Timestamp Speaker Transcript
00:00:00.95 Tony Fowler And we're rolling.
00:00:02.87 Taylor Kruse Hey welcome back to the Cruise Elite Podcast. What's up Tony?
00:00:05.98 Tony Fowler Good morning Taylor. Look what I found.
00:00:11.30 Taylor Kruse Oh. Are those those aren't pinholes but they're those glasses are well they're pinholes but they're lines. They're or.
00:00:21.14 Tony Fowler Yeah so it's almost like looking through some like blinds or or shutters.
00:00:24.95 Taylor Kruse Yeah yeah.
00:00:25.82 Tony Fowler But basically they're plastic glasses with just horizontal bars.
00:00:30.01 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:00:30.23 Tony Fowler across them. And i think I think they were like a prop at some party that I worked at and they were just handing these out.
00:00:36.02 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:00:38.23 Tony Fowler um But they do block a good amount of light.
00:00:41.18 Taylor Kruse Yeah. I've never tried those but that's probably really similar to pinholes.
00:00:46.01 Tony Fowler So I was going to ask because unlike pinholes where it's kind of like a crosshatch pattern And so you're getting less light kind of in in points all over.
00:00:57.40 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:00:58.33 Tony Fowler This is straight horizontal bars.
00:01:00.98 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:01:01.56 Tony Fowler And so I'm wondering if it's occluding more of like the up-down vision but it's allowing for like the wider horizontal to peripheral vision.
00:01:06.33 Taylor Kruse Hmm.
00:01:12.14 Taylor Kruse That's very interesting. I wonder what the difference would be you know like specifically.
00:01:13.24 Tony Fowler and
00:01:17.74 Taylor Kruse That's pretty cool.
00:01:18.84 Tony Fowler Yeah yeah that's that's that's kind of what I was wondering too. I was like is this is this useful in some way from from like a targeting perspective? If I wanted to limit just my kind of vertical spread of vision but keep my horizontal vision as wide as possible.
00:01:27.61 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:01:33.14 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:01:36.82 Taylor Kruse Yeah it's interesting. I mean there's a lot of that is I don't know exactly what it's like to have those on but I do wonder if do you have this like are you sort of perceiving the lines going across?
00:01:49.75 Taylor Kruse Like can you actually yeah.
00:01:51.03 Tony Fowler Yeah they're a little blurry but like I'm looking right through them right? It's like close enough to my eye where where um like I can tell they're there but I'm also can see through them.
00:01:54.78 Taylor Kruse Right. Right.
00:02:00.66 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:02:00.98 Tony Fowler um But I think what I do notice is way less like up and down freedom um to see.
00:02:07.45 Taylor Kruse Yeah that's interesting. Lines matter. The way that the brain perceives lines vertical versus horizontal they really do matter. It's weird. You can even test lines.
00:02:19.58 Taylor Kruse um you can this is we I played around with a friend of mine who started out as kind of a colleague through continued ed courses and stuff. We became good buddies and He was visiting us once and we were nerding out and he's like let's test let's test lines.
00:02:37.37 Taylor Kruse And so we basically were putting visual pictures in front of our face of either vertical lines horizontal lines or curved lines.
00:02:46.52 Tony Fowler Oh interesting.
00:02:48.15 Taylor Kruse And then because with you know the way that the receptors respond to the different pattern it's like kind of a pattern recognition thing.
00:02:57.45 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:02:57.94 Taylor Kruse You can get completely different responses looking at shapes essentially.
00:03:02.75 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:03:02.88 Taylor Kruse It's pretty wild. And we did. We were doing like little range of motion tests and like strength tests and finding like differences in the shapes and the lines. And it was really interesting.
00:03:18.71 Tony Fowler Yeah that makes me wonder. I've got these like ah ah vertical lines on my acoustic treatment that are meant to like disperse the sound and in certain ways.
00:03:29.24 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:03:29.56 Tony Fowler But basically I'm looking at all these lines around my studio like up and down. I wonder wonder what that's doing.
00:03:36.15 Taylor Kruse yeah Yeah you can it's you can tell you can just put a piece of paper in front of your face and draw.
00:03:37.21 Tony Fowler um
00:03:41.30 Taylor Kruse one vertical line or several vertical lines test it change it to horizontal test it test curve lines. You could even use that. That application can be used when you're doing like vision training or or vision rehab stuff.
00:03:53.77 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:03:55.86 Taylor Kruse You can actually choose visual targets or backgrounds that actually use the type of shape or line that is working for you best. I have heard a story through ah another colleague a while ago that they had to rehab somebody's ability to handle curved lines which is really bizarre to think about.
00:04:21.43 Taylor Kruse For some reason I don't know the background of this like much of the background of the story but they had it was through a lot of extensive testing and vision work they found out that somebody was basically very sensitive to curved lines.
00:04:34.65 Taylor Kruse like threat. So they had to incorporate that kind of a I think little by little exposing the person to more and more curved lines in their vision vision rehab which is interesting.
00:04:47.67 Tony Fowler That's fascinating.
00:04:48.79 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:04:49.18 Tony Fowler That's fascinating. um I also know some people have like a strong aversion to like polka dots.
00:04:57.70 Taylor Kruse Hmm.
00:04:58.15 Tony Fowler It really like freaks some people out. And I just wonder like what what what's going on in the brain there that that that that's coming out like curved lines I could almost imagine like oh maybe that's almost like the the bare minimum representation of a snake to the to that like primal part of your brain.
00:05:04.60 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:05:17.10 Taylor Kruse That's a very interesting way to think about it.
00:05:17.40 Tony Fowler yeah
00:05:19.06 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:05:20.02 Tony Fowler um so
00:05:20.06 Taylor Kruse A lot of this stuff is survival based. Yeah.
00:05:22.52 Tony Fowler yeah so maybe polka dots it's like that's like a you know maybe predators or poisonous animals have have dots. And so that's like a ah thing
00:05:30.78 Taylor Kruse I think that there's yeah there's that could be part of it. I mean there's some I get that you know it's there's a lot of that with color too.
00:05:40.11 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. so so much So much more to learn. Not enough time.
00:05:46.45 Taylor Kruse Yeah. It's true.
00:05:49.88 Tony Fowler But at least on this podcast we have we have some things that we're definitely going to learn today. um And today we are going to talk about the neurology of posture.
00:06:01.27 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:06:02.71 Tony Fowler um Posture being one that i think... all of us can kind of relate to or or most of us can kind of relate to.
00:06:11.14 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:06:11.93 Tony Fowler I don't know if you had like a ah your mom or your grandparent or someone who would tell you to sit up straight or your teacher or someone or someone who poke you in the back to make sure you you know kind of arch your back and sit up straight.
00:06:23.29 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:06:26.74 Tony Fowler um But yeah posture is one that I think ah we all we all aspire to better posture right? um And so yeah it'd be really cool to understand a little bit more about what's going on in your brain that could be affecting your posture.
00:06:45.46 Taylor Kruse Absolutely. Posture is a big topic. It's it's something that Never you know a lot of we see a lot of trends in the fitness world and in the movement and rehab world.
00:06:58.23 Taylor Kruse lot of things people are interested in and they come and they go and we usually circle back to them. But posture is kind of always there. You know people people are always asking me about posture even you know on social media and stuff.
00:07:12.09 Taylor Kruse People are wondering why do my shoulders roll in or why do I have a forward head posture or some people call it like a tech neck right? There's all these names for this stuff.
00:07:21.06 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:07:23.47 Taylor Kruse There's lots of names for this stuff and they all are you know describing some kind of shape that the body is carrying.
00:07:35.51 Taylor Kruse And people get focused on what they believe might be a postural issue because the shape of the body doesn't look as ideal as they want it to. Or maybe there's posture issues and pain issues and A lot of times we like to relate pain problems to posture issues. And you know that's a whole conversation in itself because even poor posture doesn't equal pain right? There's there's some interesting things to kind of unpack there but posture is I think probably the miss most understood thing that exists in the movement world.
00:08:17.34 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:08:17.82 Taylor Kruse I really i really do think so. Um like the industry is always talking about it but the conversation never ever seems to go further than muscles right? It's like okay you've got you've got poor posture. You've got that rounded upper or back that some people call kyphosis.
00:08:42.84 Taylor Kruse Well we must need to strengthen your back muscles and release your pec muscles.
00:08:49.17 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:08:49.56 Taylor Kruse Because in theory if you were working on let's say a model of a person that was made of clay you that's kind of what you would do. You would kind of mold the person and you know it's kind of like all right if we strengthen the stuff on the back that's going to shorten it and maybe make the person you know bring the person up taller.
00:09:08.73 Taylor Kruse But we got to release the stuff in the front or else we can't make that adjustment and it won't hold. you know that's That's where people are with their... their mindset still with posture.
00:09:20.76 Taylor Kruse And it's ah it's so much bigger than that. there's It is truly something extremely holistic involving all kinds of higher order systems that we're gonna talk about today.
00:09:34.97 Taylor Kruse Your eyes your inner ear the vestibular system your breathing system your airway your emotions.
00:09:44.78 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:09:45.19 Taylor Kruse Man there's so much that goes into this. posture is truly holistic right? It's ah it's really a symphony of all these different systems working together to express what is the person's posture.
00:10:00.82 Taylor Kruse And the interesting thing about this that I've really observed over the years is that there is not really a perfect posture right? It's it's not like we can say okay this is it because each person is different.
00:10:16.89 Taylor Kruse Their brain and nervous system is doing the best it can with the resources it has. And not everyone's posture is always going to look the same.
00:10:28.15 Taylor Kruse We can have what we might look at as a postural issue and that person has chronic pain. Right? We've seen that. But we've also seen the person that has what would be considered poor posture and they're pain free.
00:10:46.90 Taylor Kruse So then the question is why does somebody with such lousy posture not have any pain?
00:10:52.13 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:10:52.70 Taylor Kruse And then the athlete comes around who's standing up nice and tall is always training has good conditioning. You look at their body and you go wow this is posturally this is a this is a nice physique right?
00:11:08.12 Tony Fowler okay
00:11:08.89 Taylor Kruse Shoulders stacked over pelvis you know nice and tall through the crown. Everything looks in alignment yet they have chronic back pain or chronic neck pain. And we see that all the time.
00:11:21.94 Taylor Kruse All right so there's there's a lot of big questions that come up. It's like well does does bad posture equal pain? does you know do you it's just It's very interesting. And and it that by itself displays that there's a lot more to it than just muscles right? There's a lot more to it than just strengthening muscles or releasing muscles.
00:11:44.25 Taylor Kruse So there's ah there's a lot to talk about.
00:11:48.95 Tony Fowler Well I think it might be good to kind of start with that. I'll call it the the classical model of posture. And that's that idea you were just talking about like OK if you've got kyphosis if your upper back is is bent over just ah strengthening the upper back muscles and and releasing those pec muscles.
00:11:57.24 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:12:04.19 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:12:09.78 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:12:10.01 Tony Fowler um I think it's kind of useful to start there since so many of us start there in our conception right?
00:12:16.15 Taylor Kruse Right. Right.
00:12:17.85 Tony Fowler um I think people notice a lot of people notice a change when they do when they focus on upper back lifts.
00:12:25.69 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:12:26.20 Tony Fowler um And so I'm curious in the in the holistic model what do you think is going on there where you know the the day after doing upper back work
00:12:37.41 Tony Fowler they're they're feeling like they're standing a little taller.
00:12:41.11 Taylor Kruse Right. So so you can get you can get postural changes from proprioceptive work. There's there's no there's no question. um Typically what we see if we're if we're looking at a relatively significant change in posture that we're trying to work with you typically are are not going to see the carryover at least stick for as long as you would like it to.
00:13:08.94 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:13:09.50 Taylor Kruse right But sometimes sometimes through good exercise in that in that case working on you know muscles of the posterior chain the extensor group those anti-gravity muscles that help us stand up taller you absolutely can improve posture that way. But it's it's super limited right? Because people tend to look at muscles as if they have a mind of their own.
00:13:35.61 Taylor Kruse right it's It's going back to that like idea of molding the clay.
00:13:40.51 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:13:40.54 Taylor Kruse like If I work my upper back I'm going to change my upper back. And therefore if I shorten the muscles and contract the muscles they're going to hold. And muscle tone does not necessarily work that way. right A lot of our muscle tone or really all of our muscle tone is controlled by...
00:14:03.70 Taylor Kruse systems neurologic systems circuitry things that are reflexive in nature. And it's designed that way because you don't want to have to invest conscious energy into standing up taller or holding up your posture.
00:14:16.24 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:14:17.20 Taylor Kruse If you did that it would waste a lot of energy and eventually you probably would not feel good from that. Imagine fixing your posture standing up tall holding your shoulders back and doing that over and over and over again.
00:14:32.38 Taylor Kruse Yeah it wouldn't feel good right? and And how can you keep track of that while you're actually moving right through the world? So we tend to think of muscles as this organ this structure that has its own brain and and it doesn't work that way. Muscles are actually receiving let's say orders on what to do from these other systems.
00:15:00.95 Taylor Kruse And we can start to unpack those systems because a lot of it is coming from our eyes in our inner ear. In fact you're your main source of descending postural control comes from your vestibular system.
00:15:19.50 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:15:19.96 Taylor Kruse So your your vestibular system is that compass that we have that lives in the inner ear that helps us understand where we are in space which way we're going and which way is up.
00:15:33.24 Taylor Kruse Very simply put it helps you understand where your head is. It tells your brain where your head is. Your head and your neck. Your body too but to simplify it it's it's very much about the head and the neck.
00:15:49.02 Taylor Kruse So we have to have a good functioning vestibular system a healthy vestibular system that is interpreting sensory inputs coming in very clearly and is also sending the appropriate appropriate descending signals to postural muscles.
00:16:09.59 Taylor Kruse So muscles of the posterior chain Think about all the muscles on the back of the body along the spine. We mentioned the upper back the neck the pelvis.
00:16:22.62 Taylor Kruse This even goes into the lower body. Those are our posterior chain muscles the anti-gravity ones that help us fight gravity. And your vestibular system is basically the main system that's helping us fight gravity.
00:16:37.05 Taylor Kruse So... We cannot have the conversation about posture without also talking about the vestibular system because some of those orders I mentioned that are coming from these higher order systems to give muscles the appropriate amount of tone a lot of that is coming from the inner ear which is very weird to hear at first.
00:16:48.25 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:17:01.15 Taylor Kruse It's like wait it's not my rhomboids and my... My upper traps and my mid traps they don't have a brain or control center themselves. They're actually receiving orders from something else that's interesting.
00:17:19.03 Taylor Kruse right. and And so a lot of this is most of it is reflexive in nature. And um that control is not voluntary at all. In fact we don't want it to be.
00:17:30.30 Tony Fowler Right right. We don't want to be consciously thinking about our posture throughout every movement and everything we do.
00:17:37.46 Taylor Kruse Totally.
00:17:37.66 Tony Fowler um
00:17:37.86 Taylor Kruse It'd just be so energy expensive.
00:17:41.94 Tony Fowler And that's why when you're not thinking about it is probably when if you have bad posture you descend into bad posture. Right.
00:17:50.11 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:17:50.90 Tony Fowler you know It's like ah when you start thinking about your breathing suddenly ah you're very aware of it. When you start thinking about your posture that's when you oh that's when you sit up straight.
00:17:56.91 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:17:59.65 Tony Fowler Yeah that makes sense to me.
00:18:00.02 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:18:03.51 Tony Fowler um So maybe maybe the vestibular system is is the place to start. How... how Yeah yeah. Like how how would you relate the overall function and health of the vestibular system to posture in applied neurology?
00:18:22.10 Taylor Kruse Yeah so it's it's not really you can't really separate it from the eyes. So there's you know these two your visual system and your vestibular system are working together for sure.
00:18:25.85 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:18:33.40 Taylor Kruse You know our listeners can think about and in terms of posture our listeners can think about vision telling the brain where the horizon is. right because that's a very fundamental way to look at what are what are our eyes actually doing for us in terms of like pattern recognition.
00:18:52.95 Taylor Kruse And one of those things is they are really trying to figure out like what is the horizon so that we can orient ourselves relative to that.
00:19:04.38 Taylor Kruse And it kind of comes back to some of what we were talking about at the beginning of the episode here with lines.
00:19:08.28 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah. yeah
00:19:09.85 Taylor Kruse Because so much of what we interpret in our in our world in our environment coming into our eyes is based on lines and pattern recognition.
00:19:20.82 Taylor Kruse So your eyes are always sort of searching for what might be the horizon to help orient us upright. And your vestibular system tells you know your your brain where your head and neck is and and also is involved in how is your body moving?
00:19:38.58 Taylor Kruse Because posture we have to remember is is not static. right we We typically tend to think about posture as okay what's your posture like while you're just standing there or sitting there?
00:19:50.26 Taylor Kruse And that's a part of posture because in order to stand there or sit there upright you're still dealing with gravity and you still have resting tone in your tissues your your muscles and your connective tissues that are helping you stay upright.
00:20:06.71 Taylor Kruse But posture is not just static it's dynamic too. So you have to be able to maintain what is an optimal posture let's say as you're moving. And more importantly you have to be able to maintain an optimal posture as you're moving through the world with lots of interference in other sensory inputs coming in.
00:20:27.32 Taylor Kruse So we can't really just look at it as static. and And that's again where our eyes and our inner ear really help us. especially our vestibular system being the compass that is helping our brain understand how we're moving.
00:20:43.38 Taylor Kruse Like are we moving forwards? Are we moving backwards? Are we moving side to side or up and down? We have very specific pieces of anatomy in the inner ear that measure the accelerations of head and neck movement as we move through the world and also body movement very linearly again like all directions really.
00:21:10.17 Taylor Kruse And so those pieces of anatomy those parts of the the inner ear the ones that help us and help our brain understand the the forward and backward and side-to-side movements and the up and down ones that comes from the otoliths of the inner ear.
00:21:30.30 Taylor Kruse And the head and neck accelerations like imagine you're an athlete you're running down the field you quickly turn your head to receive the ball right? Because you're you're looking at where the ball is going to come from. Or you're out for a walk with your friend
00:21:45.11 Taylor Kruse And you are talking to them as you guys are walking side by side and you're periodically turning your head to the right as you talk. Then you're looking forwards. Then you're turning your head to the right as you talk and then you're looking forwards. Those head and neck movements that we kind of take for granted we don't really recognize them as turning up in all these places in our life. Those movements The sensors that sense those head and neck movements are mostly connected to what is known as the semicircular canals of the vestibular system.
00:22:19.58 Taylor Kruse So that's a different area so that's different anatomy from the otoliths.
00:22:26.24 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:22:26.71 Taylor Kruse So there's different aspects of the anatomy that help us essentially organize our movement and our posture whether we are just stationary standing upright sitting upright or actually moving through the world.
00:22:49.75 Tony Fowler So you have these vestibular components. um Your otolith your semicircular canals um they're the compasses.
00:23:00.09 Tony Fowler I just imagine two compass balls in your ears. That's kind of
00:23:03.35 Taylor Kruse Perfect. Yeah.
00:23:04.28 Tony Fowler and And there's up which is kind of like north right? It's always there.
00:23:08.81 Taylor Kruse Exactly.
00:23:08.91 Tony Fowler But then there's the cardinal direction. So it's it's a nice three-dimensional compass. um And then there's your your eyes that are supporting what those compasses in your ears are telling you.
00:23:20.57 Taylor Kruse Exactly.
00:23:21.40 Tony Fowler So you know if I feel like with my eyes closed up is a certain you know angle. And I open my eyes and that visual information confirms that then you know everything's copacetic.
00:23:38.65 Tony Fowler But if I open my eyes and the horizon is slanted and it looks really off compared to how how my brain thinks it should then I might have a sensory mismatch and then I might have problems.
00:23:42.52 Taylor Kruse Yes.
00:23:53.08 Taylor Kruse Exactly. That's the sensory mismatch idea.
00:23:56.91 Tony Fowler Okay.
00:23:57.66 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:23:57.78 Tony Fowler So so and I was just going to say you know in my example I'm imagining like something really totally bizarrely off but in reality it might even just be a tiny degree off.
00:23:57.94 Taylor Kruse and And go ahead.
00:24:09.18 Taylor Kruse Oh my goodness. Let me let me describe the tiny degree.
00:24:12.55 Tony Fowler Hmm.
00:24:13.34 Taylor Kruse This is so uh I there's an assessment that I I have not used it much in the past couple years. Cause I I'm not really doing any one-on-one in-person stuff currently. Most of my time and energy has been going into to teaching.
00:24:30.81 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:24:31.45 Taylor Kruse I do some online sessions but I can't do this particular assessment really online very easily. So I've gravitated away from it from it for now but it's a very interesting one. So um I used to do this a lot with people that I thought had more vestibular concerns.
00:24:50.17 Taylor Kruse And we called it the bucket test. And we used an app called Visual Vertical. And you take a big bucket a large one like a construction grade you know large bucket.
00:25:01.98 Taylor Kruse And you take your phone you've got this app and we used to Velcro the phone into the bucket on the bottom of the bucket and you would have the client take the bucket and cover their face with it so that their head was inside of the bucket.
00:25:17.82 Taylor Kruse So at this point all you can see is bucket and phone.
00:25:18.21 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:25:21.59 Taylor Kruse And we pivot the bucket or rotate it and then the coach grabs the bucket. So now the client is not holding it. they're just in their face is just inside the bucket and they can't see anything else. They can't they don't know where the horizon is right? They can't they can't use their peripheral vision. It's all bucket.
00:25:41.40 Taylor Kruse And what happens here is kind of like a level the coach starts to slowly rotate the bucket back to what would be vertical.
00:25:52.66 Taylor Kruse And the leveling device on the app will give you a reading after you do this for what is actually vertical. So here's what we do. So as the coach I'll say okay client I'm gonna rotate the bucket very slowly.
00:26:07.77 Taylor Kruse And I want you to say stop When you think the line because there's a vertical line on the screen of the phone when you think the line has arrived at a perfectly vertical position.
00:26:14.57 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:26:20.86 Taylor Kruse So I rotate it and then they go stop. And as soon as it stops the app basically takes a reading. And we might do three of them. We might try it three times and then the app takes an average or something or we take the average of what the person perceives as perfectly vertical.
00:26:40.79 Taylor Kruse And what you find with people that have vestibular issues and sensory mismatch as you mentioned is that once you take away the dominance of the visual system by limiting the input that they're getting from the outside world because their face is in a bucket and they have to rely more on their understanding of where vertical is coming from their vestibular system what you find is that people will perceive center
00:27:11.45 Taylor Kruse three degrees off five degrees off 10 15 it was very common for me to test healthy individuals general population healthy individuals even some pretty high level athletes and find discrepancies in what they thought was vertical from anywhere from five to 15 degrees.
00:27:33.34 Taylor Kruse Okay and that's not helpful as soon as your brain starts to take that sensory input and try to integrate it with let's say proprioception or vision right?
00:27:44.11 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:27:46.61 Taylor Kruse Sometimes that's when that sensory mismatch occurs. Of course our brain is gonna try to compensate in many different ways to figure out where center is but that's one example of kind of an accuracy issue with something like the vestibular system that can impact how you hold your body's posture.
00:28:07.26 Taylor Kruse Because if you're not sure where midline is or you're not sure where the horizon is your brain is always going to prioritize higher order systems over basic proprioception.
00:28:20.18 Taylor Kruse And proprioception is more of a hero. So here's where this really all comes together. Let's say you have some sort of deficit with your vestibular system. And sometimes these are side to side differences.
00:28:35.22 Taylor Kruse So you've got one area of the inner ear let's say the right side perceiving something completely different than the left side. Your brain would rather trust and prioritize the vestibular input over the proprioceptive input and instead of um kind of blending the two or relying more on one your brain will go proprioceptive system I need you to be the hero here. I need you to adjust yourself.
00:29:07.45 Taylor Kruse based on what's happening with the higher order systems the the systems that live above you let's say. And that's when we start to get changes in our body our proprioception because our inner ear is not functioning in a balanced way or even our eyes.
00:29:26.71 Taylor Kruse So this is when our neck position might change very subtly.
00:29:32.98 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. A little tilt to the side perhaps.
00:29:33.68 Taylor Kruse Our thoracic yeah exactly yes our thoracic position might change very subtly to accommodate our head and neck position.
00:29:35.78 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:29:43.51 Taylor Kruse Okay so think about this yeah think about this as the compensation beginning upstream based on what the inner ear is or isn't telling the brain accurately.
00:29:43.65 Tony Fowler Might drop your shoulder a little bit.
00:29:47.96 Tony Fowler okay
00:29:55.80 Taylor Kruse And then as we work down the body we might see all of these compensatory things happening as a countering type of mechanism for what's happening upstream.
00:30:07.64 Taylor Kruse So any change you make in the head and neck is going to have an influence on the rest of the body downstream of it. So that little itty-bitty tilt because somebody is perceiving...
00:30:19.19 Taylor Kruse the horizon wrong or where center is wrong or they have some sort of canal issue or otolith issue that's causing that head tilt we now get a downstream effect possibly all the way to the feet as the body tries to reorganize and proprioception becomes that hero.
00:30:25.82 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:30:38.42 Taylor Kruse And that strategy is great but it's not a great long-term strategy. So it may work wonderful at first because we're you know we're compensating machines right? That's what our our brain and nervous system is amazing at.
00:30:56.15 Taylor Kruse But if we're holding the body in a certain way in that prop our proprioception system that started as the hero that eventually might be a painful strategy over time right?
00:31:09.76 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:31:10.14 Taylor Kruse And that's when the relationships in our body of you know tension and alignment relationships could become changed in some way.
00:31:22.55 Taylor Kruse That over time you might now be dealing with force in a different way as you walk as you run as you move. as you just stand there or sit there. And those are the types of things over time that actually show us that what seems like a seemingly small problem at first can become a larger problem problem problem down the road based on the compensatory strategy.
00:31:51.86 Tony Fowler Yeah that's a compelling case for why you know if I just work on the muscles that I think will change my posture that it might it might help and it might feel good.
00:32:04.31 Tony Fowler um But if it's not changing the underlying problem ah that you might not yeah yeah.
00:32:09.66 Taylor Kruse Right. it's It's only a small part of it. Yeah that's right. So that's why so many of these methods interventions that are pretty common for the aches and pains that are related to posture you know the the releasing of muscles that's why the results of that are often quite temporary.
00:32:13.75 Tony Fowler yeah
00:32:32.70 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:32:33.28 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:32:34.14 Taylor Kruse And there's you know there's a lot to that. i mean we've talked about the table dilemma many times now. if If I have a posture problem my my I've got the kyphosis going on and then a therapist puts me on the table and releases my pecs.
00:32:48.38 Taylor Kruse And then I get up off the table I'm like wow that feels really good. I feel looser in the front and therefore maybe I feel like I'm standing up better. How long can we expect that adjustment to actually last as soon as other sensory systems organize and integrate back in if my issue is really coming from let's say a vestibular problem?
00:33:11.54 Taylor Kruse As soon as I start to move through the world again nothing was done to help my vestibular system take in more accurate information. And remember the brain will always prioritize the higher order stuff over like the local tissue.
00:33:27.90 Taylor Kruse So then your brain goes okay just put the tissue put the tension back please. Because that's our strategy for what's going on.
00:33:31.83 Tony Fowler Yeah. Be the hero again. ma
00:33:34.78 Taylor Kruse Be the hero again. and And that's some people know that in sort of the therapy world is parking lot syndrome. where you get ah an adjustment a manual adjustment or a manual release or somebody you know spends 30 minutes scraping your skin with a tool you stand up you feel great you walk out you get to your car and then you're like oh no I'm starting to feel that thing again you know that pain or that tension. and And oftentimes that's why. It's because the posture issue has all these other components to it. It goes far beyond just
00:34:09.62 Taylor Kruse the muscle or the connective tissues locally?
00:34:13.06 Tony Fowler Mm hmm.
00:34:15.35 Tony Fowler So we've we've talked a lot about like a vestibular deficit. um You know I think I think ah another another thing you mentioned earlier was like a visual deficit causing an issue.
00:34:28.73 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:34:29.91 Tony Fowler Could you describe what that might look like?
00:34:32.02 Taylor Kruse Sure yeah. So there's so many different types of... actual vision problems. Some of the ones that we are talking about the most are imbalances with eye muscles right? We have we have six eye muscles okay? For each eye that move our eyes in all these different directions.
00:34:58.10 Taylor Kruse And you can have an imbalance there the same way you could have an imbalance anywhere else in the body with a muscle. And a really common thing that we're starting to see now is people are engaging in so much screen time right?
00:35:12.92 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:35:13.82 Taylor Kruse People have jobs that they sit in front of a screen for eight nine hours a day. Well as you're sitting in front of a screen staring at it that visual skill is convergence which is using your um eye muscles your medial recti muscles to pull your eyes inward so that you can focus on the task in front of you.
00:35:37.02 Taylor Kruse And so that means you're getting eight to nine hours of convergence and you're getting very little divergence which is the opposite which is your eyes moving away from the midline.
00:35:44.12 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:35:49.85 Taylor Kruse and you're getting very little accommodation which is the focusing of near and far near and far going back and forth right? So imagine you're out for a walk.
00:36:01.08 Taylor Kruse Sometimes you're looking at the ground in front of you for a moment. Other times you're looking at the horizon and the the mountains whatever it is that you're you're looking at and you're going back and forth back and forth. That's the focusing that your visual system has to go through is accommodation.
00:36:17.62 Taylor Kruse And so for the person sitting and at a desk for nine hours a day you're not getting a lot of accommodation which means you're not exercising those those muscles involved in accommodation and you're not getting a lot of divergence.
00:36:17.75 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:36:30.36 Taylor Kruse So you could develop kind of a dominance with visual convergence because your eyes are kind of stuck in the in position for a long time. Now that has body-wide effects right? Convergence is more related to the body shape of flexion.
00:36:52.34 Taylor Kruse And it makes sense from a survival standpoint and just a movement standpoint when you want to focus on something in front of you you're likely going to be in more of a flexed posture to do that.
00:37:03.56 Tony Fowler Yeah leaning forward a little bit.
00:37:04.58 Taylor Kruse You're leaning forward.
00:37:05.46 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:37:05.58 Taylor Kruse Yeah there's some there's more tension through through the middle of your body flexing you. There's more tension in your in the front of your neck. Your head will move forward. and we typically see that posture like that reflexively is very connected to the type of visual skill that we are doing.
00:37:25.08 Taylor Kruse So with those convergent skills lots of flexion. When we diverge well we actually extend a lot. Imagine looking into the distance looking at the horizon.
00:37:37.18 Taylor Kruse you're You're not going to be in a flexed position really to do that. You're going to be in a more upright extended position. So we have body positions that kind of follow what the eyes are doing as well as other many other reflexes that are involved in um you know the eyes moving and then how the body sort of follows the lead of the eyes.
00:37:58.55 Taylor Kruse So All that is to say that's an example of how somebody could develop kind of this flexion-based dominance through a lot of ah ah a lot of practice of a convergence activity.
00:38:11.35 Taylor Kruse So perhaps that's leading to more forward head posture.
00:38:16.90 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:38:16.92 Taylor Kruse right or more of a kind of kind of a kyphosis type posture. But here's an interesting one to think about too that I've experienced a lot. You can have muscle imbalances visually um differences in the right and left eyes. So
00:38:34.71 Taylor Kruse Most of our listeners now know one of the basic vision exercises that we teach called pencil pushups where you put a pencil in front of your face you follow it in towards the tip of your nose and then you follow it back out.
00:38:45.98 Taylor Kruse So that is the skill of convergence and divergence. And um you can have let's say an imbalance between your right and left eye where maybe my right eye does not wanna converge and my left eye's doing all the work.
00:39:04.80 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:39:06.23 Taylor Kruse And that could develop for different reasons so many reasons. um Imagine how if my right eye does not want to converge every time I want it to and I'm doing something that requires convergence like looking at my phone.
00:39:23.96 Taylor Kruse Can you see how my brain would say no problem right eye doesn't wanna converge let me just tell the proprioceptive system to do something different. so So yes exactly so so instead of both eyes working together with good teamwork
00:39:33.87 Tony Fowler Tilt the head or something.
00:39:41.34 Taylor Kruse Rather than investing the energy resources into pulling my right eye in if it doesn't have the conditioning to do that anymore my brain will just go no problem rotate your head a little bit left.
00:39:55.03 Taylor Kruse And then my right eye won't have to converge as much. This is ridiculously common. So what happens when I'm that person that's on my phone or I'm the desk worker that's using that strategy for eight hours a day?
00:40:13.37 Taylor Kruse My head now has to rotate left which means my trunk might have to rotate right which means my pelvis might have to rotate left. And there's other you know examples like how you know we we we might see different changes in the pelvis and shoulders and and so on. But you can see how based on what my eyes are doing because remember my brain is going to prioritize that information.
00:40:39.70 Taylor Kruse My body will change. And it's completely completely reflexive. it's It's interesting. We have a... We have a tool that's a very been around a long time. It's called a Brock string.
00:40:53.84 Taylor Kruse It's a tool that is often used in different forms of vision therapy where it's a 7 to 10 foot string that you attach to something and then the other end you You touch it to let's say the tip of your nose so that the string is under tension. And on the string it's anywhere from three to even 10 beads of different colors. And you space them out over the string.
00:41:16.79 Taylor Kruse And the idea is as you're holding the string up to your nose and you're looking down the string you will actually see hopefully two strings that are crossing at the bead that you're looking at.
00:41:31.35 Taylor Kruse So we we would take people through this as an assessment and even a training drill. And you can move the beads along the string and say hey can you see the bead?
00:41:38.46 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:41:40.28 Taylor Kruse Yes. OK. How many strings do you see entering the bead? I see two. OK good. That's the right answer. Are the strings crossing in exactly the right place as they enter the bead?
00:41:53.53 Taylor Kruse Yes. Great. That's the right answer. How many strings do you see exiting the bead? ah One. uh-oh that's weird. You should see two because it really should be an X depending on which bead you're looking at.
00:42:09.72 Taylor Kruse So then we go oh that's interesting. Why is your visual system suppressing some of the information from the visual picture? You should see two but you're only seeing one. And this is how we start to pick up on suppression issues or like binocular vision issues where both eyes are not working with appropriate teamwork with this idea of convergence.
00:42:34.55 Taylor Kruse And that's incredibly fatiguing to the brain.
00:42:37.86 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:42:39.70 Taylor Kruse And your brain will gladly compensate your way out of that. The string gives us feedback so that we can kind of figure out okay what distance is this happening at?
00:42:50.58 Taylor Kruse Is this happening six inches from your face? Is this happening six feet from your face? The distance is very specific but that is an example of how eye muscle imbalances and how the brain is processing the visual picture because you might have one eye sending different sending a different visual picture to the brain than the other one is.
00:43:15.74 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:43:16.28 Taylor Kruse And then your brain goes Whoa I don't like this. I want both eyes sending the same image with the same accuracy. And when it's not compensation takes place. And this is the type of vision issue that can become extremely fatiguing for people extremely fatiguing. And and so um
00:43:39.03 Taylor Kruse People who have this type of suppression issue often will report challenges with reading. And sometimes if they fatigue out while they're reading they'll end up in a very strange postural position to read.
00:43:54.10 Taylor Kruse And you'll see this with children a lot if they develop vision problems early on as they're learning to read and write they will display a very compensatory strategy with their body. I'm actually watching my daughter very closely right now for with all of this because she's she's learning to write. She's doing a lot of coloring and she's been practicing you know her her letters and stuff. And I'm watching very closely to make sure that as she does that and it gets difficult and fatiguing and it should right for someone who's developing those skills we don't want to see any sustained head tilts.
00:44:36.59 Taylor Kruse We don't want to see her put her head on the table and rest it on her elbow.
00:44:40.22 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:44:41.31 Taylor Kruse We don't want to see her resting her head on her other hand.
00:44:41.69 Tony Fowler who
00:44:45.85 Taylor Kruse You know how is the person changing their posture based on what might be an unideal visual picture? And this is how posture kind of follows what's going on with the eyes.
00:44:59.54 Taylor Kruse But what do we do? We blame it on the body every single time. And this is just I have not really seen the industry progress yet.
00:45:11.15 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:45:11.29 Taylor Kruse with with this idea. It's still about the muscles. It's still about the connective tissues. I think the only progression I've seen in the last 15 years is instead of saying muscles we say fascia now because people want to sound more sophisticated and muscles got boring right? Because everybody's you know no one wants to talk about releasing a muscle and strengthening a muscle anymore.
00:45:31.90 Taylor Kruse So they jumped to connective tissue and fascia because there's more there's more mystery right? With the connective tissues and It's all involved. you You can't say one tissue is more important than another.
00:45:44.50 Taylor Kruse But what what really is not being discussed is the higher order parts of posture. Like how do the eyes impact it? how do the How does the inner ear impact it? And to be quite honest with you people either don't know what they don't know right? So it just purely doesn't exist in their life. Just like for me.
00:46:05.59 Taylor Kruse You know 16 17 years ago when I met a functional neurologist and we were sort of talking shop and he was asking me about some exercises that might help with someone he was working with.
00:46:19.96 Taylor Kruse And i was asking him about a client that I had and he said that sounds like their vestibular system. And I said their what?
00:46:30.71 Taylor Kruse Like I was doing plenty of vestibular work completely unknowingly to me right?
00:46:38.31 Tony Fowler Yeah.
00:46:39.13 Taylor Kruse Because I was training people to move through the world with better quality but I had no idea what the vestibular system was. And so we we haven't got there yet you know as a as a whole.
00:46:50.77 Taylor Kruse It's still about the muscles. It's still about the connective tissues. There's so much to this idea of posture coming from the brain and coming from All these systems we always discuss the eyes the inner ear the cerebellum the brainstem it's all involved.
00:47:08.79 Tony Fowler Yeah that that's pretty revelatory. um You know I think that the old school interpretation of of like for example sitting at a desk and working at a desk is.
00:47:17.88 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
00:47:20.31 Tony Fowler if If you hunch over it's because it's because you're you're kind of lazy you know you're kind of you're not you're not disciplined enough to hold that posture. And it's like well.
00:47:28.60 Taylor Kruse Right right.
00:47:30.57 Tony Fowler it's not even taking into account that this could be a visual ah compensation compensation strategy. Yeah
00:47:37.72 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:47:38.10 Tony Fowler um yeah that's that's fascinating stuff. That's fascinating. So it also kind of covers what what i was going to ask about next which was just lifestyle stuff.
00:47:51.70 Tony Fowler um But I think you've sort of answered some of this already because you know I'm imagining someone that's on the couch a lot someone that's sitting all the time. They're in the car all the time.
00:48:02.34 Tony Fowler They're not really exercising. They're not working out.
00:48:05.79 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:48:06.64 Tony Fowler um They're not getting outside much. and And you see the posture change. um But you know i can think of visual reasons why you would do that if you're always inside if you're always looking somewhere near if you're never standing up.
00:48:22.90 Taylor Kruse Yes.
00:48:26.14 Tony Fowler Um you know and and I guess the the exception here I would say is the driving scenario where you are looking out in the horizon at further distances.
00:48:37.45 Taylor Kruse Right.
00:48:37.90 Tony Fowler Um but yeah I can I can draw a pretty straight line in my mind between what you were just discussing and some of those what I think people would consider lifestyle uh posture issues.
00:48:48.18 Taylor Kruse Yes.
00:48:50.33 Tony Fowler But yeah do you have any any insights or any thoughts on on that?
00:48:53.75 Taylor Kruse Yeah so the sedent a sedentary lifestyle is one big giant input problem. that's That's really what's happening with being sedentary. you You're now not receiving all of these different types of input that we are designed to receive on the regular.
00:49:11.13 Taylor Kruse and And so it's ah it's one big giant activation problem as far as your brain is concerned. right So the person who's more sedentary they're inside all the time. They're doing a lot of sitting.
00:49:23.29 Taylor Kruse sure those things are not ideal for our body right? You are now becoming deconditioned right? And you're holding static postures a lot of the time and we get better at whatever it is we practice for better or for worse. This is just kind of how the brain and the nervous system work. If you sit all the time and you sit with lousy posture your brain actually learns how to do that better.
00:49:49.72 Taylor Kruse right no No little no little you know message shows up. you know You don't get a text message from your brain that says hey just so you know you probably should stand up straighter sit up straighter and you know move around and get some exercise. You don't really know this happening over time.
00:50:07.46 Taylor Kruse It's more and more of an input problem and you get better and better at actually being in that unideal position. So with that sedentary lifestyle comes a very very big deficit in vestibular input and visual input because you're just not moving through the world as much as you should be.
00:50:26.55 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:50:27.51 Taylor Kruse So there's you know the list it keeps going right? there's so many There's so many inputs that you're not getting as a sedentary individual. And the the cumulative effect of this you know has body-wide brain-wide ramifications over time.
00:50:46.90 Taylor Kruse And all of them affect posture.
00:50:51.06 Tony Fowler And I think that this also um probably applies to a geriatric population where maybe their eyesight's going their balance is going in decline they're not moving as much.
00:51:01.93 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
00:51:06.05 Tony Fowler And so you start seeing that same sort of forward lean posture occur.
00:51:08.79 Taylor Kruse Yep. Yep.
00:51:12.12 Taylor Kruse Yeah it's a more unfortunate example but it actually is a good one for learning. if you If you observe somebody who an elderly person that is obviously going through this very large input deficit now they're not getting as much vestibular input they're not getting as much visual input in all these other proprioceptive inputs through a lack of movement
00:51:40.86 Taylor Kruse you start to see the posture change. And we start to see that kind of stereotypical a rounded posture rounded back and a forward head type of posture. and And really what's happening there is as the inputs are lost and the systems are deconditioned our survival mechanisms really kick in.
00:52:04.54 Taylor Kruse and to support us. And so you'll often see elderly folks that are having a lot of vision issues basically they don't wanna take their eyes off the ground right? The ground kind of becomes the focus because the ground is what's dangerous.
00:52:21.24 Taylor Kruse And maybe they're dealing with other proprioceptive issues like let's say blood flow issues in their feet which are common with that population. And now they can't feel the ground as well.
00:52:33.66 Taylor Kruse right All those little sensors on your feet that help you understand where the ground is they're communicating back to the brain. And the brain's taking that information and blending it and organizing it with what are we getting from the eyes? What are we getting from the inner ear?
00:52:48.38 Taylor Kruse So you see that person sort of looking at the ground and and really essentially getting closer and closer to the ground.
00:52:56.41 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:52:56.70 Taylor Kruse And in a lot of that is a survival mechanism because falling will always be the the number one threat for a human physically. And so the threat is the ground.
00:53:09.02 Taylor Kruse and And that's really what's happening there. um So we have to do what we can to continue exposure to dynamic type movements and skills and thinking and you know as much as we can you know to to preserve those systems and hopefully avoid anything you know out of the ordinary out of the out of the ordinary aging process.
00:53:39.32 Tony Fowler So I had a question about um sitting versus standing and it's kind of inspired by the table dilemma scenario.
00:53:43.98 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:53:48.28 Taylor Kruse yeah
00:53:48.57 Tony Fowler So in the table dilemma that we talk about all the time you know someone might be in a horizontal position they're lying down they're not loading the spine and the body. And so whatever's being done you know maybe won't carry over to when they're standing and loading the body.
00:54:06.68 Tony Fowler And so i'm kind of wondering like is if sitting versus standing if you're kind of in this different state can your posture change or be specific to a position like that?
00:54:20.52 Tony Fowler And I would also apply that to standing versus moving.
00:54:21.04 Taylor Kruse Definitely. Yeah.
00:54:24.41 Taylor Kruse A hundred percent. Posture is specific to position. There's no question.
00:54:27.39 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:54:27.90 Taylor Kruse Yeah. There's no there's there's no question. And that's why again it's there's so much to it right? The you know taking a taking a photo of your posture standing up static position. I mean
00:54:41.94 Taylor Kruse gives you clues right? Posture gives us clues. But when you're sitting it's going to be different. When you're laying down it's going to be different. When you're moving it's going to be different. Right? It's just again it's a symphony.
00:54:53.62 Taylor Kruse So it's all these systems working together right to to create a person's posture depending on on what you're doing and how you're using your body. So yes you will you will see that posture can in fact be very position-specific.
00:55:08.19 Tony Fowler Mm hmm. And then kind of from from the opposite direction um could your posture and like a lying down position affect your posture when you're standing or moving? And and the main example I have is does how you sleep matter?
00:55:25.56 Taylor Kruse I think when your body's in a position for a long period of time we have to really consider those positions and activities right? Because the longer we hold a specific position the more influence it actually has on our body.
00:55:40.82 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:55:41.18 Taylor Kruse Right? So and so yes I think that I think that the the positions we sleep in matter um mainly because this comes down to a lot of this comes down to breathing.
00:55:55.54 Taylor Kruse Okay so we want to make sure that our breathing is optimal at nighttime. And i think I think position definitely matters for ease of breathing.
00:56:07.22 Taylor Kruse So people with you know some postural issues in the neck and thoracic spine will often really struggle at night to find a position for their head and neck that is most comfortable that allows them an open airway.
00:56:23.33 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:56:23.77 Taylor Kruse right So airway really matters in this scenario. it It's tough when you have a neck that doesn't move when you have a thoracic spine that doesn't move yeah you've got to really organize a certain way and in sleeping becomes a little bit more could be more uncomfortable if you are having trouble figuring out those positions. And once your breathing is impacted well breathing
00:56:46.97 Taylor Kruse you know There's so many unconscious repetitions happening during your day or or during a night's sleep.
00:56:54.69 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:56:54.74 Taylor Kruse right
00:56:54.83 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:56:55.54 Taylor Kruse Any activity that is reflexive like that where you're going to go through thousands and thousands of repetitions becomes an activity that we're very interested in when it comes to posture.
00:57:12.79 Taylor Kruse because you're going through so many repetitions and those repetitions will influence the rest of your body. It's like walking it's like running right? It's like chewing it's like speaking.
00:57:25.79 Taylor Kruse Breathing is the same way. And we have neural circuitry to help us with these reflexive rhythmic activities that we don't really need to give any conscious energy towards.
00:57:37.08 Taylor Kruse You don't need to give conscious energy to breathing. Hopefully if you do that's not good. Or chewing or speaking or walking.
00:57:47.77 Taylor Kruse You don't walk and go right foot left foot.
00:57:51.00 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:57:51.22 Taylor Kruse Hopefully right? um And so we have literal pattern generation is what it's called. there We've got circuitry called central pattern generation at the... level of the spinal cord and the brainstem that is designed to help us with these rhythmic kind of automatic type movements in our life so that we don't have to think about them.
00:58:13.44 Taylor Kruse Locomotion is one of them. You know that's the main that's the main one is getting from point A to point B right? It's like the most human thing that we do. Breathing being the most important thing we do for survival all these are controlled by reflexive systems.
00:58:28.98 Taylor Kruse So the position our body is in or isn't in or the way we're moving as we are doing these tasks really matters because function is one of the things that let's say
00:58:48.05 Taylor Kruse sculpts the body over time. right because our our body is constantly remodeling itself. And it's a movement that has the greatest influence on how our body is going to remodel itself.
00:59:02.26 Taylor Kruse So it's ah the way that you walk let's say. i mean walking people don't think about this but walking is actually the the single most intense activity that most people do in terms of how much force they deal with on a daily or weekly basis comes from walking.
00:59:20.64 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
00:59:24.76 Taylor Kruse Now some people think oh force oh that's bad. No force is good right? Impact is good. We're supposed to be able to handle impact. And that impact if our body is working as optimally as it can the way that those energy that energy transfers through the body has a very large impact on how our body remodels itself over time.
00:59:48.38 Taylor Kruse So we we have to think about positions. We have to think about activities that we do that involve a lot of repetitions because they can help us or even hurt us depending on depending on how we're going going about that.
01:00:08.25 Tony Fowler Another potential higher-order system what about auditory deficits?
01:00:14.23 Taylor Kruse Oh that's a good one. That wasn't on my list. That's nice Tony.
01:00:18.83 Tony Fowler Well you're talking to a sound guy so...
01:00:20.79 Taylor Kruse Yeah so I've got a quite a bit of experience with this one actually because I find a lot of low-grade sound processing issues in the population I work with.
01:00:33.34 Taylor Kruse And so what that means is they can't hear out of one ear the same way they can out of the other. ah Sometimes it's literally just They can't take in sound input on one side. Sometimes it's more about mapping of sound like knowing where a sound is coming from. There's there's different types of sound processing and we have different structures that deal with these different types of sound processing. But to keep it simple
01:01:02.33 Taylor Kruse We have cranial nerve eight the vestibulococular nerve that's involved in all vestibular activities but also all auditory type activities. So your ability to put your headphones on and listen to music in both ears stimulates cranial nerve eight.
01:01:19.77 Taylor Kruse Cranial nerve eight has to be healthy for you to process sound accurately. And the rest of the brain is involved in that sound processing. We have an auditory cortex where all of this sound input eventually goes.
01:01:32.41 Taylor Kruse and it's spread out you know even throughout the cortex to other areas too. Different areas of the brainstem like specifically at the level of the midbrain which is the top of the brainstem has a lot to do with tonotopic mapping which is understanding like okay I just heard a bird chirping over there in the tree. Like what direction did that come from?
01:01:52.38 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:01:52.73 Taylor Kruse We take that for granted. Someone with a tonotopic mapping problem that cannot distinguish where a sound is coming from that is very challenging for them to sort out right? Because you're you you need to you need to organize all this information and when things get blurry it becomes energy expensive.
01:02:13.18 Taylor Kruse So basic sound processing if you've got like a hearing deficit in one ear can you understand how that individual let's say they cannot hear very well or they have a small deficit even with their right ear?
01:02:29.53 Taylor Kruse What the body might do because the brain knows this and the brain goes well how do we solve this? Well why don't we rotate the head a little bit to the right so that we're sort of leading as we as we move through the world we're sort of leading with our left ear.
01:02:39.26 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:02:47.33 Taylor Kruse We're using the good ear. It's a very simple strategy. Well like we talked about with the vestibular system and the visual system what are the downstream effects of the head and neck rotating even just a few degrees because that's usually what we're talking about here to the right.
01:03:06.52 Taylor Kruse Well maybe the thoracic spine has to rotate left.
01:03:10.63 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:03:11.10 Taylor Kruse right And you see this sort of chain of events taking place as the postural compensation moves down through the rest of the body. And I've seen this a lot.
01:03:23.10 Taylor Kruse I've seen this a lot. I i worked with an athlete for a number of years and as I started to watch her gait I noticed something.
01:03:34.30 Taylor Kruse I said to myself that's weird. Her ponytail is always is always off to the right side of her head.
01:03:43.64 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:03:45.32 Taylor Kruse I said that's odd. I wonder if she knows she does that. And i sort of like after you know keep watching this is over over time. And I finally got to part of the evaluation that I discovered some hearing stuff.
01:04:01.66 Taylor Kruse I discovered that um she did in fact have a hearing deficit that was relatively significant in one ear. And pretty much everything she did in life was with a rotation.
01:04:14.36 Taylor Kruse And she always did her ponytails off the side of her head. And I thought the ponytail was just I thought it was more like she was doing that and didn't know it.
01:04:24.73 Taylor Kruse But then I realized oh no that's actually showing me too that her head is rotated. Yeah
01:04:29.47 Tony Fowler Yeah was going to say if only every athlete had a ponytail you could see all that stuff.
01:04:32.89 Taylor Kruse yeah yeah. And it was one of the yeah it was just one of the features. It was one of the features that made me realize she was doing this because it can be so subtle. I mean we might be talking you know i've never you know I and wouldn't be able to really measure the cervical spine and how much is it rotating you know like this but man I'm guessing we're talking a matter of a few degrees right?
01:04:55.70 Taylor Kruse Now what does that do to your eyes? Because if you're prioritizing what the auditory stimulus coming in from the right ear and your head is you're moving through life with a head rotation to the right
01:05:10.10 Taylor Kruse Well guess what? Now your right eye might not want to converge as much. Now your left eye is stuck in more divergence.
01:05:20.87 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:05:21.62 Taylor Kruse And now we're starting to see sort of a visual compensation take place. What about the connection between the auditory system and the vestibular system?
01:05:33.66 Taylor Kruse They operate depending on the same nerve. So we often see with more significant auditory deficits we sometimes discover vestibular deficits.
01:05:47.58 Taylor Kruse Sometimes it's the other way around. know Which came first? Eh maybe we don't know. i don't know if we have to know.
01:05:54.28 Tony Fowler Right.
01:05:54.78 Taylor Kruse But you see this connection between these systems and how they're compensating. And so a lot of times we're looking for maybe what we believe is primary. Like what's the most important thing to address here? Because posture really just gives us clues. It doesn't give us answers.
01:06:09.91 Taylor Kruse So you have to be able to look at it and go well I see that head rotation. And I've taken a history and I've learned some stuff about them. um and you know I'm starting to theorize maybe there is a hearing deficit here I need to check that.
01:06:25.62 Taylor Kruse And we have basic ways of doing that. Maybe there is a vision problem here and we have extensive ways of checking that. Maybe there's a vestibular problem we have extensive ways of checking that. And you're just taking the information and you're you're trying to figure out like what are the primary concerns here and how can we design training that starts to essentially make these systems smarter so that your brain can become more confident in the information that it's taking in which is really this whole idea going back to what you said earlier about sensory mismatch it's this whole idea of clarifying all the maps.
01:07:05.17 Taylor Kruse That's what it is. and And when you clarify all the maps to the best of your ability doesn't even have to be perfect. It never will be have to it will never need to be perfect right? Because compensation is normal.
01:07:18.12 Taylor Kruse It's just that when compensation gets out of control and the deficits get too large we see problems come up. So it doesn't have to be perfect but if we can clarify all the maps you know and understand these different structures that are involved in in posture then we have a really good chance of changing posture and getting more long-term change.
01:07:41.56 Taylor Kruse Dealing with a lot of these higher order things that might be going on versus just what? Releasing the muscle and expecting it to stick.
01:07:50.30 Tony Fowler who Yeah and and we have many episodes talking about like the vestibular system for example and and drills that you can do.
01:08:00.64 Tony Fowler you have episodes on the visual system and things you can do there.
01:08:04.94 Taylor Kruse Definitely.
01:08:05.16 Tony Fowler So so there's lots of of places to start if you suspect one of these things. um
01:08:12.73 Taylor Kruse For sure.
01:08:13.91 Tony Fowler I had a question about...
01:08:15.35 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:08:16.44 Tony Fowler another scenario. So let's let's say someone's body is asymmetrical.
01:08:23.52 Taylor Kruse Mm
01:08:23.64 Tony Fowler Their left femur is longer than their right femur for example.
01:08:28.50 Taylor Kruse hmm.
01:08:29.75 Tony Fowler Something like that or or they have a slight scoliosis.
01:08:33.62 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:08:33.72 Tony Fowler ah And so so structural structural differences that could lead to a posture. Based on what you've discussed what you've discussed I could see how that slight postural asymmetry could then lead to a vestibular or a visual or both kind of compen compen compensatory deficit.
01:09:00.92 Taylor Kruse Right.
01:09:01.85 Tony Fowler um is there a Is there a different strategy you would use when kind of there's a structural... ah
01:09:12.95 Tony Fowler a structural asymmetry there.
01:09:14.87 Taylor Kruse Yeah the a structural issue is sort of driving the higher order then problem.
01:09:15.16 Tony Fowler um
01:09:18.55 Tony Fowler Correct. Correct.
01:09:19.35 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:09:19.92 Tony Fowler Because a lot of times we're talking about it the other way around right?
01:09:22.04 Taylor Kruse Yes it's a two-way street.
01:09:22.39 Tony Fowler Where it's like oh sure sure.
01:09:24.44 Taylor Kruse Yeah for sure.
01:09:24.54 Tony Fowler But yeah in this scenario is is there there anything you would do differently?
01:09:30.46 Taylor Kruse Yeah so okay let's start with scoliosis. This is a good one. So typically we would look at a scoliosis as mainly a proprioceptive problem a structural issue that is maybe driving postural problems in other higher order things.
01:09:49.34 Taylor Kruse and And we can't even think about scoliosis like that anymore now that we know more about the nervous system and these different systems. I think there's probably reasons why there's probably several reasons many reasons why somebody could develop a scoliosis but a lot of times with scoliosis you get the kind of idiopathic title to it. We're not really sure why you have it but you have it.
01:10:15.68 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:10:16.15 Taylor Kruse And there hasn't been a whole lot of discussion about where does it actually come from? There's lots of different theories. What we're starting to see more now and I'm not saying this is the only reason to have that so someone could have scoliosis but what we're starting to see more now is the connection between how the eyes and the inner ear might in fact be driving the structural change of the spine.
01:10:39.13 Taylor Kruse which makes a lot of sense when you look at the neuroanatomy of this and how your eyes and the inner ear are speaking directly to the spine because your spine is always adjusting and going through these changes based on what your eyes and your inner ear are telling your brain.
01:10:54.33 Taylor Kruse So imagine kind of going back to the original you know think the The original thing that described with let's say you have an inner ear problem that is causing a deficit. you You aren't totally sure where center is or where the horizon is or you've got semicircular canal dysfunction or otolith dysfunction that's changing how your brain is perceiving the way you're moving through space.
01:11:19.03 Taylor Kruse And it's changing your body's position based on that as a survival mechanism to try to compensate as good as it can. in ah In a person who is developing and growing you can understand how like a tree that is impacted by the elements we've all been out hiking and seen a tree that was sort of leaning in the path of the wind right?
01:11:45.69 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:11:46.47 Taylor Kruse You've seen many trees like that that have been influenced by Other factors the way the tree grows based on the type of terrain it's on you see some really amazing compensatory strategies of the tree to where they grow. i mean we were out hiking just last weekend and there were giant trees essentially growing out of the side of rock cliffs.
01:12:13.18 Taylor Kruse And then because it was a gorge and it had wind that cut through the gorge all the time and the trees were literally bent in that direction that the wind was influencing them the most.
01:12:28.25 Taylor Kruse i Kind of think about it like that. Your eyes and your inner ear are influencing the growth of the spine. based on how the brain is perceiving the external environment.
01:12:41.14 Taylor Kruse So this is one thing that we're starting to learn more and hear more about now. So yes it can be a two-way street but even in that scenario I think what we're learning is that a lot of the spinal issues and and scoliosis is actually coming from the influence that the spine is getting from the inaccurate information coming from the eyes and the inner ear.
01:13:06.43 Taylor Kruse So that's one one idea to consider that's a very big one for anyone who's working with individuals that have scoliosis.
01:13:06.46 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:13:13.06 Taylor Kruse I've tested a lot of people with scoliosis would and they always I put it this way I have never tested somebody with scoliosis that did not have either a vision or vestibular deficit or both.
01:13:27.19 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:13:27.89 Taylor Kruse never Never seen that. So it's interesting to me.
01:13:29.74 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Yeah.
01:13:31.19 Taylor Kruse Again two-way street which came first? I can't really say but the connection is quite obvious to me there now having having seen that. So the other example you said was sort of like the the structural one like the longer femur or whatever.
01:13:48.67 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:13:49.75 Taylor Kruse um It changes input right? I think it has an impact and the body's going to compensate for it. Interestingly enough you know I've heard from a lot of clients that they have a leg length discrepancy.
01:14:09.29 Taylor Kruse I'll hear this a lot on histories and stuff. And I always ask them so where'd you like get that information? like did you Did you so work with somebody that was able to measure your bones and figure this out?
01:14:21.85 Taylor Kruse And they're like um no not really. I was just told by my doctor or my chiropractor or whatever that i I have a leg length discrepancy. And you want to know what it really came down to was a change in pelvic positioning.
01:14:38.38 Taylor Kruse That's just my experience. I'm not saying that these structural ah deficits do not exist. They absolutely can. Most of the time for me
01:14:49.30 Taylor Kruse working with the general population and I hear this their pelvis is asymmetric and it is then it it then looks like or it feels like or whatever that they have a leg length discrepancy. And so the person is kind of thinking oh I must have one leg that's longer.
01:15:08.14 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:15:08.44 Taylor Kruse one leg that's shorter. For the folks I've worked with that's typically what I've seen. Now pelvic asymmetry is a huge topic and is very much a big posture conversation.
01:15:22.14 Taylor Kruse a lot of people struggle with pelvic asymmetry. And pelvic asymmetry to some degree you know we could say is normal. the The human body is not designed to be perfectly symmetric.
01:15:35.90 Taylor Kruse It's when you look at the anatomy there's There's lots of different reasons. The way we breathe um our organs the way that they you know they where our organs are in our body like all of these have an influence on the body not being perfectly symmetric.
01:15:52.63 Taylor Kruse And then you add in all this compensatory stuff happening from all these well our history our experiences our injuries our emotions all this stuff goes into it.
01:16:02.74 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:16:05.97 Taylor Kruse And no body is going to be the same right? And we see pelvic asymmetry all the time. Some level of pelvic asymmetry again I've kind of put in the normal category. When the deficits get too large then they become a problem because the pelvis is a very important structure.
01:16:22.54 Taylor Kruse It's where a lot of force crosses in the body with locomotion. And there's a lot of anatomy there. Breathing involves the you know pelvic positioning has a big influence on it.
01:16:36.71 Taylor Kruse There's all sorts of stuff that we could unpack there at some point. But pelvic positioning is ah very is a large driver for changes that we see in other places in the body whether it's the feet whether it's the the spine the head the neck the jaw certainly is impact impacts it.
01:17:00.12 Taylor Kruse One of the structures that I feel is very much involved in the pelvic asymmetries that we often see is the brainstem.
01:17:10.48 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:17:11.16 Taylor Kruse We haven't talked about it in this episode yet. It's a big driver of posture because very reflexively the brainstem is involved in global tone of tissue global tone of muscles reflexive stabilization even ah more like automatic type things like breathing um and blood pressure right? All these sort of autonomic type functions.
01:17:45.50 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:17:45.92 Taylor Kruse Brainstem's heavily involved in these things. They all impact posture. We are quite accustomed to seeing that when someone has what we call a PMRF dysfunction which means usually for us one side of the brainstem is not functioning optimally or let's say it's underperforming we see changes in posture because of that.
01:18:10.78 Taylor Kruse The pelvis is pretty influenced by the PMRF. So one of the things that we kind of go deeper into in our courses is that when it comes to the brainstem
01:18:22.13 Taylor Kruse We're very much involved um interested in training it for improving posture. And the brainstem has a lot to do with setting muscle tone above the level of T6 of the spinal cord and below it but quite specifically.
01:18:40.02 Taylor Kruse So when the brainstem is doing its job well it will facilitate appropriate extensor tone above T6.
01:18:40.23 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:18:49.91 Taylor Kruse And um when it's doing its job well in the lower body it will facilitate appropriate muscle tone. Again this is a balance of flexors and extensors.
01:19:01.25 Taylor Kruse Okay so for example somebody with a PMRF dysfunction on the right side of the body may demonstrate a loss of extensor tone above T6 which leaves them with maybe that shoulder drooping.
01:19:18.55 Taylor Kruse because they've they've lost tone in the upper trap. You might see a loss of flexor tone below T6 and you may start to see that in the trunk.
01:19:30.90 Taylor Kruse So maybe they have a hard time reflexively stabilizing around the pelvis. And they tell you they have tight hip flexors right? How many people say that?
01:19:40.70 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:19:41.40 Taylor Kruse because the tone is not balanced appropriately and they carry a lot of increased tone in the low back like the spinal extensors. So then you start look you start seeing that classical sort of anterior pelvic tilt right where someone's really tight in their lower back
01:20:01.17 Taylor Kruse They're tight in their hip flexors. We even see with this posture the lower body tends to the limbs tend to rotate outward. So if you have more of a PMRF posture in the lower body you'll usually see that as the duck foot on that side because their leg is rotated out more.
01:20:15.68 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:20:19.10 Taylor Kruse In the upper body you get the drooping shoulder. You also get an internal rotation of the humerus a little bit of increased elbow flexion along with wrist flexion and even pronation of the forearm sometimes even increased finger flexion.
01:20:36.85 Taylor Kruse So it kind of looks like this claw hand. right with some excessive tone in the arm. These are all postures that we are trained to see that give us clues about what structures might be most important to start to train.
01:20:51.85 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:20:51.89 Taylor Kruse So going after the actual structure the PMRF we can do that in a ton of different ways. And then proprioceptively knowing where does it make sense to work on extensor tone?
01:21:06.39 Taylor Kruse where does it make sense to work on flexor tone instead of trying to do it all right? it's It's nice to be able to understand the pattern and then and then see okay this based on what we know and the history and the assessments we can see that we have to help this person with more extensor tone above T6.
01:21:26.30 Taylor Kruse We have to decrease extensor tone below T6 maybe increase extensor tone or sorry flexor tone in the lower body.
01:21:35.28 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:21:35.42 Taylor Kruse So it's it's great to be able to understand the structures the neuroanatomy and sort of pick your targets.
01:21:42.97 Tony Fowler Yeah and it's not dissimilar at least in an approach and in this way from kind of what i what I call the classical model where it's like oh we want to increase ah you know the erectors here.
01:21:53.37 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:21:58.68 Taylor Kruse Right.
01:21:58.90 Tony Fowler And so somebody might look at that as we need to strengthen those muscles.
01:22:03.61 Taylor Kruse Right.
01:22:03.92 Tony Fowler You're saying well we need to do that but the way to do that would be to stimulate the PMRF on this side.
01:22:09.53 Taylor Kruse Exactly.
01:22:10.65 Tony Fowler um And that's the difference that that's the disconnect.
01:22:10.81 Taylor Kruse and And that's where that's the difference.
01:22:14.32 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:22:14.83 Taylor Kruse That's the disconnect because you're using a higher order input and you're directing it at the structure that controls the muscles.
01:22:18.77 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:22:24.42 Taylor Kruse That's why the you know biomechanics matter right? But you really have to look at them as neuro biomechanics once you get to this point of understanding all these systems and because biomechanics are going to be influenced by the control centers right?
01:22:43.11 Taylor Kruse And it's always gonna be a two-way street to some degree because inputs coming in as as how you how you receive input is going to have an effect on this whole equation but the control mechanisms for how we move
01:22:45.97 Tony Fowler Right right.
01:23:01.02 Taylor Kruse come from the brain. Like literally this is this is what's I mean people need to know there are there are brain centers that control locomotion right? So let's say you're trying to help somebody walk better or run better. Wouldn't you want to know what brain center helped that happen?
01:23:22.90 Taylor Kruse And if you did know that and you could reach into your toolbox and select all these different inputs that you that activated that mesencephalic locomotor region in the midbrain that helped a person walk better and swing their arms better in the right timing you have a toolbox full of all these tools that you can direct at that area and then see immediate changes in gait.
01:23:34.85 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. h
01:23:49.27 Taylor Kruse And immediate changes in gait that you can get to you can get the person to keep facilitating. Remember we talked about i didn't say it this way when we talked about it but ground force math how much force you're dealing with on each step as you walk.
01:24:06.23 Taylor Kruse Now you're changing a person's gait and you're letting force be the ultimate remodeler of the body over time. So that's why understanding the neural structures involved in movement and posture is so key because by activating those things and getting those changes sometimes immediately you are influencing how a person moves making them more efficient
01:24:33.69 Taylor Kruse So then the natural process can occur. You're helping them move better and force is starting to change their body over time.
01:24:37.23 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:24:42.36 Taylor Kruse When you change somebody somebody's movement over time you're expanding the movement box. You're giving them more options. And as soon as they get more options what? They're taking in more input.
01:24:58.01 Taylor Kruse So it's this it's this whole journey right? This whole process that takes place where the movement box is expanding. It's now taking in more input. A person's options become larger right? They can adapt better.
01:25:14.55 Taylor Kruse they can They can make all these new movement choices that bring in new input and help the whole process unfold.
01:25:19.75 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:25:23.22 Taylor Kruse Right. So it's it's that's how I think about it. Right. It's it's not just ah what can we do in the moment release the muscle here strengthen it there and hope it sticks. It's how do we influence where those commands are coming and then use the quality the increased quality of movement to sculpt the changes that we want over time.
01:25:45.78 Tony Fowler Yeah. So your process with with someone that wants to work on their posture would be in just very general terms kind of along the lines of...
01:25:57.78 Tony Fowler taking a history and making assessments. So trying to figure out what those control centers are doing and which ones are functioning well and which one could use some work.
01:26:08.92 Taylor Kruse Exactly.
01:26:09.24 Tony Fowler And then you would find entry points that you would assess right? But you might do you know you mentioned pencil pushups. If you realize there's a visual deficit that could be contributing to their posture that's like a drill that you could do.
01:26:20.18 Taylor Kruse Right.
01:26:22.42 Tony Fowler There's drills for the vestibular system. There's drills for the PMRF.
01:26:26.83 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
01:26:26.93 Tony Fowler um There's drills for the cerebellum. There's also cerebellar patterns in gait. We have a whole episode on gait assessments by the way which should really be a companion to this episode because it gets really into that.
01:26:35.58 Taylor Kruse Yes definitely. Yeah it talks about the cerebellum talks about the the PMRF yeah.
01:26:44.15 Tony Fowler um and And so basically there isn't one like okay if you want to fix your posture do X. It's if you want to fix your posture
01:26:51.45 Taylor Kruse Exactly.
01:26:53.46 Tony Fowler figure out what these higher order systems are doing and how they might be contributing and then find an entry point that addresses one or more of those.
01:27:01.05 Taylor Kruse Yes.
01:27:04.06 Taylor Kruse yeah for the for the professional who's who's working with clients on improving posture that's exactly that's exactly how you go about it you know find those underperforming systems and when you do just sort of analyze that and you you'll likely see why their posture has changed right um and and why they're expressing the the body shape that that they are um in
01:27:12.92 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:27:32.86 Taylor Kruse Yeah it's ah it's great to be able to to see those patterns and understand things a little bit more and get those clues.
01:27:40.31 Tony Fowler who So with the thing with deficits that um may not be clear right is how much can you actually improve them or fix them?
01:27:53.77 Tony Fowler If you have a vestibular system that's not performing for example
01:27:54.10 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:27:58.39 Tony Fowler um You know is is in your experience is there a limit to what can be done with with kind of exercises and drills?
01:28:09.78 Tony Fowler Or is it really just a matter of time and and and you know targeted targeted practice?
01:28:14.39 Taylor Kruse This is a tough one. This is a tough one. I think it's all relative to man there's so many factors that go into this. So I'm under I always feel like no matter what improvement can be made.
01:28:29.27 Tony Fowler Hmm.
01:28:29.74 Taylor Kruse That's just where I'm at now. it No matter what people people message me all the time and I feel like some people are trying to prove to me that they're gonna be the hardest case I've ever experienced in my life and they're so problematic they're a total mess nothing works.
01:28:45.14 Taylor Kruse you know I hear this these stories all the time and it's it doesn't affect me.
01:28:49.90 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:28:49.91 Taylor Kruse I hear the history and I'm like wow that's a lot that's intense.
01:28:50.04 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:28:53.78 Taylor Kruse like I'm probably five minutes away from finding a stimulus that's gonna help you. Because something always helps. Not everything but something always does. And and sometimes it's harder than that.
01:29:08.44 Taylor Kruse But everybody can make improvements. Now how much? this is This is just such a big question that I don't even know if you can answer it.
01:29:21.66 Taylor Kruse Because there's so many factors right? There's there's lifestyle there's... um there's all this stuff we didn't talk about. There's psychology there's emotion there's all these things that have an impact on how we perceive you know the world right?
01:29:31.36 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:29:40.50 Taylor Kruse um the Our bodies are very the brain is a very prediction-based organ that is wired more for survival than anything else.
01:29:53.56 Taylor Kruse And The way that we perceive life whether you know our nervous system is always asking this question am I safe or not?
01:30:06.74 Taylor Kruse That's really that's kind of how it's monitoring every moment. Am I safe or not? Can I move from point A to point B? um And what's coming next? Those are really the questions that are always being asked.
01:30:18.36 Taylor Kruse And and that that kind of level of protection that is sort of hardwired into humans has a really big influence on posture and long-term results.
01:30:29.38 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:30:30.46 Taylor Kruse In addition to that metabolic health has an enormous impact on on long-term results okay? And there's that's a whole nother thing right? It's a whole nother thing but can your system handle the change?
01:30:45.56 Taylor Kruse Because we assume that any change we make the body can just handle and that's not how it works metabolically. Your brain actually would rather not change. That's what makes this whole thing so challenging.
01:30:59.10 Taylor Kruse It would rather stay the way that it is because as far as it's concerned for this next moment that is the safest strategy.
01:31:07.54 Tony Fowler Right. It's already decided that. It's already compensated.
01:31:09.34 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:31:10.94 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:31:11.26 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:31:11.29 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:31:11.50 Taylor Kruse and And if you're an individual that has underlying health concerns whatever those might be that ah affect your metabolic health and so many people do you could argue most right?
01:31:23.78 Taylor Kruse At this point there's there's always something right? There's always something. And Those factors really come into play with long-term results because sometimes your brain kind of runs through this equation and figures out that you don't necessarily have the energy resources to maintain a long-term result at this point because there's other processes that it has to prioritize.
01:31:49.78 Taylor Kruse So why should it prioritize a deeper squat or standing up straighter when it needs to do other things? And that's going to be energy expensive. So This is a conversation that is ongoing in our community and in our courses because we have to know how to support people with better metabolic health so that we can use the tools we know how to use and get results more long-term.
01:32:14.71 Taylor Kruse And you'll you'll see when you start to do this work some people adapt to change very quickly and easily. They're usually the healthier client whereas somebody else might struggle with that.
01:32:28.12 Taylor Kruse And they might be in chronic pain longer. They might experience more pain. they They might experience results that you know they get results but then those results kind of go away.
01:32:41.81 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:32:42.02 Taylor Kruse That's very typical um for people that have different metabolic issues. So it's it's a question that is not really possible to answer. and all I can say is everybody can get better.
01:32:56.28 Taylor Kruse And better is better. right that With posture we're not going for perfection. Ideally we're going for an improvement. We're going for less pain. And I think that everybody can do that.
01:33:09.72 Taylor Kruse right and And it's sometimes not even going to look drastic. right it's like I sort of get out of this mentality years ago of we have to fix everything.
01:33:20.93 Taylor Kruse Because then I realized man we're probably never completely fixing something. right And that's okay. We don't actually have to fix something completely. But I've learned that if we can improve something there are very positive consequences to that globally.
01:33:39.75 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:33:39.80 Taylor Kruse right You improve one thing and the whole system adapts to that one thing. And then we move to the next. And that's acceptable. right That's acceptable. So the only way you're going to know what's possible is if you start and keep going.
01:33:57.53 Taylor Kruse Yeah and there's no finish line to this because as a human we have to continually earn a pain-free body that can move and that can express a better posture.
01:34:12.01 Taylor Kruse There's no finish line to that. We have to keep earning it over and over and over again which is very important to know. It's not a set of exercises you're going to do for six months and then it's yours.
01:34:27.95 Taylor Kruse That's not how it works. We have to keep influencing the way that the body is holding its posture through all these different sensory systems and exposure to all these different things including making healthy lifestyle choices and you know some of the things that you know we didn't talk about today like is your what's your environment like and who do you who do you spend time with?
01:34:53.18 Taylor Kruse Right?
01:34:53.23 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah.
01:34:53.94 Taylor Kruse Like you know there's there's all these factors come into play you know with what's going on in your you know in your mind right?
01:34:54.07 Tony Fowler Yeah sure.
01:35:03.72 Taylor Kruse What's what is your self-talk? You know all that all that plays into posture.
01:35:06.68 Tony Fowler sure
01:35:10.01 Taylor Kruse And and so this is there's no finish line to this. It's Pick something work on it move to the next thing continue the journey.
01:35:20.38 Tony Fowler You know we talk a lot about high payoff drills. um
01:35:24.79 Taylor Kruse Yeah.
01:35:25.85 Tony Fowler And for the people that have high payoff drills that are just kind of always useful and it's ah consistent you know over the years I wonder if that's because it's like OK I have this low grade deficit somewhere.
01:35:40.50 Taylor Kruse Mm-hmm.
01:35:41.11 Tony Fowler And it's not going away. It just is. But this drill provides some clarity some stimulation whatever it is to that part of the brain. And therefore that's always kind of the first the first thing in my toolbox that I reach for when i want to when i want to make an improvement.
01:35:57.69 Taylor Kruse Yes.
01:36:01.08 Tony Fowler And so you know as much as it would be nice for that drill to you just do it once and then you never have to do it again. it seems like it built into that idea is this idea that you might have a deficit that doesn't actually resolve completely.
01:36:09.82 Taylor Kruse Right.
01:36:17.25 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:36:17.69 Taylor Kruse Yes. Yeah and that's okay. Right? A lot of times we can just improve the system and that's enough.
01:36:25.31 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:36:25.40 Taylor Kruse you know And in other times like you said we maybe haven't found a stimulus yet or we even haven't had enough consistency yet or our metabolic health has not reached a healthy enough point yet where it's harder to hold onto that result.
01:36:40.47 Taylor Kruse But we can still use that and leverage that. And that's perfectly okay too. That's a good thing. I sometimes laugh because you know I hear all this... all this hater talk on on Instagram with some of the stuff. And one of the ah one of the common things you sometimes hear from people is like hey that's only gonna provide temporary relief.
01:37:05.23 Taylor Kruse I'm sorry was that is that bad?
01:37:07.58 Tony Fowler Right.
01:37:07.83 Taylor Kruse What kind of temporary relief did you have before this right? Like it's almost like it's looked at a bad looked at as a bad thing. um There's nothing wrong with temporary relief. You just started a process and one thing always leads to the next.
01:37:20.41 Taylor Kruse right i I had written something recently on Instagram about you know there's not really we can't really find root causes necessarily.
01:37:31.55 Taylor Kruse It's too hard to sort out. It's too hard to sort. I used to have the mentality of I'm going to find the root cause I'm going to fix it. And then I realized in such a compensatory machine like a human how could you ever know if you're finding the root cause? And things are so holistic.
01:37:48.82 Taylor Kruse When we improve one area that impacts another. It's more of an ecosystem type of relationship.
01:37:52.48 Tony Fowler Yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:37:56.15 Tony Fowler yeah
01:37:56.34 Taylor Kruse This is huge to know. And it shouldn't be overwhelming. overwhelming It actually should be freeing. right I know that I'm experiencing a lot of that right now.
01:38:07.11 Taylor Kruse I've made so many good helpful nutritional decisions for myself in the last five months. And the impact that that has had on me myself physically is is has been kind of shocking.
01:38:22.68 Tony Fowler Yeah.
01:38:22.74 Taylor Kruse Like I told someone recently the best thing I ever did for my hip mobility was not hip mobility. Best thing i ever did for my hip mobility was improve my gut health.
01:38:34.78 Taylor Kruse Okay now this is coming from somebody that I've been doing hip mobility for like actual focused hip mobility type stuff.
01:38:46.01 Taylor Kruse I don't know 18 years? you know where I'm actually like thinking hip mobility like I should do something for hip mobility. And yeah i am i am I am more mobile than the average person right? But not extremely like you're not seeing me like jump up in the air and land in a split.
01:39:07.58 Taylor Kruse But I have reasonably good mobility in most areas. And I've been working on this stuff for a long time. Best thing i ever did for my hip mobility was improve my gut health.
01:39:19.42 Taylor Kruse right that's ah That's an example of what I mean here about ecosystems and how things you know are connected. and you know i've I've seen lots of interesting things like that with people. um it's It's fascinating which is why you have to you have to really look at things holistically and find you know where where do you need the attention?
01:39:42.55 Taylor Kruse And it's it's fun because in improving that one area there's there's gonna that's going positively impact another.
01:39:52.30 Tony Fowler Yeah. Yeah. I often think of it as the inverse of you know these compensations you've been talking about like ah okay you have an auditory deficit in your left ear so you tilt and that means that your eyes compensate and don't do what they're supposed to in the same way and your vestibular system and the way that you you know turn your spine and therefore your pelvis and therefore your foot.
01:40:08.44 Taylor Kruse Right.
01:40:15.21 Tony Fowler And it's kind of like man that one deficit just caused all of these compensatory changes that
01:40:19.80 Taylor Kruse Oh yeah.
01:40:22.45 Tony Fowler aren't great you know? Well it works in reverse also. You fix this one thing or you you improve this one thing and suddenly all those other downstream effects get better too.
01:40:26.62 Taylor Kruse Yes.
01:40:33.43 Taylor Kruse And typically when you see that cause I have seen that like that's that's usually a good clue that you found something very primary. That that your your brain and nervous system has put a lot of weight on that. And
01:40:47.49 Taylor Kruse that's a really good indication. And and sometimes it's it works the other way. you You don't find the hearing deficit but you do find the visual visual deficit. You do the vision stuff yeah you're getting a result but this seems like it could be better.
01:41:00.38 Taylor Kruse And then maybe we haven't discovered the the hearing issue yet right?
01:41:04.33 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:41:04.67 Taylor Kruse And we have to continue to test the systems to learn about the person as a whole. So yeah there's a lot there's a lot to it. There's a lot to consider. Posture it's it's a whole symphony of things that work you know together and influence how we actually ah we actually present ourselves and how well we we maintain and hopefully win that fight against gravity.
01:41:35.70 Tony Fowler Any ah final thoughts?
01:41:40.31 Taylor Kruse Your posture is your signature is a quote that came from Dr. Igor Burdenko who was one of the largest influences on me early on when I was making the transition from what is thought to be normal mainstream you know training right?
01:42:05.51 Taylor Kruse I was at the time i was in college thinking i was going the route of strength and conditioning coach right?
01:42:12.14 Tony Fowler Mm-hmm.
01:42:12.88 Taylor Kruse Sort of i remember taking classes to prepare for the CSCS and you know I had met Tom who I've talked about several times in the podcast who was my first introduction into Burdenko Method. And then through him met Igor and worked with Igor. and One of the first things he said to me is your posture is your signature.
01:42:35.16 Taylor Kruse I didn't know really what he meant and at the time but it sounded interesting. And now I do. You know there's so much so much that goes into it and how a person is presenting themselves posturally.
01:42:52.35 Taylor Kruse it' Again it it gives us clues. It doesn't give us answers but there's there's a lot of clues that we can get from it.
01:43:03.76 Tony Fowler Awesome.
01:43:06.07 Taylor Kruse All right there it is. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode on posture. I think we'll probably be back to this topic some at some point because there is a still a lot more to to discuss but I hope you enjoyed it.
01:43:19.38 Taylor Kruse If you guys will be so kind if you've been enjoying the podcast make sure to give us a review. Those reviews go a really long way for us. We really appreciate it. And you listening all the support's been great.
01:43:32.17 Taylor Kruse I've been hearing from many of you guys in my direct messages and over on YouTube and through email that you're really enjoying the podcast and we're happy about that. So we do love hearing from you. Don't be a stranger if you have ideas or questions and keep your eyes peeled because now we've added this q and a um this Q&A episode right? Once a month. So we're going to be putting out feelers on social media to get more questions from you. But ah yeah head on over give us a review. That would be great. We really really appreciate it. Thank you everybody for listening and we'll be back soon.
