winning.
01:04:14.35 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:04:19.30 Taylor Kruse You're having more success than not. so I love all that stuff. um and Then putting it together stacking it together. so Doing a joint mobility drill attached to a band while timing it to a metronome awesome way to approach that stuff.
01:04:38.46 Taylor Kruse eyes and the inner ear matter here too. it's it's ah It's more complex probably can't go into it in detail now but any exercises for the eyes and the vestibular system have an impact on the cerebellum.
01:04:52.34 Taylor Kruse So that may be part of the strategy too.
01:04:57.12 Tony Fowler I would hazard. There's some people who are just naturally great drummers.
01:05:03.29 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:05:03.61 Tony Fowler Like they have coordination in all four limbs and they have great timing and they just innate sense of timing and coordination. And I wonder if they're like uh just like cerebellar athletes.
01:05:17.18 Taylor Kruse Totally. I've I've tested um quite a few musicians with this neuro stuff and and they like smoke some of the tests and you have to make it really really hard.
01:05:22.34 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:05:26.62 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:05:26.81 Taylor Kruse Um you've got to like have them close their eyes balance in a one legged stance while doing like the cerebellar drill and like perturb them.
01:05:33.11 Tony Fowler Make him drink two shots of whiskey.
01:05:33.74 Taylor Kruse Like yeah and like yeah it's just like Yeah seriously it can be pretty amazing to see how how much coordination they can have with these like fine motor type skills and also for how long they can sustain it. you know so you just gotta make it's all Testing people is all relative to the person in front of you. right you have to you just If someone's really showing me skill then I just make stuff harder.
01:06:02.01 Taylor Kruse And then it eventually it teases out some of these some of these deficits even if they're pretty pretty minor.
01:06:02.47 Tony Fowler Right.
01:06:08.25 Tony Fowler Because you want to find the threshold where it's just difficult enough that you would be able to track if something's improving or getting worse.
01:06:16.17 Taylor Kruse That's right yeah.
01:06:16.82 Tony Fowler Because if it's too far away from that threshold you won't be able to tell if what you're doing is helping the cerebellum or not.
01:06:22.55 Taylor Kruse Yeah exactly and when you're working with a general population or an athletic population this is why those types of people cannot go into a clinic and and get help.
01:06:31.67 Tony Fowler Hmm.
01:06:31.90 Taylor Kruse because as far as what's happening at the clinical level they are amazing. But you can have low-grade issues with all of these systems that are affecting you giving you you know involved with your pain and involved with your balance involved with your movement deficits. And so there's a huge gap between what is like more clinical neurology
01:06:53.69 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:06:53.94 Taylor Kruse and And maybe like you know on the rehabilitation side versus you know where I live in in you know working with the general population and athletes and I'm still finding all that stuff within this population of people but you have to approach it sometimes a little bit differently and and make things a little bit harder.
01:07:13.88 Taylor Kruse um And yeah it's it's interesting in that in that way.
01:07:18.63 Tony Fowler Yeah that's fascinating. Well I think that's all we got for today.
01:07:24.54 Taylor Kruse All right.
01:07:27.00 Tony Fowler So i think I think we got through a few more today actually. I think we got through one two three four five.
01:07:29.88 Taylor Kruse Yeah it felt like it.
01:07:38.85 Tony Fowler I think we got through seven today.
01:07:40.75 Taylor Kruse Well that's good for me.
01:07:40.95 Tony Fowler So from three to seven we're improving.
01:07:43.90 Taylor Kruse Nice. Excellent excellent. Yeah I'm enjoying this.
01:07:49.12 Tony Fowler Awesome.
01:07:49.78 Taylor Kruse and we still got leftover questions too that we'll that we'll have to circle back on.
01:07:51.83 Tony Fowler Yep. Yep.
01:07:57.37 Taylor Kruse All right guys I hope you enjoyed that Q&A. Give us some feedback. Let us let us know what you think. And keep your eyes peeled for you know in upcoming weeks.
01:08:08.12 Taylor Kruse What we've been doing if you haven't seen it yet is I'll post on Instagram. I will typically put up a post within our feed that... says hey we're doing another Q&A episode with Tony. And if you have any questions you can drop them in the comments. So we've been collecting some of the questions that way. And then I typically follow up with a question box within my stories too. So if you're if you're seeing the stories that I put on Instagram look for the podcast Q&A box that we'll use. And that's another way to submit them.
01:08:40.95 Taylor Kruse And yeah give us your feedback. Let us know how you're enjoying this style of episode. I think it's it's been a nice change and um I'm liking it.
01:08:53.62 Taylor Kruse Let's see. What can I tell you? um I can tell you to go watch my free neuro masterclass if you haven't seen that already. So you can find the link for that in the show notes. If you are kind of just getting into the podcast and getting into this material that's a wonderful place to start is with the free masterclass. So I'll take you through all the foundational kind of educational lessons that we like to teach people.
01:09:21.11 Taylor Kruse And in addition to that you'll get some not only an understanding more understanding for how the nervous system works but things you can try drills you can try. And in that particular masterclass we dive deep into cranial nerves which is pretty cool.
01:09:36.66 Taylor Kruse And you'll walk away with some tools that you can use immediately to to help improve movement and hopefully decrease pain. That's it for today guys. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll be back soon.
