Beth Lewis has been infatuated with movement as long as she can remember. She grew up in small town in South Georgia where she was a competitive gymnast, swimmer, dancer, soccer player and martial artist. Her heart was set to dance as she graduated from The University of Georgia with a BFA in Dance Performance. After graduation, Beth moved to Atlanta where she fell in love with training and fitness.
Training took a pause as she had the opportunity to dance for Pilobolus Dance Theater. After four years of touring internationally, Beth decided to make New York City her home and to get back into training. Beth is currently a Strength Coach at Body Evolved in Manhattan. She works with a wide variety of humans ranging from athletes to post op clients. Beth is a founding instructor for Cityrow where she teaches instructor education and writes programming. She is a Kinstretch instructor throughout NYC and travels to teach both domestic and international workshops.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Beth Lewis about why you can’t walk without arms.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- Why people should make their movements as cheap as possible with as little cost as possible.
- How your shoulder blades are the rudder for your body and help control your spine.
- How people can literally have no arms and still be world-class runners.
- How movement has to be synchronized motion of tension and release.
- Why most people need more ribcage and midline variability.
Connect with Beth:
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@bethlewisfit
Connect with Steven:
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Twitter
@XeroShoes
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@xeroshoes
Facebook
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Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
Here’s something for you to ponder. You can walk with no legs, but you can’t walk with no arms. Find out more about what that means on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement Podcast, the podcast for people who want to know that truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first. Those things are your foundation after all.
And we break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the straight out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to walk, or run, or hike, or dance, or play, or do yoga, or CrossFit, whatever it is you like to do, and to do that enjoyably and effectively and efficiently. And did I mention enjoyably? It’s a trick question. I know I did. I know what I said. I said this a million times.
Anyway, we call this The MOVEMENT Movement Podcast because we’re creating a movement about natural movement, helping people rediscover that letting your body do what it’s designed to do is the better, obvious healthy choice the way we currently think of natural food.
I am Stephen Sashen from xeroshoes.com your host of the podcast. And by the way, that movement part of the natural movement part, that just involves you. There’s nothing special. Just go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com and you’ll find all the different ways you can interact with the podcast. All the places you can find it, how you can find us on YouTube, and Instagram, and Facebook and wherever else the gist is.
Share. Let your friends know what we’re up to if you think this is a message worth spreading. Like, and subscribe, and give a comment, and a thumbs up, and hit the bell icon on YouTube. I mean, look, you know what to do. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.
So, let us jump in. Beth Lewis, a pleasure having you here. Would you tell people who the hell you are and what you do?
Beth Lewis:
Who the heck am I? So, my name is Beth. Thank you so much for having me. I feel so flattered and honored to be here. I am a retired professional dancer as well as a movement specialist/movement coach. So, I work with a variety of humans from all different ages, teaching them how to have efficient, coordinated just functioning movement, just trying to be comfortable. And to quote one of my teachers, “Make the movement as cheap as possible with as little cost as possible.”
Steven Sashen:
Two things. One, I love that. I’ve been reading Dan Lieberman’s latest book called, I think it’s called Exercised.
Beth Lewis:
Exercised. I love him.
Steven Sashen:
I’m horrible with titles so that’s why I had to say, I think.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. That’s a great book actually.
Steven Sashen:
And at the beginning of the book he’s just talking about how human beings, like all animals, are basically designed to use as little energy as possible to basically get to the point where we can reproduce. And we think of it very often the other way around.
So, I love that quote. But let’s back up to one of the first things you said is retired professional dancer. Because when most people think professional dancer, they’re imagining people doing ballet and they’re on point and you were in a whole different dance world.
Beth Lewis:
I was in a whole different dance world. I worked for a company called Pilobolus Dance Theater, founded in the early 1970s by a bunch of scientists. And the movement was based on a technique called weight sharing. So basically based on physics.
So, if someone’s pulling out, you have to have equal pressure out, and pushing in equal pressure in to make shapes out of human bodies. That would be absolutely impossible without a partner. So, a lot of strength involved and a lot of trust involved.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and I think you’re underplaying this. So, I’ve been a Pilobolus fan, not for the 50 years that they’ve been around, but for 47 of those years. And back in my days, as a soon to be All-American gymnast, we used to go watch Pilobolus shows, which are flat out amazing.
I mean, even if you don’t like dance, if you think you don’t like dance, you will still love Pilobolus and go find them. We’ll spell it in the show notes, but we used to go watch the shows and then go back and try to replicate some of the stuff that we had just seen. And 9 times out of 10, could not-
Beth Lewis:
How did that go?
Steven Sashen:
Not well at all. And I only recently found out why from talking to someone who still works with the company. Which she explained it as, we all get together and then we just experimented and we found things that we could all do because of our unique everything. Strength, body size, weight, I mean, all of these things.
Beth Lewis:
That was one of the cool things about the company. It was all based on improvisation. So, we used to always say, you show you do we, because if you did, it wasn’t a guarantee that your other company member could do it. So, you had to be really careful about what you would show because you’d be holding some pretty weird positions for hours on end.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and you and I talked about this before, one of my earliest memories from one of the shows, I had to confirm to see if it was actually true or a memory that wasn’t really a memory that I don’t know where it came from out of my head, which was someone who walked out on stage, turned perpendicular to the audience, just lifted one of his legs straight so it’s parallel to the ground and just stood there like that.
And for 10 seconds, we’re all watching going, “All right. I wonder what’s going to happen next.” And at the 32nd mark, we’re going, “Oh, this is weird.” And then about the one minute mark, you’re going, “Okay, this is insane that he’s able to do this.”
And at the five-minute mark people were jumping out of their chairs freaking out. And I confirmed, that was an actual bit that one of the guys could just do that.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So, what was the transition from dance to what you’re doing now?
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. So, when I first graduated from, I went to the University of Georgia, graduated with a BFA in dance. And I was like, “Well, what the hell am I going to do with that? I want a dance, but getting a dance job is not the easiest task.”
So, I fell into group fitness and personal training. My first job was at a Gold’s gym in Cartersville, Georgia. I learned a lot in that gym actually. A lot about dealing with people, for sure.
And I got my dance job. I was living in Atlanta. I moved to New York. I came off the road and I just took a deep dive into training. I did a ton of continuing education from performance training with a company called EXOS. I also did, I did bodybuilding and powerlifting, I dabbled at some Olympic lifting.
And it was basically, they were all just projects because I wanted to learn more about it. I really wasn’t so interested in Olympic lifting, but I was like, “Look, I’m going to do a 12 week program. I’m going to do a little competition and I’m going to see what happens. Because I wanted to experience it. I learned that I do not like Olympic lifting.
Steven Sashen:
How come?
Beth Lewis:
It’s just like you say with Pilobolus, not everyone’s built to do it. I am not quick. I don’t get tired, but I am not quick.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, those go in opposite ends of the spectrum.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. It’s a different muscle fiber, it’s a different energy system. I was just talking earlier with someone about it and I just don’t have that CNS drive. Neuro-fatigue is a thing for me.
Steven Sashen:
And I’m the other way around. It’s like I can just put out the force, but the endurance thing, I just…Not my thing.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. And then eventually, I started getting more into the clinical side of things. I was very interested in working with physical therapists, I worked in a couple of different clinics, learned a lot there. So, that’s where my continuing education shifted.
So, I started doing a lot of functional range conditioning. It was a system functional range systems was created by Dr. Andreo Spina. And then also a lot of postural restoration, which was created by Ron Hruska who, that quote that I told you, you can’t walk without your arms, he says that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And you just gave out my biggest secret. People thought that I made that up and now you told them that, man.
Beth Lewis:
Well, I wanted people to think I made it, but I’m not. You can’t take credit when you’re not that cool. Yeah. So, I still work with group fitness. I love group fitness. I teach a variety of online Zoom classes now, and then I’m also affiliated with a rowing studio called the CITYROW.
They have an online platform as well and a ton of studios all over the U.S. So, my fitness has been all over the place, but I love it because it’s made me pretty well-rounded. And I’ve taken from different modalities and systems to create things that work for people in certain situations. Because not one system works… There they are.
Steven Sashen:
So, let’s pause a bit because-
Beth Lewis:
That blondie is Georgie, and this is Hank.
Steven Sashen:
Hi, Hank?
Beth Lewis:
He’s my baby. And then I don’t know where Gus is. Anyway, but not one system works for everyone all of the time. So, it’s really important to be able to intermix between all of them.
Steven Sashen:
Well more, I mean, I’ll be totally candid about this. When people approach me about being on the podcast and all they’re doing is teaching something they learned from another person, I don’t typically care to have them on, but you have synthesize things and you’re doing your own thing in a way that, in our previous conversation, that’s what was interesting and we’re going to dive into that. But let’s start. Why don’t we start with that opening quote of, you can walk without legs but not without your arms.
Beth Lewis:
Right. So, I’ve always had a fascination with shoulder blades. The scapulae, if you will. I always thought of them from just a control standpoint and overhead reaching and loading, pushing and pulling.
And after working with postural restoration, they’re so much more than that. They’re like rudders for your body. They help control your vertical axis, which is your spine. They also help you to maintain rhythm when you’re moving. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to locomote forward because they give you that propulsion forward.
And they also help you sense the ground, which, when you’re talking about feet, that’s very important. When you reach back with one of your shoulder blades, you’re getting ab wall compression on the opposite side, which is helping you get pressure from the ground up that makes you more efficient at walking, and it also just makes you, it keeps that nice rotational action happening, which helps you utilize the real estate of your feet.
Which is so important because the feet are what you walk with, no pun intended. But they have the ground contact. But these shoulder blades are what are actually moving you through space and assisting that sense of grounding. That’s why.
Steven Sashen:
Some people, I want to highlight this or emphasize this, because when we say you can’t walk without your arms, we’re not talking about whether you actually have arms or not. We’re talking about this movement-
Beth Lewis:
It’s for your shoulders.
Steven Sashen:
… happening with shoulders and shoulder blades. There’s an interesting version of this where there’s a sprinting coach that I know who got into a big argument about what the proper arm motion is. And he said, “Well, why don’t we take a look at the Paralympians? And there’s a guy who just ran a half a second slower than the world championship able-bodied runner, but this guy has no arms.”
And so, if it was about what your arms are doing to make you run faster, this guy just proved that ain’t it. But there is still this rotational thing happening, and there’s no denying that arms can be something, but it’s always interesting to me how people, I don’t know how to put this, they mythologize one thing or another because they think, A, that’s their way of putting a stake in the ground and saying, “This is who I am.”
Beth Lewis:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
And also, because we want a simple answer to so many things.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, rib cages and shoulder blades are so important. And without one, it makes it really hard to find the other. And the brain is all about references and pressure, and that’s what really helps you do that coordinated with your breath, obviously.
Steven Sashen:
So, moving to the thing that you alluded to then, so talk about that connection, that relationship between shoulder blades and feet.
Beth Lewis:
Right. So, I’m in my Zoom set up, so I can actually move around a little bit.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, nice.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, when you take a step, you-
Steven Sashen:
Ah, you just froze. Oh, no. Hold on.
Beth Lewis:
… isn’t that the way-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Sorry, we had a little glitch as soon as you said, when you take a step, you froze. So let’s-
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
… take two.
Beth Lewis:
So, when you take a step, the opposite arm should, your shoulder blade should pull back in the scapular retraction and the opposite arm should reach forward. Obviously, I’m being very dramatic about this. It’s not going to happen that way.
So, from the front side, if you watch my rib cage, as I pull back, do you see how I’m getting that loading idea?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
That creates pressure which allows me to get grounding from the heel. Does that make sense?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
So, I’m being very dramatic about it, but the arms really help your rib cage rotate appropriately so you can feel a sense of grounding up.
Steven Sashen:
Of a weighting.
Beth Lewis:
If you don’t move your arms-
Steven Sashen:
Right. Oh, man. You just froze again, Beth. I’m going to pause this. Sorry, everybody. Hold on. All right.
Beth Lewis:
Okay.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. So we had glitch number two. Welcome to the inner tubes. So, you were talking about, you were just showing walking without your arms. Can you do that again?
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. So, the shoulder blades don’t reach forward and they’re always squeezing back. They have an extension pattern. It throws our femurs into external rotation and we tend to waddle. I’m exaggerating obviously. Waddle through space. So, it’s not giving us that access to all of that foot real estate.
Steven Sashen:
Right. So, the thing that I’m seeing when you do that, I just want to talk about the loading pattern. Because when you’re making that motion, and it’s a subtle motion, obviously we’re exaggerating for the sake of this example.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
But when you have that torso torsioning, the whole idea of getting that weight onto your foot to apply force into the ground, this applies whether you’re walking or running. I mean, there’s an idea in running that what makes one person faster than the other is mass specific force, how much force you’re putting in the ground at the right angle based on how much you weigh.
And if you’re not getting fully over that foot, you’re not applying all the mass that you have into the ground in that right way.
Beth Lewis:
Right. Yeah. And you’re not able to access all of that foot so you could push yourself through space. One thing is taking the brunt as opposed to that rocker idea, which is what you want.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. Got it. And the other point you made, if you’re not using your arms, if you’re not getting that torsional rotation, how that’s going to affect your glutes, which will then rotate your hips or rotate your femurs.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Your femur rotate out, because you’re… The brain has two priorities, keep breathing. No matter what, it’s going to breathe. And don’t fall down. So we have a whole-
Steven Sashen:
I would argue there were a couple of others, but okay, I’ll go with you on this one.
Beth Lewis:
Those are the two main ones.
Steven Sashen:
Eh, I’m not too sure, but okay.
Beth Lewis:
You have this set of anti-gravity muscles that kick in to keep you from falling on your face. So, shoulder blade squeezing back those scapular retractors, that muscle stuff back there, those are anti-gravity. Yeah. The spinal extensors are anti-gravity. That actually, whenever that anti-gravity stuff kicks in, because that is such a high stress, your brain thinking you’ll fall down is very stressful.
So, when those muscles kick in, most of your variability is limited. So, midline variability. So, when you’re running, mind you, I haven’t run in a very long time, but I’ll just take it back to walking.
When you’re walking, your feet should be doing the work here. The midline should be pretty easy. Those anti-gravity muscles are kicking in. You don’t have that ability for this stuff to move and rotate. So, you don’t really have the space for anything to go wrong. You know what I mean?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I’ve actually seen clinically, and also I’ve read a couple of papers on this about lower back discomfort and lots of extension. Actually starts to limit the proprioception ability in your feet because this has such a high cost your brain’s like, “Hmm, these guys got me. I don’t got to worry about the feet anymore.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, there’s another thing that you were doing when you were walking that I find interesting and I’ll set it up this way. People get into arguments about whether you should land on your heel when you walk. And I go, “You’re missing the point about that first of all, it’s not about what touches the ground first, it’s about how you’re loading and what you’re using in your foot.”
And when you were walking, while your heel was touching the ground first though, you were getting your foot in a position where it’s underneath you and you’re reloading the foot using the arch and building the strength to begin with before you took off. It was a whole different game than what most people think.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. So, if there’s a book I can recommend, it’s real nerdy.
Steven Sashen:
And you’re about to. Let’s see it.
Beth Lewis:
Can you see me?
Steven Sashen:
All right. Let’s see it.
Beth Lewis:
It’s real nerdy. Human Locomotion.
Steven Sashen:
I love that book.
Beth Lewis:
I love this book. And for people looking-
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on. Wait, for people who aren’t watching, give the title and the author.
Beth Lewis:
Human Locomotion, Dr. Thomas Michaud.
Okay. So, I will say, because it can get quite heavy, he has a lot of videos on YouTube. They’re easy to follow. They’re great.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. People also, they talk about the fat pad in the heel. And they go, “Well, that’s made for, fill in the blank.” It’s not made to protect you from slamming your heel on the ground, it’s basically just to let you roll over. There’s so much misunderstanding about this.
Beth Lewis:
Right. I mean, there are some things that have to happen up top to dampen force. So, when you land on your heel, your femur has to pull back. That helps dampen force. If it doesn’t pull back, I.e., you’re not able to dampen that force, but if you’re able to, when you reach this opposite, this side of your pelvis has to pull back. That’s a force dampener.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, but you just also showed, wait, hold on. I’m going to make you stand up. I’m going to make you play a dancing monkey.
Beth Lewis:
That’s okay. I do this all day long.
Steven Sashen:
I like how I just said dancing monkey and as you walked back, you looked monkey.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah, that’s how I live.
Steven Sashen:
Could not help it. But what you were also showing is what many people do is they’ll kick their foot out in front of them and use that front leg almost like a pole going over it. Where, if you just landed like that with your heel down, you also can’t get any of that force dampening, because you’re sitting there with a straight leg. There’s nothing that’s-
Beth Lewis:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah.
Beth Lewis:
Exactly. But this pullback is vital for dampening force. But if you’re like this-
Steven Sashen:
You can’t… Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
Because you got no place to go.
Steven Sashen:
Well, wait, stay there. I’m going to hit you with another one. Many people, though, because what you’re showing is the shoulder blades pulled back on a sort of lock, but many people have the opposite where their shoulders are cave forward, so can you talk about that?
Beth Lewis:
Yes, that’s actually a respiratory strategy of compression. So, we’re going to move along to my second favorite topic.
Steven Sashen:
Keep breathing. Okay.
Beth Lewis:
This is why I’m single.
Steven Sashen:
Again, for the record, I completely disagree with Beth’s idea about what’s first and second most important, but I’m not going to tell you what I think is true.
Beth Lewis:
I know. This is why I’m single. Scapula and rib cages. That’s my whole life. So, rib cages, when you inhale, are made to expand three-dimensionally. So, our respiratory strategies impact our stabilization strategies and our movement variability. Okay?
Steven Sashen:
Okay. I’m that one.
Beth Lewis:
So, if you aren’t able to expand three-dimensionally, so front, side and back, you start to compress in certain areas and not be able to compress in others. So, movement has to be, and I always think in terms of dance, movement, even walking, has to be this lovely, synchronized motion of tension and release.
Beth Lewis:
Something has to tense, and something has to release. If you’re too released, it’s not going to work. If everything’s locked up, you can only do one thing. So, I see this a lot in runners.
Steven Sashen:
Caved in thing. Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
Caved in. And a lot of people think it’s because they’re always doing this. This is a respiration strategy. They’re always bracing down so they’re never getting air in the apical space.
Steven Sashen:
What do you think? I mean, it’s a strategy for what? What’s it either trying to protect or accomplish?
Beth Lewis:
That’s unknown.
Steven Sashen:
I mean, I think about it because I was an All-American gymnast way back when. And the most important strength you can have as a gymnast is lifting forward that hollow back compressed chest thing. Because there’s a pattern there.
Beth Lewis:
That’s a gymnastic that’s so compressed.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I spent a good 30 years of my life trying to, and still to this day, still opening that up in a relaxed way. So, that was a deliberate thing that got developed from the requirements of the sport.
Beth Lewis:
Right. I mean, I think it is important, and a lot of things are sports-specific, right? You develop patterns based on what you repeat all the time. But I mean, think about what that does. If your apical space is super tight, you’re not back there.
Steven Sashen:
Interestingly, many gymnasts, and I think this is misdiagnosed, and I had the same issue, had shoulder problems. And most of the time, we think that the shoulder problem is just because of what we’re doing to our shoulders rather than what you just described, which I’d never even thought of till right now, is if that chest is compressed, you don’t get the mobility to begin with. So, you’re putting your shoulders in a bad position and then, ah, that’s really cool.
Beth Lewis:
And your rib cage should be the most flexible, pliable thing on your skeleton.
Steven Sashen:
Once again, I totally disagree with Beth on around that point, but I’m not going to say anything.
Beth Lewis:
Fine, fine. But from a movement standpoint, I mean, think about it this way. If you’re so compressed, this ain’t going anywhere. Now, you may create a lot of passive range of motion, but that’s not going to be supported. And in the long haul, it’s going to start causing some issues.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and you nail it. Because for gymnastics to have that chest compressed in so that it does limit the motion of the shoulder, is important because you don’t want to be hyper-extended. That’s not where your strength is, but then-
Beth Lewis:
Yeah, most gymnast I see, start to move from that lower back.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
They don’t have that ability to actually segment through their thoracic spine and that’s a big issue.
Steven Sashen:
Right. When I first moved to Boulder, I had a friend who had a daughter who was 11 years old at the time who’d just got into gymnastics and she was pretty good. And I said, “I’m going to warn you in advance, when she’s 18, she’s going to have the exact same posture I do.”
And seven years later, when she was a nationally ranked gymnast, we looked like we were twins. Totally the same posture. When you watch, especially female gymnast, walk, I like trying to imitate people’s walks. And like you said, everything goes to the lower back when all that’s tied up top, I can’t imitate their walk. It is so weird.
Beth Lewis:
They start rotating from our lower back because they can’t get any rotation up top. And I mean, you have to think about it, all your flexors work together. So, deep neck flexors, rectus abdominis, hip flexors. Think about how much compression they’re always trying to use.
And runners tend to do the same thing. They’ll sometimes bear their chin down, rock and roll. I’ve seen that some as opposed to… We have strategies for when stuff gets tough, you know what I mean? And over-bracing is a strategy.
Steven Sashen:
There’s another component to this that I’m thinking about that I want to hear your take on. And it goes back to powerlifting. So, when you’re bench-pressing, what most people don’t think of is that what makes you instantly stronger is scapular attraction, is getting their shoulder blades back and down and together.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that’s called a wedge.
Steven Sashen:
A wedge.
Beth Lewis:
A wedge. Yeah. So, wedges work in different ways. When you’re doing a bench press, and you’ll see super competitive powerlifters, they’ll get that big back arch. Right? So, when you get that big back arch, you’re basically creating support from the back side of you.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Now, in the deadlift wedge, it’s a little bit different. I usually teach a deadlift as you’re using the weight like a partner, you have to fall back and counterbalanced with it so you can actually feel your feet. So, if you go to set up for a deadlift, if you’re here and just go pull and push, do you see how my legs aren’t really loaded?
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Beth Lewis:
If I fall back and use the weight as a counterbalance, there’s my legs. All I have to do is stand up.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s interesting.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Really clever.
Beth Lewis:
It’s really all about finding your feet in a deadlift.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and dead lifters, it’s funny. When you talk to people who say, “Well, I can’t go into my gym if I’m wearing no shoes.” I go, “Well, that’s so ironic because serious dead lifters, they’re either in bare feet, or socks, or super flashy wearing other stuff.
So, they understand that feet are important. And what most people don’t get in powerlifting is, your feet are important for bench pressing too, which seems totally counter-intuitive.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. You better be pushing through those feet.
Steven Sashen:
Right. And people-
Beth Lewis:
That is your super gas power.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Beth Lewis:
That is your gas pedal.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And people don’t think of it that way. So, where in this process, I mean, one of the things that started our conversation was that you do have this understanding of how things both go down two and come back up from your feet. So, when did you get really hip to the feet?
Beth Lewis:
There is an organization called, IKN, Integrated Kinetic Neurology. I was actually just chatting with one of the founders today. He lives in Ireland. His name is Ryan.
A big part of their teaching is using hands and feet for problem solving. So, if we think about what has the most contact with your environment, it’s your hands and your feet. You don’t bench press with your shoulders or your chest, you’re connected to the bar. You don’t deadlift with your hips, you push the ground with your feet.
Similarly, to walking, you don’t walk with your knees and hips, you walk with your feet. So, the better you can actually, to use their terms, problem solve, and the more lower leg variability and risk variability that you have, the more that the stuff up the chain and the midlines specifically can chill out. Your proximal joints, shoulders and hips, will tend to stiffen if your distal limbs don’t know what the heck is going on.
Steven Sashen:
So, we are going to pause there. Give me an example of that. So, if you’re-
Beth Lewis:
I’ll give you an example.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. Good.
Beth Lewis:
Because I do a lot of virtual assessments now and I can’t, I’m so used to getting my hands-on people. First thing I look, I just had them get into a half kneeling position. And if they can actually-
Steven Sashen:
I’m going to pause here for people who are listening. So, start by kneeling and then lift one foot, put one foot on the ground in front so you’ve got, how would you describe this if you’re describing it to people who aren’t watching.
Beth Lewis:
Half kneeling.
Steven Sashen:
Half kneeling. All right. So, one knee on the ground, one foot on the ground, 90 degrees on your knees.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Two little 90 degree angles here. And I have them shift forward and just feel pressure in their leg. And usually I’ll, not usually, but sometimes I’ll see this.
Steven Sashen:
So, the hip extending out to the side that…
Beth Lewis:
Right. So, it’s just this hike, a lot of tension in the midline and the hip because they… And the foot will start doing some weird stuff or they’ll go to stand up and the foot’s all over the place. And it’s just showing me they don’t have a sense of grounding. Now, I don’t know, and no one could know if it’s coming from top down or bottom up. So, usually I attack it from both ends.
Most people need more ribcage and midline variability. That’s just the way it is. You know what I mean? We all do. You cannot have a ribcage that’s too movable or a spine that segments well enough. That’s how you transfer force. But if you have a good sense of grounding, this stuff can chill out so you can actually push with your legs and not have to stiffen up.
I always tell people, I’m like, “Guys, you’re doing a body weight split squat, you’re not lifting a car.” You know what I mean. You don’t need to hold your breath and you don’t need to tighten up. You’re literally standing off the floor.
Steven Sashen:
So, I wanted two things. One, just highlight, what you’re talking about is, if your foot is not engaged with the ground and is functioning well, flexible and strong, then everything upstream is going to try to compensate in ways that it’s not designed. Or top down, if there’s stiffness and things aren’t moving, that’s going to be reflected in.
Beth Lewis:
You don’t have a chance to be grounded.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
And I also want to highlight that when you’re saying grounded, there are some people who are thinking we’re going to be talking about “grounding” a.k.a earthing, a.k.a, well, I won’t get into that, but what you’re-
Beth Lewis:
I don’t even know what that means.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, really? Good. Then we’re not going to get into that. But actually, just for the sake of clarifying, when you say your foot is grounded, can you say more about what that means for you?
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you think in terms of center of mass. So, your rib cage is your center of mass, right? So, at this point in time, my rib cage is directly over my pelvis.
Steven Sashen:
So now we’re in half kneeling again. And so your body, you’ve got your hips over your knee that’s on the ground, your shoulders over your hips, your head over your shoulders.
Beth Lewis:
Right. Exactly. So, if I go to shift forward and I don’t necessarily have that ability to maintain my center of mass, this’ll happen sometimes.
Steven Sashen:
Arching your back. Yep.
Beth Lewis:
Yep. So I’ll stiffen up here. So when I go to stand up, that’ll happen. Right? But also, if I don’t have the ability for compression in the ab wall, I still don’t have a sense of grounding.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, interesting.
Beth Lewis:
The ability to actually feel my entire foot real estate. Not just the heel, not just the toe, because if my center of mass goes forward, look what happens to my heel.
Steven Sashen:
Right. Heal this up. Yep.
Beth Lewis:
Yep. Yep. And look what happens to my knee. That’s what is called a shear force.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
Right? So, when people say lunges hurt my knee, I’m like, “Mm, I don’t think it’s a knee issue, it could be, I think it’s probably more of a center of mass issue.”
Steven Sashen:
Well, it’s interesting you say that. Have you bumped into Ben Patrick, who I had on the podcast a little while ago, who calls himself the knees over toes guy?
Beth Lewis:
No.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, you will get a kit… You got to check out Ben because let’s just say, he has some ideas about what it means to have your knees go over your toes and what the value of that is if you do it correctly. And very, very interesting cat. And anyway, I’m just going to leave it at that and you can-
Beth Lewis:
Okay. I’ll go check it out.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. You can check out the podcast where he and I chatted. You can check out, he’s got like a bazillion YouTube videos. You might find it interesting because I would argue that you’re not disagreeing with each other. Because for him, the whole point of being able to get your knee over your toes when you’re doing a lunge is that it requires really having your foot anchored into the ground, then having the ankle flexibility to do that properly.
And he just has a bunch of regressions for, if you can’t do that all the way, here’s how you can get there and what the value is. And I’ll give you a hint. There’s someone I know who didn’t want to give him credit for this, it’s not his idea, but didn’t want to give him credit, even though that’s where he heard about this whole idea of doing a lunge with your knee going wherever your toes. So, he just referred to it as a VMO split squat because-
Beth Lewis:
I mean, okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Because when you do it that way, and for VMO is your Vastus Medialis. So, it’s that teardrop muscle on the inside of your knee. When you do properly let your knee go over your toes in a split squat, it really activates that VMO and your glutes in a way that’s interesting. And it can only happen if the feet are really, really able to feel and accurate to the ground. I want to hear your feedback after you-
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. I’ll definitely check it out. For sure.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, it’ll be interesting. So, I want to give people something that they can play with. I mean, we’re given a few things, but if people are coming to you, or let’s just say for the fun of it, that someone just says, “How can I explore what you’ve been doing or play with my body in some way,” don’t take that out of context, in some way that is going to really let me discover something about my feet, and my ribcage, and my thoracic flexibility, or whatever it is that you would want them to just learn as a starting point.
What would you imagine teaching? If we were going to teach someone a movement, what would you do?
Beth Lewis:
Right. I mean, just to keep it as scalable as possible, because things are different based on assessment, obviously. Everybody’s body’s different. The first thing I do actually is just have people lay supine, so flat on your back in, this is called the hook lying position. So your heels are pretty close to your butt, palms up towards the ceiling. And you do want to create a posterior tilt.
And this is where people get into trouble. They think of a posterior tilt as a big brace, as a big ab brace. And when you brace, especially over-brace, you can’t get air in and then variability is limited.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Beth Lewis:
Because all you can do is brace. You can’t go in the opposite direction. So, the tricky part is finding the posterior tilt where you’re literally taking your tailbone between your heels, and all I feel is my waistband getting heavy into the floor. So, my belly is very relaxed.
Steven Sashen:
Very relaxed. Again, so, you’re lying on your back, feet close to your butt or as close as you can comfortably get. And the-
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. I mean, pretty close, you can touch them.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. About a hand length away. And then the poster tilt is as if you’re basically taking the back of your pelvis and rotating that back in front of your pelvis forward. But to your point, not doing it by cranking on your abs.
Beth Lewis:
Right. So, a posterior tilt literally looks like this.
Steven Sashen:
So, it’s like tucking your butt underneath you is one way of thinking of it.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. So it’s not here. It’s literally, I think about my tailbone melting down.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, that’s was good.
Beth Lewis:
You know those old school shirts that have the scrunch in them?
Steven Sashen:
No, the what? What the hell are you talking about?
Beth Lewis:
I’m from the south. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s like a tie where it makes the shirts scrunch up smaller.
Steven Sashen:
What are you talking about? You’re making shit up.
Beth Lewis:
That’s not uncommon. I think of those muscles right above my tailbone as like a little scrunch. Somebody out there is going to know what I’m talking about.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, they’re lying. So, okay. Whatever.
Beth Lewis:
When I think about reaching my tailbone down, I think of those muscles ironing out.
Steven Sashen:
I like the distinction that you’re making is most people, if they think about posterior tilt, they think about it like doing an ab crunch. And what you’re talking about is-
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is leaving the abs and just letting that tailbone drop.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
That’s interesting.
Beth Lewis:
This is the tricky part. If your ribcage is going forward, this is what we like to call locked and loaded. Try as you might, you are not going to be able to posterior tilt.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Beth Lewis:
There’s nothing wrong with an anterior tilt, unless you just can’t get out of it. You know what I mean? That’s that whole tension release idea. One side of your pelvis when engaged has to be an anterior tilt, one side has to be an posterior tilt.
You have to have that continuous tension release. So, a good way to start if you can’t find it, is just elevate your feet. So, I’ll take like a little yoke, easy. Right?
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Beth Lewis:
And this is going to help facilitate my posterior tilt. I don’t even really have to brace anymore. And you want to attack it from the ribcage down. So, you would do super quiet, easy breaths here. Like your inhale would be quiet A loud inhale is not an expansive inhale. It’s a secondary, respiratory inhale.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Beth Lewis:
Does that make sense?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
So, you want to inhale super quiet. And then when you exhale, you want to let the ribcage fully depress, compress. Now, watch my shoulders. I don’t want that to happen.
Steven Sashen:
So, you don’t want your shoulders coming up off the ground.
Beth Lewis:
I’m literally just letting the front of me relax. And when I go to inhale again, I have a more productive inhale. And then when I exhale, I have a super productive exhale. So an exhale, a better exhale equals a more productive inhale.
Steven Sashen:
So, to highlight a couple things from watching what you’re doing, and for anyone who’s just listening, I hope you go and check out our website so you can see the video of this. There’s a couple of things. When you elevate your feet, it does some of that posterior pelvic tilt for you.
Beth Lewis:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And the point you were making before about things starting bottom up and top down about how they interact, so if you do with your feet on the ground, that’ll let you feel that bottom up version, if you will, and you can play with the-
Beth Lewis:
You too.
Steven Sashen:
Well, you can too, but when you-
Beth Lewis:
You’re bringing the ground up to you.
Steven Sashen:
True. But it seems though, and these are not mutually exclusive. It’s obviously on a bit of a spectrum, if you will. But what you were just showing was letting that top down part inform the bottom up part.
So, working on the breathing and the ribcage lets the pelvis do its thing. Work on the pelvis, you’ll start to feel the ribcage thing as well. So, that’s a really great place to…
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. And you’ll see a lot of people want to come and say, because I hear a lot of, especially like group exercise instructors now say, and trainers, “Knit the ribs in. Knit the ribs in, blah, blah, blah.” And that is an over-bracing strategy. That is going to actually inhibit mobility and movement if you brace down too tight. So, if you just let the exhalation do the work, you’re golden.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Beth Lewis:
And exhalation’s your best ab exercise, because when you exhale fully, your internal obliques pull your ribcage into internal rotation.
Steven Sashen:
So, are you suggesting something a little more…? I mean, since exhaling, the diaphragm is naturally coming back into this curve spot. When you’re talking about exhaling fully, adding that little extra something or just letting the diaphragm just do its thing and no extra effort?
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. I think about letting the breast bone fall down so when you go to inhale, you actually have somewhere to go. If you don’t exhale fully, see how I’m an extension. Say I exhale, this is what happens with belly breathing a lot. They’ll pull their belly in. I haven’t changed. I haven’t moved at all.
So, when I go to inhale again, I’m like, “Oh-oh. I got nothing. I’m already there.” Your brain wants to do two things, breathe and don’t fall down.
So, if you’re already in a state of inhalation and you go to inhale again, you have to pull from somewhere, usually it’s right here.
Steven Sashen:
You know, yeah. So, it’s so interesting you’re saying this. I have a friend, I won’t mention him by name, who made a lot of money teaching people how to breathe. And a lot of it was belly breathing.
And I said to him, “You’re not doing anything with the chest and the thoracic area, about at the very least letting that be relaxed enough to open up and relax enough to go the other direction as well.
And I noticed this years ago. I haven’t thought about this in a long time. That if when I focused on my chest a little more, it allowed my belly breathing to be better as well.
Beth Lewis:
A thousand percent. The belly should expand.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
But it should not be the only thing to expand.
Steven Sashen:
Only thing.
Beth Lewis:
And when the belly expands only, that tips you right into an interior tilt.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is not great from a stability strategy.
Steven Sashen:
No. No. And again, it’s one of those things, backing up to our female gymnast, watching them walk around. I mean, they’re always massively anterior tilt, a lot of arch in their lower…
I mean, and again, this is just, it’s something that ends up developing because it’s more effective for what they’re doing for their limited careers.
Beth Lewis:
Right. And also most of them have ankle sprain and foot histories. When I’m doing an intake with someone, the first thing I ask, one of the first things, “Have you ever sprained your ankle?”
Steven Sashen:
Why? That’s interesting? Why?
Beth Lewis:
If you’ve sprained your ankle, anytime you have a scar tissue, or chronic pain, or repetitive injuries, that inhibits cortical mapping. So you lose awareness there. Create stiffness up the chain.
Steven Sashen:
Fascinating.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, that is one of the first thing. And I’m just like, no, with the ankle sprains. I mean, I’ve sprained this one 20, 25 times.
Steven Sashen:
I was gonna say does it matter how you sprained it because you just gave me a flashback. Back in my days when I was doing standup comedy for a living, I was late for a gig and I’m… It’s a club that was in the basement of a restaurant and I’m running down the stairs, or more accurately, it was two flights of stairs.
So, I jumped down the first flight, I turned around and I go to jump down the second flight and then I notice that there’s a fire sprinkler or sprinkler head that I’m heading straight for. And so, I ducked to miss the sprinkler head, but then I caught both of my feet on the bottom stair and sprained both my ankles so much that I actually went into shock, which was the first time I did that. That was very entertaining.
So, I make it onto the stage and after 30 seconds, the club owner goes, “Dude, you are white. Let me get you off the stage.” And carried me off, took me to my apartment, threw me in the bed and I didn’t leave for a week. And happily, I had a good supply of lucky charms, which have magic healing properties.
Beth Lewis:
Oh, thank God.
Steven Sashen:
So, that was bad.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. They create a lot of issues. And multiple sprains tell me something for sure. It’s like there’s some stuff going on there.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t know anyone who hasn’t gotten an ankle sprain personally, but to your point, there’s another thing about humans where we will heal just enough to be able to breathe and stand up without falling and not get back to optimal functioning unless we pay attention to it.
Beth Lewis:
I mean, I’m not sure if Daniel Lieberman talks about it in Exercise, but if you’ve read his first book, Story of The Human Body, ankle sprains are like, that’s a new thing.
Steven Sashen:
That’s interesting.
Beth Lewis:
Our feet don’t problem-solve like they used to.
Steven Sashen:
I forgot about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
They don’t. They don’t. And that’s why you don’t have that environment. So, you have to start easy, but multi-directional, multi-planner things is very important. The more variability you have in multiple directions, the better you can move forward.
Steven Sashen:
This is something I actually had, I get into this argument with people on a somewhat regular basis. Let’s not call it an argument. Someone says something that is not true and I try to correct them.
And so, it’s a variation of, we didn’t evolve to, fill in the blank. And they go, “We didn’t evolve to run in concrete.” I go, “Well, first of all, what we evolved on is such a variable and variegated surface that we’re constantly using all these muscles ligaments and tendons in ways that we’re not doing right now. And if you can do that, then you’re fine.”
Like you just said, you’re fine on a flat, straight surface. And just because we didn’t evolve on a flat, straight surface, doesn’t mean you can’t function on a flat, straight surface.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. You just have to do supplemental things.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. And the other point in this video that he was complaining about, I make a point, my dad, this is six years ago, had always been in big, thick padded shoes and couldn’t really feel.
Beth Lewis:
My mom does the same thing.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Well, he’s one of those guys that tripped on something that was really shouldn’t have been trippable, fell down, broke his hip and was dead a couple days later. And people go, “Oh, you’re saying that the shoes made him die?” It’s like, “No, I’m saying the shoes made him vulnerable.”
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. That is true. I actually, I made my mom, I was like, because she was walking around in sneakers at home. A lot of people in the south do that, for some reason. They’re the big, padded, we call them tender shoes in the south.
And I was like, “You need to start walking around barefoot.” And I was just like, this is important because her feet just didn’t, because she was starting to shuffle a little.
Steven Sashen:
Shuffle. This is what I said. My dad shuffled. He tripped over something that was a half an inch high because he shuffled when he walked.
Beth Lewis:
Right. I have to shout out my mom though. She took, I tell the jump rope course, I guess like four weeks ago. It was all about feet. So, we used toe spacers and how to load differently and just different working, loading tolerance. My mom is 72 and she did 20 skips consecutively.
Steven Sashen:
Nice.
Beth Lewis:
I was just like, “All right. All right.” I mean, having that ability to move well is important. And that is one thing that I did learn with functional range conditioning. They have these movement called CARs. CARs stands for Controlled Articular Rotations. This is another movement that people can do quite easily on their own.
Basically, you’re taking a joint and you’re isolating the movement. You’re trying to make the biggest circle possible with that joint, keeping the rest of the limb very still. So, if I were going to do it with my ankle, I would keep all of this nice and still. I would go through plantar flexion and then I’ll turn and face this way.
Steven Sashen:
Wait. I have to pause. I mean this in the nicest possible way. Oh my God, you have dancer feet?
Beth Lewis:
Yes. I do have dancer feet.
Steven Sashen:
That was awesome. Anyway, please continue. And again, if you’re not watching the video, you got to watch. Those are some very amazingly beautiful feet.
Beth Lewis:
All I have is feet. So, you plant your flex, pull the toes across, drive the heel forward, toes out and then down. So basically, you’re going through plantar flexion, inversion.
Steven Sashen:
Dorsiflexion.
Beth Lewis:
Dorsiflexion.
Steven Sashen:
Eversion.
Beth Lewis:
Eversion.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
Then back into plantar. And you’ll go in both directions.
Steven Sashen:
Nice.
Beth Lewis:
Now, this is the fun thing about doing CARs. If you haven’t gone in these ranges in a long time/ever, your brain will sift through them.
Steven Sashen:
Oh yeah. Yeah, no. I was just about to make that point. Yeah. I was just going to make that point. You have a nice, smooth circle that you’re are making. And I know that for most people, there’ll be glitches in the whole thing and the idea is to slow down more so you can make it-
Beth Lewis:
To get that control.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. And some people get incredibly frustrated. They’re like, “Why is my ankle not doing what I’m telling it to?” I’m like, “You haven’t been in that range maybe ever.”
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Beth Lewis:
The cool thing about CARs is it plays with pressure in a different way. So, we talked about pressure with air. This plays with mechanoreception. So, mechanoreceptors are these little pressure sensors in your joint capsule. And if you’re really pushing on your in ranges, it sends a signal to your brain like, “Oh, I can go there.”
And a lot of times with ankle sprains, it’s due to lack of predictability. So, you go there and it’s just like, ooh. And the rest of the body freezes up and then it can’t be pliable. Does that make sense?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Oh, no. Totally does. The thing that it’s got me thinking about is this whole, I mean, a bunch of ideas about neuroplasticity. There’s a book called, did you ever read The Brain That Changes Itself?
Beth Lewis:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
So, I think about that book and I talk about it a lot because when you stop using some part of your body, and I normally think about this about just using it at all, but now it’s occurring to be about, let’s say, certain parts of a range of motion. Your brain literally shuts down and changes shape.
About using that, but because using it is natural, if you start to do it again, it will re-differentiate, and you can build that back because that’s what normal is.
And so, I never thought about, just we develop these little, protective things, sprain our ankle and we try to keep ourself from doing something like that again, which is this negative cycle of turning your brain off from being able to get that motion back, which is what you would need to do to heal.
Beth Lewis:
Exactly. Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
Fascinating.
Beth Lewis:
CARs are incredible for that. And FRC, Functional Range Conditioning uses a lot of isometrics. And isometrics are so great because they’re like, you get on that in range and then you apply a little bit of force and it just, almost the pressure and the force lets the brain know. “Okay.”
Steven Sashen:
Have you ever done anything with Feldenkrais?
Beth Lewis:
I’ve read a couple of books, but it’s so funny, even being a dancer, I’ve never formally done anything with Feldenkrais.
Steven Sashen:
That’s okay. Well, I only bring it up because-
Beth Lewis:
I like a lot of the eye work though.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, the eye stuff’s really fun. I bring it up just because there are some similar ideas in there with one part being, again, slow motions, but one of the fun parts is, it’s like if, let’s say your left shoulder is the one that’s “frozen”, you make movements with your right shoulder really slowly. And then when you have that down, you go to the left shoulder and it’s like the left one learn from right one. It learned from the good side.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. So, in training, we call that carryover training. So, I use that a lot with people who are injured. So, I think you can get something like 25% straight gains to carryover training. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah. It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I was really lucky. There was a guy named Tom Hannah who brought Marshall Feldenkrais to America. And back in 1989, I got to have some sessions with him.
Beth Lewis:
That’s amazing.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. It was great. I had a wacky shoulder from gymnastics things and he’s working on the good side. And I go, “What are you doing that for?” And suddenly, I had this massive change in my range of motion. And then he says, “Now try the “bad side”. And it’s like, “What the hell?” I was able to move in ways that I probably hadn’t done that in years.
And it does this fun thing in your brain when you reawaken one of those little, dead, glitchy parts. It feels so pleasant. It’s just this rush of adrenaline.
Beth Lewis:
Where you can let go.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Beth Lewis:
There’s a lot of apprehensive tone around the unknown. I see that a lot with people with lower back discomfort or ankle sprains. And there’s just-
Steven Sashen:
I think that’s true. Even if you just think about something that you’re “afraid of doing” that’s, whatever. That’s what the body does is there’s just some sort of contraction for whatever reason to do something seemingly protective when it’s probably going to effect the opposite.
Beth Lewis:
Exactly. Exactly. It’s totally a counterproductive, protective. Maintenance.
Steven Sashen:
I’m trying to remember who it was. It was some gestalt therapist whose line was, anxiety is just excitement without the breathing.
Beth Lewis:
Yeah, exactly. That’s true. That’s absolutely true.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Beth Lewis:
For sure. Yeah. Absolutely.
Steven Sashen:
So, first of all, thank you. This has been a total pleasure. Is there anything that you can think of, before we tell people how they can find you, anything that you would want to… Here, I’m going to do this. This is going to be really obnoxious and I don’t expect that you can do this. If you can, this will be really cool. It’s an-
Beth Lewis:
Oh, no. Now I’m very nervous and I love a challenge.
Steven Sashen:
Be nervous and breathe. So, I am told, I don’t know if it’s true, that somebody asked Freud as he was dying, not necessarily on his deathbed, but towards the end of his life. If you had to sum up everything you know in one sentence, what would it be?
And I’m told that the answer was secrets make you sick. Now, it may not be true that he said that, but it’s a really great thing to ponder. If you had to sum up what you’ve put together so far in your life into a sentence, can you do that?
Beth Lewis:
Ooh.
Steven Sashen:
That’s a good one.
Beth Lewis:
I always tell my students, that take my classes, I’m like, “Being able to dissociate your shoulder blades from your rib cage is the key to life.”
Steven Sashen:
You know, wait, hold on, I got to tell you something.
Beth Lewis:
Don’t expect any other thing from me, but that seems like a very easy feat.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, no.
Beth Lewis:
One of the hardest things, but if you can do that, everything down below is real chill.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. So, again, my right shoulder’s been out of whack since I was a gymnast. I had my rotator cuff and biceps tenodesis a few years ago. And my right shoulder blade is not as mobile to my left. And I literally say to people when I have any body-work or whatever, I go, “If you can get that moving, my fantasy is that you’ll just crack or pop or move something. And then my entire life will change.”
I’ve said this so many times to people. So, I’m all on board with that one. I think that nails it.
Beth Lewis:
Good. Oh, boy.
Steven Sashen:
This is how we’ll change the world is just-
Beth Lewis:
Exactly. One shoulder blade at a time.
Steven Sashen:
I think you’re onto it. So dude, again, this has been a real, real pleasure. If people want to find out more about what you’re up to, how can they do that?
Beth Lewis:
My Instagram is my entire life.
Steven Sashen:
I’m so sorry to hear that.
Beth Lewis:
It’s my work and my three small French bulldogs. My handle is Beth Lewis Fit.
Steven Sashen:
Well, B-E-T-H L-E-W-I-S F-I-T.
Beth Lewis:
F-I-T. Yep. And all my, I do teach six-week courses online. So, I do one six week course every eight weeks and they’re very themed. So, coming up, I’m doing a pull up course and an upper body reaching, like a hypertrophy course, and then also actually an agility cardio course.
Steven Sashen:
Ooh.
Beth Lewis:
I know. I’m pretty pumped for it actually.
Steven Sashen:
Having fun. Well, I hope people go and check that out. Once again, it’s been a total treat, so let me do the sign off part other than saying thank you, thank you, thank you.
Please go check out what Beth is up to. And again, I’ve mentioned it a couple times, go check out www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find previous episodes and all the different ways.
You can engage with this. If you have any questions or recommendations, people you think we should have a conversation with or something I should rant about, because I do those things too, drop me an email [email protected].
Again, as I said, this is all about you spreading the word about the value, and benefits, and fun of natural movement. So, do that. If you want to be part of the tribe, as I said, please subscribe. But most importantly, make it simple. Just go out, have fun and live life feet first.