Episode 87: Muscle Memories, Emotions, and Chronic Pain with Dr. Yangyi Chen, D.O.M., L.Ac
Show Summary:
Today we are going to discuss the fascinating topic of muscle memories and how we can unlock the connection between our mind and body.
Yangyi is an acupuncturist who enjoys working with his patients to find their "spark" to thrive – practicing individually customized care for pains, sleep, stress, and trauma resiliency. He also incorporates touch based treatments developed from polyvagal theory to help people get unstuck and more like themselves again.
If you've ever wondered why you have certain emotional reactions or how to improve your overall well-being, this is an episode you won't want to miss. Plus, we'll learn practical techniques to become more aware of our physical responses to certain emotions and how to create positive muscle memories.
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Full Transcript:
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Trauma, to me is anything, just anything that is coming at you too fast, too much or without adequate support. What I'm learning now and practicing is that comes with a thwarted response to trauma in a person's body.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
So let's talk about physical trauma. If a person if I get into a car accident, maybe I brace myself right before and try to protect myself from an impact. And usually it it's, the force is too much, right and too fast. And hopefully enough support for me adequate support, so that I don't get into a serious injury. But sometimes I might. And this bracing and or maybe holding my hand out or arm out to protect myself might not be enough. And that's the sort of thwarted response. And I failed to protect myself and then I get a trauma.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Beyond the physical trauma, it's also sort of this is a way for the muscles and joints to hold on to an incomplete movement, right or for bracing, of protecting myself. And now I might be I might be holding that incomplete action inside me. Throughout my recovery time, maybe even months, maybe even years later, I still have this tight shoulder or wrist pain that never seem to go away.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Welcome to the capital, integrative health podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Andrew Wong, and we are excited to be joined by Dr. Jung E. Chen. Today we are going to discuss the fascinating topic of muscle memory, and how we can unlock the connection between our mind and body using muscle memory. Dr. Yong Chan is an acupuncturist who is at Capitol Integrative Health that enjoys working with his patients to find their spark to thrive, practicing individually customized care for pains, sleep, stress and trauma resiliency. He also incorporates touch based treatments developed from polyvagal theory to help people get unstuck and more like themselves again. If you've ever wondered why you have certain emotional reactions, or how to improve your overall well being, this is an episode you won't
Dr. Andrew Wong
Welcome Dr. Jani Chen to the Capital Integrative Health podcast. We're so excited to have you here today to discuss muscle memories and emotions as bridges between the mind and body.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Hi Dr. Wong, I'm glad to be here.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So glad you're here and so glad you've joined ch Yes. Let's talk about before we dive in here, Yang Yi, can you tell our audience a bit about the work that you do? And what drew you to become an acupuncturist?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, so as even as a kid, I've been very curious about how things work, how nature works. It's so beautiful, how I just wanted to know everything, and learn everything. Maybe, like very curious child, and that I felt it's pretty important to hold on to and keep asking and keep being curious. And actually, that's what's been driving me to, throughout adulthood to to wonder and think and make connections and learn from other people as well as maybe, at some point, listen to what myself has to say through the experiences?
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yes, well, yeah, there was a wise person that has said probably many times throughout the centuries about the open mind how, you know, we need to have an open mind to, to learn new things. It kind of makes some intuitive sense. It sounds pretty obvious. But you know, a lot of times what happens is, we kind of get stuck in a labyrinth, so to speak, or like a little box like okay, this is the box of knowledge that we know, this is the box of knowledge that we don't know, and maybe we don't want to learn about it. But I think curiosity like you said is a really key element of you know, being an integrative healing profession, like acupuncture and Chinese medicine.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, I want to I so I used to work in a biology laboratory at one time, and it was very rigorous and was very rewarding and interesting. And then I was thinking, thinking to myself, there's more, there's more to life in general, there's more two ways I can help people. And I feel like I wanted to do more. I see what's, what else is out there and see how I can help people more directly, because that that's part of what I feel like. Makes sense?
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah. Now as an acupuncturist, that journey, and as a doctor of oriental medicine, what conditions do you work with the most? What do you enjoy working with the most?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
What I feel very rewarding. And also, what I like to work with, is to help people get back in touch with their bodily sensations in a way so that it's not threatening or uncomfortable, or tiring, I like to help people get back in touch with how they're in charge of their health and body and start to make sense of things happening. And that will help people transform.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Thank you. And let's get into the topic of muscle memories and emotions as bridges between the mind and body, so many people that we see are. And I think this is the way society is kind of going as you know, there's some disconnection between mind and body. And you know, we might not be fully in our body to mind to be fully present all the time. So at least when I think about muscle memory, I'm usually thinking about like, physicality. And, you know, let's say I'm working on my basketball foul shot and keep on practicing it 10 times 50 times 100 times I'll get more muscle memory for that shot, you know, kind of do this and make more swishes and things. So is that what muscle memory is are we talking about?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
So muscle memory is a way to help us go through life with a really good coordination, with fast coordination. And it's a sort of distributed intelligence, when we coordinate movements, not just with our brains, but there are ganglions along the spine as well to have reflexive movement. And so you will run these tests where you hit the kneecap to make sure the person has a good reflex as a part of physical checkup, and such.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
So that's just one obvious test for reflexes there are many more reflexes body does body has, that are more minut. And that's an example of this kind of distributed intelligence that we have to move through physical world with coordination, because we, we can't really go about our life lives thinking about okay, here's these 30 muscles, 14 muscles, how do I move, even just picking up a pen picking up something, it's so many movements, if we operate like machines to do that, it's, it's a lot of thinking it's a lot of attention. So the muscle memories take care of that. Most of that for us.
Dr. Andrew Wong
And it sounds like there's the brain that stores some of the memory for how the muscles move but also the muscles themselves. I know there's different like slow twitch fibers fast twitch fibers and different types of muscles and then I guess the muscle also is connected to the fascia to the soft tissue. So we can almost call it the neuro muscular system or even a neuro muscular fascial system you know, we can like ADD, make it like the longest word in dictionary kind of thing. You know, let's talk passion that every hyphen everything, how to how do emotions bridge between the mind and body so you know, in other words, how our emotions kind of transmitted and stored in the muscle.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
So emotions, informed the context of what we're doing right now. We're where we are at and in a way that helps us coordinate our body postures, preparing us to feel anticipate our bodies to do certain things. For example, very basically, we're sitting here, I'm chatting with you. And so my emotion is sort of like curiosity and, and engagement with you. So that already informed that kind of information, as a form of emotion informs my body. Okay, here's, I'm going to be talking a lot, I'm going to be looking at you, I'm going to be thinking a lot and gesturing, so probably, that emotion will help me loosen up my face because I'm emoting. Right. And that emotion will also inform me to be more expressive. I looser with my hands, I talk with my hands sometimes. Yeah. So, and shoulders, arms.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
So that's a difference. That emotion would inform me, whereas I, if I'm doing something else, if I'm going for a jog or something, maybe I'm not paying more attention up here, because I feel like the emotion of Yes, I get to go jog and, and Explore the trails. I like to to jog in the nature. So yeah, good.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Good. Good news, a lot of nature around here. So is it true yong yi, that really, we can influence our emotions, if we're mindful of them. And then the emotions within influence the muscle memory and the the activity of the muscles and how things are expressed in the body.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
In my practice, many people come in about neck pain, and at the same time sleep issues. And so here's a good example of of this is that throughout our day, most of the time, were either sitting up standing up, or just up in general, our neck needs to hold our head up, right? And when we get used to that a lot. Neck might be doing that when we're trying to sleep. Okay, yeah. So the neck could be the muscles in search in the neck could be still feeling like, or anticipating, we're going to be upright. Yeah. And so in that situation, it will be bad for a person to fall asleep, because they'll fall down and, and injured themselves. So it's a sort of way for your body to say, hey, let's, let's keep you awake, because otherwise you might injure yourself. And there's a discrepancy, right? Because between the inflammation your body is anticipating, is holding and anticipating.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So next literally trying to start the next letter trying to hold the head up. Even when we're trying to sleep if it's been holding the head up all day that I think it's 12 or 13 pounds. Head, you know, and I think I was reading one time, it's almost like compared to a bowling ball. Like if you've ever, right? It's like the neck is like the base of the bowling ball.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
That's right and away. Yeah. We have big has mine, it's very big. I have extra extra large, extra large size Yangyi's head. It's very heavy.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Either way, well, maybe it's 12, 13, 16 pounds. But if it's trying to hold that ball for a while, how do we desensitize or relax the neck? So that that we can kind of get into more, you know, relaxed mode, so that we can sleep better?
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, so we're doing a lot of extra things with our neck, other than just holding. I think that's part of that. Because we're reading a lot of things on screen a lot.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
That means we're also wanting to stabilize our vision, so that we can see, as steadily as possible. So there's some extra, extra work that goes into there. On top of that, when our mind is thinking about some difficult things, it's troubleshooting is doing our jobs to read things abstract, just thinking abstract things we never think we never think about difficult.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Here, right? So it's like the neck is tense or trying to hold everything together physically, mentally, emotionally. Yeah, then it gets tight. And then it might stay tight at night when you're trying to lay down to sleep. Exactly. If you're wanting to let it relax. Yeah, even if you want to relax.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, it could be as simple as person wants to keep in their mind about what's happening, what's what they're going to do tomorrow, and you know, that kind of stuff. Even that will help. One even that will change how tight the muscle is. In the in the neck.
Dr. Andrew Wong
I don't know if I've ever examined in one last 10 years that didn't have a tight neck and upper trapezius. And yeah, upper back muscles. I mean, everyone is tight now.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, they pandemic, shift to screen a lot of zoom, a lot of screen has bumped up really high. Right? And? Yeah,
Dr. Andrew Wong
so So what are some ways that we can change these responses? You know, how can we change these kind of sounds like built in seemingly short term, you know, helpful responses, but then long term, they're not that helpful for, for our health, for the for the muscles. To be, I mean, for the muscles to be a little bit more more balanced there.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah. So it really comes to the awareness. Of these places, sometimes we get really tired, because all at these places, and then we push through, and in that pushing through. That means we're ignoring some signals. So sometimes it's pretty useful to push through these things. Sometimes it's useful that we keep these emotional postures, these physical postures, that when it serves, when we are doing something, and we gotta follow through with that. Yeah, I mean, any perceived need to do that. Well, can override these kinds of information coming out, you're saying, we're holding this too tight, we're clenching our jaws too tight, yeah. Or we're holding our lower back too tight. That's okay, you know, we got to go through life, right. And sometimes, we gotta do stuff that's challenging. And the key you're talking about is the short term, having these be short term. So we talk about long term stress versus short term stress, this is the physical part of that short term stress can be useful. But if it's chronic long term, then it can have negative impacts. And it's the same for the muscle tension.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So to parallel and reiterate what you just said, short term mental stress, where you kind of have to get up and go kind of do things get activated. It's parallel to the muscle, the short term muscle tension or the muscle kind of positioning that you might have to do to, to, you know, be alert and do things that in the environment, in your environment that you're in, to get stuff done or to to deal with whatever needs to be dealt with. And then long term we want to maybe balance that out. Let the let the muscles let the mind and let the muscles both recover and rejuvenate. Yeah,
Dr. Yangyi Chen
yeah, exactly. What I say is important is to make time during the day, check in with yourself. It could be sort of meditation time. If you put A prayer time, it could be relaxation time. And it could be a walk, taking a walk time. It could even be lunchtime or meal time. It doesn't have to be, you know, an hour long thing. It can be few minutes, it's sort of a mindfulness to check in. And here's the thing, here's the important thing to say, to declare for yourself that this is a safe time for me to do this. This is a safe time and space for me to check in with myself.
Dr. Andrew Wong
That's really important. If you don't say that if we don't say that this is a safe time to check in with yourself. What happens in the body? Yeah, don't say that.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah. So especially when we're trying to do things and get things done. Yeah. And not paying attention to any, to some of these things we're holding on to, then they stay there. And so you, the goal for these little pauses during the day, to check in, has to be for the purpose of checking in not for the purpose of let me get this other thing down. Yeah,
Dr. Andrew Wong
yeah, that's huge. I mean, I think the way our society has been dominated by left brain intellectual access, even when we try to build on these breaks, like, even if joining a yoga break, or breathing break, it's like, Oh, I gotta get five minutes in, or I gotta do it this way. So the left brain still trying to steer it, as opposed to, like you said, just be just for the sake of being, and let the kind of the right brain kind of come into place that the holistic aspects of, you know that person's innate nature so that healing can happen. From from the inside out, it sounds like creating a safe space, partly, even when you're saying that verbally is you're giving your body it sounds like a chance are some margin for just to be rather than kind of doing all the time or thinking all the time. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
So I say it's essential to define a time. And space doesn't have to be permanent, right? For the next three minutes. For the next three breaths, I take, I'm going to check in with myself. And I'm going to acknowledge that if I'm holding on to a motion, if I'm holding on to tension that might be associated with it. To say that, thank you for informing me. Yeah. Thank you for being there. Do I need this now? Can I process this? And like, Go, maybe you can't, maybe you can, and see if there is some parts of that you can let go. Because it's not relevant anymore. Or you got to process that.
Dr. Andrew Wong
So we will get into some practices in just a minute. But first, how does this translate into chronic diseases? So if someone has muscle memory imbalance, and is not really dealing with this in a, in a sort of sustained way, how could this translate into the risk of chronic diseases or chronic imbalances?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, so just as we were talking about how short term stress can be pretty useful, but long term stress will be it's pretty bad for health like it. It's same for the physical aspect as well. Like the chronic stress will have low lower immunity or for sure, yeah, more pain, pain, and that kind of stuff. So you will change a person's posture, not for the maybe not for the better. Maybe for worse, it might be so if one place, or a set of certain muscles are holding on, and the person override that tension and tiredness and say, no, no, no, I really need to do this. I need to keep doing this. And forget that is there. And it's tight 24/7 For the next you know, month or years, then everything else need to work around I found that when the person loses that ability to say, Okay, let's, let's loosen up now, or now I need it to be tight, let's tighten up, if the person loses that ability for some of the muscles, then every other muscles, and also joints need to work around that. So that might show up, you know, in changes in postures that might show up down the road as in joint inflammation, chronic joint inflammation, and that kind of things. So at some point, I would like to talk about the trauma. Let's dive in. Okay. Because we're talking about, like, chronic tension and chronic pain, and you can relate to trauma, trauma, to me is anything, just anything that is coming at you too fast? Too much. And, or without adequate support? What I'm learning now and practicing is that that comes with a thwarted response to trauma. What is that in a person's body? Okay, so let's talk about physical trauma. If a person if I get into a car accident, maybe I braced myself right before and tried to protect myself from an impact. And usually, it it's, the force is too much, right and too fast. And hopefully enough support for me adequate support, so that I don't get into a serious injury. But sometimes I might. And this bracing, and or maybe holding my hand out or arm out, to protect myself, might not be enough. And that's a sort of thwarted response. And I failed to protect myself and then I get a trauma. Beyond the physical trauma, it's also sort of this is a way for the muscles and joints, to hold on to an incomplete movement, right, or for bracing, of protecting myself. And now I might be, I might be holding that incomplete action inside me. Throughout my recovery time, maybe even months, maybe even years later, I still have this tight shoulder or wrist pain that never seem to go away. And
Dr. Andrew Wong
and even if the X rays are negative, the MRIs are negative, it sounds like the force can be transmitted to those areas that kind of overcame, you're trying to protect yourself, that then created energetic and structural imbalance that then will be manifests maybe down the line as pain or as some sort of some sort of dysfunctions. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
So it's a way to inform going back it's a inform what the context your body is in. And there was a really I expected change to your, to your surrounding your context where you had to protect yourself. And so it's to your emotional, your neurological, your body mechanics of physical mechanical system, it's a major adjustment, I need to change really quickly, really fast, in order to adjust to this sudden change in my, in my world. And so your body could be perceiving, like, I have orient reoriented myself to this new threat.
Dr. Andrew Wong
And that's a physical trauma to the nervous system. Yeah,
Dr. Yangyi Chen
that can be can be Yeah, that can be manifesting physically. Now we know that pains and such and, and also emotions can do very similar things. Right? Yeah. Yeah. By pain, I mean, not even like physical pain, emotional pains. Yeah. That kind of things and the body
Dr. Andrew Wong
reacts in a similar way to if someone had accident or had some sort of physical trauma. You You're gonna be manifested
Dr. Yangyi Chen
physical trauma, interpersonal trauma any time person felt violated or threatened, they have to reorient and protect themselves right reflexively.
Dr. Andrew Wong
And that's, that's a natural part of the human condition to want to protect ourselves but it sounds like after a point it becomes not functional, it becomes not advantageous for us to always be in that kind of turtle shell all the time.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Right, because sometimes we carry around that kind of incomplete responses, those reorientation to what? The changes who are I go, we're still not sometimes we're still not sure. When it's over. Yeah,
Dr. Andrew Wong
we might think it's our body, we may think we think it's over, but then it's not over the body is telling us it's not over. That's the message it's sending. Yeah, the muscle memory. Exactly. Okay, exactly. Kind of be prepared. You're always in that fight or flight mode, you know, kind of thing, right? What practices Jung, you do recommend for patients to work on on these responses and think specifically, what are the most important lifestyle practices you recommend to people that people do regularly, whether it's weekly or daily, to work on their awareness of emotions, and the connection between mind body and specifically muscle?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, so I would say, primacy of checking in with your sensory systems. Okay. The awesome thing about this is that we have some saying these things, well, that takes some attention, that takes some time. And that takes some concentration. It's not hard. Exactly. But it's going it's going to be a thing that you do instead of instead of some some automated thing. So it needs it. It costs on your, I would say curiosity, in and also in claiming that you're, you deserve it. You You deserve a pause or a moment. One breath, two minutes, three minutes, one minute, however long that you have to say, I deserve checking in and start, I would say, moving in a curious way, with curiosity and moving fluidly. And a little bit slowly, in a curious way, so that you get to check in with your perception. So that you're feeling like, Okay, I think I'm moving like this. How does that feel? to it? Does it feel? Tight, smooth? A little bit challenging? A little bit unexpected? Am I moving in a way that I need to shift my weight that I didn't notice before? So it's kind of granular, right? It's yeah, these kinds of things we maybe take for being automated and doesn't really register, I would say to check in and see what they feel like. And notice any sensations and
Dr. Andrew Wong
Okay, so we're going from automatic to manual transmission. That sounds like a good thing. You know what, it's funny when you're talking kind of I don't know why this popped in my head. But um, that movie Alice in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat. Have you ever seen that movie? Yes. So the cat is very like smiley somewhere and it's like moving in the tree but it's very subtle. So there's a lot of movement going on, but it but it's very curious kind of animal and I think this curiosity that you're mentioning yong yi, requires it sounds like a lot of compassion for ourselves. It's not it's not just like about like we have a task or you know, we have something we have to do. It's more just about being like you said, and being compassionate with ourselves and that we are worth it to take some breaks from from you know, even like messages in like work that we have to do. So. Another kind of funny thing is like, you know, instead of checking messages we check our muscles?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yes, exactly. Um, that reminds me of image area I have of patients coming in, especially with tight muscles. And, and this kind of pain such what I see is kind of a person plastered head to toe with post it notes, right, all this tension, they might mean something, it's sort of information that they're holding on to. And to me, that's a good analogy. It's like, the person is covered with post it notes. And they're not getting, letting themselves maybe look at what does this mean? Do I really need this? And maybe I can release some of it, you know, it starts becoming informative, and useful when one it's on top of another. And everything is covered. Some are some post it notes are from years ago, you know, doesn't make any sense anymore. I kind of stuff.
Dr. Andrew Wong
What what is your general kind of practical tips for people that are listening out there to check in with their bodies with their muscles? Is it? Is it something where they're kind of doing some meditation upright? Are they laying down? Or they they more like doing like a body scan to check the muscles? Or are they actually moving in a certain way? Like, almost like a tai chi or something? Or what what do you recommend there for checking in with the muscles?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, so different things will work for different person. And the important part is the smooth movement. And curiosity. Okay, so maybe something you not do usually, or not all the time. And so it becomes its own thing. So they're moving their movement, I would say some movement, and maybe stretching involved, maybe
Dr. Yangyi Chen
holding those stretches involved. Yeah, and maybe taking down the what's at stake. by that? I mean, if you feel kind of embarrassed, of not doing yoga, properly, for example, if you're embarrassed about dancing, for example, in front of people,
Dr. Andrew Wong
sweatpants are not required. Okay, all right, good to know,
Dr. Yangyi Chen
you can definitely get some this release. This kind of checking in and then release, from dancing from yoga, from Tai Chi, from Qigong from martial arts, from taking a walk from, from meditation, from moving meditation from rest, meditation, mindfulness meditation, so it can happen in many ways. And the key I would say, is to, to be fully checking in with your body instead of thinking about something else, because this Yes, yeah. Because this takes most of your whole person to to process this.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, that sounds like the key point is, is not thinking of something else, doing it for the sake of checking in with yourself. Because you're worth that full attention as opposed to it being for a certain task or some, or maybe thinking of something else while you're trying to move. And, yeah, I gotta get my exercise. And so then then, you know, just just checking it off in a box. We're not talking about that. We're talking about really checking in with yourself in a deep way.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, yeah. So you can definitely follow a teacher and instructor even music if it helps. Though, it's very important also to listen to yourself, because that's what that's the beginning. And maybe the whole point of this activity I'm describing is to check in with yourself. Even a even a instructor will not know exactly what's going on. Exactly the combinations of Are tensions or emotions or context that you feel you are in or you're having. So that is you are the most informed person for that.
Dr. Andrew Wong
If you weren't in mind, and this is not planned, but you know, a lot of the things in the podcast are not planned. If you could lead the listeners through some maybe brief one, two minute, kind of check in with the muscles, because right now, we're taping this podcast here, young you and I, we're not on the cell phones are on the screen, we have a nice opportunity to check in with their muscles right now. It's doing all right, yeah.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah. So wherever you are, find a position that feels like you can be for a few moments, maybe a minute or so. If you're driving, maybe pull aside and be safe out there. Right, just be safe. And take some moments to feel the surfaces that you're touching you're resting on. If you're sitting, maybe you're sitting on a chair or something and feel the weight of your body being held up.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
And just really check in with that kind of feel. Its stability, and then be aware that you are here right now. Right? We are. We're doing something a little bit before but right now we're setting our unsetting you're at rest right now. And tune into some parts of your body, let's say your right shoulder somewhere and a neutral. Doesn't have to be the right shoulder
Dr. Yangyi Chen
and feel the sensations and identify them. We can even go to the skin have the right shoulder. Does that feel like? What's the temperature? Is there a sleeve or fabric? There maybe when you are breathing? Maybe the fabric shifts just a little bit?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
And is there some sort of feeling about a some tension or a posture that I feel that you feel like it's important to hold? Is there like a one position that you feel like it needs to be and be curious about is that? Is does that need to be like that? What else can be? What else can it be like? Maybe you you're noticing some new sensations. Oh yeah, I didn't know. I was holding some tightness here. Oh, yeah, I didn't know I my shoulders were out in front. Doesn't have to, I guess. Yeah, so this kind of checking in kinda slow, right? Even one part of your body might take some time. And I advocate that you deserve it. Because deserve some attention and time to check in.
Dr. Andrew Wong
I love that. Thank you for leading us to that. All right, well, let's kind of talk about are closing questions here. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming on today and talking about muscle memory and emotions. And that was great to you know, really experienced that as well. And like you said, we do deserve this, you know, to make time for ourselves to make time to attend to our physique. Does our physiology I would say nuts. Your physique but physiology and and, and muscles is a big part of that, you know, obviously muscles kind of houses a lot of the nerves that kind of run through and that are connected to the brain which is going to be influencing all parts of our, of our system really. Part of our mission here at CI H is making integrative health care more accessible, and focusing on on small things are small steps we can do to improve our health. So we just thought we would ask, we ask this to all of our guests here. What is one thing under $20 That you feel has has transfer transformed your health?
Dr. Yangyi Chen
I would say find ways to massage your your forearms, find ways to massage your forearms doesn't even have to mean a little gadget just for form. You know, it's it's sort of it can be really satisfied. This reminds me of like a bear scratching, and they're back on a tree and such. Yeah, massage your forearms. I call these muscles especially on the outside of the forearm like they have the extensors of the fingers. Yeah. And we don't feel much. Usually we don't feel much tension there until you start massaging. I call these places, the browser tabs.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Oh, never massaged this arm area.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah, yeah, it's um, yeah, it's like the, the tip of the elbow to the back of the rest all this area you'll start to feel like, Ooh, that's a sore place all this other places. So a place. And I might use the analogy of their browser tabs because we keep them we'll keep the tension there. Because we're we think about grabbing something, or holding something or putting pushing a button or typing, but we don't really think about lifting the fingers. Okay. Right. And so I mean, not normally. And so they kind of get neglected, and they start building tension.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Okay, yeah. I can feel the tightness for sure.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
Yeah. Were you aware of that before? Not at all? No, no, not at all. Right. I
Dr. Andrew Wong
was like, This doesn't feel tight at all. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
And when that start building up, then that informs your shoulder that you're holding on something. Okay. And, or you're carrying something, even though when you're not carrying anything? Yeah. And that tells the shoulder area as with this distributed intelligence to be tighter, so that you protect your shoulder from getting pulled out from this additional weight that you're holding on. And suddenly, you have a tight shoulder and neck pain, maybe. Alright,
Dr. Andrew Wong
and we're using our hands quite a bit during the day, like exactly your mouths are lifting stuff up picking stuff, typing on screen really relaxing the the hands much at all. It's right or the arms, I should say. Yeah.
Dr. Yangyi Chen
So I think anybody can get a lot of relief. From massaging their forms, you can use the edge of rounded table, you can use rounded edge of a chair, okay, you know, get creative, all these things you can follow the sensations of, of Oh, that's a good massage, you know, follow that and that you can extrapolate. That's a skill, like following those sensations. You can follow that to start massaging anywhere in your body.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yes, good. That's great. Can you use a piece of wood like something outside or without splinters? Or is that
Dr. Yangyi Chen
like the bare rub on the Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna cheat trunk. Yeah. If it's smooth and Okay, yeah, I think it's possible.
Dr. Andrew Wong
Yeah, no one gets splinters out there. Just Yeah, watch for the sharp edge of the tree. And this apps and this app, or this as you're trying to, like, you know, mind some maple syrup or something. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jamie. Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the capital Integrative Health podcast. A quick reminder that the information we share on this podcast is meant for educational and informational purposes only. It's not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. We highly recommend that you speak to a qualified health care provider before making any medical or healthcare decisions. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a few moments to subscribe and leave us a review. Your reviews help us reach more people and continue to offer innovative insights and information to better optimize your health and wellness.