Pelvic Health, Trauma Recovery and the Power of Movement

What if the one of the keys to healing from trauma was right within you, hidden in the depths of your pelvic floor? I'm thrilled to share with you another conversation with our amazing guest, Jana Danielson, a pioneering expert on pelvic floor health and creator of The Cooch Ball. Jana's deep insights into the relationship between pelvic floor health and trauma recovery is a revelation that could potentially change the way we approach healing and wellbeing.

Check out the previous episode with Jana:
EP 64: PELVIC FLOOR HEALTH & HOW TO STRENGTHEN YOUR PELVIC FLOOR

Timestamps to help you navigate this episode:
(0:00) Intro
(0:20) FREE Self Love & Sweat MONTHLY Calendar
(3:08) Pelvic Floor Health and Trauma Recovery
(11:20) Importance of the Pelvic Floor
(15:51) 25% OFF Snap Supplements with code LUNDEN25
(25:17) Exploring the psoas Muscle
(35:41) Movement as Healing Tool
(47:15) Spreading Self Love and Sweat

Jana guides us through the often misunderstood world of the pelvic floor, debunking common myths and presenting a holistic view of our body's lower energy centers. She also introduces us to the power of the psoas muscle, and how it acts as an alert system for both physical and emotional threats. It's a fascinating dive into the uncharted territories of our bodies, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss it. 

But the conversation doesn't stop there. Jana beautifully intertwines her expertise on pelvic health with her personal journey, enlightening us on the importance of movement in healing. From writing, Pilates, to traditional strength training, she shares how she redefines what exercise means for her. We also delve into the critical role of breath in movement, the need for balance between push and rest, and the importance of mindfulness in personal healing journeys. So, sit back, tune in, and get ready to embark on a journey to rediscover your body and reclaim your health.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:20 FREE Self Love & Sweat MONTHLY Calendar
• 1:52 Pelvic Floor Health and Trauma Recovery
• 8:13 Importance of the Pelvic Floor
• 15:51 Sponsor: Snap Supplements 25% OFF using code LUNDEN25
• 22:10 Exploring the Psoas Muscle
• 32:34 Movement as Healing Tool
• 44:08 Spreading Self Love and Sweat

Transcript

Lunden Souza: 0:01

Welcome to Self Love and Sweat the podcast, the place where you'll get inspired to live your life unapologetically, embrace your perfect imperfections, break down barriers and do what sets your soul on fire. I'm your host, Lunden Souza. Hey, have you grabbed your free Self Love and Sweat monthly calendar? yet This calendar is so amazing. It comes right in your inbox every single month to help you have a little nugget of wisdom, a sweaty workout, a mindset activity, just a little something, something to help keep you focused and motivated and keep that momentum towards your goals. So every day, when you get this calendar, you'll see a link that you can click that will lead to a podcast episode or a workout or something that will be very powerful and quick to read. and then you'll also see, on the top left corner of every single day, there's a little checkbox in the calendar And what that is is that's for your one thing. You can choose one thing every month, or it can be the same, something that you want to implement and make this something that you can easily implement, like daily meditation or getting a certain amount of steps or water, for example, and staying hydrated and even taking your supplements. This can be something if you want to get more regular doing a particular habit and routine. you can choose what that checkbox means. So if you want your self-love and sweat free monthly calendar delivered right to your inbox every month on the first of the month, go to lifelikelunden.com/calendar. Fill out the form really quickly and you will have your calendar in your inbox within a few short minutes. That's lifelikelunden.com/calendar. Go, get yours for free and enjoy this episode.Welcome back to the podcast. Today we have Jana Danielson back on the show. We talked about pelvic floor health and really dove into the anatomy of our pelvic floor and our diaphragm and kind of that cylinder space that we have and get to utilize through a lot of pelvic floor work. We talked about her coach ball and so many amazing things and I said, jana, let's come back and let's talk more about pelvic floor and a little bit more trauma and healing and just go a little bit deeper. So I'm so excited to have you back here, jana. I'll let you kind of reintroduce yourself a little bit for those that are excited to listen to this and check out the previous episode, and then maybe, if you've listened before, then this will be a re-intro into the wonderful world of Jana and her coach ball and pelvic floor wellness.

Jana Danielson: 6:09

Lunden. Well, thanks for having me back. We had such a fabulous conversation the first time around, and anytime someone offers me the opportunity to help educate and inspire men and women about their body, I am always going to say yes, and so I love your audience, I love your community and I love what you do, so thanks for having me back. I am a pelvic floor expert, really by accident. That wasn't my career path. I was gifted in my late teens and early 20s a pain journey, and my pain journey was digestive in nature. But those of you who have lived with any kind of pain, chronic or acute you know that it's not just one part of the body. Your entire body responds to that pain. We don't want to live in pain, and so we have this nervous system that has two parts to it the sympathetic, which is the fight or flight, and the parasympathetic, which is the rest and digest. And for about for sure, four years of my life I, if I went back and watched myself as that, you know, 17 to 21 year old, I would bet that I was 98% of the time in fight or flight, not knowing it, but my body was alarm bells all the time, and you can you know, if I go back and look at pictures, you can see it in my posture, that very protective, forward rounded posture. We actually see that posture in a lot of young women, especially as their bodies start to develop, you know, usually a little bit sooner than you know the boys in their class, and they hide that posture. Well, that really is pain protecting posture. It's like a, it's like a coat of a suit of armor basically, and that was my life right For those listening the posture that Jana is doing.

Lunden Souza: 7:52

if you're watching the video you can see it, but she's really like you're rounding your shoulders, you're closing in over, you know, shortening, let's say, the spine or, like you know, some of the people in their journey sometimes like feel like they get taller or lengthen or just whatever in the way that you're doing. That is like really, yeah, hunched over, closing off that heart space and just yeah, very closed off. So I just wanted to illustrate that.

Jana Danielson: 8:16

Yeah, Well, thank you, thanks for doing that and so, and that was my life, and I didn't know any different. And I actually thought at one point, well, I just I pulled the short straw. God gave me some sort of a pain because I must have done something. And what I realized after? My medical team told me that after two years of treating and not finding a diagnosis and not having any relief from my situation, they told me that the pain was in my head, I was taking attention and I should have a nice life. And what I didn't realize then was that that was the biggest gift that my doctor could have given me, because I was so in train to believe that I needed someone in a white coat with a stethoscope. And I'm not, you know, poo-pooing the medical industry at all, but I think sometimes when you don't fit into a diagnosable box, you can get lost really quickly. Or you can get diagnosed with kind of a catch, all you know chronic fatigue or chronic this or chronic that, and then you become that, your brain actually becomes that. And so when I was told those words and I went into my probably six months of depression, thinking that, what my body? Be able to have children. Should I even marry my then fiancee? I started wondering what else was out there. And when I started wondering that, I saw Madonna on the cover of a fitness magazine. In the fall of 1999, I bought the magazine. The article was all about Pilates and I learned about this form of movement. Movement is medicine, gang, it really is. And this form of movement focuses on spinal alignment, breathing, proper spinal movement, which we all need in everything you know in our daily living. And when I started doing Pilates it took me only four months. So after 16 weeks of Pilates I was off all 11 of my prescription medications and I really had a new lease on life. But I did not understand what just happened and how my body went from fear to really freedom and confidence just through moving and breathing. And we wanna talk about that today because I think sometimes for a lot of years, if someone would have talked about trauma, I would have said to them oh, I've never had a traumatic experience. But Dr Amy Epiglian, who I interviewed last year for a summit that I did, she defined trauma this way and I wanna share it with you she defined trauma as too much, too soon or not enough for too long. And isn't that such a beautiful way of defining trauma. Trauma could be something as simple as just missing someone in your life and not seeing them for too long or not getting those hugs you need. And so the pelvic floor. Even though my pain was digestive, my pelvic floor was responding. I was in a state of fear. I became very disconnected from the world because, as we know, the pelvic floor sits in our pelvis, so the pelvis is the. If you put your hands on your hips, essentially you're putting your hands on your pelvis, the bones of your pelvis. Your pelvic floor lives like a hammock underneath or within that pelvic bowl. It holds up our organs, it helps us to function with our urination and our elimination system and it also has a lot of nerves around it which can create pleasure or can create pain. So I think sometimes we forget about the pelvic floor and the importance of it because A we don't see it. It's a group of muscles we don't see, like we can see our biceps or we can see our glutes right, and we also, I feel, as a society, are told by big corporations that this is inevitable. As a woman, you're going to eventually start laughing and coughing and peeing a little bit. You know. Add on if you are premenopausal, perimenopausal or you just had a baby. So we kind of expected, as women and for the guys in the community, erectile dysfunction is one of the most known pelvic floor symptoms, but yet Big Pharma tells us that it's something that you need to take a pill for, and in 90% of the cases that is actually not true.

Lunden Souza: 12:54

Yeah, yeah it's. It literally is like a wonderful world of the pelvic floor when it comes to both men and women and the knowledge that you've acquired through your experience and through the thousands of people that you've worked with. And I love these conversations because I feel like we get so, yeah, uncomfortable somehow or we're not taught to be really not I would say you tell everybody all your things right, but just to have these conversations or to be able to ask why, or could this potentially be something that you know I can work within or kind of do things in my lifestyle or have, you know, some awareness in spaces that could allow for deeper healing outside of just take this pill, do this particular thing. And so I want to dive in to talk about our lower energy centers. Maybe you guys have heard of the chakras before and that root chakra, the sacral chakra, solar plexus, a lot of those lower energy centers, and I know specifically the root chakra is the energy center where the pelvic floor is, and meditation has been a huge part of my healing journey, so has breath work and using your coach ball and things like that. So I remember being, yeah, new with meditation and doing the meditations with Dr Joe of blessing of the energy center. So you go through all the different chakras and energy centers and he'll say like find it, feel it, notice it, pay attention to it, like these are, like you know, just awareness in space. And in that space and I remember for the longest time I like would lose my, you know, lose focus, think about other things, not be able to be present in those lower energy centers. When I get up to my heart throat chakra, a lot of these higher energy centers, I was able to put my awareness there, but it was as if the healing journey I now I know had just begun because there wasn't even attention or awareness happening in that space. We can be very closed off, kind of in the way that you hunched over. I can see how that can happen through different types of trauma, to be closed off in a lot of those lower energy spaces. And I didn't know it at the time. I just remember being like, oh, I just like tap out and energy centers one, two and sometimes three. I kind of am in that meditative kind of focus, but not their way. Maybe people listening who meditate, you can kind of understand a little bit what I mean there. But I was like it was just kind of annoying. It was kind of like I don't know in fitness if there was an exercise or something I just like wasn't that good at. Yet I was like, oh, I want to like practice, getting my focus there, like what is there? And so, yeah, I want to talk about that. I want you to go into, yeah, what is there? What can we uncover when we start to do work in those lower energy centers? Hey, really quick, i want to interrupt the podcast for just a minute to tell you about one of my favorite supplements for hair, skin, nails, digestive and gut health, and that is snap supplements super greens with collagen. Now, if you're following me on social media, you've probably seen me post about this a bunch because, honestly, this product tastes amazing and it's jam packed with nutrients, like I said, to support healthy hair, skin and nails. It helps support detoxification, a healthy immune system And there's even probiotics in there for a healthy gut. It's non GMO, no sugar added, soy free, grass fed collagen, and every scoop is going to give you seven grams of protein, and this is why I love it, because it's not like a protein shake, it's just a scoop of powder. It tastes amazing. I put it in water or, if I want more hydration, i'll put it in coconut water and mix it up, and it's like having a nice refreshing beverage that's packed with a bunch of super greens and protein. So what I'm super excited about is that for listening to the podcast, you'll get this discount here. Nowhere else, but for listening to the podcast, you can save 25% off on all your snap supplement purchases, including the super greens with collagen, and you do that by using code LUNDEN25 at checkout. That's LUNDEN25 to get 25% off at checkout. You can shop on snapsupplements.com or you can shop lifelikelunden.com/on my website, supplements And you'll see there there's already an additional 10% taken off. But you, because you're a podcast listener, you're going to get 25% off when you use LUNDEN25 code at checkout L U N D E N 25 at checkout to get your snap supplements, super greens and collagen and all your snap supplements for 25% off. Now let's get back to the show.

Jana Danielson: 17:49

Yeah.

Lunden Souza: 17:50

Okay.

Jana Danielson: 17:51

So for those everyone who's listening let's just do, let's just get a baseline here of what this muscle feels like. Okay, so we've probably all heard of a kegel, and you know what I'm going to. Just have you imagine that you're stopping the flow of urine right now. Men, women, just pretend you're stopping the flow of urine. There's that squeeze in that lower part of your body, and then just let the flow of urine start again, okay, and then just do two or three of those little squeezes, squeeze and release, squeeze and release, squeeze and release. Okay, so those are. Yes, your pelvic floor is working. Yes, your glutes are contracting. There's some other work there from you know, the adductors, your inner thigh muscles was a little bit of work in your transverse abs, all those kind of anatomical pieces that are helping that contraction happen. And we can, really, unbeknownst to us, we can hold a lot of tension in that part of our body and we don't even realize it. So, you know, the people that I've worked with in the past predominantly are in this kind of in this box, right, they don't even know, like you say, relax, and they think they are. But that if it was an, if it was, if your pelvic floor was an elevator, it's like on the ninth floor and maybe it gets down to the fifth floor. It actually never really gets down to the lobby. So we do things, we get you know. We're told, oh, we need to strengthen our pelvic floor, we need to do kegels, and actually kegels can create a little bit more trouble for that part of our body. And so that's what I mean unbeknownst to us. We, you know, those of you who live where there are seasons and you're driving on an icy road or walking on an icy parking lot, or you know, you're driving and you know a ball bounces across the street and you hold, we watch a scary movie. You don't realize your breath starts to become a little more erratic. You pull the covers up. You know, past your nose, you're holding tension. Right, you're going to write an exam, you're going to have a conversation with your boss, you need to have a conversation with your partner. You are unknowingly holding tension in that area. It's like a sponge for emotion, and so that root chakra, the energy center at the base of our spine, can become very closed off. It becomes inaccessible to a lot of us and we're just not understanding that. What do we start feeling we might start feeling a lack of being grounded, like being super indecisive. We might start feeling a lack of safety with ourselves, in our relationships, with our job. You know, always thinking about worst case scenario, doing all those what ifs, what ifs, what ifs. And it might not be like that, might not be in your normal pattern or behavior, but those are just really subtle ways. If you know what you're looking for when you're disconnected from that root chakra, it can actually be that can be some of those pieces that you're experiencing. The other important thing to understand and I just learned this like less than a year ago so we have millions and millions and millions of nerves that run through our body that are like the communication system, like the telephone wires right, and the main nerve that runs from our brain to our pelvic floor in a woman's body and in a man's body, is called the Pudendal nerve. This nerve has two super important jobs. Job number one is as a communication system. So it's like a highway. It sends messages. You know when to hold oh, I'm picking up 10 bags of groceries right. Or oh, I'm climbing up this ladder to you know, get to the top of this wall, I'm painting. It sends messages because the pelvic floor works to protect the spine. It connects through to the diaphragm, which is our main muscle of respiration. There's lots going on and we don't even realize it. So the Pudendal nerve is a communicating nerve. It's also a sensory nerve, which means that all the pleasure, all the pain and everything in between gets communicated through that nerve. Now here's something pretty spectacular that I feel we all need to understand, and I think it's one of the reasons why we don't talk about this part of our body, or it's not normalized like other parts of the body, is that the Latin root of Pudendal means ashamed. So the Latin root of the nerve that communicates and brings sensation to the pelvic floor is rooted in the energy and the frequency of ashamed. Like if we looked at David R Hawkins scale of consciousness, right, like we are below 200 at that point Like it is not great, it's not a good place to be. And so couple that with maybe the household you grew up in, where learning about your body was taboo. You know you didn't call. You didn't call your anatomy vagina or penis. Your parents may have given it a different word. You know we've never. It was wrong Like. It was wrong to like look or touch right In that. That you know good girls didn't do that and good boys didn't do that. And so we come with these belief systems that we know it's there and if it's not causing any trouble, we just, you know, go on with our lives. Yet a little bit of understanding can bring so much healing. We cannot heal if we are in survival mode all the time and that pudental nerve being rooted in a shame itness and us not wanting to really understand what that part of our body does. It keeps us in survival. So we can't thrive, we can't heal until we move through that, and that's one of the things that the Coochball does a really good job of. Physically, that area needs blood flow. Any muscle that is void of oxygen, rich nutrient, rich blood is like a plant without water. I said that in the first, in our first podcast together. Take a plant out of sunlight and don't water it and see what happens in 30 days. It's exactly the same with our body. Any muscle that is lacking oxygen, rich nutrient, rich blood, it's not if it's going to die, it's when it's going to die. So that's that's why I was inspired to take action and create something. You know that's a fitness tool that's easy to use, because when you can bring blood flow into that root chakra it's almost like giving it this beautiful hug. It's like it's like taking a big breath of air and you can start to connect in a really beautiful way. I'm not saying that there's not going to be little hiccups and it might bring up a lot of emotion. We'll talk about the so as in a second. It doesn't mean it's like this linear line of healing there's going to be ebbs and there's going to be flows. But when you can understand that, it's really empowering, because now you understand, when you start to feel a little bit locked down, what you can do or how to break through. You know Lunden you talked about in your meditation like just having trouble connecting there. You wouldn't have known some people don't even know that they're not connecting and so that's kind of that's. That's the first part of it.

Lunden Souza: 25:28

Yes, and that's what I think. I didn't say that specifically, but I love that. You said that some people don't know that they're not connecting, and that's the conversations I like to have is really like hey, there's some conversations that even if you didn't know you needed to be listening to them. There's some that need to be listened to. And that's what I really feel about this, because, yeah, if I didn't, you know, do a meditation style that required, let's say, tapping into those energy centers, I wouldn't have, you know, spent time in those spaces to be like, oh wait, why can I open up my heart? Or I don't have you know, blockage that I can sense, but here maybe right, and it became like a whole new language and a type of learning. And I love what you said about that breath of fresh air, because I feel like it's, yeah, it's like clearing the channel or like a straw, almost with no plus, where it's like information can travel the way that it's supposed to, without a muffled signal, without some of those blocks, when we check in regularly. And that's what I learned, too is just like exercise being a regular thing, part of what you do. I realized in my healing journey, just because I was able to have awareness that maybe I couldn't connect in the space then was able to connect, doesn't mean that then you know I'm done or it's over, like I keep working in, working in, yeah, working in and working out to to kind of utilize what can be learned when we can tap into those spaces. And I won't go into too much detail but I've had, yeah, some really profound, magical, wonderful healing experiences and new perspective shifts when I've stayed persistent in visiting and that the awareness in a lot of those spaces and so sometimes we hear something on a podcast somewhere that you know allows us to go into a door that we didn't know would be helpful. And I think you know it's wonderful and it can be, it can be messy and sticky and the healing journey you know of choosing to kind of look in a lot of those spaces can require that support and that love and conversations like this to process. I had a really great conversation with a friend of mine yesterday wasn't particularly on this topic, but kind of and at the end we were both like, yeah, it's so wonderful that we could have this conversation and we could, you know, have a dialogue. Like you said, that isn't always traditional in homes or when we know it's like pee, pee and your privates and it's like penis or vagina become like and say certain things. And so I like being able to have platforms like this and people like you, or we can say the things and people can realize, oh wow, that can be so powerful. And you mentioned that the so as was so important, powerful place to tap into. And I was sharing this to you before we pressed record. But I had a friend who told me he's like, oh yeah, I had you know so, and so she worked on my so as and I was crying like a baby and, oh my gosh, I thought I was getting like a massage, in a sense of, maybe like deep tissue or some you know some deeper work, like a physical feeling of good. He goes, but, man, that was a huge release for me. Flood gates were open and that's it. That's a the so as is housed and living in that space and can be super powerful. So I like that. We have the two peas there the pudendal nerve and the so as to think of as we're learning more about this area.

Jana Danielson: 29:11

Yeah, well, you know so many people have hip flexor issues, right? You know tight hip flexors, tight hips, and so they will. They'll go to massage or you know you can use your coach ball, lay on your coach ball, do a release. But I've really been diving into learning more about the so as lately and just quick, a quick, quick, quick explanation. This is a muscle, it's a hip flexor muscle. So if you were like marching, if you're running going upstairs, it helps to lift the leg. The muscle attaches on the inside of the long leg bone, of the femur, called at the greater or the lesser trochanter, and then it comes up through the pelvis and it attaches to all of the bones of the lumbar spine, so all five of those lower back vertebrae and their little spongy introvertibral discs. So just understand, they're like two pillars, like you know, like the Queens guards at in Lunden that are just standing watch of the gate. That's kind of what the so as muscles are. And I mean it's no coincidence that I use the word guard, because they do become very, they can become very garden. And here's just here's what I learned last week when I was doing some some studying on this is that when we are developing as an embryo. The so? As is one of the first muscles to be developed, and it is the book I was reading. The author talked about the so as almost less of a muscle and more like an organ, like the tongue, like there's way more sensation in the so? As than we actually think, and some of the new research is showing that the so? As responds to any sort of emotion quicker than the other muscles do. So the so? As is kind of like the like I said, the guard. Like if there's danger coming, it tells all the other muscles in the body like danger, hold or stop or be careful. Right, it's that, it's that quick and see, here's the problem is that our body is meant to go into fight or flight for sure. I mean, we are meant to do that when we're in fight or flight our appetite diminishes Because we don't. We shouldn't be eating at that point. If there's danger, we should get the heck out. We get blood flow from the heart getting really quickly pumping into our extremities so we can get the heck out of there. We lose our thirst mechanism. All of that happens right and so. But here's the thing everyone we are very quickly supposed to go back to. We are very quickly supposed to go back to Parasympathetic rest and digest, take it easy, like chill. But that's not happening in our lives. We are functioning at this heightened anxiety and stress level without even knowing about it, so the so-as is sending these messages all over the place. Then we start getting constipated, we start getting bloated, we start getting inflammation at our joints and we're like what's happening to our body right, like even if you're eating well and exercising. Don't fool yourself. Your emotional body and your energetic body are laughing at you if you think that we are just a physical being, because that we're not one dimensional at all. And so when you understand this about the so-as and why Lunden your friend said he was crying like a baby is really when that muscle is developing and we're in utero, we are absorbing all the energy, frequency, emotion from our mom while we are growing inside of her. And so even if you have the most pregnancy was planned, a great relationship with a partner, a great, whatever it is this is still something very new in the body there's always gonna be a little bit of anxiety, wondering how things are. Am I supposed to be feeling this? And so we're born and we have these energetic imprints in this part of our body. Fast forward to where we are now. What do we do most of the time we sit in front of computers. This so-as gets shorter and shorter and shorter. We're more stressed. We maybe don't hydrate as much. This muscle can become a thermometer for you of health. If you have a healthy so-as, I guarantee you every other aspect of your body is going to be healthy. If you are locked down, every other aspect of your body, whether you're conscious about it or not, is gonna be impacted by it.

Lunden Souza: 34:00

Yeah, I love learning more and more about the so-as and I love that you said it's more like an organ or like a tongue, where there's like a mind in there, if that makes sense, or like this yes, that's exactly it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know my tongue has a mind, but it does things that other muscles right it like, gets into different formations and provides different support in ways that, yeah, just when you said that and then thinking about it, it just became a little bit more alive for me and through doing more work within my pelvic floor and so-as and all of those things like I shared with my friends experience it very much is an alive thing. And yeah, I just I think another muscle that most people or organ that most people think, oh, yeah, I wanna check my abs or I want my booty or my shoulders to be a type of way. But because we don't see our so-as or nobody's like, oh, how toned is your so-as? It's like not something that we think to focus in on or hone in on and it can just be, yeah, such a powerful space to explore, let's say, within our healing journey and within our physical body. And you mentioned, when you started and saw that magazine and tapped into Pilates and being able I know you, you know we could, I could talk about your story all the time, but it's like you know then fast forward, you were able to get off of different types of medication and, you know, work with your body in a whole new way, get to know your body in a whole new way. And with my clients that I work with one on one, we do a lot of writing. I love a written exposure therapy. I love the rewriting of the story, reframe and it can be really helpful for and that's what it's, that's what it was studied for, is really helpful for for trauma and for processing trauma and through learning about a lot of people and their trauma and the way they've chosen to rewrite their stories. It's been so beautiful in this fitness realm because for the longest time, while I was coaching fitness and doing my thing, of course I had done Pilates and explored a lot of different modalities. But in terms of what I was teaching and coaching and even predominantly doing on my own, was more like traditional strength training. I would do yoga and high intensity and it was more like, okay, that variety to get my physical body ready, prevent injury, improve performance which is wonderful goals, right. But then when I started working with more and more people and myself and then starting to see exercise as an opportunity to like be a supporter in that healing journey, then it was like, oh, pilates makes so much sense when it comes to restoring a lot of that connection and that healing in those lower energy centers. And I remember having this moment with one client in particular and we both were like, oh yeah, pilates is that next step. Like she knew, she knew with that area that needed to be strengthened and the connection needed to be cultivated there. And it was really. It had nothing to do with like, oh, your physical goal is you want to look good in a swimsuit by the time you go to your beach event. It was like no, this is the next logical step to use movement in my healing journey and to be honest, it probably wouldn't have, and I love the way the universe works that way. But I had talked with you a lot, followed a lot of what you were doing then incorporating some different types of healing in the coaching I was doing, and it was like a little nugget from you that I thought of. I was like, oh yeah, I've been using the coach ball working more pelvic floor and it just kind of made sense to be part of the plan in something that had nothing to do with like a physical fitness plan and I just think that's like also the thing that maybe people don't know they need to know is like your workouts can really be part of that healing journey to get us into that rest and digest state. You know walking I've never walked more in my life than I have over the last year and a half, not thinking I have to run or need to do the hard thing, you know. some good few minutes with my coach ball, a nice walk, some breath work and I just feel like the healing benefits plus the physical. You know we like to see what we see too right in our own bodies and kind of feel good in our skin. That's been so profound, thanks to you. So what would you add to that. I just feel so grateful.

Jana Danielson: 38:34

Oh well, Lunden, that I mean. That's exactly. I feel like that's why I was put on on this earth is to help people just find those little nuggets when it comes to wellness. I, I would love your audience to really take what you just said to heart, because if you think about the way fitness has been framed for a lot of us, it's you know. You need to do X number of days a week. Here's the duration, here's the intensity. Make sure you're stretching, like it's kind of like a formula or a recipe, right, like this. Imagine we opened up a cookbook, but it's like a movement book and you're you know, you, what do you want the outcome to be? Well, here's the recipe, here's what you have to follow. And I think what I've come to appreciate more now than anything, I'm this is my 50th year, so I'm going to be 50 on Christmas Eve this year and I instituted this fun little mindset for myself called project fab 50. And I want to know, when I wake up on December 24th, I want to meet the most healthy version of Jana that has ever walked this planet in this half century. Right, and it's not for me about a number on a scale or a size hanging in my closet. It's not, it really is not any of that. But I'm having so much fun seeing what I can do and, in kind of opposite, I've been such a Pilates aficionado you know, master trainer, for the past two decades. I actually talked myself into thinking that I didn't need the weight training because that was concentric and I got enough concentric movement during my day. And if I focused on Pilates and a centric movement, that was the balance. And here's what happened, like three months ago, all of a sudden I was like I would love to get back to the gym and feel that burn of lifting, you know, a bar over my head. And and so this is one of the things that I've learned over these past 90 days is that I think sometimes, when it comes to fitness, we prescribe or subscribe to the old so many times a day, so much you know intensity. I would love people to let that, let that go just like how you have, and kind of meander and experience and see what. What does my body do when I do this? What do I? Because that's what I'm doing right. I'm reinventing what movement means for me and I'm adding more of it into my life because it's not something that I have to do or I have to get through, or I have to carve out this hour. So maybe this can be, for some of you, the start of a new habit, a new pattern, something in your life that you let go of. This is what I have to do, or this is the physique I'm changing. I'm chasing, and let's focus on the process of how does my body feel in a yoga class? How do I feel when I take my mat outside versus when I'm inside? What if I do go for a walk without my earbuds today? What do I hear in nature? And, trust me, the outcome of the body that you're meant to have is going to unfold, it's going to right. So that's the piece that I would love to add to what you so beautifully framed as just this new way of thinking about what are the possibilities in this amazing body that we were born into, and knowing full well that there are going to be little hiccups, like I've got this knee thing going on. So I'm getting on my roller a little bit more. My quads are quite a lot tighter than they have been since I've started lifting heavy things, but here's the cool thing I know that I can manage it. I'm not fearful that my knee is hurting, I'm not. You know none of that. So you know, let your body be a playground and see what you can see how you can get connected to him or her.

Lunden Souza: 42:48

Yeah, I love that redefining what movement means to us and just yeah, getting connected and seeing what happens. It's okay I mean me and Janet with our fitness backgrounds not to say that we're the end all be all rules, but it's like it's okay to try something new. It's okay to not do the program that's in the latest fitness magazine. It's okay to be like I like that, even though you know most people are doing this and when we can build kind of that confidence and that you know ownership of being like, hey, I know what I like for my body and what works. And that's why I think movement can be so profound when we look at it that way, because then it can transcend into other areas of our life to be more curious, to try something new, to understand you know our body in new ways and build confidence there. This has been so wonderful and I hope my dream. Always every episode that I create is just like that. One person has this I don't know aha moment or this moment that I know you and I both have had, where it's like you know, we have a moment where it's just like that spoke to me in that way and I didn't know I needed to know that. But that was that, and everything's different because of it. So I hope that someone listening at least one person is like, yeah, things are different now because I learned something new and so, yeah, thank you guys so much for listening. Jana, thank you for being here and for sharing so much wisdom and knowledge about, yeah, areas that we can tap deeper into and connect deeper into our own selves. So then, when we're out in the world and we can connect better with others too, I really feel like the inside job helps us connect with others. So, yeah, let us know how we can connect with you and your website and social media poochball info and then we'll sign off for today.

Jana Danielson: 44:45

Yeah, so I'm Jana Danielson on Instagram or the Coochball on Instagram. You can direct message me. Email is just info at Coochballcom and I just want to say and I actually I mean, I'm very like, I'm honestly giving your audience this invitation connect with me, because I feel like especially women, we feel like we are alone when it comes to pelvic floor function and dysfunction and I want to, just as we sign off, let you know that that's not the case and in fact, last week, the stat that I the newest stat that I read is that 50% of women are dealing with some sort of pelvic floor situation. So you're not alone, really. The next first step is just finding that person or someone to really acknowledge, you know, hear, you, hold space for you and help you understand what the next step is. We know that 90% of pelvic floor situations are actually movement slash, fitness and nature, which means that all you need is someone to help you connect the dots, help you learn in your body what you're lacking, what you're getting too much of, and then changing that, so you don't have to be that one in 10 women that has to wait until she's getting a pelvic floor surgery to fix this part of our body. We are extremely. The divine feminine is a beautiful being, not that the divine masculine is not, but I think sometimes as women, we just we discount or we don't. You know, we have time for everybody else but us. So please do reach out. I'm happy to at least start the conversation with you.

Lunden Souza: 46:27

Yeah, thank you for that open invitation and reach out. Reach out to Jana, connect with her she has so many great resources and tune into the episode. I'll link it in the show notes that Jana and I have done before, because you'll really get a clear picture of anatomy and function and a lot of the, let's say, dysfunctions or like incontinence or a lot of other things that can develop out of poor pelvic floor dysfunction. We go into much more detail into those things, so I love the value that you'll get from listening to this and from the previous episodes. Get connected with Jana. Thank you guys for listening. Jana, I appreciate you and all you do in the world. See you next time. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of self love and sweat the podcast. Hey, do me a favor Wherever you're listening to this podcast, give us a review. This really helps a lot and share this with a friend. I'm only one person and with your help, we can really spread the message of self love and sweat and change more lives all around the world. I'm Lunden Souza, reminding you that you deserve a life full of passion, presence and purpose, fueled by self love and sweat. This podcast is a hitspot. Austria production.