The ‘Normal’ Body Signals That Come From Unprocessed Trauma

1. 0:00 – 1:17

   Can trauma be stored in fascia? Water, memory, and emotional imprinting

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

      A lot of people are aware, Jason, that our body can hold emotions and trauma. But what I get from watching you speak and watching what Human Garage is doing is this idea that the trauma and the emotions might be stored in something called our fascia. Is that right?

   2. JBJason van Blerk0:27

      I believe it is. And the reason why I believe that is because fascia is primarily made of water. And there have been researchers who've studied a lot about the properties of water and what water can do. So Veda Austin's one of them. What she does is she takes water, she puts a coin next to it, she freezes the water and looks at it under a microscope. And what you see is that that water actually takes on the same structure or picture that was on the coin. And water is showing that it can hold memory. So if you talk to water, if you put it next to a, a plastic water bottle, whatever that water is next to, it actually takes on the information that's around it. And so if we're 70% water, where is all the memory being stored in the body? I believe it's being stored in our fascia, and our fascia is primarily made of water.

2. 1:17 – 6:23

   Emotions, posture, and body-map patterns: why releases can cause shaking or tears

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:17

      Yeah. I think we, we sort of are getting this collective understanding now that our body holds tension. And look, I've been delving into myofascial release and all forms of body work for a long, long time now. I've been to many courses where they train practitioners, and you will see time and time again that when people have a deep release in their body, sometimes they can be shaking, sometimes they can be crying. And I've seen that enough times to know there's something going on here that we're not taught in medical school. And you see this all the time, don't you? That you're treating people, you're holding their body, you're pressing on their body, and suddenly they come out in tears. What do you think is going on?

   2. JBJason van Blerk2:08

      You know, I, it's really interesting because w- I've worked on eight hundred people in a day. W- I've worked on probably about five thousand people in the last year, and I'm just watching patterns. When I work on somebody's knee, there tends to be certain emotions and certain reactions when I work on their knee. When I work on someone's shoulder or their head, same thing. And so I believe that different parts of the body hold different emotions or different memories. So, you know, like, what is trauma? Trauma is an event where you could not process the emotions. It could be something when you were eight years old, your mom didn't give you candy at the store, and you were all frustrated. You didn't have the tools-

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:46

      Mm

   4. JBJason van Blerk2:46

      ... to process those emotions. Those emotions go somewhere. Like when you're angry, what happens to your body? You tighten your fists, you clench your jaw. You almost... You go in. You roll like this.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:57

      Mm-hmm.

   6. JBJason van Blerk2:57

      So people who work out and they're angry all the time, they're like this. And so when we have an emotion, it changes our posture. When we have an emotion, it stores somewhere in the body. And I've just seen countless times when I touch people in certain parts of their body, certain emotions release, certain patterns are stored there.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:13

      Yeah. I think something that everyone can resonate with is this idea that if you've had a really busy day at work, you know, you didn't take any breaks, there was loads of demands, you worked through lunch, you can come back in the evening and your body can feel tense and tight. You can feel neck tightness or whatever it might be. I mean, what's going on there? Of course, you know, your stress, your emotions are being stored, and unless you do something about it, it's gonna stay there, right?

   8. JBJason van Blerk3:48

      Mm-hmm. Yes. And if we look at most people's bodies, we talked about this when we were working together, you know, most people have a left shoulder that's higher than the right, and their one hip is higher than the other. So it looks like they have a leg length discrepancy. It's n- ninety-nine point nine percent of people do not have leg length discrepancies that are anatomically that way. It's because the... there's some sort of torque pattern in their body. So one shoulder's higher, one hip is higher, one part of their face is more forward. The eyes are slightly torqued. And based on the emotions that we're holding, you can actually see patterns in the body when people walk, when people move. If they're holding anger, they're tight in the groin, they're tight in the jaw. So if you do a jaw release, they're gonna have a lot of anger come out, like err. And if you watch our videos, you see people, they, they scream in a very angry way when you do the jaw release. So there's something to do with posture and emotions. And there's certain emotions on certain parts of the body and certain p- emotions on another part of the body. And we've just done this so many times that we've been able to map it. You know, there's a lot of people who do this. The Body Keeps the Score. Um, you've got Louise Hay, who's documented this. You've got Metaphysical Anatomy. And over time, I've just found that a lot of these practices, they've found something. There's something about the body holding emotions in certain areas, and it affects our posture. Like, if somebody's sad, what do they do? Or they're, they're suppressed, or they're not acting as themself, they start to curl forward and almost become small.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:16

      Yeah.

   10. JBJason van Blerk5:17

       And if someone's confident, like, look at Tony Robbins, like, he's really big and confident, you know if you stand in this posture, you feel more confident, you feel larger. And so based on the posture, it can also influence the emotions.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:30

       Yeah. I, I think these things work both ways, right? You know, is it sorting out your emotions that then changes your posture, or is it clearing the fascia and clearing your body that's gonna sort out the mood, right? I think it could work from both angles, perhaps.

   12. JBJason van Blerk5:47

       Hundred percent.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:48

       Yeah.

   14. JBJason van Blerk5:48

       Like everybody can do this right now. You could sit up nice and tall with your chest up. You feel stronger.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:53

       Yeah.

   16. JBJason van Blerk5:53

       You feel more confident. So I can put the body into certain positions, and it can reprogram my emotions. I can also have an emotion that reprograms my physical body-

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:03

       Yeah

   18. JBJason van Blerk6:03

       ... into a certain position. So it goes both ways. And you know, there's mind over matter, and people always talk about can you use the mind to influence the physical body? Yes. You can also use the physical body to influence the mind.

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:15

       Yeah.

   20. JBJason van Blerk6:16

       There are two ways. You can't-- It's not just one way, it's both

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:19

       Yeah. You mentioned the term fascia.

   22. JBJason van Blerk6:22

       Yeah.

3. 6:23 – 8:36

   What fascia is (beyond ‘Saran wrap’): living tissue, gel-water tubes, and signaling

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:23

      That is becoming, I, I hope, a term that people are more familiar with today than they were 10 years ago, for example. But for people who've never heard that term before, can you explain what fascia is?

   2. JBJason van Blerk6:38

      Yeah. Fascia's a very interesting thing. You know, they, there was actually articles 20 years ago that were buried about what fascia really is, and the traditional way of looking at it was it's like this Saran Wrap connective tissue, kinda looks like a spiderweb, and it surrounds your muscles and your bones.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:55

      If we, if we bought a piece of meat from the store and we're sort of pulling it apart, that kind of fibrous connective tissue-

   4. JBJason van Blerk7:02

      Yes

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:02

      ... that's, that is fascia, isn't it?

   6. JBJason van Blerk7:04

      That is the traditional way of looking at it.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:06

      Okay.

   8. JBJason van Blerk7:08

      But we're looking at dead bodies. We're looking at the, the chicken once it's on the counter.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:13

      Mm.

   10. JBJason van Blerk7:14

       We're not looking at it when it's alive. And so what we found, and we found a video on YouTube called, uh, Fascia Magnified 25 Times, and they cut open the forearm, and they lifted the skin up. And what you see when you look in there is there's these water tubes. They're tubes of water, and when you have a movement or an emotion or a thought, all of a sudden that tube breaks off and reconnects to another tube, and it breaks off and connects to another one. And so when we look at it in the living system, it reacts very differently. What I believe is fascia is these bio-hydraulic tubes of water, and it's in a gel-like state. That's why if I cut your body, you don't just squirt water out. You're 70% water. Where is all that water? The water's not in a liquid substance. It's actually in this gel-like state called our fascia.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:05

       Mm.

   12. JBJason van Blerk8:06

       And because it's in this gel-like state, I believe it actually transmits electricity, it sends information, it stores memory and emotions. And there are studies now coming out validating this. They're saying that fascia is bioacoustic. That means it responds to frequency and sound. They're saying that fascia, um, conducts electricity, and it has its own brain. And so I believe fascia's the most intelligent organ in our body, and it holds your muscles, your bones, your tendons, your ligaments, and

4. 8:36 – 9:36

   Why pain often returns: restrictions, hydration, and the ‘tight shirt’ model

   1. JBJason van Blerk8:36

      your organs. So if you have a, if you have a neck out and you go to a chiropractor, you get it adjusted, a week later your neck's out again. If I go to a massage and they massage my muscles, my neck goes into place, it's all good, and then a week later it goes back out. I believe that the fascia is becoming restricted, and if we work on the fascia, because it holds everything, everything unwinds and resets naturally. And because fascia's so sensitive, it changes structure based on the way that we feel. And if you sit for a long time, it starts to solidify, calcify, and harden, and that is a position where it's now locked and it's tight. So the goal is to get the water in our bodies moving again, and if we're dehydrated, if we have chemicals, if we're not moving, that will just start to harden and calcify. And that calcification is what we see when you're cutting that piece of meat and you're lifting it up. You see those little fibrous strings of, of this white fibrous string? That's the calcification of it.

5. 9:36 – 11:39

   A different approach: rotational movement + breath vs linear stretching and forced release

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:36

      A lot of people know that feeling when they're on a foam roller or a ball and they're trying to sort of, you know, rub out some tension. Are... You know, when we're doing that, would you say some of the time we're, we're finding adhesions in our fascia that we're trying to rub out a- and try and roll out?

   2. JBJason van Blerk9:55

      You know, it's very interesting because once we discovered what fascia is, we found a new way to work with the human body. And the traditional way of working with fascia or the muscles is we, we roll it, we massage it, we push into it and make it submit. And it, it's so painful, at some point the body's like, "Okay" and it releases. But for some reason it was coming back, so we had to look at the body in a new way. If we understand that fascia is this water-based system in gel, how does water react versus a dense structure? It's very different.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:30

      Mm.

   4. JBJason van Blerk10:30

      So water goes through tubes, and it's flowy, and it's almost hydraulic. It, it, it re- responds to pressure.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:38

      Mm.

   6. JBJason van Blerk10:39

      So what we found is if we rotate the body in counter-rotation while we breathe, then the fascia starts to release. But rolling it and, and submitting it with an elbow or stretching it in a straight line doesn't work. The body is a rotational system. Like when you walk, every part of your body, including your arms, your legs, your head, are constantly counter-rotating when you walk and move. When you swing a bat, when you're in the fetal position, all of these positions are rotational. So if all of these things that we do naturally when we move are rotational, why are we stretching in a straight line?

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:16

      Yeah.

   8. JBJason van Blerk11:17

      Why are we lifting, you know, a bicep curl in a straight line? The body... You know, when you fix your arms on a bar and you do a, a bench press, there's no rotation that's allowed to happen there, so we're locking the body in positions that it's not familiar with.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:31

      Yeah.

   10. JBJason van Blerk11:31

       And so I believe that these linear-based straight line movements are causing more dysfunction to the body than if we were to add rotation into it.

6. 11:39 – 14:09

   Modern surfaces vs nature: how flat floors, shoes, and straight lines may reduce rotation

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee11:39

      Yeah. I mean, that's certainly been my experience for many years now. Let's take two, you know, core human movements, walking and running, something that humans are uniquely adapted to doing compared to lots of other creatures and animals, right? I remember early on with my work with Helen, my, uh, movement coach, Helen Hall. After she did something with me, we did some movements to sort of free certain things up. Suddenly when I was walking, I was like, "Oh, Helen, I'm sort of rotating." And she's like, "Yeah, you know, you should be rotating when you're walking and running." And I can-- I'm really tuned into it now where I feel when I go for a walk, you can feel that this is not just a linear movement, and when you get into that counter-rotation, I-It just feels effortless. You feel, "Oh, this is how I'm designed to move."

   2. JBJason van Blerk12:33

      Yes. And if we look at the reason why we stopped rotating, we walk on flat surfaces.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:40

      Mm-hmm.

   4. JBJason van Blerk12:41

      We used to walk in nature and nothing was flat.

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee12:44

      Yeah.

   6. JBJason van Blerk12:44

      So that means your foot had to rotate and adapt around an uneven surface. The moment we brought flat surfaces in, our foot, our toes, our ankle, none of the joints in our foot are actually rotating. They're walking in a, in a straight line, and they're, they're very flat. Well, if your foot's flat, then your ankle, your knee, your hip, your shoulder, your jaw, and everything responds to that. But if you were to walk in nature barefoot for 30 minutes, you would notice that your body would start to rotate and swing. Your body should swing and it should feel very efficient. But if we're not doing that, if we're wearing shoes, if we're on flat surfaces, we're not getting the natural rotation that the body needs.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:21

      Yeah, it's interesting. As you were saying that, reminds me of another way to look at nature, right? We know, for example, that when a human being goes into nature, the levels of the stress hormone cortisol start to come down. One of the reasons that I really like is to do with fractals. So fractals are these geometric shapes that you only get in nature, and when a human eye sees a fractal, something happens with your physiology and cortisol starts to go down, right?

   8. JBJason van Blerk13:51

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:51

      But of course, these things like where do you see fractals? Trees, uh, leaves-

   10. JBJason van Blerk13:58

       Flowers

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee13:58

       ... coastlines. There's no straight lines.

   12. JBJason van Blerk14:01

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:02

       These man-made surfaces which we're surrounded by are linear. These straight lines are basically not what we have evolved for.

7. 14:09 – 18:21

   Frequency, vibration, and why music can ‘time travel’ you back to old memories

   1. JBJason van Blerk14:09

      Exactly. And even if we go down to the cellular level, like I like to break the body down in a very simple way. You're 70, 75% water, depends on your age and your hydration level. You've got about 20, 25% sand if we were to grind down the bones, the muscles, the minerals, the nutrients and everything and it becomes sand. And then bacteria and viruses. So that's a very simple formula for understanding the body.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:36

      I love that. Can I just say, that's... I'll just say that's how simple we are. I, I love that.

   3. JBJason van Blerk14:43

      Yeah.

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:43

      It's such a beautiful... I've never thought about the human body like that, where we're just like water, sand, and some bugs.

   5. JBJason van Blerk14:47

      And exactly.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee14:48

      [laughs] In some sort of combination.

   7. JBJason van Blerk14:50

      Yeah. And if we look at how water and sand react to the world, then we understand the human body in a deeper way. That's my belief. If you Google on YouTube water frequency experiment, what you'll see is they, they create sound waves and the water creates cymatics, it creates geometrical shapes.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:11

      Mm.

   9. JBJason van Blerk15:12

      Now go to sand on YouTube, the frequency of sand. When you vibrate sand on a plate, it starts to create geometrical shapes. The higher the vibration, the more complex the geometrical shape that's created. And so you've got water and sand. When we vibrate water and sand, it changes shape. It creates the shapes that you only see in nature. That's inside of our bodies. And so I always thought about this, like when I listen to sad music, I feel sad.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:40

       Mm.

   11. JBJason van Blerk15:41

       When I listen to exciting music, I'm about to go out, I feel excited. And so how come sound or the music that I'm listening to makes me feel a certain way?

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee15:50

       Mm.

   13. JBJason van Blerk15:51

       I believe it's because that water and that sand is vibrating at the frequency of the sound around us, and it changes structure, which changes the way that we feel.

   14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:00

       Yeah. I want to relate that back to what we said about fascia earlier on in this conversation. This idea that when you release someone's fascia in a variety of different ways, which we're gonna talk about, old memories and often painful memories can come up. People can cry, they can shake, right? It's really quite profound. But I think most of us know that feeling when we hear a song or a sad song and we can literally, with our entire body, be back at a different part of our life, right? You can literally be 14 years old again.

   15. JBJason van Blerk16:37

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee16:37

       You can feel, you know, where you were, you know, what was going on, what you were wearing, you know. It, it's quite incredible, isn't it? So what is going on? Do you think that's also fascia?

   17. JBJason van Blerk16:48

       Yeah, I think it has to do with looking at how sand and water vibrate. At specific frequencies, they change shape and they create specific shapes. So if I listen to a song that I'm familiar with from 30 years ago when I had a breakup, my entire body is f- is vibrating at that frequency. All my cells are changing shape-

   18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:10

       Mm

   19. JBJason van Blerk17:10

       ... to that frequency, and it creates a familiar pattern, a pattern that I felt 30 years ago when I was going through a breakup.

   20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:16

       Mm.

   21. JBJason van Blerk17:17

       And so that's my guess. Like, I don't know if we'll ever really understand-

   22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:22

       Yeah

   23. JBJason van Blerk17:22

       ... how the human body works. You know, I laugh about this because, you know, kids at two years old know how to use an iPad. But they have no idea what's on the inside. And I think if we started to look at the human body in a similar way of like, I don't know if we'll really ever understand what's inside of this computer, but if I know which buttons to push to create whatever feeling I want, then I'm empowered. You know, if you hum, you feel lighter and calmer.

   24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:49

       Mm.

   25. JBJason van Blerk17:49

       If you sing or dance-

   26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee17:51

       Mm

   27. JBJason van Blerk17:51

       ... you feel happier and lighter. And so there's certain buttons that we can push on the body that create a certain feeling. And so my goal is not to understand what's inside the body and how it works. It's how to use it. I'm the new generation using, you know, the two-year-old using the phone. I just wanna know h- what buttons I can push to create what response.

   28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:13

       Yeah.

   29. JBJason van Blerk18:13

       And we've become masters of knowing which buttons to push on the body to release emotions, to, to help people release tension and feel better.

8. 18:21 – 29:29

   Results-first vs explanations-later: observation, skepticism, and the role of belief

   1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee18:21

      Yeah. That, that is such a great analogy. We don't have to know how everything inside works. We just need to know how to, what inputs to give the body to get the response that we want.Now, Jason, a few times in this conversation you've said, "I believe, um, I think this is the explanation." And I love that, and I find that really interesting because you and your colleagues at Human Garage, you've gone through the process of getting results first, right? So you deal with humans who are struggling. People come and something's not working. There's some dysfunction, there's some movement pattern, there's some pain, whatever it might be. And you guys have figured out in real time how to help people. And, you know, all people have to do is go online, go on your Instagram, go on your YouTube, and just see what people are saying about how the fascial maneuvers that Human Garage have created have had such a huge impact, right? But the modern belief system is that you have to get evidence first, publish it first, get it peer-reviewed. Only then can you then talk about it. Which I'm like, how, how... That's n- that's not how anything has ever worked. Things have always worked by observation first, and then the scientific method is there to try and make sense of why that thing worked. You know, think about, um, athletic training. A lot of modern science now, whether it be on zone two training or interval training, is basically just saying what the best running coaches have known for 70, 80 years, right? It's the same thing. Like, you go to, like, someone like Arthur Lydiard, and he was like a, one of the world's best running coaches. Everything he was doing with his athletes decades ago is now what modern scientists are saying, "Oh, yeah, yeah, you've got to do low to low intensity, you've got to do this." And I'm like, human beings have known how to do stuff for a long period of time. We need to be a bit more humble and go, you know, "Let's observe what works, and then let's go and study it." So what I was trying to get to, Jason, is when you say, "I believe," it's fascinating to me that your results are so clear to see. I felt them myself twice in the past few weeks, right? But you don't exactly know why it's working. Is that fair to say?

   2. JBJason van Blerk20:47

      There's a lot to say on this topic because in, in 2020, after a decade of w- helping people. You know, we had a, we had a clinic in Los Angeles with 52 practitioners, from chiropractors to naturopaths to dieticians to, um, integrative medicine. You name it, we had it. And we were testing the body to find out, you know, if I can put 52 people in the same room from different specialties and look at the same body, I'm gonna see something that others don't. And for 10 years, we had this clinic. And when we closed in 2019, when we hit 2020, and we were sitting there and, and we're ... During the pandemic, we had all this time. We thought, "What if we just forget everything that we know and we just play like kids would? Like, what happens if I try this?" So try it. You know, either he would be on the one end or I would be on the other, and we would do these crazy movements on each other, and we started to feel better. So we committed ourselves to doing this practice every single day, and we started to change. That's N equals one of science. I'm testing something for myself, and I felt a difference, okay? So that was step one. Step two was to go out and start sharing with others to see if they also got the same result. So we were results-based. We just did it ourselves. We were curious. We forgot everything that we knew, and we tried to come in with a completely fresh lens. And if we look at three different examples, Bruce Lipton, epigenetics. He was talking about epigenetics for, like, 20 years.

   3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:21

      Mm.

   4. JBJason van Blerk22:21

      He was scrutinized by the scientific community, and he ended up leaving the universities. We have Wim Hof, who had done all this breathwork and ice therapies, and he was pushing the narrative where scientists finally came in and, and said, "Okay, this guy's onto something."

   5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee22:36

      Let's study. [laughs]

   6. JBJason van Blerk22:37

      Let's study this guy. And then you have Joe Dispenza, who conducted his own research because he was seeing such amazing results from people doing the meditations and all that. And so epigenetics to cold therapy, breathwork, and meditation, these were all practices that people really pushed back in the scientific community until enough people were talking about it. And so when we started sharing this with people, you know, we had people who had reversed Parkinson's and dementia and scoliosis and autoimmune and all these complex health issues. That to me is science. We just don't have a lab where we're measuring at the, at the scientific level, at the cellular level exactly what's changing. My goal was to just get this out to people, create results, and hopefully one day a scientist comes in and says, "I'm really interested in what you're doing, and I wanna learn more about this." And we're starting to get the interest of the scientists. Like, we have, um, a gentleman who created robotic surgery who's now really looking into what we're doing. It's changed his life. He had kidney disease, and he was gonna die, and he's, he's reversed a lot of that through our practice, and he says, "I'm super interested in this. I wanna start to study it." So my goal is to get this out to people. I am not a scientist. I'm not going to sit in a lab and study at the molecular level the changes that people are experiencing. But I have enough people coming up to me saying that this has changed their lives and, and that's all that I need.

   7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee24:02

      Yeah, it's really powerful. I mean, meditation falls into the same category, right? Something that was poo-pooed by Western science for years. You know, you go to traditional practitioners in India. For hundreds of years, they'll tell you the benefits of meditation. They'll tell you what they've seen, right? And, you know, there's many, uh, scientists I've had on this show who admitted, you know, good- all credit to them, that they were very skeptical 20 years ago. Thought, "What? Stress? Meditation? What the hell's that gonna do?" And they're like, "Actually, you know what? I was wrong." There's so much science now on what meditation does, lowering your stress levels.Which parts of the brain get affected, all kinds of things. And again, it goes back to this idea that I feel I'm talking a lot about these days. We just need a bit more humility to go there are lots of things out there that work. Sometimes we've got an explanation for them, sometimes we don't, but that's okay.

   8. JBJason van Blerk24:55

      Mm-hmm. You said something really big there, belief. I learned something very interesting about belief because we did an event in Austin. We had, you know, 800 people in a line, and I worked on every single one of them over eight hours. And each person that I worked on, I had to rebuild belief. I had to have the conversation, understand what was going on. We did the maneuvers with them. They had a release. Boom, next person, next person, next person. And then the next event, I was like, "It's kind of unsustainable if we do it that way." So what I did is I had everybody in, in the, in the event do a Q&A, and we were answering the questions, and somebody needed help, and we would go and help them. And when I helped that person, everybody witnessed it. They all had a kind of a connection or a release, or it built belief for them because they saw it help someone else. The next person that I helped, almost instantly when I touched them, they had a release, the next person even faster. And so what I realized was when there was a collective conscious belief that this could really help them, it was faster and more effective than when I had to build belief with people-

   9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:03

      Wow

   10. JBJason van Blerk26:03

       ... each time. And so I have run into situations where I'm working with somebody who doesn't believe that emotions are in the body or doesn't believe that there's sometimes something more than just this physical suit that we live in. And when I'm working with them, if they're skeptical, their brain is looking for why it's not working. And it's very d- it uses a lot of my energy to help that person, and what I learned is I'm not here to change the way people believe.

   11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:35

       Yeah.

   12. JBJason van Blerk26:35

       I'm here to help people who are ready to transform.

   13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:38

       Yeah.

   14. JBJason van Blerk26:38

       And this was a big, big shift because I was using a lot of energy trying to push this movement into people who didn't believe. And when people are ready to release, and they come to you, it's almost instant.

   15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee26:49

       Yeah.

   16. JBJason van Blerk26:50

       So belief systems, you know, placebo effect, nocebo effect. You know, if I believe there's a positive outcome for doing this, or if I believe there's a negative outcome for doing this, they have proven that in the scientific community that nocebo and placebo are sometimes more effective than the drug itself.

   17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee27:05

       Yeah.

   18. JBJason van Blerk27:05

       And it's a lot of the time that they're, that they're proving that. And so belief systems is so important. So the more people that share their stories and testimonials with us online about how this has changed their life, the stronger this movement practice becomes.

   19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee27:19

       Yeah.

   20. JBJason van Blerk27:20

       So it's important to hit people at the belief level. And if they don't believe that emotions are in the body, it's kind of a hard conversation. It's hard to... It's harder to work with.

   21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee27:28

       Yeah. B- b- I, I mean, I, I love that you're bringing this up. I used to play that game as well, like try and convince people, talk to the naysayers and talk them around, and now I'm like I'm, I'm over that. It's like I just do my thing. I just try and put out positive, helpful information. If you like it, if it helps you, great. If you don't like it and you don't like me [laughs] , that's also great. I'm probably not the right person for you. You know, if you don't believe, you don't believe. That's fine. Let's get into what Fascial Manoeuvres is, right? Because there, there's quite a few interesting things so far that I wanna make sure we cover. Um, I guess the first thing is when you said that a lot of people, let's say they're in pain. They will go to a practitioner, whether it be a physio or a chiropractor, whoever it might be, okay? And you use the example of a chiropractor, I think, where you might get a manipulation, and then it feels good, and sometimes that feeling good is temporary, and a couple of weeks later, it reverts back. So you need to go back, okay? I'm not saying this to be anti any physio or anti any chiropractor, right? Genuinely not. I've been, you know, I've been seeing practitioners for years, okay? But I, I know that feeling when you have something released, and you go, "Oh, great, my back feels great." But a few days, "Oh, damn, it's come back, you know. I need to go back again."

   22. JBJason van Blerk28:51

       Mm-hmm.

   23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee28:52

       And I wanna draw that, um... I wanna bring back fascia into the conversation because if fascia is this, as you call it, an intelligent organ, do you think that for many cases when you've had a manipulation and it doesn't hold and it reverts back, do you think that sometimes that's because the fascia has remodeled and is, and is almost in a different pattern now? So you can temporarily realign the spine with a manipulation, but the fascia is always gonna drive it back to its current type of positioning?

9. 29:29 – 37:41

   The body as a pressurized system: zones, mapping patterns, headaches, and compensation

   1. JBJason van Blerk29:29

      Yeah. You know, it's very interesting. So I believe bones actually float inside the body. There's only the rib cage and the ears where they actually touch. But if our bones are floating inside of us, you know, I, I almost envision like it's in a, a, a fish tank or a bowl. And we've created these restrictions. So for example, if I tighten the front of my shirt and I pin it really tight, all of a sudden, I start to feel tension on the back.

   2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee29:57

      Yeah.

   3. JBJason van Blerk29:57

      My liver starts to pull up to the center. My organs get pulled into the center. My rib cage gets pulled down. And so whatever this restriction is, it's moved my organs, it's moved my bones, it's moved my tendons, my ligaments. It's moved everything. And so if I crack the bone, but this is still there, it's just gonna go back out into place. And so what I find is if we get to the root cause, which is usually not where we think it is-

   4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee30:25

      Mm-hmm

   5. JBJason van Blerk30:26

      ... right now I'm tight in the front, but my pain is being experienced in the back. So a lot of the time, people have lower back pain, but it's actually coming from their bladder or the front.

   6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee30:35

      Yeah.

   7. JBJason van Blerk30:36

      There's too much tension there. So it's about addressing the body and understanding where the tension lines are, how the fascia's being held there, and there's a lot of points on the body that almost everybody has tension in, and you can map it. If they have back pain, it's usually coming from-From the bladder. If they have frozen shoulder, it's actually coming from underneath in the armpit. So you can map it on the opposite side of the body. That's where the restriction is.

   8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee31:00

      Yeah. For people listening on audio, what Jason did then was he crumpled up the middle of his T-shirt, and, you know, if you wanna watch this, just jump onto YouTube to actually see the YouTube version. But y- we can all try it ourselves, just crumple up that middle bit, and it's amazing. So you're basically saying that if your fascia has got tight for whatever reason in that area... You know, I can feel a pull on my shoulders, I can feel a pull on my back, just from my T-shirt, and I think that helps to explain why sometimes these manipulations don't hold. Now, of course, th- there's many great therapists out there, there's many great physios, great chiropractors, and sometimes they'll also try and do some fascial work as well, and give you some new movement patterns to try and actually change your patterns so you don't go back to the old patterns that will just reinforce the way your body currently is, which gave you pain, which is why you ended up with a practitioner. I'm delighted to announce that AG1, the daily health drink that has been in my own life for over six years now, have updated and improved their formulation based upon the latest science, and to celebrate by giving my audience a very special offer. Some of the upgrades include more magnesium, which supports muscle function and improves the ability of your nervous system to relax, and also five strains of bacteria instead of just two to reflect the latest advances in microbiome science. It also contains key nutrients like vitamin C, biotin, niacin, vitamin B6, riboflavin, thiamine, zinc, and folate in bioavailable forms the body can easily and readily utilize, maximizing their potential benefits. Nutrition can often seem really complicated. What diet should we be following? What supplements should we be taking? And I think that's one of the main reasons I really like AG1. They make it really simple for you to be the best version of you. Over 70 ingredients, one scoop once a day for less than a cup of coffee. So if you wanna support your health seven mornings a week, get started with AG1, and right now we have a very special limited time offer. Get a free AG1 duffle bag and a free AG1 welcome kit with your first subscription. All you have to do is go to drinkag1.com/livemore, and the offer is only available while supplies last. That's a really, really beautiful analogy of just thinking if there's tightness somewhere, it's gonna pull on somewhere else. And I mean, you and Aisha worked on me this morning before we, um, started this podcast and, you know, I know the body's connected, right? I intuitively, I f- I know it, I've felt it, I've seen it with patients, that you change one thing in one area, you automatically change something else. But you were working sometimes on my stomach or, like, my left hip, and then when I would get up off the couch and walk, I could feel tightness in my right foot. But you haven't touched my right foot. You've touched something much higher up, but I'm now feeling a change in my right foot. And I just love that, that these fascial lines go through the entire body. Make one change in one area, you can automatically influence another area.

   9. JBJason van Blerk34:26

      Mm-hmm. And the way we map it is you've got your head, which is zone one, your torso, zone two, and your legs, zone three. So when you walk and when you move, these zones are constantly counterbalancing each other. So you have cheeks on your face, you have your, your cheeks on your chest, your, your pecs, and you have your cheeks on your butt, your buttocks. And if I change pressure in your cheek on your face, it changes pressure on the cheek in your chest and the pressure on the cheek on your butt.

   10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:00

       Should we be able to feel that? Like, if we press it now.

   11. JBJason van Blerk35:03

       Yeah, like, there's movements that you can do. You can even just, on the right cheek, if you take your right hand, place it on there, and just twist, twist the skin over the, the bone and hold that there. And you have to be sensitive to be able to experience this, but if you change the pressure here, it's gonna change the pressure here and here when you walk.

   12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:22

       I... Like, so this is what I just did. I just did that. I can feel that in my left pec. So I can feel something there.

   13. JBJason van Blerk35:29

       Mm-hmm.

   14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:30

       And I'm not even doing what... I'm just twisting here.

   15. JBJason van Blerk35:32

       Yeah.

   16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:33

       I can feel it right there.

   17. JBJason van Blerk35:34

       Yeah, so we're a pressurized system. Like, if, if you look at, you've got outside pressure and you've got inside pressure. The outside pressure is atmospheric. When you go higher up in an airplane, what happens to your ears? They wanna pop.

   18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee35:47

       Yeah.

   19. JBJason van Blerk35:47

       Why? Because you have inside pressure. The outside pressure's decreasing the higher you go, and now that inside pressure's trying to equalize with the outside pressure, so it's like pop, now it's balanced. And so if we're a pressurized system and we look at the body like a pressurized system, we interact with it differently. Like most people, if you want, you can look at your feet. One foot is bigger than the other. Usually the left foot is slightly bigger.

   20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:11

       Mm.

   21. JBJason van Blerk36:12

       Same with your chest. You have one chest that's bigger than the other. It's be- I believe that it's bigger than the other because we have a dysregulation of pressure. There's more tension on one side, there's less tension on the other, and they have different sizes as a result of that. And so if we're a pressurized system and we have these zones, zone one, zone two, and zone three, these pressure systems work together. For example, when you take a step with your left foot, your right hand swings to go outwards.

   22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:40

       Mm.

   23. JBJason van Blerk36:40

       Your foot and your hand, I don't know if I can do this on the podcast, but let's see. These map each other. So your foot and your hand map each other with pressure. Your forearm and your shin map each other.Your upper arm and your upper leg match each other. Your shoulder and your opposite leg match each other.

   24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee36:58

       Mm.

   25. JBJason van Blerk36:58

       So when you walk, your foot and your hand are balancing pressure, and you see this the most easily when you're working with, like, elderly because they've got tension somewhere on their left hip or their left ribcage, which pulls their entire body to the left, and then they cramp their hand on the right to stand straight. And so they're using pressure, they're creating pressure with their right hand to balance themselves. So it's a little bit... You really have to think about the body as a pressurized system where there's balloon with inside and outside pressure, and when we move, these pressure systems are trying to balance each other. So if you have a headache-

   26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:35

       Yeah

   27. JBJason van Blerk37:35

       ... you just have a dysregulation of pressure in your head, and there's ways-

   28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:38

       Mm

   29. JBJason van Blerk37:38

       ... that you can move this pressure around through movement.

10. 37:41 – 39:38

    Digestion–brain connection and pelvic/diaphragm flow: why sitting may disrupt regulation

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee37:41

       Yeah. It's kind of interesting. I was speaking to a lot of runners, um, about how they feel when they run, and a few of them have said to me that if, if, let's say, they haven't managed to open their bowels before they go for a run, right? So there's, you know, there's not the lightness, let's say, in their being compared to when they have managed to. And people will probably know this, if they go for a run when they feel light inside and clear as opposed to bunged up inside, actually, their gait is gonna be different. There's gonna be different pressures within them. That makes sense, doesn't it?

    2. JBJason van Blerk38:14

       Yeah. I mean, if you were to fill up your intestines right now with liquid or food, think about it when you go to swing your arm, there's so much pressure inside of there, it actually creates a restriction so your arm can't swing as much.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee38:29

       Yeah.

    4. JBJason van Blerk38:29

       And so we've noticed a difference in, you know, getting this area open. You know, women have a lot of infertility these days, a lot of period cramps. People have digestive issues, autoimmune. It's because there's a lack of flow between the diaphragm and the, and the pelvic floor, and a big reason for that is we were never meant to sit in chairs.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee38:48

       Yeah.

    6. JBJason van Blerk38:49

       When you sit in a chair, your upper body weight sits on top of your diaphragm, and it compresses everything in here, so nothing moves. Then we've got non-organic food and the, the chemicals in our environment, they're coming in and disrupting the flow here, and if this can't flow, we've got a lot of problems because if you look at even on, um, anatomy chart, you'll see the brain, and you see the intestines.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:12

       Mm-hmm.

    8. JBJason van Blerk39:12

       They look the same.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:13

       Mm.

    10. JBJason van Blerk39:14

        And so what I found is when people have a concussion, they start to get digestive issues, and when people have digestive issues, they start to have racing thoughts, foggy in their brain, harder to wake up. They start to have stuff going on in their mind. And so it's really important to get this area flowing, and this is pressure. When this is gr- constricted, it affects the way we move. It affects the way that we think.

11. 39:38 – 44:01

    Elite athletes vs everyday bodies: optimized asymmetries, performance goals, and stress vision

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:38

       Yeah. You guys treat some of the world's best athletes, okay? So you d- you, you, you teach the public, you're, you're teaching people around the world. You're on a mission to, well, you know, state your mission. One billion people to do what?

    2. JBJason van Blerk39:54

       It's to inspire a billion people to heal themselves.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee39:57

       Yeah.

    4. JBJason van Blerk39:58

       And the reason we did that was because we had a clinic with a 3,000-person wait list, and we closed. Why did we? Why would you do that? The reason why was because people were coming to us, we were taking away their pain, and then they were going back r- right to the life that caused that pain, and they made no changes. Then they would come back to us six months later, now the problem was worse. We fixed them, they go back to that life, and they come back, and now it's a chronic health issue that's life-threatening. And so if we're not giving you the tools to actually change your life-

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee40:30

       Mm-hmm

    6. JBJason van Blerk40:31

       ... and we're just another pill, another drug that you take, where we take away your pain and suppress it, we're not really getting to the root of the problem.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee40:37

       No.

    8. JBJason van Blerk40:37

       We're not making a change in the world. The only way to make a change in the world is to give people the tools to help themself. And if people start to help themself, their life literally changes.

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee40:47

       Yeah.

    10. JBJason van Blerk40:48

        You know, we live in a world right now where, you know, you don't like somebody in your environment, and you try to change them. It never works.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee40:55

        Uh-huh.

    12. JBJason van Blerk40:56

        But when I change, change the way I see them, change the way I feel about them, change my actions, whatever it might be, I change. They start to interact with me differently.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee41:04

        100%.

    14. JBJason van Blerk41:05

        And so I believe life is a mirror, and I believe that the only way to really make an impact in the world is to change myself, is to focus on myself.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee41:12

        Yeah. I love that. I just wanna finish off that thought about elite athletes, and it fascinates me. So you and your colleagues have worked with tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people now, right?

    16. JBJason van Blerk41:23

        Mm-hmm.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee41:24

        So you've laid your hands onto many different people. You just mentioned the elderly and what you notice when you actually lay your hands on some elderly people and how easy it is to see the compensations. Are there any patterns that you see when you're putting your hands on some of the world's best athletes? We won't mention names, okay? But when you put your hands on an elite athlete who is the best in their chosen sports, does their body feel different?

    18. JBJason van Blerk41:56

        [laughs] That's a great question. Yes, because they have optimized their body for a specific pattern. So if I'm a baseball player, and I'm swinging, I've created tension in certain areas of my body-

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee42:11

        Mm-hmm

    20. JBJason van Blerk42:11

        ... created pressure in others so that I can optimally swing. So you have to be very mindful because if they've created this pattern over time, and I go and reprogram their computer, their swing is gonna be slightly off for the next couple of days until they integrate that pattern.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee42:27

        Mm.

    22. JBJason van Blerk42:27

        And so you have to be mindful. We are a computer, and we are computer programmers, so we understand if I twist here and pull here, it's gonna create this effect. So a lot of time, you know, you got one-sided sports where they're playing on one side, well, they're creating tension lines. So what we do is we work on the opposite side of the body to balance the pressure because they've created this long-term pattern. You don't really wanna mess with the patterns too much.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee42:52

        Yeah.

    24. JBJason van Blerk42:53

        Yeah. The goal, to, to be honest, the goal with a professional athlete isHow can you get them to get into the zone faster? How can you help them manage their emotions better? And how can you help them change their perception so they can see things differently? Those are the three things that you can really fine-tune, but their bodies are, like, well-trained machines. And either you're working with somebody because they have an injury or you're working with someone for performance. Specifically, I'm talking about performance. You know, how do you ... If I'm out of stress, I see situations differently.

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee43:26

        Hmm.

    26. JBJason van Blerk43:27

        The peak of stress is I do this or I die. That's suicide. I only see one option. So if we take the body out of stress, you start to see options.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee43:37

        Hmm.

    28. JBJason van Blerk43:37

        So if I'm playing a, a team sport and I'm out of stress, I'll see that there's a player to my right, there's a player to my left, and there's a player behind me that I can pass to. But if I'm in stress, that fight or flight reaction mode, I might make silly decisions because I only see that one option to the left, but there was a better one to the right. And so our goal is to bring the body out of stress so that people can see options again. And this happens in life, too.

12. 44:01 – 49:26

    Scars, skin, and ‘fascial coffee’: simple self-touch techniques to create space and flow

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee44:01

       Yeah. It's so interesting. And without going into the whole history, I mean, I think, you know, I had an emergency appendicectomy when I was about seven or eight years old, and long story as to how and why that happened, but it was an emergency, so, you know, I would've just literally had a knife ripping it open-

    2. JBJason van Blerk44:22

       Hmm

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee44:23

       ... to take it out, right? And ever since I started working with him, it's very clear that my whole right side around my groin area, and you probably notice this in me as well, all my movement patterns in life are all about not closing down my right groin area. I will do anything to avoid doing that. And then if you see the way I play table tennis or snooker or the way I hold my guitar, it's flipping everywhere. I'm like, oh my God, that's my pattern. So it's amazing how many of us probably choose sports based upon our compensations. You know-

    4. JBJason van Blerk44:59

       Mm-hmm

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee44:59

       ... the patterns we've got, we're naturally drawn to sports which actually suit our compensations, right? And it works until we get injured.

    6. JBJason van Blerk45:07

       Mm-hmm. And then you have to find a new program.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee45:10

       But you-

    8. JBJason van Blerk45:10

       You have to find a new way to kick the ball to, to hit the-

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee45:14

       Yeah

    10. JBJason van Blerk45:14

        ... hit the tennis ball. And even for you, when we were working with you, if you noticed, your right glute was tighter than your left.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee45:19

        Yeah. Massively today.

    12. JBJason van Blerk45:21

        And that's ... When we crumpled up our shirts ... What is a scar? A scar is we're crumpling up our shirt.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee45:27

        Yeah.

    14. JBJason van Blerk45:27

        We're, we're tying the fascia right into that spot, so the opposite side of the body, the glute, is gonna tighten as a result of that. There's less room for it to move. So it's very important if people have scars throughout the body to actually stretch them.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee45:40

        Hmm.

    16. JBJason van Blerk45:41

        And you can just put your fingers on either side of the scar, and you pull it apart in every single direction to give it space. You're, like, unwinding the fascia there. One of the things that we talk about is if you stretch your skin, you're working on your fascia because your fascia connects to the skin. The skin is an access point. And there's this misconception that if I stretch my skin, I'm gonna get wrinkles, but it's actually the opposite. You get wrinkles because you're dehydrated, because everything's pulled into that area and it's constricted. But if you pull the skin over your scar or over any area of your body, you're creating space in the bag that's holding everything.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:19

        Yeah, that's really interesting. You've put some stuff up online before about how your face and skin has changed since you started doing these maneuvers, right?

    18. JBJason van Blerk46:27

        Mm-hmm.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:28

        You look way younger and all kinds of things. And you would say that's because you've been doing these maneuvers, right?

    20. JBJason van Blerk46:34

        I would say it's a combination of lifestyle and maneuvers.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee46:37

        Mm-hmm.

    22. JBJason van Blerk46:37

        So I do maneuvers every single day, 15 minutes in the morning when I wake up. Sometimes I do it before I go to bed because that helps me sleep faster and deeper. I do these movements to unwind all the tension and the stress. It helps me get into the flow state, helps me focus better. It helps me have more energy throughout the day. But then there's a lifestyle component. And just like if you look at yoga, you know, thousands of years, there was a lifestyle, and then there was the movements. What happened was it became Westernized, and they lost the lifestyle aspect of it.

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee47:09

        [laughs]

    24. JBJason van Blerk47:10

        So we do teach a lot of how to build a really healthy lifestyle, and I like to do it in the most natural way possible. I'm not a big fan of, you know, having thousands of dollars of equipment. If I can get out into nature, if I can walk, if I can get out in the sun, if I can get in the ocean, touch a tree, uh, move my body, I know that I'm giving my body the optimal conditions-

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee47:30

        Yeah

    26. JBJason van Blerk47:30

        ... to feel good.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee47:31

        Yeah.

    28. JBJason van Blerk47:32

        And, you know, I see the body as an electrical system. If you look at every cell in the body, it has a voltage. It literally conducts electricity. So if I rub my feet on a carpet, we've all done this as kids, and you could zap somebody. So my question is, if I could rub my feet on a carpet and zap somebody, I conduct electricity. Well, that's interesting.

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee47:51

        Mm-hmm.

    30. JBJason van Blerk47:52

        So when I dove deeper into this, there's a, a Dr. Jerry Tennant, he really breaks down the cellular voltage, and what he was able to do was map pH to a voltage, and based on the voltage, he could map disease processes. So a healthy cell is at around -20 to -25 millivolts.
13. 49:26 – 1:34:08

    Fascial Maneuvers in practice: self-hug patterns, stress relief, feeling ‘lighter,’ and next steps

    1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee49:26

       Yeah. These Fascial Manoeuvres, um, you g- you guys give out all your content for free, okay? So it's all out there. It's on YouTube. It's on social media platforms. The maneuvers themselves, and you just talked me and my wife through a sequence, which was lovely, you feel different very quickly. I think we only did three of those maneuvers, and felt really calm and light after doing them, and I can see why it's such a powerful practice to do every morning when you wake up. One of the things I was thinking about as I was doing them, and even over the past few weeks of observing them, is I guess one of your classic ones is when, you know, you put, let's say, your right leg over your left foot. Your right, uh, hand goes to your left armpit.

    2. JBJason van Blerk50:22

       Mm-hmm.

    3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:22

       And then the left one, the left arm goes onto the right armpit or the right, uh, the right back like that, okay?

    4. JBJason van Blerk50:28

       Yeah.

    5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:29

       And then you start doing things where your torso goes one way and your head goes another way whilst doing certain breathing patterns. We'll dive into why you do it that way in just a moment, but I was thinking, as you're doing it, you're sort of giving yourself a hug.

    6. JBJason van Blerk50:46

       Mm-hmm.

    7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee50:47

       Right? So yes, there's what's happening to the fascia. There's what the breath is doing to the sympathetic nervous system and how it's releasing things. Great. But there's also just something really deeply primal about you're getting in touch with yourself. It's like a practice of self-care, dare I say it, self-love, where you're hugging yourself as you're doing these things. And I really feel these days, Jason, that so many people are so disconnected from their bodies. Like, they've... Yes, they live in their heads, and I've certainly been guilty of this in the past, right? But they don't know what their bodies are doing, like what their hips are doing, what their breath is doing, if their diaphragm's tight, you know? And what I love about these Fascia Manoeuvres that you guys have created is that it's helping people get back in touch with their bodies. You're, you know, you're holding yourself. You're, you're touching yourself, your skin. Um, in the early days of this podcast, I'm gonna get him back on soon actually, hopefully, I spoke to a guy called Professor Francis McGlone. He's one of the world's leading touch researchers, and he does some of the early research showing that when you stroke the skin, I think it's at one to three centimeters per second, you activate certain nerve receptors in your body called C tactile afferents, which basically go all the way to the brain and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. But, you know, [laughs] when, when, when we spoke, we said, "Yeah, of course no one is measuring the pace at which they stroke someone." That is naturally the pace at which a mother will stroke their child-

    8. JBJason van Blerk52:28

       Mm

    9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee52:28

       ... at one to three centimeters per second, right? This stuff is built into us. So I just love that these maneuvers, y- y- it's not just you're getting back in touch with your body by actually working on your body and moving your body, you're actually touching your body as well, so you're really... I don't know. I think that's one of the key powerful parts of it for me, is that you're actually putting your hands back on your body again.

    10. JBJason van Blerk52:55

        Yeah, I mean, it's... Self-awareness is a really big component of this, and I, I really think that there's something that happens in the brain and in the body when we cross.

    11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:04

        Yeah.

    12. JBJason van Blerk53:05

        Like, when, when y- wh- why do we all, when we're sitting at a desk working, bring one... Not everybody, but a lot of people, they bring one leg up and cross it over.

    13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:13

        Yeah.

    14. JBJason van Blerk53:13

        There's something to what happens. There's something neurologically that's happening when we cross sides, and I think that when we're hugging ourself, you know, when you're in a, an extreme pain or, or trauma or sad or a breakup, what do you do? You crawl into a ball in, in your bed and you cry, or you, you, you lay there. There's something to getting into that position, and what we found is that position you just described with the right foot over, the right hand under, and the left arm on top, and we twist, that's a fetal position. But we just do that when we're standing for the Fascial Manoeuvres, but one of the other Fascial Manoeuvres that we use is actually getting into a fetal position. You lie on your side. You crawl into a ball. You cross your arms. You hug yourself, and when you do that, you just feel different.

    15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee53:59

        Yeah. How do Fascial Manoeuvres help us with stress?

    16. JBJason van Blerk54:07

        I believe stress takes a lot of energy from us, and as people age, you know, they get, uh, decreased sight, decreased hearing, decreased taste, smell. All their senses start to diminish. When people do about 15 minutes of Fascial Manoeuvres, all of a sudden the room looks different. They hear differently. The food that they're eating tastes different. And so I believe it's bringing the body out of stress in just 15 minutes, and why it works, I don't fully know yet. But when we put the body in these rotated positions and we breathe, we're unwinding tension in the entire body, and the body just starts to relax.

    17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee54:47

        Yeah. I heard your partner Gary say in a podcast recently, he said, "Look, we're not saying this is the only thing that works, right? There's probably other things out there that work as well, but we know that this works," or something to that effect.

    18. JBJason van Blerk55:01

        Mm-hmm.

    19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee55:01

        Which I also love. It's like, because-There are all kinds of practitioners who are doing all kinds of amazing things. You guys have just found a method that is very scalable and very teachable that also works and happens to be very powerful.

    20. JBJason van Blerk55:15

        Yeah, I think whatever you believe in and whatever you commit to over time has the ability to really help you.

    21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee55:22

        Yeah.

    22. JBJason van Blerk55:22

        And from going to a chiropractor to a physio to doing breathwork to doing meditation, if you commit to it and you're really serious about it and you do it right, over time-

    23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee55:33

        [laughs]

    24. JBJason van Blerk55:33

        ... you're gonna see a result. This is just one way. There's tons of ways that people can do it. And if you like moving your body in this way, like what I like about this practice is I don't need a mat. I don't need equipment. I can do it while I'm standing in line at a grocery store.

    25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee55:47

        Mm-hmm.

    26. JBJason van Blerk55:48

        I can do it anywhere. I can do it on a plane when I-- to avoid jet lag. You know, it's so simple that anyone can do it. Even kids are doing it. You know, you've got elderly doing it. And so we're just out here to teach people how to heal themselves, and there's so many ways to do it.

    27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee56:02

        Yeah. This morning after you took, uh, Ved and I through these sequences, maybe three of the maneuvers, so I don't know if you have names for them or not-

    28. JBJason van Blerk56:11

        Mm-hmm

    29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee56:11

        ... but what, what was that first one that we did? What's that called?

    30. JBJason van Blerk56:14

        Totally Twisted.

Episode duration: 1:34:08