The Wise Why

Episode #83

Episode #083

#Ep 83 | Caz Hitchcock How to Live With Chronic Pain

by | 10 May,2024

About This Episode

In this episode of “The Wise Why,” Kirsty van den Bulk is joined by Caz Hitchcock, a chronic joint pain specialist and creator of the Gravity Technique.

Despite some initial hiccups with introductions due to Kirsty’s dyspraxic mouth, the conversation delves deep into debunking myths around chronic pain management and explores holistic healing methodologies.

In the middle of the podcast, Kirsty experiences a power cut, leaving Caz on air alone. The live audience starts to send Caz messages to keep talking, as what she is explaining has so much value.

Key Points:

Challenging Conventional Pain Narratives: Caz emphasises that enduring pain or relying on painkillers as we age should not be accepted norms. She advocates for recognising our bodies’ innate intelligence and self-healing capabilities.

Personal Experience with Back Injury: Kirsty shares her journey dealing with back injury at 39, expressing how quitting painkillers cold turkey and resuming exercise helped her recover. Rethinking Medical Approaches:

The podcast critiques the standard medical practices offered by the NHS, often involving temporary solutions like steroid injections without addressing root causes.

Pain as Communication: Caz describes pain as a message from our body signalling the need for change rather than something to suppress.

Interconnectivity in Our Bodies: Discussing lumbar destabilisation and disc prolapses, Caz points out that issues often stem from other parts, such as tight shoulders or stiff ribs, leading to compensatory movements elsewhere in the body.

Emotional Factors in Physical Pain: Both guests explore how emotional states like feeling unsupported can manifest physically, referencing studies correlating stress levels with increased spine sensitivity.

Business Ownership Loneliness & Health Impacts: They touch upon how loneliness experienced by small business owners can exacerbate physical ailments.

Caz’s Personal Healing Journey & Scar Tissue Challenges: Sharing her health challenges, including surgeries at an early age, led Caz towards yoga initially for self-healing before turning it into a career helping others manage their conditions.

Gravity Technique Introduction: Combines movement therapy and manual techniques. Offers one-to-one sessions tailored to individual needs. Advocates start wherever you are health-wise 1

Feet—The Foundation of Our Body’s Structure: Emphasising feet’ flexibility and strength as akin to hands, the authors discuss common foot-related problems that contribute to knee, hip, and back issues due to modern footwear habits.

Contact Information: Listeners interested in working with Kaz or learning more about managing chronic joint pains holistically can visit gravitytechnique.com.

Wrap-Up: This episode provides valuable insights into understanding chronic pain beyond traditional medication-focused approaches while highlighting alternative treatments that consider physical alignment and emotional well-being components influencing overall health.

Remember! Recognise your body’s signals; don’t just silence them. Consider holistic approaches over quick fixes. Emotional states deeply impact physical health. For those seeking better guidance on managing chronic pain.

Episode #83 : Full Transcription
Kirsty van den Bulk
And I and. Welcome to the wise way. This morning I am joined by, Oh my goodness. My brain has Hitchcock. I couldn’t speak to one. That is my dyspraxic mouth not working. Anyway. Kaz is joining me to discuss everything about chronic pain, but as usual, the guest the I am really with it this morning, so as usual. The show is not about me, it is about my guest and I can’t speak this morning, so Caz, please introduce yourself.

Caz Hitchcock
Good morning. I’m not sure I’m going to fare any better, but I will. I will attempt it. And yes, I’m Kaz, and creating gravity technique and a chronic joint pain specialist. So, but my main campaign in life is to change the really toxic narrative around the fact that just putting up with pain and taking painkillers and, you know, pain is a part of getting older. I would like to to change that because actually we’re a highly intelligent self healing Organism and if we give our bodies the opportunity to be that, then we can. You know, move and move fluidly and easily.

Kirsty van den Bulk
And that’s why I asked you on because something we’ve not, we I mean we’ve just touched it very briefly in the the little studio before we went live, but I’ve had a back injury which came in when I was 39. So I had two products discs within really short space of time and I ended up down the route like everybody popping pink. Killers waiting to see if I needed an operation with the products, is it too small and actually what got me moving? Well. What? What got me back again was actually, this sounds awful, but going cold Turkey on painkillers, half lives and 72 hours later that was tough. And then I started exercising again. So I wondered if you could talk about. The alternative route to the painkiller, because, you know, it was horrific.

Caz Hitchcock
Yeah, the the issue that we that we’ve got is that the the general practises that we’re that most of us have available to us through the NHS, which is a wonderful thing, but because of their time constraints and because of their limitations, really all we get access to are sticking plaster. Approaches so painkillers, steroid injections, things to make the pain go away, and we don’t get intelligent about asking questions around the why. So pain is not something that we want to make go away. It’s a call from your body for your attention. It needs you to change something. And the more pain you’re in, the more shouting your bodies becoming to change certain situations and certain daily activities that we’re doing. You know. What I it’s interesting low back pain is something that I deal with a lot. It is I think 85% now of adults in the Western world will suffer with back pain at one point in their lives. Or another. Really high statistic. And again we’re we’re not looking at why that’s happening. We we love a stat. There’s lots of them. Being bandied around, but what I want to do with my work is to really get into, you know, looking at why that’s happening. Is it just a sedentary lifestyle or is it something emotional? Or is it something? You know the other contributory factors and the answer to that is that it’s never just one thing. It’s always, you know, it’s a layer upon layer upon layer and then something finally breaks the camel and and off we go into something but. These sticking plaster approaches don’t take us towards a solution and you know you’re really wise in in your approach to to painkillers and that it’s not sustained. Table for me I only have one kidney, so painkillers are not an option. I can’t take most of them. I’m allowed, you know, one random paracetamol every few years. But apart from that, most painkillers are not suitable for for me. So from that approach I kind of got, you know my hand. Forced into into what I do, but looking at what what the root cause is. So with low back. Lumbar destabilisation, disc prolapses, that sort of stuff tends to be coming out of shoulders and head positioning. So if we’ve got very, very tight shoulders and very and our ribs aren’t moving appropriately, if something doesn’t move, something else has to. When we look at the body as a holistic functioning. All, not just a sum total of individual bits. When it’s all joined up together, if something’s not moving, something has to over move, and generally that’s where the low spine gets unstable, because other parts of the. Spine are too. Stiff and your brain is run into a very certain set of rules. About keeping you alive, you must stay upright. You must stay mobile so that you can get the food so that you can have the sex so that you can procreate. Take over the world. That’s that’s basically, you know, the brain, you know, brain running pattern. And it doesn’t matter how much pain you’re in.

Caz Hitchcock
It will satisfy those rules first, so your body is says that your brain is there to keep you safe. It’s not there to keep you comfortable, which is quite hard fact to get our heads around because we think that you know our body should look after us and you know we should naturally be pain free or if we are in pain. Why isn’t our body sorting it out? But actually, you know, if the brain is satisfied that we are safe and we’re mobile, it doesn’t really matter how much pain we’re. In.

Kirsty van den Bulk
That’s. Yeah, that’s absolutely fascinating. And the reason it’s fascinating is I suffer with child attention. And I get, like, I’m standing up today. So my husband bought me a gift, which is really sweet of him. And I love him for it. So I.
Caz Hitchcock
2nd.

Kirsty van den Bulk
It’s be standing up more, and since I’ve been standing up more walking more, being more active, my back is much more manageable, you know. But there are still days I can’t physically get out of bed and I love that connection with that. The the emotional connection. I mean, I know this, but I love the fact that we’re talking about. How the our emotional state affects our physical state.

Caz Hitchcock
Yes, we we have studies to show this now. There was a study conducted over at the Fashion Research Institute in Munich where I have some connections there and and they were looking at and I’ve seen this myself in my own studio and and clinic was. You know people. Will come in with terrible back pain. Debilitating back pain. And we get the MRI up and have a look at that and there is just. Nothing of note to see. And then other people come in and say ohh, you know sort, I pop in, got a bit of a niggle. You look at their scan and they look like a Jenga there’s been bits all over the place, so actually the correspondence between the pain experienced and the physicality or physical reality. There was some disparity there, so Doctor Roberts like got into that and they looked at as an ethical, ratty study, by the way. And I’m always appreciative of an ethical, ratty study where no ratties were harmed in the in the pursuit of this study. But what they did do is they they put their little rat in. The perspex tube and justice left him in the middle of the office and this is a low level stress, so it’s like our children being told to sit still in class. You know where today in the UK it’s really sunny and we’ve all got to sit still and anybody that’s got Suns is going to know that they’re desperate. To get out, get outside and boys particularly, but that that whole thing of that low level pressure and what they were testing for was they were just very gently pressing on the rats low spine over. The time and what they found was that sensitivity in the low spine area increased incrementally over time as they continually put these ratties in a in this in this stressful state because obviously they want to be in the dark and they want to be away from humans and want the stuff that the people moving around them. Puts them in a stressed state and then they started to to study this with humans. Shortly after that, and looking again as that holistic hole, you know there’s a life pie behind this and and they the studies really showed that people with high sensitivity in their low spine where you know what we would call pain and for some people debilitating pain, there was a correlation between that and a distinct. Feelings of lack of support within their life sphere, so not supported in their work or not supported by their family where they’re going through a challenging time, that sort of stuff was flashing up and and it was a recurring theme that came through the study over and over again. It’s really interesting to look at, but it answered so many questions. For us about why our. Bodies can be in pain. And. And it’s disheartening because, and I hear this from my clients a lot, it’s it’s really disheartening when you’ve got this terrible pain, you go to get the scan and you think you’re gonna see something and there’s nothing there, or the doctor tells you that there’s no, you know, there’s a little bit of degeneration, but there’s nothing of note. And it leaves us without the answer although. The path forward that we were looking for, you know, we’re all looking for a solution to to get ourselves out of this pain of. Course we are. And it and it’s, it’s disheartening when that happens for sure.

Kirsty van den Bulk
That’s absolutely brilliant. Fascinating, and I’ll explain why both times when my back has gone or through the three times my back have has really gone. When I was in a job that I was miserable in and it just didn’t suit my personality. And I was absolutely ohh. It was horrific. And and I was dragging my leg, I mean I was. I looked really, really bad the other two times where it’s gone quite badly have been not so, you know, six months ago now, but have been when. I’ve. Been at my lowest as a business owner. And it’s been when I’ve been struggling going. Am I doing the right thing? Should I continue with the business? Should I wrap it up and people don’t realise when and you know this when you’re a small business owner, you get you don’t necessarily have a team around you. You do but you don’t. And sometimes you just feel really lonely and that loneliness. That overwhelms. Gotta come out somehow. I just find that.

Kirsty van den Bulk
And I don’t know if you’ve experienced that loneliness as a business owner.

Caz Hitchcock
Ohh, there’s an awful lot of self in self-employed. Massive amounts of of. Alone time and yes, of course you have your family who support you and love. You and. You know, that’s my mum, my biggest cheerleader. She’s she’s all over it. She’s the first one that likes my Instagram and. You know, all of all of those, and but nobody really knows the business like you do. And nobody’s really, you know, because for most of us, particularly women, as as business. And. It’s. It’s not business, it’s not work. It’s a life passion that we’ve turned into our career. And that makes it very different than just being like a data entry person or somebody that that, you know. I liked this thing, so I took it in that direction and now I’m a lawyer or something like that, you know. That I find, particularly with female entrepreneurs, it’s something that has affected them in their life deeply or or has been part of their own journey. I do this work from my own journey. I had my first surgery when I was 12, my second surgery when I was 20 and my third surgery when I was 20. Two. So I went already. I’ve already kind of had my hand forced. I was, you know, my mum took me to yoga because I had a congenital kidney issue. So my first surgery left me with an 11 inch scar from my navel to my spine. There’s probably my core muscles, but back then you didn’t even get 6 sessions of physio. Yes, I’m. Hold. So when I when I had this surgery, you know, some 3030 years ago now. You didn’t get any fizzy or anything, so they’re like, well, thanks for popping in, you know, great to see you. We’ve saved your life. Bye. Bye. And you just get handshake and that’s it. It’s all. Over. And and I think with. With that in mind, you know then it was down to my my family to support me and it was my mum that actually took me to yoga at 15 years old because I was starting to go lopsided. So. Forecast are you frozen? And we’re just going to wait for Kirsty to come back.

Caz Hitchcock
Hello Gill, I love that I’ve got my support team there. I have lost the lovely Kirsty so.

Caz Hitchcock
We’re getting prompted by Jill. What do you want to know? Have you got any? Have you got any questions? Actually, I can come across here and have a look in my LinkedIn have. You got any questions? Let’s have a look, You said it so resonated with you. Ohh, here she is. She’s come back. Yes. So if we keep going a little bit about. My personal journey, if that’s interesting. I’m hoping it’s interesting, yes.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Sorry, I no, no not I always. Say I am so sorry. To leave you you stranded there. We had a power cut. And of course, I always say to people be hard wired when you go live. Well, there you go. There’s another thing about why you shouldn’t be word. But anyway, let’s catch up because we had some comments which unfortunately I have now lost. So I will go to my phone and see where we. Are with them Jill. Has just said tell us about the feature wherever you were, take the floor and I will be quiet. Now.

Caz Hitchcock
Yes, feet are the foundation. Also, what were we? We were my mind was off into something.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Welcome. I did leave you.

Caz Hitchcock
Ohh. Stranded. It’s alright, it’s alright. Yes, I was thinking about getting into this work and being passionate about what you do because.

Caz Hitchcock
You know for for me, coming from a yoga background, it was purely in the in the beginning, just to heal myself.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Without buffering.

Caz Hitchcock
Ohh there you are. Again, I am. Yeah, it was just to heal myself in the beginning. And then what I found was. Was so exciting. I then started to yoga anybody that couldn’t run fast enough. So if you were, if you had the misfortune to sit next to me at a dinner table and tell me that your shoulder was bad, that was it you got hauled. Into the lounge and. Because I discovered this amazing thing that. Could that could help? And and then and then the game changed. When I was about 24, we discovered that I had keloid and hypertrophic scarring, so I generate far too much scar scar tissue still generating it. Now, years after the fact and and. I don’t have an off switch, so the prognosis was I produced the scar tissue and every five to seven years the medical professions would would I would have surgery to take that out. Which involves having the all your organs taken out and the unstick all the tissue and they put all your organs back again. And we were gonna go into this cycle. I could see this coming and a little bit like we were talking earlier about the painkillers, but just decided that this was a bad idea. How do how could I? The question was how do I support myself? Well, as a 2324 year old person, I’ve got a whole life ahead of me. The kidney event, the kidney failed just before I was 20 and I had it removed. And and in removing the damaged kidney, I suddenly had a life back again because when you got an ailing kidney and it’s poisoning you quite poorly all the time. And then. Sort of miraculously missing Morgan. I was much better. So it was that. That was the question how do I support myself while post surgery? And then as I trained to become a teacher? Everybody that came had the same question because they’ve all had surgery. I’ve never had anybody in the 20 years I’ve been doing this come through the door and ask me for a yoga class. I’ve always had everybody limp through the door saying this bit hurts. Somebody said you could help me and that was how I got into remedial remedial work. But I found that the. Movement was nothing without the manual therapy and the manual therapy was nothing without. Movement. We have to have both. For particularly for those of us that are post surgery or post injury, we have to work with Scottish intelligently and sometimes the hands on approach and touch for connective tissue is is amazing you. Know we are. Touch based beings. Which is why we were so affected by the lockdowns cause we are. Designed to interact with each other and touch each other and hug each other. And you know many, many different levels. Where we are. A park animal essentially, and we need each other. So it was, you know, how do we how do we bring that together and that’s where the gravity, gravity techniques were essentially comes from.

Kirsty van den Bulk
So how does somebody get in touch to work with you? Because this is a new it’s not a new way of thinking. It’s almost an old way of thinking because you know, modern medicine is great. Painting is a great. But what did? We do back in the dark ages, so how can somebody contact you to start working with you to start dealing and owning their chronic pain?

Caz Hitchcock
So yeah, gravity technique, gravity technique.com. It’s everywhere. Visit I work 1:00 to 1:00 predominantly. But I also run Sessions online each week, so we have a small group sessions where we’re not taught. Into reception. If if I had my way of being the curriculum we’ve been taught this at school, we are taught all about our external world. We’re taught to crack the books, monitor our environments and feedback to ourselves about the external world all about it all around us. But we are not taught to touch in with us out. Your body is talking to you all the time. We just don’t know the language. We don’t know how to interpret the messages, and then we don’t know how to respond appropriately. So the one to one sessions that we do get into your specific situation, your body is as unique to you as your fingerprint.

Caz Hitchcock
So this whole way of cookie cutter approaches to exercises or you know this one-size-fits-all. It doesn’t. Still working with the the the unique individual with your unique circumstances. Nobody’s got a history like you. Nobody’s got a genetic history like you. No one’s got an ancestral history like you. So you are you. So there there is that and. And then to support that movement journey, there’s their sessions each week. So if you wanted to come in for a free class, there’s a I think it’s gravity technique.com/free class or just go to the gravity technique.com website. You can come in and have a 30 minute discovery call with me. I’m always interested. To to talk people to talk through. With people, what’s been going on for them? A large part of of. What we do here is. Is not just to do with movement and getting you out of pain. It’s also to help people feel seen, heard and understood. Because for a lot of us particularly, we’ve been through the mill. We’ve sat in the room with consultants. I now sit in the room with. Consultants and I’m. Like, right? Come on. And for a lot of people, it’s a big it’s. It’s a lot of jargon. I read letters for people all the time. People take a photo on them and I they watch that them to me and say. Here’s what the consultant said about my back. Can you read this? And they’re like, yes, I can. But the the problem that we have is that when we’re when we’re getting all this information from consultants and high level medical professionals, we don’t really know what that means. And then we feel disempowered because we’re not able to make an informed decision. Sometimes surgery is the right. Way. If something is, is is. If there’s a joint in the body that’s degenerated to such a point that it does need to be replaced, somebody said to me the other week, you know, does that mean you know, nobody ever has surgery again? Absolutely not. But can we approach our surgery? Intelligently, can we use it as the window of opportunity that it is? It is not a fix, it’s the first step to you being able to do the work, to getting your your body back to high efficiency functioning.

Kirsty van den Bulk
We love that we. Do, yes, absolutely. We’ve got some comments and I will try and grab my phone, although I’ve just. Thrown it down somewhere. Because we had quite a few comments, but I was like, oh, no power cut, so going backwards, obviously you’ll put the the link in the in the comments. Lisa Varnals has said, no question. I totally agree with trying not to worry on painkillers. I have a severe osteo osteo. I really can’t speak this morning. It’s one of those mornings, osteoarthritis in both knees, but rarely take tabs as I need them. If I’m stressed, yeah, I need them. I need to know if I’m stressed them and I think that’s really key. As a dancer, one of the things we were always taught was your body’s telling you if you’re in pain, feel the pain. You need to feel the pain. So you don’t push it too far.

Caz Hitchcock
Yes.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Have you got anything to say to? Lisa, whilst I. See if I can find any comments that I missed.

Caz Hitchcock
Osteoarthritis is a big word right now. It’s getting bandied around a lot. I hear a lot of words like bone or bone, particularly when it comes to knees and on a knee and hip specialists are specialising in gait and walking and. That sort of stuff. And and you know it can it again. It’s one of those disheartening. And where the doctor says. Ohh well, it’s osteoarthritis. The end. Let’s say give me something to work with. So. You know osteoarthritis is is drying within the joint. So the question is why why? Why is the joint unable to lubricate itself? And and follow that why it will give you the answers that you’re looking for. A lot of the knee and hip and low back issues that I work with are just to do with poorly functioning feet, which is gonna come back. Jill’s gonna be out there. Going, yeah. Yes. She’s talking about it. Most of us have got immature. In fact, all of us have got immature. Feet. Because we put the shoes. On at a very, very early age. Makes us walk like Thunderbirds. And so we’ve got this lovely sorry you have to be a certain. Age don’t need. To know what Thunderbird is. It gives us these these kind of plank shaped feet and and it it the. The load that that puts through the knees and the hips, the stress that that puts on the low spine walking in that way, you’ve got 108 articulating facets in your foot. Which means it’s designed to roll. Is not designed to plop along the floor, and you know, and we’re busy people. So the head is full. Roads, we’re often, you know, pulled by the eyes. We’re always trying to get to the school gate or get to the meeting or get to wherever it is that we’re trying to get to. So I heard it’s forward. We’re taking in lots of information and that has an effect. All the way down, all the way down the body. So your your feet want to be as flexible as dexterous and as strong as your hand. And if you’re looking down at your feet thinking. That’s not me. That’s OK, because we will just, you know. The. The ethos behind gravity technique is start. Where you are. Use. Do what you can. Use what you have and when it comes to accessible movement, we just have to start where we are so you everything that we do here you can do in bed, you can do sitting down. You don’t have to. I had an issue with with a video that somebody sent me and they said, you know, this is for back pain. And the the video for back pain started with just coming to your hands and knees on the floor. And I know with slip desk you’re not getting on off at all. It’s already off the table. So there is no just so we try to go upstream and become more accessible, more inclusive for you regardless of where you are, regardless of your medical history. It’s never too late to start. My oldest client is 94. She’s doing amazingly, but you know she came because she’d had one hip replaced and she didn’t want the other hip replaced, and she presented me with these very beautiful cork shaped blocks for feet because she’s worn cork. She was in a skirt all her life. We’re conditioned as a woman particularly. We’re conditioned into walking in a ladylike fashion, sitting in a lady. Like fashion, all of which causes hip to generation. So we got started with her. She didn’t have the other hip replaced in the end, and she’s doing great. But your body is a self healing Organism, highly intelligent, right up until your final day. So it’s never too late. You’re not written off. You have to throw yourself out for the glue factory. Just or we do joke about those things because we work in chronic joint pain. So we have to be slightly humorous. But yes, with regards to osteoarthritis, you know, where is the disproportionate load coming through the knee, what are the feet up to? And and what can we do to to change how we’re load bearing through the knee and get the knee to lubricate itself and and then it’s got a chance of of repair.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Brilliant. Now I really love that because one of the things that I do when I’m teaching public speaking, so I am anti, I’m gonna put it out there. I. Am anti the. Power pose and don’t explain why you’re anti the power pose because your feet. If you haven’t got your feet rooted to terraferma you use gravity. I’m about terraferma it, says Stanislawski conversation. If your feet aren’t rooted. So I walk a lot. They’re footed deliberately because I need my feet to work. I’m an ex dancer. We’ve been taught about feet and I remember my voice teacher when I was 17, telling us to take off Bally shoes off because the ballet shoes altered our gate and altered the way we walked and made us walk around barefooted. So a lot of the time when I’m doing coaching, some will walk in in massive. High heels or they’re walking in in like trainers and it affects the way we stand and it affects the way our feet move. And that is actually normally why I don’t like the power pose because if you haven’t sorted. Beat you’re not rooted, and you’re gonna wobble. If you’re gonna wobble, then you’re not in a power pose. So that’s just. My own little. Funny thing about feet. Yeah, and. And you know.

Caz Hitchcock
And we habitual, we want an adaptive body and I love a pair of high heels. We want to be able to put ourselves into different. To train, your foot is feeding back to your brain all the time about the environment underneath you. If the messages cannot get through or they’re not coming back from your foot to your brain, the brain, all it can do is send the message down to the body brace brace. So we’ll pull up in the quads, those we know, hip flexors very well, where the piano wire is stuck on the front of your hips and you know, so it will place at the thigh. It will lift the shoulders up. It will pull the head forwards. All the things that it thinks it needs to stabilise. And interestingly for our friend Lisa, it will also causes you to lock out the needs. If the brain can’t feel the heel, it will lock through the knee and then we end up with with the knee that is sitting on itself and it’s not. It’s supposed to be a a double wall and socket joints. It’s supposed to be revolving and oscillating and all of this stuff, but for a lot of us we use it as a hinge joint and the bones are you. If we think about joints, we want the bone ends to be like we are with our friend in the cafe. We want a table between us, a space between us. We do not want to be kissing our well unless he’s good looking. But you know we don’t know what to be kissing our friend. We want a bit of space between us and it’s the. Same for the. Joints. You know, they are the creators of space. In the body and they’re the facilitators of movement in the body. They are not load bearing organs and they are not the power behind it all. So it’s really important that we we shift that, but in standing particularly for standing desks or we’re standing on the shop floor or, you know, we’re standing for long periods of time, then the knees will lock out at one point because it’s just not possible for us to to stand efficiently upwards for that amount of time. And the same with sitting at desks. Work a lot in ergonomics and I asked my teacher many years ago. You know, what do we do about sitting? And he said, well, would you stand on one leg for 8 hours a day and said no? Of course I wouldn’t. That’s stupid. And he said.

Caz Hitchcock
But you sit at the desk hours a day. And yet. We expect our central core systems to support us in that way, and then we’re surprised when actually the head comes forward and we start to collapse heavily through the centre. But it is the equivalent of asking ourselves to either spend 8 hours with our army. In the air. Will stand on one foot. But so it’s starting to be a little bit more intelligent about our environment, but also a little bit more forgiving with ourselves. We have to prioritise ourselves over the work we have to prioritise ourselves over our children. We have to prioritise ourselves over life in general because that that is how we. We that’s how we we keep ourselves efficient and moving and we’re useful. And you know we can’t pull from an empty cup. It’s really important, you know, we laugh a lot about self-care. It’s not floating around in the bath with some candles on it. It’s getting working. It’s setting the. Setting that the alarm on your phone for every 30 or 40 minutes to remind yourself to put your head back in the gravity line, we can do that together if you want. Very clear go. But why not that? We’ve got some people watching who are at their desks this morning. Jill, I see you. I know where you are. She’s she’ll be at her kitchen table somewhere.
Kirsty van den Bulk
I’m thinking Lisa. ‘S here, she says. Thank you. I’m too young for knee replacement. Supposedly I don’t hear that hear that often now. So. And it’s your high heels for you. So yeah, let’s do this. Let’s let’s finish on this.

Caz Hitchcock
Yeah, let’s. Yeah. So stick your thumbs out. So this is this is for you to do if you’re looking at the computer, your head will get pulled forward to see the information in front of you. It’s an old, primal primal lay down in the back of in the back part of the brain to take in lots of information to make a decision. As to whether I stay here because it’s Kirsty and she’s lovely, or whether somebody’s coming down coming. In they’re gonna burn my village to the. Sound so it switches the brain switches gear. So when we look at the thumbs just like we look at the computer screen, the head will go forwards. So if we turn the thumbs into fuzzy focus so we look past the thumbs, we’ll make nice and fuzzy. And then what we’re gonna do is gonna walk our thumbs out to the sides of those. And you’ve got 90° range on each side, but you don’t lose your thumbs out of your peripheral vision. Now this is going to get challenging at some point and you’re going to have to muddle around with the head. That’s a technical. Term. Mess around with your head, mess around with your shoulders in an attempt to get yourself to that 90° range so your thumb is in line with your elbow and is in line with your shoulder. This is something that you can get into later on, but you can do there. So every 30 to 40 minutes at your desk, it puts your head back in the gravity line. But what’s really important is that when your head is back at the top of the spine.

Caz Hitchcock
OK.

Caz Hitchcock
And your your vision is then fuzzy focus or in your peripheral vision puts you into repose mode. So this will actively drop your cortisol and adrenaline levels.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Well, and and I could feel the difference there. And obviously it says a lot. But although my bingo wings I think were showing quite nicely there, but. Yeah, do that. It’s like ohh, I don’t think I like that. Bit. Well, that’s. The joys of being in my 50s. But yeah, no, I could feel the difference in my in my spine II Jen, you could feel. The difference there that was.

Caz Hitchcock
Uh.

Kirsty van den Bulk
Fabulous. Normally I ask you to ask me a question, but I’m not going to cause I think that’s a really lovely note to finish on. Thank you so much for holding this space. Whilst I went off on a power cut and then had to log log back in. That’s the first time that’s happened. You have been incredible. This is full of fantastic information. Thank you so much.

Caz Hitchcock
You’re so welcome. Thanks, Kirsty.

00:09 Welcome
00:53 Intelligent Self Healing
02:49 Body Warning System
03:08 Low Back Pain
04:04 Painkillers
05:10 The Body as a Whole
06:24 Fashion Research Institute
08:35 We are Individuals
09:25 The Emotion of Pain
12:21 A Life of Surgery
14:59 Power Cut
16:50 Feet
17:40 Self Healing
19:24 Manual Therapy & Movement
20:23 What Caz Does
21:37 Understanding Jargon
24:00 Audience Comments
25:06 Osteoarthritis Tips
26:23 It Starts With Feet
31:17 Our Space
33:34 The Gravity Line
36:00 Close

Connect with Caz:

Caz Hitchcock

Mentioned in this Episode:

Fashion Research Network

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