Find Your Strong Podcast

Rehabbing Our Relationship with Our Body. A Conversation with Hannah Husband

Christine Chessman & Ela Law Season 3 Episode 14

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I have been SO excited to bring you this episode as I know it will speak to so many of you.  Hannah Husband (they/them) is a body liberation coach.  Think of Hannah as a couples therapist for the relationship between you and your body. They help the two of you fall in love with movement all over again (or for the very first time.)

Hannah's unique take on movement truly spoke to me, as someone who longs to feel free in her body but struggles to let go, the idea that movement could be about nourishment, pleasure and exploration was so affirming.

This conversation will surprise you, challenge you but above all encourage you to get curious about what movement truly feels good in your body.

Hannah references Elka Schroeder who they credit with her Take 10 series and Jane Clap, her former coach for the body tapping technique.

If you're interested in working with Hannah, she is keeping the doors to her Body Liberation Playground open until 7th October 2024 at 12 noon PST.

Find out more here: https://www.hannahhusband.com/

Are you simply fed up with hating your body? Are you stuck in the 'earn and burn' cycle when it comes to exercise?
You are not alone and your body is NOT the problem

Please reach out if you would like some support. We both have limited slots for Intuitive Eating and Strength Coaching, so get in touch with Christine or with Ela.

AND if you enjoyed this episode, please share and follow the 'Find Your Strong podcast' and if you have time, write us a short review. It would honestly mean the world. Love to you all, Ela & Christine x

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Christine Chessman: I cannot wait to bring you this episode this week. Hannah. Husband is a body liberation coach. Think of Hannah as a couple therapist for the relationship between you and your body. I love that they help the 2 of you fall in love with moving all over again, or, indeed, for the 1st time, which may be true for many of you, listening.

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Christine Chessman: Hannah's unique take on movement, really spoke to me as somebody who longs to feel free in their body.

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Christine Chessman: but struggles to let go. The idea that movement could be about nourishment and pleasure

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Christine Chessman: and expiration was just so affirming.

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Christine Chessman: The conversation will surprise. You maybe challenge you. But, above all, we'll encourage you to get curious about

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Christine Chessman: what movement really works for you, and feels good in your body without further ado. Here's Hannah.



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Christine Chessman: Welcome to the find your strong podcast Hannah, husband.

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hannahhusband: Thank you for having me. I'm so delighted to be here.

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Christine Chessman: Well, we are very delighted. I've been as soon as I've kind of come across you on social media, I wanted you on the podcast? And we have lots of questions. And I don't know. Shall I start? Ella? Shall I get us kick started.

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Ela Law: Why don't you start? Yes, go on, then.

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Christine Chessman: So talking about movement, Hannah, I am. I am a not. I describe myself as a non diet, fitness, professional or a.

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hannahhusband: Trainer.

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Christine Chessman: I also used to describe myself as an intuitive movement

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Christine Chessman: and trainer, but more and more I've been encouraging clients to tune in, to listen to their bodies.

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Christine Chessman: I'm an intuitive eating counselor as is Ella, so

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Christine Chessman: that interoception that tuning in is very important to me, but

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Christine Chessman: I have yet to really feel like I'm embodying it myself. And that's why I was so drawn to you, because I feel you really embody what you're saying about movement. And I just want to know how does so to tell people who are listening who might not know you as well. How does your approach differ from other trainers, movement, professionals.

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hannahhusband: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Etcetera.

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hannahhusband: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I call myself a body liberation coach. Now.

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hannahhusband: which is kind of something I just made up and pulled out of a hat. I was a personal trainer for a long time, and then I was sort of embracing the like fitness, coach language, and then I was like.

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hannahhusband: how do I let people know that I'm like health, you know.

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hannahhusband: health and weight neutral, that I'm a non diet like it. Just all felt a lot of like jumbly words and a lot of describing what we don't want versus what we do want.

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hannahhusband: But yeah, I would say, like.

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hannahhusband: you know, I definitely came up in the personal training world. And

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hannahhusband: my typical way of learning things is that I will sort of like shapeshift into the best version of the thing. The person, I think is doing it the best in the thing, and then slowly kind of make it my own, because I always do, anyway.

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hannahhusband: And so it's been kind of a slow process over time of just like letting more of what naturally occurs to me.

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Christine Chessman: Hmm.

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hannahhusband: Into the way that I approach

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hannahhusband: movement and fitness. But I'm like kind of equal parts, like

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hannahhusband: intuitive woo tune into your body. Everything is connected

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hannahhusband: like witchy

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hannahhusband: vibes, and like strong background in like

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hannahhusband: like strength, science, and the nervous system theory and

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hannahhusband: like one of my sort of deep rabbit holes I've gone down is like

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hannahhusband: a functional range conditioning so like joint specific strength, training, active mobility.

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hannahhusband: Joint health, that kind of thing.

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Christine Chessman: That's I mean.

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Christine Chessman: this is all very exciting. We can talk about the mobility side of things more because that interests me as well. But one. This is very strange for me, but I was in a hotel room. Here's the Tangent hotel room in Northern Ireland, and I was a bit down. I was feeling a bit low, and I thought, you know what I need right now is a Hannah husband. Take 10.

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hannahhusband: Oh!

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Christine Chessman: That'll put some music on and just move my bodies. And I love that song dancing on my own by Robin, and there's 1 of your free on Instagram. Everybody take 10 rings where you invite people to. Just you put the song on and invite people to move through that I think that one was spine, or

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Christine Chessman: absolutely loved it, just starting away in a hotel room, but in a way that was just

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Christine Chessman: I don't know. I can't. I can't describe it, Hannah.

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hannahhusband: Yeah. So I have to give credit to that movement. Lineage.

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hannahhusband: the

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hannahhusband: the tick tens.

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hannahhusband: which is like a take 10 as a

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hannahhusband: 10 day movement quest. I don't like to call it a challenge, because we have enough challenges in our lives. But it's a it's a quest to move our bodies for 10 min a day in ways that feel good, and I run it seasonally so sort of like around the

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hannahhusband: solstice and equinox.

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hannahhusband: but that the inspiration for that came from one of my favorite movement teachers, Elke Schroeder, who teaches

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hannahhusband: she's taken

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hannahhusband: this body of work called Fighting Monkey, which is really centered in like task-based movement, improvisation.

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hannahhusband: And then she's like built on it with her own genius. And I was doing a series of her classes

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hannahhusband: online because she's in, I think Helsinki or something. Now,

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hannahhusband: and

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hannahhusband: yeah, I just for me, like, cause you know, I came up in personal training. Then I did, Pilates, which is so like, you know exactly this. Not that inhale here. Exhale here ribs down, shoulder weights, you know. It's like so prescriptive.

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hannahhusband: And I really bought into that for a long time.

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hannahhusband: and then I just burnt out no surprise as a neurodivergent. I got a little demand avoidance with things being too prescriptive.

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hannahhusband: But

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hannahhusband: movement has always been my like best mental health strategy, and I realize now

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hannahhusband: the way that I manage my Adhd symptoms best if I move enough and like

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hannahhusband: and moving enough for me is like

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hannahhusband: frequency. So like everyday ish some amount, if it's less than that, I tend to the brain, gets a bit squirrely

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hannahhusband: and and if I get too prescriptive, if I like, try to sign up for a program or

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hannahhusband: overly dictate what I'm going to do every day. Then I rebel against it, and then do nothing. So a lot of the way that I teach about movement just comes from literally me trying to be like, how do I get myself to do this thing that is really supportive to my like holistic beingness, but that I sometimes rebel against, and then screw myself over in the process. So, anyway.

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hannahhusband: Elka's work, this task-based movement improvisation.

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hannahhusband: it's ends up feeling like dancing ish partly because we associate moving to music as dancing.

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hannahhusband: but I always say like it can be as pedestrian or as dancerly as you desire, right like. We don't have to try to like, look cool or like, do a dance. But what I love about it is that it's really it's prescriptive enough that you're like, okay, I know what to do.

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hannahhusband: But within those parameters there's a lot of room to improvise and discover and kind of mine the prompt for possibilities

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hannahhusband: which again with my like Adhd need for novelty keeps me engaged and curious and interested.

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hannahhusband: and really frees up this ability to like

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hannahhusband: move in a way where I like like, it's like

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hannahhusband: I'm doing the prompt. So it satisfies that part of my brain that like wants to do the thing that's being asked of me.

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hannahhusband: but there's enough freedom within that that I don't feel like pinned down, and I feel like I can like be expressive and creative. And so it's just been such a blessing in my life, and I was like, I think, and like Elka is a dancer. So the way she teaches it and does it. It just looks impossibly cool.

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hannahhusband: And I was like, I think I could like make this a bit more pedestrian and kind of like.

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hannahhusband: It would be really useful, for just like people who don't consider themselves dancers or movers, particularly.

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Ela Law: Do you find this is so interesting to me? Because I'm

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Ela Law: I find that really hard. I do Christine's classes, and I like the

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Ela Law: the kickboxing classes. And when she says, Now we're doing the freestyle, I'm like, holy shit! What am I gonna do? I don't know what to do.

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Christine Chessman: Really, and I.

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Ela Law: I freak out a little bit? Yeah, because I feel I don't know if it's self consciousness, or if it is just literally no idea what I should be doing, what

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Ela Law: I think for me. That sounds that feels very alien to kind of just move in a very embodied kind of way, I'm very much like.

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Ela Law: Do 20 reps of that. And I'm like, Okay, my brain happy to do that.

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hannahhusband: And I'll stick.

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Ela Law: With it. So do you think that you get a lot of clients who are like me, who are just like totally? Oh, my God, I don't know what she wants me to do. And then how long do you think it takes for people to kind of embrace that approach? Because I love the sound of it.

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Ela Law: My brain's just screaming. No.

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hannahhusband: Yeah, yes, thank you so much for being honest about that. This is really common. You are not alone, 1st of all.

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hannahhusband: So

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hannahhusband: this is a thing that happens to our brains. If there's too many options do anything you want.

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hannahhusband: we often freeze.

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hannahhusband: and we're like anything. What is that? I don't even know where to begin.

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hannahhusband: And so the the this is part of what I love about these task based movement improvs because it's like it's not do whatever you want for the length of a song. It'll be something like. Draw as many circles as you can in space, with as many parts of your body, leading those circles as you can

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hannahhusband: play with speed size, changing directions. So it's like

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hannahhusband: there's a clarity of the task.

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hannahhusband: And human beings like we like to do a physical task. It's like very

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hannahhusband: evolutionarily hardwired to like, do that. And we learn physical skills best by iterative learning loops that involve clear parameters and failure. Right? So you can understand when you failed. Right? So the circles. One doesn't have a very clear failure. I guess you could make a square, and then you'd be like oops. That wasn't a circle.

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hannahhusband: a better example would be like we did one yesterday where you start on the floor, and you have your hands and your feet touching the floor.

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hannahhusband: and the goal is to be in continuous motion. But not let your hands or feet come off the floor. So you get into these positions where you're like. Oh, how do I? Right? And you you mess it up, of course. But then you notice that, and if you can notice it without being like Oh, God, I'm terrible, which is helpful practice for me.

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hannahhusband: Covering perfectionist. But I am.

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hannahhusband: It gives you this opportunity to be like, Oh, I oh, I can't! I can't do that. Okay. How do I do that right? And then we get curious about how to solve the puzzle.

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hannahhusband: And that is actually like curiosity about solving the physical puzzle is the way that humans are meant to learn new movement skills right? If you watch like

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hannahhusband: babies into toddler, that kind of age range, they're constantly being like, how do I get my

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hannahhusband: butt off the ground right? And they go. Oh, that didn't work. And then they go. How about this? Right? And it's a game right? They're playing their own game.

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hannahhusband: and they don't have any shame about failure.

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hannahhusband: And so I think

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hannahhusband: part of the reason I love this work is that it brings us back into that. It can bring us back into that state of like

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hannahhusband: buck around and find out like, how do we?

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hannahhusband: How do we play our own game.

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hannahhusband: get comfortable with failure, as like a guardrail for learning a new skill.

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hannahhusband: And and let it be like playful and experimental.

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hannahhusband: But you're absolutely right, like we have only really been taught movement in a prescriptive way.

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hannahhusband: And so, of course, if someone suddenly takes all of the prescription away and goes. Do whatever you want. You're like.

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hannahhusband: I don't know how to go to there, because you have no scaffolding.

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Ela Law: Yeah, it's very I. I'm just thinking that it's very

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Ela Law: similar to when you learn to become an intuitive eater when you've.

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hannahhusband: Premium.

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Ela Law: Been taught.

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hannahhusband: Great. You have.

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Ela Law: To eat that you can't eat that. And then suddenly someone comes. Oh, you can eat anything.

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Christine Chessman: That can be.

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Ela Law: Holy shit. There's so much food I have no idea where to start, so it's kind of narrowing it down and and having some, as you say, guardrails to kind of. Say, no, let's maybe have a little look at. You know what foods you want to start with and what

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Ela Law: try first, st and it's it's interesting you should describe it like that, because that that resonates a lot with me to kind of.

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hannahhusband: Yeah, see that stuff.

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Ela Law: That's really interesting.

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hannahhusband: It's a great comparison. And it's interesting, like the more intuitive eating providers I've been connecting with lately.

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hannahhusband: The more I'm like, wow! This scaffolding is not translating into movement for folks. Has that been y'all's experience?

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Christine Chessman: Very much so very much so.

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Christine Chessman: and it's it's almost like I I'm not sure if this is answering your question, Hannah, but it's it's

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Christine Chessman: with intuitive eating. It's it's almost some people are replacing move or the diet with movement. So it's all about.

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hannahhusband: It's.

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Christine Chessman: Fill. It's sort of let's do as much movement as possible, and we can sort of punish our bodies that way. And we can embrace food. And yeah.

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hannahhusband: Oh, I know that one. Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: It's okay, because over here.

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hannahhusband: Right.

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Christine Chessman: We are doing a certain thing in a prescriptive way and doing what we're told and working out as much as we. And that's I'm getting a lot of clients who are very much wanting to embrace food, but also not feeling the same way about moving, and have no idea where to start with movement.

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hannahhusband: Well, and we've just, you know, the the popular, especially with the rise of social media. The popular way that

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hannahhusband: movement and fitness has been marketed is quote unquote, educational content. Where we're going. Here's the wrong way to do this. Here's the right way to do it. But we're fueling this narrative that we can't trust our bodies to figure it out.

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hannahhusband: that you need a like outside eye, an expert

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hannahhusband: to like, teach you how to.

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hannahhusband: you know, sink down towards the floor and stand back up. Aka, a squat that is like the most basic human movement.

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hannahhusband: and like, I promise you, your body will figure it out, and

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hannahhusband: some coaching can be helpful.

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hannahhusband: especially because we're coming from

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hannahhusband: this brainwashing of feeling like we need someone to teach us exactly how to do it step by step, right?

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hannahhusband: Most people who reach out

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hannahhusband: over the course of my career for training help are like, I want to make sure my form is good. Right? We've got this like very intense idea

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hannahhusband: that proper form is really important.

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hannahhusband: and that that's gonna come from outside of us.

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hannahhusband: And we like.

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hannahhusband: and and you know, to be fair, a lot of folks have

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hannahhusband: injured themselves, especially like I tend to work. I somehow attract a lot of hypermobile clients. I am not hypermobile.

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Christine Chessman: Where do I?

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hannahhusband: Folks who are like hyper, flexible or hypermobile, who have the

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hannahhusband: really stretchy connective tissue, and their joints kind of just like fall out of socket. Sometimes.

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hannahhusband: often, those folks do have really punishing experiences of trying something that felt fine in the moment. And then, the next day, being in like so much pain. And so

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hannahhusband: I don't mean to say that we don't benefit from guidance, as we're endeavoring to learn new movement pathways.

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hannahhusband: But

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hannahhusband: the industry, the fitness industry at large has really done us a disservice in terms of like fueling this narrative, that we can't

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hannahhusband: trust our bodies to learn through iteration.

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hannahhusband: which is, in fact, the way that bodies best learn.

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Ela Law: So it's about trusting that what you're doing, even if someone tells you

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Ela Law: well, you need to do the squat this way. But you say, actually, no, that doesn't feel good. I'm going to do it this way.

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Ela Law: That is that what you're talking about when you're talking about form.

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hannahhusband: That's a layer of it, for sure.

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hannahhusband: But I think also it's like, so I used to teach movement in that more prescriptive way. I thought my job was to.

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hannahhusband: You know I loved working with beginners. I loved working with people who are like I have no clue how to do strength training. Please help me. And I'd be like I got you

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hannahhusband: and I would, you know, scaffold everything and be like, okay, we're going to start with this. And then we're gonna build to that. And we're gonna build to that.

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hannahhusband: But I was like giving them a laundry list of cues like, Okay, you want your feet like this, and you want your knees to go out of your toes. And so then, like

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hannahhusband: the person is running this form checklist in their head, which is not a great way to actually be present in your body and feel

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hannahhusband: what's happening right? That interoception job.

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hannahhusband: So I think the other thing here that's missing culturally.

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hannahhusband: That you both work with in your intuitive eating work with folks is like

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hannahhusband: the baseline status of most human beings, is somewhat dissociated from their bodies.

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Christine Chessman: Oh yes!

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hannahhusband: And so what I've learned over time is like, I have to actually coach people on how to just be present with their physical sensations

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hannahhusband: which can be

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hannahhusband: scary, hard to do, you know, especially if there's been traumatic experience that can be. That's a process that's a thing that deserves

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hannahhusband: support.

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hannahhusband: and coaching and like time to develop.

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hannahhusband: It's not like, oh, just work disembodied. Let's become embodied like no

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hannahhusband: rapid embodiment can be really traumatizing if you've dissociated for a reason.

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hannahhusband: But once we can get into

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hannahhusband: a conversation with our bodies, that's sensory. Right? Once we can start tuning into like, okay, what does it feel like?

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hannahhusband: What do my feet feel like on the ground? Right? So if you're seated or standing listening to this, you can try this.

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hannahhusband: Just shine the flashlight of your awareness to your feet

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hannahhusband: and the surface they're contacting.

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Christine Chessman: Sorry.

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hannahhusband: Notice what you notice.

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Ela Law: Hmm.

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hannahhusband: Map. That sensation

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hannahhusband: can you tell without changing anything if you're more weighted on your toes versus in your heels?

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hannahhusband: Oftentimes we can't. We don't know we're like I don't know.

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hannahhusband: So we have to experience. Contrast purposefully, shift more weight into your toes, feel what that feels like

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hannahhusband: purposefully, shift more weight into your heels. Oh, oh, yeah, that's unfamiliar. I don't do that very often, right? So we have to kind of build this

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hannahhusband: sensory vocabulary is what I've been finding.

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hannahhusband: and then, once we have that we can play with it, we can experiment with it right? So like now, when I coach a deadlift, for example.

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hannahhusband: I have people check in with their feet first, st

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hannahhusband: so that we have that baseline of sensory awareness, and then I'm like cool, so like the weights in between your feet.

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hannahhusband: We usually do, Kettlebell deadlifts to start.

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hannahhusband: Make sure you feel weighted into your heels.

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hannahhusband: and then push your butt back until you get your hands around the handle of the weight.

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hannahhusband: and then from there just stay with your feet, press your feet through the floor until you arrive at standing.

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hannahhusband: and then stay weighted in your feet as you put it back down.

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hannahhusband: So many fewer laundry list cues than I used to give. It used to be like brace your Abs, you know. Do your lats grip the

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hannahhusband: we can't. We just can't juggle that many plates, really. And

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hannahhusband: the nervous system is determining how we accomplish a movement task

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hannahhusband: like that's the actual decision maker. Our thinky brain, our prefrontal cortex can like

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hannahhusband: kind of sorta shape what we're doing. But as soon as you get tired or distracted, your nervous system is right back to what it thinks the most efficient way to solve that task is.

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hannahhusband: So if we want to actually improve how we solve these physical tasks, we need to get down to like a a more joint specific level and sort of see? Like.

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hannahhusband: okay, do we actually have enough hip internal rotation to get into a real hip hinge if we don't, no amount of cueing from the outside is going to fix that.

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Christine Chessman: And.

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hannahhusband: Anyway, that was a tangent.

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Christine Chessman: This is so interesting to me, because I'm also a Pilates teacher. So I've been kind of schooled in the, you know. Tuck your tailbone. Slide your zip bones forward, roll through, and you know what I've I have adopted my cues now to the point that I think people come in and go what

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Christine Chessman: I'm like. So if it works better for you not to flex your spine, then keep length through your spine, because our spines are all completely different. Some people.

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hannahhusband: Unreal.

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Christine Chessman: Some people have posterior tilts. Some people a roll up will be very easy without practice, for some people practice and practice and progress, and eventually get there.

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hannahhusband: Let's.

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Christine Chessman: But they feel like they're failing. If they can't do a roll up. And it's actually no, it's a boy. Our bodies are all different, and what we can do in Pilates should not look the same.

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Christine Chessman: It is a really people kind of look at me very strangely. They're like, what what do you mean? And not everybody can do flat back. Not everybody can. Their spine.

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hannahhusband: Especially if you have a lot of gluteal mass

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hannahhusband: you like, like I can go towards an imprint for sure I can get.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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hannahhusband: Pelvic tilt. But my low back is not touching the ground.

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hannahhusband: Yeah, that's not happening.

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Christine Chessman: Yeah.

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Ela Law: That's so. That is so interesting. So both of you tell me, then.

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Ela Law: are there different? I'm just thinking about strength, training and and lifting weights and things.

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hannahhusband: Isn't it.

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Ela Law: It is.

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Ela Law: is there not a way that you can do yourself a real injury if you are.

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Ela Law: if if you aren't looking at all of those that laundry list that you described. If you don't have that, can you not injure yourself? Because sometimes I don't go to the gym anymore? Because I really really hate gyms with vengeance. I just don't do it.

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Ela Law: But when I do see people messing around with weights, I think, Oh, my God, you're gonna come out of here and you'll you'll have whatever injury.

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hannahhusband: Hmm.

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Ela Law: Muscles, back issues.

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hannahhusband: Yeah. So

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hannahhusband: here's how I would frame that

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hannahhusband: strength. Training is actually really safe of the forms of movement that are possible, because generally it's slow and controlled.

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hannahhusband: especially if the weight is appropriately heavy.

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hannahhusband: And then also, especially if the weight is appropriately heavy for the lift. You have to be present with that, or else it's not gonna happen.

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hannahhusband: So I would say, the the things that actually keep us safe in that scenario is like embodied presence, being able to like, feel your body and feel what's happening.

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hannahhusband: And then.

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hannahhusband: like I was saying, before we want to make sure that the person has the joint prerequisites for that lift to go well for them.

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hannahhusband: Joint prerequisites and ability to create and maintain intra-abdominal pressure.

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hannahhusband: everybody's obsessed with core strength, but we've got some really messed up ideas about what that is.

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hannahhusband: and intra-abdominal pressure is something that a lot of people have like never heard of or thought of.

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hannahhusband: And so that's often another kind of foundational piece that I teach folks.

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hannahhusband: Because if you can

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hannahhusband: create and maintain intra-abdominal pressure like 360 through that canister of the trunk, the torso.

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hannahhusband: and you're in tune with your body, and you pick up a heavy weight like you're probably gonna be fine. You might be like sore in weird places the next day.

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hannahhusband: but the likelihood that you're gonna like

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hannahhusband: herniated disc, or something like that is very low.

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hannahhusband: But again, this is stacked on the foundational pieces of like body awareness. Right? You have to have good interoception to feel if you're creating and maintaining intra-abdominal pressure.

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hannahhusband: because that's a subtle kind of a subtle sensation, and it's a sensation in our abdomen which is an area that many women and femmes deeply dissociate from

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hannahhusband: probably Cis men, too. But

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hannahhusband: anyone who's ever had you know, body image issues about their belly.

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hannahhusband: That's a place that we then just exit. We're like, I don't like how this looks and feels, so I'm not going to feel it.

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hannahhusband: In order to really keep ourselves safe and stable through the center.

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hannahhusband: we need to reconnect with sensation in the belly and be able to be like.

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hannahhusband: oh, yeah, I can feel that I'm maintaining my expansion. Okay? Great. I can feel that and move at the same time, which is like 2 plates spinning

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hannahhusband: right? So these are things that

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hannahhusband: we just haven't been given much practice with.

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hannahhusband: And so often we have to kind of build that up from from the ground.

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hannahhusband: But but that's like those are the checklist things for me. I'm like, make sure you can feel and maintain intra-abdominal pressure. Make sure you can feel your body and your connection to the floor, to the earth, because that's what you're pushing off of with any of these lifts.

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hannahhusband: And then, you know. Sense yourself as you're going through the movement. If it feels challenging but not threatening, you're probably fine.

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Ela Law: Okay.

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hannahhusband: Our nervous systems will tell us if things are going awry, we'll get that kind of like. Like that sort of overwhelmed, like alarm sensation.

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Ela Law: Hmm.

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hannahhusband: So we have to learn how to like tune into those.

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hannahhusband: That sensory language.

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Ela Law: It's so fascinating. I'd never thought about it in those those terms, but it is about sort of learning to tune in, and it's learning to feel that, as you said, if that feels scary, it's probably not the right weight or the right thing for you to do right now. So it's about not pushing through and messing around with weights that are completely out of your range, but actually listening to what feels challenging but doable.

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Christine Chessman: I have a I have a lovely client who I absolutely adore, and she we talk about safety the whole session, because her shoulders like to really keep her safe, and then, if we're doing a particular lift, or if she's maybe feeling a little bit vulnerable in the lower back, or anything. Her shoulders will just go.

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Christine Chessman: And they'll pick her up from the floor. And I'm like what's going there, what's going on there, and we kind of talk it through. And I'm like, so you're not feeling safe in this movement. And then it's about why, what's going on there? What's and it's so fascinating. But it impacts every way. She moves every single way.

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Christine Chessman: And you know that's where our conversation will go every week, because the shoulders are taken care of.

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hannahhusband: And.

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Christine Chessman: When she doesn't feel safe in a movement, and I find that so interesting and the quality of her lifting changes completely if she feels connected to the ground and stable and safe movement.

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hannahhusband: Yeah.

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hannahhusband: Yeah, we have to be able to feel

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hannahhusband: so

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hannahhusband: nervous system theory has been helpful for me with this and a lot of like therapists

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hannahhusband: and folks who study like somatic people get it right.

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hannahhusband: Our nervous system. We have this like window of tolerance, as what it's called. I like to call it the window of capacity. Which I stole from my teacher, Jane Clap. But

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hannahhusband: when we're in that window we're kind of like, okay, right, and then if we get kicked out of it into overwhelm, we'll either go up into like fight flight.

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hannahhusband: or we'll go down into sort of like freeze fawn

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hannahhusband: so like starting to also get a baseline of of that sort of spectrum of your experience is helpful.

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hannahhusband: because with strength training

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hannahhusband: we want to be inside the window of tolerance window of capacity. But we want to work right at the edge like that's where we're going to create adaptation and widen the window.

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hannahhusband: But if it's too intense, if it's overwhelming, then we're just getting kicked out into those survival strategies, and we're not actually then able to be like present.

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hannahhusband: Thoughtful, curious.

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hannahhusband: But it is. Yeah. You're so right. It's very interesting to find these little ways that

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hannahhusband: our bodies have

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hannahhusband: found a way to get us through overwhelming situations.

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Ela Law: Wow! I just I. What you 2 have just highlighted to me is how

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Ela Law: important it it is to kind of work through that with a coach initially at least. And then once you kind of know what you're doing. Obviously you can go it alone. But this is something that I think a lot of us haven't got a clue about, and we have been sort of.

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Ela Law: It's been taken away from us from a very young age, because

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Ela Law: prescriptive way of moving, so.

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hannahhusband: Yeah.

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Ela Law: To reawaken that. And by, you know, we I feel like that's something that is very difficult for people to do on their own. So

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Ela Law: you know, Christine, sharing that. You know you notice that in your client, because you work with with her and

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Ela Law: Hannah, you saying that you know we we start from from the ground up. We notice our feet.

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Ela Law: If you did that on your own you wouldn't start with your feet. You would look at. Oh, I'm going to lift that weight now, and I'm just going to do it. But understanding how this very intuitive way of moving this connection works. I think it's really important to have someone coach you through that.

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hannahhusband: Yeah.

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hannahhusband: Yeah. And like

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hannahhusband: again, the way we've been taught movement is highly visual.

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hannahhusband: especially with the rise of Instagram. People give like how to videos.

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hannahhusband: and it usually shows their, you know, very muscly, body like doing the thing. And then the person goes. Okay, let me do an impression of what I'm seeing.

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hannahhusband: but you don't necessarily know what to feel for.

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hannahhusband: and part of the gift of the pandemic for me. You know we we had. I had to move towards virtual training versus in person training for a good stretch of time

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hannahhusband: and in person training. I'm very like hands on with my clients. I give a lot of tactile cues as long as that feels safe for them.

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hannahhusband: Because we can't feel what we can't feel. But touch is one of the best ways that we can connect with parts of ourselves that we can't currently map or feel

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hannahhusband: and so now I coach my distance clients with self, touch modalities, or like.

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hannahhusband: use a wall, and like, get some sensation on the back of your shoulder so that we can find that tissue as we're trying to engage it.

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hannahhusband: But so much of our movement learning experiences have been very visual, the instructor demonstrates, and then we just try to recreate the shapes they made with their body, with our body.

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hannahhusband: and again, gift of working with hypermobile clients. Hypermobile people can recreate that shape like picture for picture perfect.

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hannahhusband: not engaging any of the tissue that you're hoping that they will engage.

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Ela Law: Yeah.

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Ela Law: so I.

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hannahhusband: Really had to learn through coaching my hypermobile clients like, Okay.

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hannahhusband: I don't care what shape you make. I want you to feel your hamstrings. Let's like touch them.

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hannahhusband: And then, like, when you do this hinge movement, can you feel any sensation of stretch as they lengthen? And can you feel any sensation of engagement as you're bringing yourself back up.

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Ela Law: Here, you.

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hannahhusband: Oh, you're muted, Christine, somehow.

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Christine Chessman: Sorry. I started a contemporary dance class in January, and it's it's the only thing that I do consistently. The only thing I do.

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hannahhusband: And everything.

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Christine Chessman: But the teacher, so from the very 1st lesson had us tapping

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Christine Chessman: our arms, tapping our arms, tapping our chest, tapping our back neck, tapping our tummies, tapping our Abs, tapping the side of our bodies. And then, when I saw one of your take 10 videos where you did exactly that, I now use that with a lot of my clients, because it is.

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hannahhusband: So helpful.

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Christine Chessman: So valuable and.

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hannahhusband: Yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Honestly, it has made a massive difference to my own sort of interception and embodiment of movement. But it's something that's so simple but so impactful, isn't it? Yeah.

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hannahhusband: Touch is profound, even self-touch. It's really cool.

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Christine Chessman: Honestly, Ella, you have got to try it. So we're gonna we are.

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Ela Law: I'm learning so much. I'm learning.

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Christine Chessman: No.

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Ela Law: This conversation, not just for myself, but also I think there's quite a lot of what you both share today, and Hannah in particular, that I can. I can use and transfer, because obviously I'm not a movement coach. I'm not. I don't work with movement. However, part of intuitive eating is also respecting your body and finding joy in movement again.

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Ela Law: And I do talk to my clients about it, and hearing you both kind of share those things is really really helpful, so I can kind of use and take some of that.

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hannahhusband: Yeah.

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Ela Law: Translated into into my kind of practice. So.

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hannahhusband: Yeah.

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hannahhusband: yeah.

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Christine Chessman: Before before we kind of let you go this morning or this evening, whatever time of day it is.

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hannahhusband: Evening for you. Morning for me. Wild. Yep.

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Christine Chessman: What are you have? So in terms of you've got, we're gonna promote this. You've got this amazing body Liberation playground which I've recently signed up to

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Christine Chessman: for you. What are you? Have you got long term plans.

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hannahhusband: Hmm.

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Christine Chessman: Or have you? Are you just going with the flow, are you? What? What do you.

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hannahhusband: Great question.

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Christine Chessman: Where are you going to be in 5 years time? What do you see this evolving in any way? Or you just kind of enjoying the process or.

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hannahhusband: Both ends. So I typically shy away from like long term strategy and goals. My, I just get over Adhd overwhelm

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hannahhusband: I'm much better at being in the present moment.

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hannahhusband: And I've been

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hannahhusband: recently able to challenge myself on that a little bit.

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hannahhusband: And so the way I relate to it now is like, I have sort of like a north star of like.

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hannahhusband: how I want to feel and sort of the impact that I want to have.

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hannahhusband: And then I just sort of like, I'm in the present moment being like, Okay, what's the right next move? And is this drawing me towards that North Star.

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hannahhusband: So you know, right now, I have

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hannahhusband: the body Liberation playground, which is an online community that I host.

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hannahhusband: We play around with these kinds of intuitive task based movement. Improv. I call them movement snacks because they're little. They're short, just a little sip. Just about every week we have a whole library of them recorded.

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hannahhusband: and then we also, like the body liberation playground, is really a support, a peer to peer, support space

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hannahhusband: where we can feel, not alone with, like the unique struggles of being a human in a body and trying to

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hannahhusband: unlearn diet, culture and toxic fitness, culture, and like, come into right relationship with movement in our bodies.

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hannahhusband: So we do like a circling practice where folks can just share what is true for them, what they're grappling with

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hannahhusband: and then we practice radical consent in terms of how we respond to those shares. So

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hannahhusband: you'll never get unsolicited advice. Some people just talk for their whole time, and kind of unpack what they need to unpack verbally.

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hannahhusband: or sometimes folks will talk for part of it, and then say, you know, I'd actually really like some coaching about this, and then I can step in and offer a little, you know, spot coaching, or I just need to hear from the group like, who else has experienced anything like this? I need to know that I'm not the only one.

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hannahhusband: Or

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hannahhusband: can we all just have a collective scream into the void together about how much this sucks? Right? Like.

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hannahhusband: So we practice the skill of

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hannahhusband: okay. Here's how I feel. What do I need what would feel supportive to receive from other humans about this

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hannahhusband: cause. That's also something we've not really been brought up to, know. So it's a. It's a skill to practice

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hannahhusband: but we offer each other compassionate witness encircling. That's the main sort of technology that we're leveraging there.

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hannahhusband: And what I've found in my own personal experience of circling is that the more that I sit with others and compassionately witness them.

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hannahhusband: and see parts of my own experience mirrored in their shared experiences, the easier it becomes to be my own compassionate witness. And when I have that negative body thought to be like.

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hannahhusband: Oh.

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hannahhusband: Ouch! That's a painful thing for my brain to say to me

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hannahhusband: of that.

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hannahhusband: The same way I would respond to someone else who tells me what their brain is saying to them, right! We immediately rally for each other, just like without hesitation.

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hannahhusband: But often when our own shame voices come up we go. Oh, you're right, I'm terrible.

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hannahhusband: And so it's this beautiful reciprocity and kind of

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hannahhusband: community care.

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Christine Chessman: Hmm.

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hannahhusband: Balm. My friend just called it a giant hug.

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Christine Chessman: Oh no!

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hannahhusband: To the giant hug that is blp.

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hannahhusband: so.

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Ela Law: Awesome.

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Christine Chessman: Are. Are the doors open right now, or when.

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hannahhusband: Technically, no. But if you're port, if you're listening to this podcast, and you're like, I need to be part of that community.

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hannahhusband: I would encourage you to

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hannahhusband: like, apply and just put in the there's like a message part where you can. I think I say, like anything else you want to share. And just say, I heard you on Christine's podcast, and we'll we'll sneak you in the back door and and make it work.

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Ela Law: Amazing.

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hannahhusband: Yeah, I love that.

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Christine Chessman: I highly recommend it to anybody who is listening. But Hannah. The time has gone ridiculously fast.

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hannahhusband: I know we were like

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hannahhusband: 35 min.

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Christine Chessman: Nice got start, Adela way, but.

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Ela Law: I know. I know there's so much more. But maybe we can have you back some other time.

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hannahhusband: You too.

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Christine Chessman: We'll do a part 2. But, Hannah, thank you so much for being so generous with your time, and we really appreciate you.

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Christine Chessman: Thank you for being here.

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hannahhusband: Having me. This is a delight.


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