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Dr. Deb Muth 00:03
What if bloating, back pain, and low energy aren’t separate problems, but clues from the same root cause? What if your posture and the way your fascia moves are changing how your digestion works and how you feel every day? Today, we’re unpacking why symptoms like bloating, fatigue, and persistent pain often come from deeper, whole body issues, and how a multimodal, root cause approach speeds real recovery. You guys can, put our advertisement in here for Venari before we do the intro.
Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative and integrative care, and empower you with practical tools to heal.
I’m Dr. Deb, your medical detective, and today we’re talking about whole body recovery, how movement, fascia, gut health, and personalized medicine come together to restore function, energy, and confidence in your body. If you or someone you love struggles with bloating, pain that won’t quit. Slow recovery after surgery or postpartum, or chronic low energy, this episode is for you.So get comfortable, grab a warm drink, And let’s get into it.
So today, I’m joined by Dr. Shalini Bhat, founder of the Movement Boutique in Toronto. She is a chiropractor and double-certified functional medicine practitioner who builds care around root causes, lady after my own heart. And rather than just treating the symptoms, as we all know, and you guys have heard me talk about before, that is how we get to the other side of things. So, what I love about your work is you blend the clinical expertise and that lived experience, and just before we started recording, we were talking about the difference of fascia.
and chiropractic, and even when you’re looking at bringing in acupuncture and Pilates and functional medicine, having all those modalities together is so amazing. So, before we dive into all of this stuff. Tell us a little bit about your own story.
Shalinibhat 02:49
Yeah, well, my own story is that I grew up very steeped in Western medicine. My father’s a surgeon, and I had, you know, access to all the allopathic care that was out there, but I kind of had all that, what I call, gray area symptoms. That doesn’t make it into, you know, an allopathic answer, so to speak. And so, having access to all of… you know, the best… this specialist and that specialist didn’t really give my IBS you know, some type of help, and it didn’t really give my chronic back pain some type of help. And I kept, like, tearing my meniscus. I was a dancer, and I just kept, like, thinking, I’m doing all the same things as all these other girls in my class. Why am I the one who keeps tearing my meniscus? Like, what is up with… they… like, we all have the exact same tissues. Why is my tissue resilience so low? that this keeps happening to me. And I seem to be the only one in, you know. from dancing from 3 till I was… when I was 3 till when I was 18, and experiencing this, and I’m looking at everybody, like, what’s the deal? And I sort of felt different, but I couldn’t really pinpoint what was going on, and probably similar to your story. all the things that were coming at me were just labels and diagnoses, and like, you know, same with my meniscus, they were like, the first time, they were like, alright, we do surgery. I was like, okay, sounds good, like, went and did the surgery. The second time it, tore, I was like, that obviously didn’t, do it, because they took out 30% the first time, and then, you know, some of the 70%, you know, tore. And I said, there has to be… there has to be some reason why my My tissue resilience is low, and why that shear force is going through on my left knee every single time, like that same mechanical strain is happening, and fast forward to today, I realized that fascia is this fabric that runs all over the body in huge swaths, and in very large, sort of movement patterns, which we’ll get into, but basically, the way that I was, like, standing, the way that I was… my tissue resilience was less, that’s what was setting the stage for me to re-tear that meniscus, but nobody was asking those questions. My IBS, like the stealth infections I had, the leaky gut I had, all of those things creating excessive inflammation just in my body in general was decreasing my tissue resilience and making me re-injure that same area. So instead of, oh, I’ll just keep getting it, you know, shaved down or taken out, like, why was that same mechanistic injury and strain happening? on that knee, and I started asking different questions, which led me to, instead of going to medical school, say, oh, wait, chiropractors can actually, like, you know.
Actually move the body, understand what’s going on, spend the time with patients to properly diagnose, and then actually use our hands, because I’ve always been a very tactile person. Being a dancer, you know you’re always using your body, I understand my body, so when I started my kinesiology degree. I… kinesiology was a no-brainer. I’m like, I have a body, I want to use it, I want to learn… you know, when I’m learning about the muscles and the hands and the… like, I have that, so it’s… I’ve always been a touch kind of person, and that makes sense to me, learning about the body. And, that’s why I ended up studying in such, let’s say, asking alternative questions, so to speak, and that’s why even when I finished my kinesiology degree, and even when I finished my chiropractic training, I still went to school to learn acupuncture training, because I still had more questions, and then
I… and concurrently, I was teaching Pilates as well, and Pilates always resonated with me because I thought, yeah, if you have this really strong powerhouse and this really strong core, that always helped my back. And it always helped my knee. And so, translating kind of all four of these modalities, the chiropractic, the fascial release, the acupuncture, and the Pilates, became sort of my… my own little method that I created on how to help people. I probably… a lot of people listening to this, think of chiropractic as, like, you go somewhere and you get crack, crack, crack top to bottom. That actually is not how I’ve ever practiced, either, because even when I was chronically inflamed with all these issues, even an adjustment would send me into more inflammation, and I would be, in… having aches and pains, so that was not even… I needed it so much gentler, and that’s why I started working with fascia and thinking, like, what else is here? And, like, if someone’s so inflamed, maybe an adjustment is too aggressive for, somebody in the moment. And there’s a time and a place for everything, don’t get me wrong, but that wasn’t my personal, you know, go-to, so to speak, and so that’s why I started working more gently around fascia, and that’s why I used acupuncture needles, and pilates training, and rehabilitation, and looking at people’s movement patterns, and seeing, okay, where are things going off here, and what’s the actual… I hate the word root cause, but that’s where we all come from, it’s just gotten so crazy. But really, truly, if you have back pain, why are we just looking at the back.
Like, if your entire pelvis is off, if your entire, like, body is leaning to one side, and you’re putting way more weight on one foot than another, like, why are we… why are we just treating the back? Why are we just adjusting the back? Why are we just, you know, putting ice on the back, or put… or putting painkillers, or rubbing things on the back? We gotta look at the entire body as one whole system when it comes to injury, and that’s my very long backstory to tell you how I… sort of amassed these different things that I do, And in my training. Sorry, I forgot one piece in there, and that’s… with my gut thing and my IBS, I went back to school and did functional medicine training to figure out what that was about, because, and even when my uncle mentioned it, I think, oh gosh, early 2000s, he said, leaky gut, and I thought, well, people probably think these days, like, wait, there’s holes in my stomach? You know, like, what is
And at that time, you know, way back in the day, the first test was, like, that, flakulose mannitol, like, that really.
Dr. Deb Mut 08:53
Boom.
Shalinibhat 08:53
You can get tests. Yeah. Now, obviously, we’ve come a long way. So yeah, that’s how I ended up with all these five random modalities that are sort of enmeshed into one, and that’s what we do in my practice. My clinical practice is literally all of those modalities, and we really meet people where they are. So we invite anyone to come to us with, whether they have an MSK issue, and that’s the primary thing they want to work on, we can do it by starting Pilates. We can do it by starting fascial training. We can do it by starting acupuncture. We can do it by running labs and seeing where you are functionally if you want to lower that inflammation, or those stealth infections, or whatever it is that you have going on. So we invite anyone to come in and sort of pick their service menu, because I feel we… we should help everyone, but not everyone feels… like, not everyone’s like, wow, I want to run a school test with you first. They may have the capacity to be like, okay, I’ll try a workout, or I’ll try a Pilates class, you know? And then once they’re in our space, they’re like, oh wait, what else do you offer here? This is really different than where I’ve been. So that’s sort of what my practice is all about.
Dr. Deb Muth 09:58
I love that. I love that blending of all of the different things, and I think, you know, some of the best practitioners are those who’ve been through things, and it doesn’t have to be that way, but we kind of explore all the different things that could be causing our issues, which allows us to have a little bit bigger reach, across modalities, because there’s never the one thing that fixes everything. It’s kind of like in the conventional medicine world, we’re looking for the one pill that fixes everything, and there just isn’t that. And so, when you’re looking at blending all of these things, eventually you will find the right thing for each person, because it could be very different. You know, what works for me might not work for you, or it might be a different combination, and I think looking at each person as an individual is really important these days.
Shalinibhat 10:44
Totally, yeah, and I can’t… like, I just have to emphasize what you said again, because everyone is looking for it to be… you have patients like this, I have patients like this who come and they’re like, I’m just looking for that one guru, that one person who’s gonna finally tell me what it is that I have. Finally, I’m looking for that one answer, I’m looking for that one supplement, and like, if I can just reiterate exactly what you said, like. there will be 10 different kind of things that could be bothering you, and 10 different kind of solutions that will be the best for any given person, and if we just change our mindset around that, like, just say, oh, there won’t be one exact thing, and one exact solution, and I should be bucketing myself into 10 different things, and like, just… even just the sheer change of mindset and expectation, I think would help like, everybody, including practitioners, right? Because people will come to us and say, what is the one thing? What is the one, like, what is the one supplement, right?
Dr. Deb Muth 11:38
Yeah.
Shalinibhat 11:39
it’s too much pressure, right?
Dr. Deb Muth 11:41
It is, yeah.
Shalinibhat 11:42
Yeah.
Dr. Deb Muth 11:44
Yeah. Yeah, when they come and say, you’re my last hope, and you’re like, oh boy. I hope not, but that’s how we get sometimes. We’re looking for that person with that final answer, and and there is… there’s not just one answer, and I think that’s the important takeaway. So, let’s dive into, fascia. It’s a word that a lot of people might have heard, but don’t really understand what that is. Tell us about fascia and how it fits into the influence of movement and pain, and how can we change that for people?
Shalinibhat 12:19
Yeah, I love this question, because even one of my own patients who I manually treated for, you know, 14, 13 years, she said to me, Charlie, you know what’s becoming so hot? There’s the word fascia. I’m hearing it all of a sudden. I was like, what? So, yes, even people receiving fascial care, sometimes don’t even put two and two together. Fascia is basically when you cut open a chain chicken breast. When you cut open a steak, there’s that sort of film that’s on, you know, the chicken, or there’s that kind of film around a steak, and those white kind of areas, that we sort of cut off. That is fascia, and if you picture it in a chicken breast, it’s really that… it’s really that thin layer that comes off of that chicken. And what’s really cool about fascia is it’s highly resilient when it’s stretched, so if you actually were to picture stretching that chicken, you know, piece, if you actually, like, you know, hit it with your finger, it would be pretty tensile.
But if you kind of let it go and be, relaxed, it’s very flexible. So you could actually take your finger and almost put your finger through that piece of that film, and it would almost make it all the way. So fascia is very flexible, but it’s also extremely resilient. And that is… those two qualities of that fabric are what will give us more tissue resilience.
The other thing that we need… sorry, I should also back up. Fascia, by the way, is just a fabric that encases everything in your body. So, it’s a support structure, it holds our organs up in the places where they’re meant to be, otherwise gravity would pull them all down into our pelvis. It surrounds every, you know, blood vessel and nerve and, lymph, area, and then let alone all your muscles and your bones. So, even when we’re talking about something like bone health and bone strength, you know, often people are talking just about this calcium conversation when we’re talking about bone, for example, and fascia is encasing that bone, right? So I just talked about the resilience of that type of, what’s on a chicken breast. I’ll actually change analogies here just to… for people to understand a little more. If you take women’s nylons, of those thin nylons, same thing, right? If you pull them really tight, and you were just holding them in your hand, and someone were to flick it, it’s very strong, right? But again, if you held it single layer and kind of put your finger through, it’s very flexible. So, in… as we age.
If that tissue’s getting really tight and dehydrated and, you know, it’s not flexible as bone moves, right? That fabric is what’s holding that bone and creating that sort of shock absorption if we’re doing anything. It’s that women’s nylon that’s kind of shock absorbing that bone when it’s coming down you know, jumping, landing, whatever, running, whatever it is that we’re doing. So that’s why one of the big things of, you know, strength training or keeping your body moving as you age is because it continues to make that fabric that’s actually around the bone. So yes, we talk about things in such isolation. Oh, we need bone health, we need bone strength. Okay, that’s great, but what’s actually intertwined right around that bone, creating
that integrity is fascia. And one of the ways to keep it, again, flexible and tensile and strong, which are the two qualities we wanted it, is to keep it very hydrated. And there’s, you know, another kind of way to think about hydrated and not hydrated fascia. If you think of beef jerky, but you think of steak, you can… a raw steak, sorry guys, if anyone’s vegan. The beef jerky spirit, you can tear it super easily. Right? But you can’t take a piece of raw steak and tear it with your bare hands, right? You can’t. It’s so strong. So the same thing goes for that type of hydration. You want to keep that tissue really hydrated, and that’s why in a lot of scenarios with chronic aches or pains.
The tissue is really dehydrated, and so that’s why, when someone goes for a massage, or they go for fascial release, or they have direct stimulation to that tissue, that’s actually breaking those adhesions and kind of, almost like a sponge, it’s compressing and releasing, which is actually bringing more moisture into that gel-like matrix that is fascia which allows those fibers to move again, so again, we’re bringing that flexibility and that tensile strength back, which gives you more of that raw steak texture versus that beef jerky, right? That beef jerky’s so vulnerable. You go to do a workout on beef jerky, you’re ripping your muscle. I’m so sore, I can’t get up and, you know, people who are so unusually sore the next day, for example, versus those people who have nice, hydrated fascia that they… that they’re great, they’re working on a raw steak texture, they’re not going to rip something or have that feeling of being so vulnerable. So that’s basically, yeah, to answer your question about where fascia fits into, everything. And again, just to reiterate fascia it actually… when you look at… I don’t know if you know any of the work of Tom Myers, that’s who I studied way back in the day, like.
In the early 2000s he, you know, wrote this book called Anatomy Trains, and what it, illustrates is how long the connections of fascia are. So, the exact same sheath might start from our forehead and our scalp and go all the way down the back of the skull, all the way down the spine, through the pelvis, down the back, down the hamstrings, down the calves, right into the plantar fascia. So, I… I say plantar fascia because that’s the one area I think people have heard the word fascia before. So, although they’ve heard plantar fasciitis probably more.
Dr. Deb Muth 18:06
But no.
Shalinibhat 18:07
you know, it’s from the plantar fascia. And the plantar fascia is a continuous sheath of fascia all the way up to our head. So, you know, at any point along that entire chain, there might be a dysfunction. So you might be having… you might be experiencing plantar fasciitis, but you’re… that… you could address that person’s fascia anywhere along that entire line. To be able to truly again, within quotation marks, root cause, address that plantar fasciitis, because someone might have plantar fasciitis, it hurts when they step out of bed in the morning, they have that exact classical pain, they’ve been to the GP, GP says, yep, you got plantar fasciitis, they go, okay, and now they’re, you know. no better off, they might give them, like, a few things to do, but really, if they actually address that entire channel of fascia, they would give themselves more space, and consequently decrease a lot of that inflammation in that one area that’s, again, getting… just like my knee injury at the beginning, why is that one area taking so much brunt? there’s an issue along the chain. And I’m giving you one train, but there are many different trains that work in long sheets throughout the whole body. And another way I, like, sort of. I like analogies because I’m a visual person. Again, back to that dance mindset. I think another way people can really get on board with, like, fascia being in long sheaths is picturing a woman in a one-piece bathing suit. If you pull up the shoulder straps of that one-piece bathing suit, can you give her a wedgie? Like, she can pick that wedgie all day long.
Dr. Deb Muth 19:42
Right.
Shalinibhat 19:43
actually the shoulder straps that you need to release to get rid of it completely. So that’s kind of, like, the easiest example I can give to someone to relate, like, because they might have that wedgie-type experience or symptom, and they go to their doctor, I’m having a wedgie, I’m having a wedgie, and they’re like.
Dr. Deb Muth 19:58
No.
Shalinibhat 19:59
let’s pick it, let’s glue the bathing suit down, let’s do this, let’s do that. Really, someone’s up here franking those shoulder straps way up. You’re never going to get rid of that wedgie unless you actually see where it’s getting, pulled. And really. rings true for the gut as well, which is what I’ve learned. And… like I mentioned, fascia’s encasing our entire organ and organ systems as well, so if people are, you know, messed up and torqued in their spiral line, for example, and if they also are having tightness in different areas of their, you know, whatever, stomach, small intestine, large, like, anywhere along the actual gut, that that does make a big difference for bowel habits, gas, you know, trapped gas, IPS, all that kind of stuff as well. So the musculoskeletal component. And this fascial tangling, for example, also does make a big difference with IBS and stomach aches and all that kind of stuff as well.
Dr. Deb Muth 21:02
Yeah, and I think, too, one of the biggest things that we disregard, or maybe just don’t think of when it comes to GI issues, is the psoas muscle. Like, when people are constipated, and you start pushing around on that psoas muscle, they’re not gonna like you very much. But even for, like, that low back, that pelvic pain, if we start adjusting that and start doing movements, or yoga, or just massage of that psoas muscle and do a release on the psoas muscle. it can make a huge difference in somebody’s lower back pain. Do you want to speak a little bit to that?
Shalinibhat 21:39
Yeah, I mean, so there’s… yes, and, I mean, the psoas also right there, fascially, is, on the same train as the diaphragm. So, right under there, how that rib cage is sitting. And how the diaphragm tightness related to exactly what you’re saying, let’s say the top of the psoas fascia, for example, that’s going to change our breathing mechanics, which is also going to change the pressure, you know, kind of pressing down through the gut and everything which we need. It’s also going to change how we’re breathing. So, you know, you and I know taking lower, slower belly breaths and full breaths Better than shallow, breathing up through the neck, which people can relate to by, you know, people always are like, oh, are you sure breathwork’s gonna help? I’m like, if I gave you a paper bag right now and told you to hyperventilate for a scene of a movie like you were an actor, would you actually induce a panic attack on yourself? Potentially. even go the other way, that yes, maybe, you know, sitting down and proper breathing could actually, yes, bring you into this relaxed state, which we, of course, know that, but sometimes people are like, breathing, whatever, that can’t make a difference, right? And you’re like, oh, let’s do the hyperventilation one, let’s give you the bag and start just going, right? See how you feel.
Dr. Deb Muth 22:54
Yeah, exactly.
Shalinibhat 22:56
that breathwork and changing someone’s breathing mechanics, and I mean this in a gross, sense of actually, because I’ve done a ton of hands-on work for the last 16 years, when you actually release… a lot of people have tight diaphragms, they don’t even realize, and when you actually get in there and can release that fascia. Not only are a lot of those people
those tight, psoaszy people that you just mentioned. But it can dramatically, change how the gut is moving and how they’re feeling in that area as well, right? Again, that pressure change, moving gas, all of that. And then. Going down, how the psoas goes from right under the rib cage to the front of the hip, and I know this is a podcast, so I’m trying to speak it out for people who don’t… who can’t, visualize it, but it comes off the front wall of the lower spine, and then goes all the way down to the hips. And when this muscle can feel tight, to your point, this could feel like appendicitis on one side, you know? At some point, this can be very uncomfortable. I had a patient, actually, very similar story recently. had, like, almost a psoas spasm with a torque through her spine, and diaphragm tight, that’s exactly what I was telling you about. Went to the hospital, thought she had appendicitis, had every, like, ran every single test, was in agony, came to see me, we did all this fascial release of all that exact area. She was like, my pain’s gone. And, like, that’s not something they would ever evaluate there.
Dr. Deb Muth 24:21
No, they don’t even think about it.
Shalinibhat 24:24
No, it wouldn’t even cross their mind. So, Yes, there are definitely postural consequences. to not only people who are having tummy aches, gut issues, stomach pain, but it will affect breathing mechanics, and to your point, releasing… I find releasing anywhere in that mid-area, so diaphragm, top of the psoas, like, getting in the obliques, like, anywhere that people can start to relieve in that area is fantastic, and if people need, like, a kind of at-home way to do that, you can take… you can, like, roll up a washcloth and even just put it under where your ribs kind of connect at the front, and just lie on it and let your rib cage kind of fall over it. If you have, we have a little cork ball here, that’s a thing you can sort of put in that area, like, kind of just, under the rib cage. And on either side of the midline is sort of where you would start. If anything felt completely uncomfortable, anyone listening, absolutely adjust it, and start with something less. But that can be such a big, tool, just opening up the front wall of that deeper fascia, for sure.
Dr. Deb Muth 25:36
That’s awesome. How do you use Pilates? Pilates is well known for so many things, right? But when you’re using Pilates, how do you use it to retrain the movement patterns to reduce pain long-term?
Shalinibhat 25:50
Okay, so that’s such a good question. So I did training in Pilates 20 years ago. so I would say it’s Pilates-informed, but it’s certainly not directly Joseph Pilates work that I, use by any means, if people are picturing his sequence or anything like that. But that basically informed my… understanding of the core, and I was teaching for 20 years, you know, like, just watching movement patterns, movement patterns, and what I noticed, which is so fascinating, the number of, men, actually, who have diastasis, who, you know, they maybe reach midlife and just Like, suddenly got that belly fat or something, and, like, they’re… they have a diastasis, and, like, they maybe play hockey, or they’re playing, you know, they’re weekend warrioring, kind of, their workouts, and suddenly get really bad back pain, and they have the tightest hips because they’re not really doing any type of cross-training, but they’re… They’re working… they’re doing so much hockey. And they have this back pain, and they’re like, I have no idea what’s going on. And again, they go to the… practitioner that myopically is like, it’s back pain, let’s do an image, oh, it’s a disc bulge here, and like, okay, you know, let’s do these XYZ. And I’m like, dude, these people… this is a diastasis, like, you have literally separated your.
Dr. Deb Muth 27:06
Nope.
Shalinibhat 27:06
You are not using your deep core at all. It’s completely, un, what’s the word? It’s unconnected. Like, they actually training as if they had a baby. So it’s really… it’s a population that I think is, like, not, because sometimes when we’re in school, you and me both, we learn these very textbook things that we know when a woman’s had a baby to evaluate her abdomen, you know, to look for diastasis.
Dr. Deb Muth 27:33
Right.
Shalinibhat 27:33
Or retraining, that’s a time in a woman’s life during school that we were very much, you know, that’s a… that’s where diastasis, that’s where you hear that word, right? Listening, sorry, diastasis is when your abdominal wall separates in the front from a quick or fast, abdominal expansion, which is why we think of it with, Prenatal, postpartum-type, situations. But we’re… we’re completely omitting this, this… you know, just evaluating people in general. I just saw, a young lady yesterday in her 20s, and she does Pilates every single day. Every single day she does Pilates, and she’s like, I can’t feel my obliques. And I was like, come in here, come in here, let me check this out. And her superficial, her, rectus abdominis, which is her most superficial abdominal layer, it was compensating For her obliques. And that shouldn’t be the case when you’re 20, and I had to undo a whole bunch of different kind of fascial torques that were happening, because When somebody… like, if you picture… if you picture blocks standing on each other and they’re not, sort of, perfectly aligned. then they’re gonna topple, right? And I’m just saying that for the people listening, like, that’s when I say fascial torque, it means that the structure isn’t, isn’t optimal in how it’s going to fire, and how the muscles are going to signal to contract. And so what I had to do, I had to say, wow, it’s actually so cool how your superficial rectus abdominis has compensated for your obliques in this way, and it was, like, really fascinating to watch it, actually, and how she would get around doing it. But we had to completely undo those torques, and then she was able to use her obliques afterwards.
So I think there’s a huge miss in abdominal evaluation when it comes to chronic low back pain, or back pain, or, yeah, when you’re talking about, like, where does Pilates fit in, I think Pilates is great when you have somebody who’s really good at teaching it, and I use, principles from it to evaluate people’s core. I mean, so hard to say, because I’ve been doing it for so long now, where I’ve pulled the tools from, but yes, it’s definitely Pilates-informed of how I get their core firing back again, and I would be… you would be absolutely shocked, at the number of people who do work out tons, or do Pilates tons, or… and I own a Pilates studio, okay? I’m very openly admitting that, a ton of people are doing these things that are quote-unquote good for their course. Sit-ups, going to the gym, doing this.
Thing, and they actually aren’t three-dimensionally training that area due to, again, these huge, long fascial chains that are just… they’re just not trained how they should be, and what I mean by that is we are so sedentary as a population, this, like, in 2026, like, we’ve never, ever, ever been more sedentary in our whole. like, lives, and we… these fascial chains, we are meant to be up and out, and, like, walking tons, and hanging off trees, and picking things up, and, like, we’re meant to be doing huge movements, and we don’t. We sit in chairs, and then we stand up, and we’re like, I’m gonna go to the gym, and we get on a bike, and we do this much range of motion, and then we do some bicep curls, and do this tiny bit of range of motion. We don’t do huge ranges of notion. things that we should be doing with… to keep that, again, those long swaths of fascia really healthy. And so that’s what ends up happening, because when we do those huge ranges of motions in all those different ranges of motion, like, we have many that we can access.
And when we miss a lot of those, those huge swaths don’t get trained, and that’s why the core ends up so weak. And to your point about the psoas earlier, the psoas gets, you know, tight in the wrong ways, and we get weak as a result. But yeah, if I could just say back to… Pilates is not synonymous with a good core, and I think every single person listening should have a good, proper core evaluation, and that’s actually one of the things I’m working on, is for people to be able to self-evaluate properly their core, and their breathing mechanics on how to undo this for themselves, because I’ve done it now with so many people, and it’s been so changing, and it seems so easy to me, it’s almost like it’s like my side gig, because I do, like, oh, I’ll run your labs, and your gut health, and this, but this… it makes… You know, it makes such a huge difference that people… we should all be, you know, educated in looking at this.
Dr. Deb Muth 32:14
Yeah, so since we’re talking about core, let’s kind of talk about gut health. That seems to be something that you’ve dealt with before. So when we’re talking about people who have bloating and brain fog and low energy, which is half the population, if not more these days, right? What are you seeing as the most common underlying patterns from a physical standpoint, if not a, you know, an infectious standpoint as well?
Shalinibhat 32:42
I mean, from physicality alone, I would say, again, this… prescriptive, chronic, like, diagnosis of sedentation. Like, I… I can’t… I cannot say enough, like, if you go to work from 9 to 5, and then you go on your spin bike for half an hour in the day, and then sit and watch Netflix, I know… like, and I mean this from the nicest place, I know the person’s intention is correct, like, I know that they really are, like, yep, tick mark, did my workout today. I love that for you. Also, like, that is not an active person. Like, that’s not. Like, you know, 10,000 steps or, like, aiming to be mobile, like, moving as much as humanly possible in a day, like, really, that’s the goal. How much can you possibly move in a day? Because that is where a huge piece… bloating, brain fog, and low energy, let’s just cut to the chase. Hydration and lack of circulation, that’s just, like.
Basically, here we go. So that’s… that’s one and two, right? So let’s just talk about move as much as humanly possible, because A, you’re going to move that gas, so trapped gas is going to move, you’re going to actually help digestion and peristalsis, you’re going to help your blood sugar. Then, when we’re talking about brain fog, you need, you know, circular… and again, you and I know there could be many issues, but let’s… let’s stay very high level, because you asked physicality. Moving tons is going to help that, too. Oxygenating those tissues, right? Again, breathing, right? So those breathing mechanics we talked about, our breathing mechanics are going to be better when we’re standing up than if we’re just sitting… like, collapsed, right? So, again, moving more is the ultimate prescription that I would give for every single thing that you just mentioned, energy included, because almost like, you know when you nap in the afternoon and you wake up, you feel less energy? That’s sort of where I think of, like, you know, non-moving, right? And you gotta… yes, there’s gonna be a point to everyone listening who’s like, I can’t even move that much, my weather sucks, or like, whatever.
Just walk around your office, like, you know, make a… you’ve got to put the timer. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, we have to use timers, right? Because we’re just going to be, you know, not able to do that. The second thing I would say is even just in that sense of physicality is meet, which I’m sure you know about non-exercise activity time, right? Which is just standing more. So, even just setting your your phone timer for every 20 minutes, because every 20 minutes is when you know, your body’s going to… or every 15-20 minutes, A, it’s when your fascia just goes, oh, okay, you’re kind of not moving, so I’m just gonna, like, I’m just gonna sort of relax here, and that’s where it loses resilience. So that’s something called tissue creep. So that’s why, if you sat all day long, you were kind of semi-stretching it and, like, in a seated position, and that’s why when you then are at home showering, you go to reach for your razor, and you’re like. My god, I just, like, put my back out. It wasn’t that you went to go pick up a razor, it was that all day.
Dr. Deb Muth 35:41
long.
Shalinibhat 35:41
That tissue was semi-stretched in this one, you know, sedentary range of motion, for example, and that’s something called tissue creep. And when we have tissue creep, we are so prone to injury in that. So when you stand up every 15-20 minutes, you bring that recoil back to that fascia. So, like I said, we have that flexibility to it, and we have that tensile strength to it, and actually just standing up and sitting back down. will bring both of those qualities back to it, because it will hydrate it. So that’s another thing that, I think people could incorporate more in their day, is that non-exercise activity time called MEAT. That would be my answer for your physicality questions.
Dr. Deb Muth 36:19
I love that. I remember when I learned about the atomic habits, and I was reading that book, and one of the things that he had talked about was moving more, right? And how do we create these habits? And one of the things that he did was, every time he went to the bathroom, he would do 3 wall push-ups, 3 squats. And so, as you got up every day, you know, multiple times you get up to go, by the end of the day, you had a complete workout in, and you didn’t really even have to overexert yourself, you were just moving your body more, and I think we think of workout as, I have to go to the gym, I have to spend a half hour, 45 minutes there, I have to sweat, it has to be all at one time, and it really doesn’t have to be that way. It can be these small movements throughout the whole day, and by the end of the day, you’ve had your whole workout in. And for those people who are listening to us going, I don’t have time for a workout. I just gave you the time for the workout.
Shalinibhat 37:15
Yeah, exactly. And just one thing to add to that, only because you said squats and push-ups, I love that, but squats and push-ups are in the exact same range of motion as, cycling and running. So I think that… I think we actually spend too much time in that plane of motion, so if everyone thinks of sitting, standing, cycling, running, squatting, push-ups, they’re all in the same range of motion. We actually all need way more Twisting, like, huge twisting ranges of motion.
Dr. Deb Muth 37:43
And…
Shalinibhat 37:44
Need side bending. So if we can include, you know, jumping jacks, that’d be the side bending kind of thing, or side stretching, kind of think on that plane of motion, and big, huge twisting motions, those are two categories of planes of motion that we’re missing, so I would, like, just if someone thinks of, like, what do I do all day? Oh yeah, I do bicep curls, and I do push-ups, and I do squats, and I do lunges, and I… cycling, you are literally working on a range of motion, and, you know, again, back to that, how do we create fashion resilience?
Dr. Deb Muth 38:18
One
Shalinibhat 38:19
I’m twisting and side bending as well, those types of movements in our day, big time.
Dr. Deb Muth 38:24
I love that. That is… that is so great. I love that. So, when we put all of this together, you’re… you’re doing some acupuncture, you’re doing some chiropractic, some Pilates, some fascial release, and… and obviously functional medicine together, too. What does a coordinated, week-to-week look like for somebody who’s taking on all of these modalities to fix their chronic pain, or just to make their body move better?
Shalinibhat 38:52
Kind of what I said at the top of the call, meet yourself where you’re at, and look for results in what moves the needle for you. So let’s say you did go to a Pilates class, and you’re like, wait, I’m, like, actually feeling so much more energized in my, you know, from the twisting I did in this class, my digestion’s feeling a little bit better. Awesome, double down, go again.If you went for a treatment, and you were like, you know what? That fascial release made my back finally feel open, and I’m feeling great, and that’s made my mood lighter, and my sleep got better, amazing, go again. If you went to acupuncture and, you know, you felt that the needles, like, gave you this sense of calm and a nervous system reset, and that helped your digestion and your sleep, awesome, go back to it. Whatever, like, you can get those huge bucket you know, wins in any type of modality you’re going to… to start, you just gotta start it and notice whether there was a shift for you. If you went to a practitioner and you were like, then that’s not the person for you, and that’s not… and I should say the person, maybe, because maybe that modality is for you, but it was just the person. But do more stuff that makes you feel good.
So, and I say that because I’ve had patients that are like, oh, I went to this person for 10 years, yeah, I felt okay, it was fine, they told me to come back. I don’t know, they told me to do this. Like, seek results, because, like, I’m a results-oriented person. When you come to see me.like, if I haven’t changed… if I haven’t made a huge difference in one session with you, like, please don’t come back. Like, you know, be like, that didn’t work for me, right?
Dr. Deb Muth 40:26
Number 7.
Shalinibhat 40:26
Reason it was complicated, and I explained to you why… like, if someone’s in major acute pain, and you can explain, this isn’t going to be the one-shot thing right now. Right. You know, and there are, like, listen to your practitioner like that, but you want to find a personal fit, first of all. It’s really important when we’re talking about these types of modalities, whether it’s acupuncture or hands-on care, fascial release, Pilates, you need to find someone who’s the right fit for you, because it has to be motivating and exciting, and you want to be able to want to go back. So, if you’re like, I don’t know, my friend kind of, like, goes, and like, they said I should go back next week. If that’s your energy going into it, you’re not going to get the best, most out of it, right? So just do whatever it is that, you know, I’m somebody… if I hear of someone through the grapevine with… through three people, that’s my thing. If three people say, so-and-so’s awesome, I’ll go try them. And then how I built my practice, I kept trying all these people that people would refer, and I would take the best bits of what they did through treatment and stuff, and I’d be like, okay, and I slowly started incorporating that into what I do as a clinician. And I would say the same for… not that you guys would be amassing it to do it as a clinician, but same thing when you go to seek any type of care, number one, make sure you have some type of a positive feeling when you’re coming out. Number two, don’t be… like, go back again. All of these things are meant to be compounded, so, you know, whether you decide to yourself, I’m going to do acupuncture once a month, then I’m gonna do fascial release twice a month, then I’m gonna do Pilates twice a month, and then I’m gonna make sure I get my walks in every single day, and I’m, you know, doing my breathwork and my relaxation techniques, and I’m just gonna prioritize my nutrition, drink my water, and go to sleep on time. Like, hello, you’ve already.
Dr. Deb Muth 42:05
I’m gonna leave our…
Shalinibhat 42:07
you’ve already done, you know, you’re gonna be better for it. So, put into your schedule whatever fits, and don’t make it overwhelming, because if something’s overwhelming, you’re also not going to do it, and then it’s not going to work either.
Dr. Deb Muth 42:18
Absolutely. This is a great conversation, I love this. I have one last question for you, and I ask this question of all of my guests. If you could change one thing in healthcare today, what would it be?
Shalinibhat 42:31
Oh my god. That’s such a good question. I… does it have to be realistic?
Dr. Deb Muth 42:41
It does not.
Shalinibhat 42:43
I would put someone with expertise like myself, and I’m not saying this, like, oh, I’m so good, like, just somebody with outer knowledge of the body and inner knowledge of the body from a gray area functional perspective in acute care. And what I mean by that is for example, that patient I gave earlier that went to the hospital with acute abdominal… within quotation marks, acute abdominal pain, seeking, like, is this appendicitis? If that person sought somebody who… or… That person sat and waited in the, you know. at ER for so long because they’re not bleeding from the head, you know what I mean? Right. And then you put a functional person in there, not only are they going to say, hey, you want to know what this is? That makes that patient feel great, because they feel heard, they feel seen, they now have an answer for what’s going on, and… they didn’t have to clog up the system. I think there’s a lot of functional, from an MSK perspective, people in the ER, and I think there’s a lot of functional you know, things that you and I would see in our practice in the ER. And I wish people were more equipped with the type of tools you and I might have that we take
Granted, because if you or I have a symptom… I remember one day, actually, I had this… such an acute neck pain all of a sudden, and I knew exactly what it was, and I knew exactly what to do to, like, how… like, how to move, and how to lie, and what at that moment, and I said to myself, I said to my husband, I said, if I was a layperson right now, I would think death was on my door, I would make you run me to the ER right now in an ambulance, like, I would call an ambulance because of how I felt, but because I actually knew what it was, A, you have that locus of control. You’re like, oh, okay, I’ve seen this before, I’ve treated this before, I know how to deal with it. Okay, it’s gonna be 48 hours, here’s how it’s gonna start, like, here’s the position I need need to be in, blah blah blah.
But if you don’t know that, that’s highly alarming. And so, the second… You didn’t ask me for two things, but I’m giving you two things anyways. That’s okay. The thing would be making sure that in schools, all of the children, all of the teenagers are extremely equipped with their own understanding of the body and understanding of tools available to them Should non-emergent things be happening to them that they could empoweringly address themselves.
Dr. Deb Muth 45:12
I love that, that’s great. I think you’re right, like, we’ve taken so much of how the body functions away from the general population of knowledge and made it so complicated that people can’t help themselves, and they’re so fearful of Any little thing that happens in the body. And I guess rightfully so, you know, there’s a lot of terrible things that can happen, and everybody’s afraid of the worst thing possibly happening, but I think if we could give power back to people so they understood their bodies. That would make all the difference in the world between them being a nervous wreck about something and waiting to see the doctor versus, I can treat this myself, and it’ll be better, and it’s okay. Because I think we’re… we’ve lost a lot of that magic of, folk medicine, so to speak, or the things we pass down from family generations, but we were able to treat a lot of things back then and make people not afraid of it, and we need to go back to learning that.
Shalinibhat 46:10
We do, and I think the other, like, one thing that I noticed with my son, even, like, all, like, immediate… like, if he even shows a sign of anything, I’m like, oh, immediately putting him on, like, homeopathic this or whatever, and that’s when to use those things, right? Is, like, at that.
Dr. Deb Muth 46:26
Right.
Shalinibhat 46:26
So, like, if we could teach people that, like, you know, the signs of when you’re feeling off, like, and really tune into that, so, like, how do I feel today? Like, what’s norm… what’s my normal, and what’s not, so that they can always catch things really.
Dr. Deb Muth 46:41
early.
Shalinibhat 46:42
When you catch things really early, all the amazing things that we have, you know, access to can make such a big difference. It’s when it goes on and on and on and on and on so long that you’re suddenly like, oh my gosh, now what’s wrong with me? And that’s the other thing, is like.
That if, again, we could shift the mindset of when something happens to someone, they’re like, the hospital will fix me, the doctor will fix me, something’s wrong with me, you know?
Dr. Deb Muth 47:03
And then…
Shalinibhat 47:04
Like, oh, my neck is feeling like this because I XYZ, and now… and you know what? It just needs this. Instead of that, I’m going to take this body that’s kind of not mine and take it to the ER, you know, to fix it.
Dr. Deb Muth 47:16
written.
Shalinibhat 47:17
You know, and so that’s, like, yeah, that’s a piece that’s missing, too, that I wish we had.
Dr. Deb Muth 47:22
Awesome. This has been such a great conversation. Thanks for joining me. Is there any last comments or things you want to share with our audience today?
Shalinibhat 47:31
Yeah, I mean, you guys can come find me. I actually, write a newsletter myself, not through AI, and so if you liked learning these little nuggets from me, here on this podcast, I just talk like this, and this is what my newsletter sounds like, is like you’re chatting with me. So you can head over to my Instagram or my website and join, my newsletter list, and yeah, otherwise you can join me on my social channels, which I’m sure you’re gonna link here. And, yeah, it was really nice to meet you, and thank you for all the work that you do, because I know it’s hard doing the work that we do, and, you know, trying to hold the line for the people that really do need us, so I always, you know, just want to say thank you for that, too, and thank you for having me today.
Dr. Deb Muth 48:16
Oh, thank you, it’s been a great pleasure.
Shalinibhat 48:18
Yeah!
Dr. Deb Muth 48:21
Oh, goose this. Thank you for joining me today on Let’s Talk Wellness Now. If this episode gave you clarity about why your symptoms might be connected, or how, and how they’re integrated in root care cause. and you feel like this could help, share it with someone who needs to hear this. To learn more about Dr. Bhat and the Movement Boutique, you can look them up online or on social, and check out their links below. Until next time, I’m Dr. Deb. Remember that your recovery is a process, not a race. Be well, and I’ll see you next time.