ETR 310: Do you need to lose weight to reduce pain? with DK Ciccone

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Podcast Interview on Do you need to lose weight to reduce pain? with DK Ciccone
Do you need to lose weight to reduce pain? with DK Ciccone

In this episode of Eat the Rules, I’m joined by Dana Karen (“DK”) Ciccone, a certified Pilates instructor, owner of Movement Remedies, and author of You’re Meant to Move. We’re talking about how to recover from having a disordered relationship with exercise and whether you need to lose weight in order to reduce pain.

        In This Episode, We Chat About

        • How DK got into this work,
        • That pain is ultimately your brain reacting to a stimulus that it believes is dangerous and it’s trying to help us,
        • How pain can become a self-fulfilling prophecy,
        • How aging impacts how we view our comfort zone,
        • That you want to get to a place where the benefit of movement is immediate and in the moment,
        • The importance of understanding why you’re moving,
        • The definition of exploratory movement,
        • The link between chronic dieting and chronic pain,
        • That she has not seen weight loss lead to pain reduction,
        • The many factors that contribute to pain,
        • That we tend not to notice the absence of pain, just the presence,
        • How she works with people,
        • Plus so much more!

        Listen Now (transcript below)

        Watch on YouTube

              Links Mentioned in Episode:

              Connect with DK:

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              Transcript

              Summer:
              This episode of eat the rules is brought to you by you on fire. You on fire is the online group coaching program that I run that gives you a step by step way of building up your self worth beyond your appearance with personalized coaching from me, incredible community support and lifetime access to the program so that you can get free from body shame and live life on your own terms.

              Get details on what’s included and sign up for the next cycle at summer innan.com. Forward slash you on fire. I’d love to have you in that group. This is eat the rules, a podcast about body image self worth, anti dieting and intersectional feminism. I am your host, summer innan, a professionally trained coach specializing in body image self worth and confidence, and the best selling author of body image remix. If you’re ready to break free of societal standards and stop living behind the number on your scale, then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the show.

              This is episode 310 and I’m joined by dk Ciccone, who is a certified Pilates instructor, the owner of movement remedies and author of the book you’re meant to move. We’re talking about how to recover from having a disordered relationship with exercise in order to have a better relationship with movement. And we’re also talking about weight loss and chronic pain and whether you need to lose weight in order to alleviate different types of body pain, like knee pain and back pain. You can find the links mentioned at summer innan.com, forward, slash, 310,

              I want to give a shout out to Anne M S, who left this review. After decades of disordered eating, I discovered intuitive eating. At first, I reveled in relief about not dieting anymore. It didn’t take long, however, for consolation to turn into confusion. I was flailing in fear until I discovered this podcast summer was the first voice I heard in this new anti diet world that provided true guidance and compassion. Her insight felt like desperately needed lifelines. From that day on, I have been a loyal listener who is continuously inspired by her wisdom and devotion to making the world a safer, kinder place for all of us. Thank you so much, and oh, wow, that means a lot to me. You can leave a review for the show to support it, and you can also subscribe to the show if you really want to help the podcast out. You can support it via kofi. Just go to kofi.com which is K O dash fi.com forward slash summer innan, and you can make a monthly contribution for as little as $5 a month. You can help keep this podcast on the air for another season. And you’ll also get access to my mini course conquering negative body talk. I’ve also got free resources for you, including a 10 day body confidence makeover, as well as a guide for professionals who work with people who may also have body image struggles. You can find everything at the body image coach.com

              really excited about today’s guest, DK Ciccone is a certified Pilates instructor who helps people in pain improve strength, mobility and well being in a weight neutral environment. She’s also trained in pain reprocessing therapy through the pain psychology center, having begun her own journey with chronic back pain as a young teen, she has been exploring ways to help herself and others regain joy of movement for decades, after 20 years in the health sector. DK left a corporate career to follow her passion later, launching movement remedies, a chronic pain focused Pilates studio in Boston. She’s now residing in Edinburgh. Her first book, you’re meant to move, a guide to conquering chronic pain, increasing stress, resilience and reclaiming an active life, was released in December of 2023 and it’s an amazing book if you struggle with chronic pain,

              let’s get started with the show. Hi. DK, welcome to the show.

              DK:
              Thanks for having me, happy to be here.

              Summer:
              Yeah, me too. So I would love for you to just start by telling everyone just a little bit about how you got into this work, like what was your relationship with your body like growing up? And then, you know, how did that sort of lead you to what you do today?

              DK:
              Yeah, thank you. So I mean, it’s a long story, like most good stories. I mean, I, I think since a very young age, especially because I was really interested in becoming a professional dancer, I had a lot of pressures to be in a certain body, and just genetically, was not kind of meeting the cut in terms of what the ideal dancer body was, especially at that time and around the same time that I was kind of starting to go through puberty and body changes and everything, I had my first episode. Of severe low back pain, sort of in a sudden way, in the middle of performing. And then it became sort of a cycle of pain throughout my teens and 20s and so on. And so I think everything in my environment between not feeling like my body was good enough and not feeling like my body was reliable, because it would sort of show up with pain when I didn’t expect it. I just really did not have a trusting relationship with my body. And I don’t think I really realized how much that was affecting me until, you know, Fast forward 20 years or whatever, when I was really starting to have just chronic pain everywhere.

              And I had to really, you know, sit down and evaluate, like, what are the triggers and where is it all coming from? And, you know, at that same time, I was going through, you know, using Pilates as a means of dealing with pain as it as it came up in my in my body. And, you know, decided to make this life transition into becoming a Pilates teacher. And I was always interested in how Pilates could be used for pain, because that was what, how I got into it to begin with. But then once I became a teacher, and I started seeing that the people who did come to me with complex cases and pain, much in the way that I had or in different ways. There was sort of this consistent theme of how we talk to ourselves about our bodies, how we believe our body can show up for us, and the narratives we carry around, what our body is worth really affects the way it actually performs. And as I was starting to see that lineup, I was sort of like my clients were going through that experience as I was going through that own self discovery in my life. And then those two things kind of melded together in the creation of movement remedies, when I realized that I needed to break out and be in a safe space that was only dedicated to this experience for people, because my history, and I think all my all my clients, have pointed out the ways in which traditional health and wellness and especially fitness spaces have not been welcoming to people who feel uncertain in their bodies, or feel they don’t meet a certain esthetic in their bodies, and so they don’t feel welcome there. And so I really felt like I needed to separate from that, and that is really where the birth of of my business came from,

              Summer:
              yeah, and I feel like so much of what you focus around in your book is the, is that mental side of it. So you mentioned there, like the the narrative, the narrative that we have, impacts the way our body performs. And so I’d love for you to just kind of maybe elaborate a little bit more on that, because I find that really fascinating.

              DK:
              So there’s kind of a couple pieces to it. So first of all, there’s the fact that pain is ultimately just your brain reacting to some sort of stimulus that it believes is dangerous, right? So it’s a threat response, just like you know, your sympathetic nervous system as a stress response, when, you know, these are survival instincts that have been evolved over, you know, eons for us to escape predators, etc, and in pain has, if you imagine if you were someone who got a bad infection and didn’t feel pain, that would be a life threatening thing, right?

              So pain, I think ultimately we want us to see it actually as some something that’s trying to help us. But sometimes, you know, we become so used to the pain showing up, or we become so convinced that we’re going to be in pain that it actually kind of sets us up to move and have pain as sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy. So there’s, like the mindset around, you know, learning how to really understand the situation, the specific situation that you’re in. And, you know, is it really a situation where if I move my body, I actually am at risk of harming myself? And I think that that’s like a story our brains tell us again, sort of just instinctually, if you do this, you’re hurting yourself, because it feels, it feels like you’re harming something. And so I think being clear about that, there are really very few cases where I would tell a person, okay, yeah, you really don’t want to be active because you, you know need to rest or avoid something because you are, maybe you’re at severe risk, but there’s almost always a way around that.

              And then there’s sort of the other side of it, which is, if you I think especially women, you know, when we’re experiencing the aging cycle and we go through lots of changes, the body feels almost like foreign to us, right? It’s kind of a stranger, or even just this idea that I think we have internalized from a conditioning perspective of I’m of a certain age, therefore my body doesn’t really belong doing active, challenging things anymore, and so we kind of box ourselves in, and then we lack confidence to do things that are outside of the comfort zone. I think it’s just like really easy to. Shrink our comfort zone, whether it’s because of pain or just because we get into a pattern and we get into a mindset and we just think, like, Okay, well, you know, tennis or roller skating or skiing or, I don’t know, it just kind of is out of bounds for me. And so once you have, you know, it’s kind of like a use it or lose it kind of thing, right? If you, if you don’t put yourself in situations where you’re constantly challenging your boundaries, then you will shrink them in my Yeah, and so I think the two together you, because pain will also in the fear of pain will also make you shrink your boundaries, but also just that challenge of as we get into patterns in our lives and as we age, like making sure that we’re pushing ourselves so that we stay confident to address new challenges, and don’t, you know, react in a guarding response that could also just heighten the possibility for pain as well.

              Summer:
              Yeah, yeah.

              And that, really, I can totally understand that like and it makes perfect sense why someone would be hesitant, because if they’ve had, you know, some sort of pain or chronic or injury where they were, you know, out of commission for a while, or they had to have, you know, surgery or whatever, then it would make sense that your brain would be like, Well, I don’t want to do, I want, I don’t want to experience that ever again. So I’m gonna, you know, kind of built that fear kind of gets built in there even stronger that that narrative becomes even louder, and so it’s hard, and I think that there’s a parallel between that and people who’ve had a disordered relationship with with exercise as well. So I know a lot of the people I work with who had a really disordered relationship with exercise, like, the only reason why they did it was to lose weight, and a lot of the times they took it too far. And so in order to cultivate, they want to cultivate a new relationship with movement, but they’ve got that narrative that, like, I only do this for weight loss, or it has to be x in order for it to be okay, like, and so, yeah, I mean, when you bump up against that, like, what’s your advice to somebody who’s who’s perhaps struggling with, like, with that narrative around, you know, I don’t know if I can move my body, because it might send me back into, you know, a disordered relationship, or what’s the point if I can’t do what I used to do?

              DK:
              You know, those are two difficult questions. I mean, so, I mean, I’ll be really honest with you. I mean, I gave up dieting during COVID In 2020 and it was kind of my like, last the last hurrah of a huge calorie deficit, and that was when I really started unraveling my relationship with food and realizing that I had a disordered relationship with food and also with movement. And I still, you know, have to kind of like fight myself a little bit, because I, I get into that, you know, is this movement enough? Am I doing enough, my sweating enough, or I, you know, I find myself wanting to say, Oh, I have to do this extra hike because, you know, I had XYZ calories or whatever. And, I mean, it’s gonna take a really long time to that, have that not be the like, knee jerk reaction. And I think we also have to give ourselves a little grace there to like, you know, this is a journey, and you know, if you start to get into that mindset to not beat yourself up. But what I found was really helpful for me was actually to kind of work backwards and say, what is the minimum amount of exercise I need to do to actually feel good? And I love that. You might find it’s not very much. I found that it was like five to 10 minutes of really gentle movement in the morning. Got me that benefit, that sort of chemical, you know, my, you know, mental health benefit of being, of moving my body, also like a pain relief for my body, without getting into a place of, kind of it was a chore, or I had to push or, you know, and you know, I did have several weeks of that and and realized, okay, actually, I’m only doing it because when I do it, it feels really good and like that’s the place that you want to get to, is that the movement that you’re doing is because of, you know, the immediate sense of satisfaction, release, relaxation, whatever it is that is The benefits that you’re getting in the moment, not like the Grand tally in the sky of how many calories I consumed versus how many I burned, and kind of that mindset, and it’s just really, really important to find spaces that you can work in that do not reinforce any of that language. And boy, are they hard to find. I mean, it’s really hard to find, especially in a good group fitness situation.

              So I think you know when you can do things in nature, when you can take walks, when you can make it something that nourishes your soul and isn’t in an environment where people are using language that just conjures up that old mindset, is really important. And then I think just understanding why we’re moving. Because, if you know that you’re doing it because, like, maybe you are strength training, but it’s because you, you know, really want to complete, like, the Camino, what’s it called, The Big pilgrimage that people the walk that people do in Spain. Or, like, maybe, you know, it’s a thing you want to do with friends. You know, it’s like you have a goal that’s like a life experience goal, and you’re doing the movement to get you to the life experience goal and to focus on, like, if you are a person who is naturally drawn to kind of achievements, rather than achievements being associated, like around weight, have the achievement be around like a physical like milestone for yourself, of something that you’re working toward. Or maybe it’s because you you notice that when you do certain kinds of exercise, you have a huge relief of your stress from the day. So I think just like, really starting to turn inwards and pay attention to, like, how my is my body responding to this? It’s very much like what we talk about with intuitive eating. And, you know, like, how does does my body actually like this? Does my body want this food right now? And it is really eye opening when you start to ask yourself those questions. And I think it’s the same for movement and and just making sure that you’re that you’re getting a benefit in the moment.

              Summer:
              Yeah. And one of the things you talk about in your book is this concept of exploratory movement. Is, that is, I know you’re kind of like, I feel like you kind of touched on it a little bit there. But like, how would you define exploratory or what is exploratory movement?

              DK:
              Yeah, so exploratory movement is, I like to feel like it’s moving from the inside out, so you’re sort of moving your body and then, and then reflecting in the moment on, like, what was that like for me? You know, rather than kind of pushing to the next thing, I just think that, you know, I think I can speak for a lot of sort of overachieving, you know, type a types that’s like, we push to the next thing, and exercises and movement is no different. But what is it like to actually do the movement in a way that is constantly introspective and gives you the space to, you know, incorporate breathing, which we know is good for us, you know. And like taking a moment to take stock of, you know, where am I feeling this in my body? Where are the parts of my body that I’m actually having a hard time connecting to, especially when it comes to pain, a lot of times there’s like a dead zone in a place where there’s been recurring pain, where your brain sort of isn’t isn’t listening anymore, or, you know, has kind of stopped taking in information, or maybe trauma, and so kind of, kind of doing, like an inventory of your body as you move of and then you can learn, like what your patterns are, and it’s beneficial to rebuild your relationship with movement, but it’s also just beneficial to kind of rebuild that communication highway with your body, so that you are more apt to listen when it’s trying to tell you something.

              Because, I mean, at least the experience in my own body was that, I think it was trying to tell me something for a long time, and it was, sort of, it came as a feather, and then it came as a baseball bat once I wasn’t listening, you know what I mean? Because I had, I had, sort of, and, you know, and this is kind of another topic we’ve talked about separately, but, you know, I do have sort of a hypothesis that chronic dieting sets you up for chronic pain. And one of the reasons I believe that is because there’s a natural shutting down of listening to your body signals that have to happen when you’re in a deficit. And I think that breaks it breaks that, and so rebuilding that is a huge part of exploratory movement.

              Summer:
              Yeah, yeah, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about, because you mentioned that it’s just that being a chronic Dieter puts you at a greater risk of persistent pain symptoms. And I was like, Oh, wow, that’s super interesting. But it makes it makes perfect sense, and I think that I can remember kind of pushing through or I was injured a lot more when I was a chronic Dieter than I am now, and because I think it was just so I was so focused on, like, more, better, faster, instead of, like, you know, what’s my form? Like, what’s my breathing? Like, how does this feel in my body? Am I do I need to rest? Instead of, like, going super hard seven days a week, you know, so it makes Yeah, it makes perfect sense, yeah.

              DK:
              And I also just think, you know, when you have, when you have internally told yourself that your body is a fundamentally unsafe place to inhabit, it sets up a sort of, I’m blanking on the word adversarial relationship with yourself and your body, and I really do feel like I went through a huge chunk of my life, feeling like my body was sort of like a separate person from me that makes any sense, like there’s kind of like me the inside, and then there’s my body, and my body is just not playing along. My body’s often doing what I wanted to do. It’s not sure. Working like I wanted to. It’s not, you know, showing up or lively like I want it to. And I think that that, that kind of it’s not safe to be here. I mean, it has to, like everything else about, you know, what we know about, about trauma and the nervous system and just this, the desire and the human craving for a sense of safety, and how the nervous system responds when it doesn’t feel safe, like all of that points to potential triggers for chronic pain. And so I do think there is an overlap, even in just the mentality, to say nothing of the fact that you, you know, if you’re ignoring your your hunger pains, you’re probably also ignoring things that are going on that are indicative of of injury in your body?

              Summer:
              Yeah, that makes so much sense. So one of the other things I really wanted to talk with you about today is, you know, pain and weight. So I think a lot of people who experience pain, like whether it’s back pain or knee pain or ankle pain, are just told they need to just lose weight, or maybe they’re not even told that, but they just assume that the reason why they’re experiencing this pain is because of of their weight. And so I’d love to, yeah, just get your perspective on that based on on your experience, and then we can sort of take it from there.

              DK:
              So, I mean, I have to speak from this anecdotally, at least, from the perspective of I feel very strongly that weight loss is not connected to pain relief for anybody. I have never seen weight loss lead to pain relief for anybody. I’ve talked to other clinicians, you know, folks who are actual doctors with similar frustrations and interests, who also say the research does not show that weight loss leads to pain reduction, but there also isn’t a lot of research out there testing that hypothesis, because I think it’s sort of like a foregone conclusion, right, that that the that that weight loss is in itself a health indicator, is already just Like a problematic thing that you know is unfortunately permeates the research the folks that I have worked with, almost every single one of them, has either been told directly or indirectly, that what they need for their pain relief is is weight loss. This happens a lot with folks who have severe arthritis and are awaiting a joint replacement, and maybe are told, okay, well, we’ll do the joint replacement when you when you lose weight, and it’s just, it’s absolutely demoralizing for people, and, you know, it’s frustrating. It’s, we all know that that’s not even a goal that people can sustainably achieve to begin with. So it’s sort of like it’s a path to Nowhere. I think it’s a lazy on the part of physicians. I think it’s sort of, they don’t, they know they need to give a diagnosis or a, you know, a solution, and they don’t have one, so they just say weight loss.

              But I have had all of my clients who’ve come in, you know, probably 90% of them have been told at some point, you know, lose weight in order to adjust your pain. And they have, we’ve worked together without weight loss as a goal, without weight loss even occurring, and they felt better in their bodies. So, you know, movement, movement is, is, is, in my opinion, the number one health promoting behavior that we should be striving for. And it doesn’t have to show up in any kind of way, and it doesn’t, shouldn’t be tied to weight loss at all as a goal, because it just feels good and it is good for your organs and your systems to move. I think that we need to start pushing back harder on doctors who make that, who make that risk, that diagnosis or response for people. I know some people are doing that, and it’s unfair, but I mean, that’s just where we are to say, well, if I was a skinny person, how would you be treating this? Right?

              And, you know, the reality is, because pain is a response in the body that can be tied to a whole host of factors, from, you know, actual tissue damage to, you know, autoimmune conditions to, you know, social environmental factor, social isolation, mood, mental health. I mean, there’s so many things that contribute to pain. I do think that our physicians are not equipped to really give people advice. And I think that it is hard to to say, I don’t know why your pain is occurring, you know. I mean, I think that’s usually the answer. I don’t know why your pain is occurring, and I don’t know how you can help. And you know, the answer is, you know, move your body in a way that feels good. And you know, address, address, the triggers that exist in your life, whatever they are. And, you know, obviously I’m that would be sort of outside the scope of my practice. I mean, you’d want to work with someone who’s more specialized and in addressing pain and trauma and those things.

              But never, in my experience, have I seen anybody have any improvement in their pain as a result of weight loss. And in fact, you know, I had a client who was waiting to lose weight in order to get a hip replacement, ended up going forward and pushing. Thing for the hip replacement, and it turned out to be sort of an anatomical thing. It wasn’t even, you know, related to wear and tear. It was just that anatomically that her hip joint was not really set up for success. And you know, then ended up having a second hip replacement, went on with her life, and is now very active, and, you know, pain free and very happy. And, you know, if she had really followed that original advice of waiting, would would just be in the same place she was in before, which is like, you know, in an on a good head space, because she couldn’t do the things she loves. And in this, you know, there’s that sort of blame thing that happens right the minute a person hears, oh, I should lose weight in order to improve my pain. It’s like the pain is my fault, and that is such an unproductive paradigm for people to believe that they’re that they’re at fault for their pain. You know, are so many things in our environment contribute to the stress and to, you know, any number of conditions that affect the way that that our brains produce responses in the nervous system. And to tell a person, it’s also just like a false sense of control, right? I mean, you know, sometimes we do have pain symptoms, and they will come and go, and we have to learn how to age gracefully and and accommodate that. But weight loss is not, is not a solution to that. Is not in our toolbox.

              Summer:
              Yeah, it’s such a hard thing for people to I think a lot of people might who are perhaps more familiar with this type of approach, or maybe intellectually understand that, but it’s still, I feel like it’s so hard for people to really, truly believe that that the pain wouldn’t be better if I lost weight. You know what I mean? I think it’s like, it’s, it’s really, really hard. And that’s why, working with someone like you, I feel like would be such a gift to somebody, because you would be able to help them start to see improvements in their pain without them having to, you know, diet or lose weight or whatever they would have to do to lose weight.

              DK:
              I mean, for what it’s worth, again, anecdotally, I’ve gained 40 to 50 pounds since I stopped dieting, and my pain levels are way less than they were. I feel much better in my body at 43 than I did at 25 so I mean, that’s been my experience. And I’m like jogging again, you know, which I hadn’t been able to do for ages because of joint pain. And so I just, you know, what I always point people to, is there’s a lot of research, and when I got back into jogging, I was I was I was wary, right? I was nervous about it affecting my my knees, and I have had a history of of cartilage damage in my knee, and there’s all this research that shows that they actually prevented the progression of osteoarthritis in knees with moderate running. So if you think of the force of a person’s body running right, like, Surely that is not more than you just existing in a large body like this, like this idea that like force, that force on the joint is automatically going to cause you, you know, extreme pain. I just don’t think we really have evidence of that. If anything, we have evidence that the body adapts to force, reasonable increases in force. So I usually try to share that with people you know, to help encourage them. But also, if you believe that losing weight is going to make you feel better and and then you lose some weight and you feel better, it also becomes this kind of it really is about like your belief system, right? So it’s about believing that I can feel better, I can reduce my pain in the body that I’m in today, and then having those little wins, right? Like safely challenging yourself, working in a program that helps you go a little bit into your out of your comfort zone, realize that you actually have way more capability than you do, because every single person I’ve worked with that came in with chronic pain is capable of more than they believe in their bodies. Then you start to get a little confidence, and you start to do a little more, and then suddenly you realize, actually, I haven’t had pain. It’s so funny, because we often don’t notice the absence as much as we notice the presence of something like pain. So I think it’s also just important, like, to force yourself or to work with, again, work with someone like me, or someone else in a coaching capacity who is kind of like calling attention to the fact that you’ve done a thing that you thought you couldn’t do and it didn’t hurt you, you know,

              Summer:
              yeah, and appreciating that for sure. So in terms of, like, where people can find you, and how you work with people, can you share a little bit more about that?

              DK:
              Yes, so I’ve been part of a kind of exciting life transition at the moment. So I was previously in Boston in a brick and mortar studio. I now am in Edinburgh, Scotland, so I do see people virtually, and I have a regular a coaching program that goes over four months in alignment with the book. So I meet with people weekly to go through the week by week of of your meant to move, and kind of walk them through designing a program that gets them to try to move out of their comfort zone. And then also attend some some restorative. Pilates Mat classes. So that’s one way of working with me. I also do have three times a week restorative Pilates Mat classes that are really meant to be that exploratory kind of movement on a mat, very accessible for all different kinds of situations. And then hopefully I will, in the coming year, have a have a on site studio in Edinburgh as well. But that’s I have a wait list on my on my website for that until it gets up and running cool.

              Summer:
              And you wanted to give the listeners today a free movement coaching call?

              DK:
              Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think the easiest thing, because each person’s situation is different. So I would love to to meet with folks, one on one, kind of, hear their story and give my suggestions. Sometimes I’m able to even refer people to people that are close to them. But, you know, as we’ve talked about, like the the process, at least, because you did also ask, sort of, how I work with people. I mean, the process is to understand your why, right to be really, really clear on we’re not doing movement for esthetic reasons, and we’re not just like, generically, doing it for health, but sort of, you know, actionable. What is your strategy? How is movement going to enrich your life? How do we use movement to enrich your life? And then we want to find movement that feels naturally nourishing to you. So like most people, have a few things that they can do that just like automatically settles the nervous system. Either it’s a child’s pose or it’s, you know, it’s a walk, it’s, you know, we focus on building that repertoire first as your kind of daily go to and we call that the those, the refuge movements, and then your reach movements are, you know, what are the things that you need to be able to do in order to reach your goal? So if a goal, if a hike is your goal, maybe we’re going to work on some step ups to get you feeling strong, you know, with a backpack on or whatever. And so we’ll start small and work up. So, you know, having having the ability to slide back and forth between the movements that make you feel really soothed on days where your pain flares up, and then being able to work into something that’s more challenging on the days when you’re feeling strong because they you know it’s going to ebb and flow, and being being flexible with that, and not beating yourself up for the ebbing and flowing, and knowing that that’s just part of the human experience. That’s kind of the movement remedies approach amazing.

              Summer:
              And so where’s the best place to find you? What’s your website or social media, or anyone,

              DK:
              yep, movement remedies.org. Is my website, and then on Instagram, it’s the one I use the most. Is movement underscore remedies, those are the two best places, and you can email me, dk@movementremedies.org

              Summer:
              amazing, and this has been so great. I love the way that you talk about movement and all the personal stories and and experiences that you shared. It was, it was really, really wonderful talking to you. Thanks for being here today. Thank you.

              DK:
              Thank you so much for having me

              Summer:
              rock on.

              I really love DKs approach to movement and and pain, and I highly recommend checking out the book. You’re meant to move if you struggle with with pain, or if you’ve had pain in the past and you’re kind of hesitant or afraid to move your body. I also feel like you could read the book from the perspective of having a disordered relationship with exercise, and apply the same exercises and ways of thinking to heal your relationship with movement. So that’s kind of what I was thinking about as I as I read through the book. So definitely check it out. It’s called, you’re meant to move. I’ll link it in the show notes, which you can find at summer innan.com. Forward slash, 310,

              thank you so much for being here and listening today. Rock on. I’m Summer innan, and I want to thank you for listening today. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at summer innan, and if you haven’t yet, go to Apple podcasts, search, eat the rules and subscribe, rate and review this show. I would be so grateful until next time, rock on you.

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