Fascia Training for Midlife Mobility, Active Aging and Pain-Free Longevity with Anna Rahe
Show Snapshot:
Beauties – are you stiff, stressed out, experiencing twinges, or even acute pain? Time to show your fascia some TLC. Movement and bodywork pro Anna Rahe, founder of GST Body, walks us through an often-overlooked aspect of midlife mobility and overall health—our fascia network. Fascia is the connective tissue that forms the webbing of the body, holding all our organs, bones, muscles, and nerves in place. We get into the link between healthy fascia and active aging and longevity, learn tools to combat neck and back pain, and tighten your core without crunches. Plus, simple ways to incorporate fascia training into daily life—no expensive gym membership required!
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Quotable:
The freedom that fascia offers us as women who are aging is that beauty can look different. Vitality is totally accessible, and it's never too late. In fact, fascia is restoring faster than any other cellular tissue in your body.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty 0:03
Welcome to a certain age a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud beauties. You do not need me to tell you that modern life is busy and stressful and stressed as a number on the body impacting all of our systems, our mind, our muscles, our overall health. My guest today helps us radically rethink how we tackle stress in our body, and manage overall health and longevity. Please meet Anna Ray, the creator of je s t body which is a body management system designed to optimize the health of your fascia. The connective tissue system that runs through your body and surrounds every organ, muscle, fiber and nerve. Your health and your fascia are inextricably linked. Anna works with top athletes doctors and clients around the world through her online programs and in person and has been featured in various publications from shape to L Netta. portait to goop and the Wall Street Journal. She joins me today to share the link between healthy fascia and active Aging and Longevity. If you want new tools to better care for your body, or fresh ideas for combating the stress and tension that can take root in your body. Or if you're thinking what the heck is fascia. I have no idea what Katie is talking about. Stick around this show is for you. Welcome Anna.
Speaker 1 1:24
Thank you so much for having me. It's really fun to be here You did a very good job of capturing fascia in a very short amount of time.
Katie Fogarty 1:31
I'm so glad because I learned a little bit because I did hit the Google yesterday. I really wanted to explore this. I've seen articles about it. I've seen it on goop. I've read about it and well and good and I'm really excited to learn more about it. Learn how working with movement medicine and tools to fix and you know, care for our fascia can help us age vibrantly, and mitigate pain, which is something that I know. We have more of sometimes in midlife, but I would love to just start with some stage setting before we do our deep dive. How did you get into this line of work? And what made you launch GSD? Body?
Speaker 1 2:06
Oh, my gosh, great question. I'm going to try to take 25 years and put it into five minutes.
Katie Fogarty 2:12
You can have more than five minutes.
Speaker 1 2:14
Okay, thank you. I have a really interesting relationship to aging because I was 18. And I was living in a body that felt like I was at. And this really isn't an exaggeration had extreme, complicated, multi symptom body problems. And some of them were as simple as like I was super stiff, really rigid. I was a professional dancer, a certified Pilates person who was certified in multiple different styles of Pilates, I had studied yoga, but my body was just kind of rebelling and being angry with me. And so some of the symptoms would be like I would feel on certain days like I had gone and done the hardest workout of my life, the kind where you can't like lift your shirt off over your shoulders, or you have a hard time sitting down in the toilet, just super sore. And then other days I would have digestive issues that would just be really complicated. And I'd go to doctors and have them try to figure out if I had IBS, I'd have a colonoscopy, they'd be like, everything looks fine, we're not really sure why you're suffering like this. And there was kind of like more scary symptoms where it would affect my respiratory system. And I would like go out running through golden gate park one day and feel super athletic like a train marathon runner, and I was a good runner. But literally two to three days later, I'd go do the exact same run. And I felt like a 10 pack a day smoker. And I'm like, Why are my symptoms so volatile? And why does it feel like I'm kind of captured inside my body like I'm wearing a straight jacket. And on the inside are sharp and blunt, poking objects that are constantly kind of agitating me and hurting me. And I would notice that these flare ups would kind of accompany different things like with my training in my dance or working and doing certain things in Pilates. And so I just kind of started the age of 18 when I was understanding that it was so diverse that like all specialists do is kind of narrow their focus and like only focus on one thing and trying to get to a simple diagnosis. And I'm like wait, I got to start opening this aperture because no one's really talking about how they could be related. And so I really spent kind of the next I guess, 25 years 20 years. Diving really deep into fashion. I had had introductions a little bit to fascia in my Pilates training. I had also kind of been aware of fascia through like Rolfing and manual bodywork therapy techniques. Of course, you know, you go through Pilates and you can't not know what a foam roller is. And Feldenkrais was kind of like big in the early 90s or mid 90s When I was doing that until the Feldenkrais roller really came out. And so I just started studying a bunch of different disciplines from east to west, trying to throw anything I could learn At this, and I knew early on that it was fascia that I was working with because it wasn't muscles, and it wasn't bones, I could feel that something else was holding me back and restricting. And in my head, I was like, I wonder if this could be fascia. But at the time, there wasn't a lot of fascia, like research other than like Anatomy Trains, and a lot of the stuff I was experiencing was quite different than what I was studying out there. So I just don't know, like, talking about weird and fringy fashion, I went into it really deep and started finding these things that were very different. I would like do things that were completely opposite to what I've been taught and Pilates and yoga, and my fitness workouts and dance. They all shared like common principles that anytime I did them, I would have these deep flare ups that would last me for a couple days, two weeks. And then I would do go back to what I was practicing in my own, you know, kind of trying to release. And I would find reprieve. And so I started teaching this to my clients, I was teaching Pilates at the time and had a Pilates studio in San Francisco. And I started seeing incredible changes in all different levels of physiology. And I started kind of getting known for not just like fitness and workouts, but like complicated things like how do you get nerve pain to stop, you know, and someone would come to me. And their arms had been in nerve pain for a couple years. And they were facing a second surgery. And I would teach them like three simple things and their nerve pain would die down and they could cancel their surgery. And then I'd have people who had digestive issues or incontinence issues. And it was just kind of interesting, because I would just use movement. And I thought that I was kind of doing Pilates but doing it differently. And then I started really realizing, whoa, I am not doing anything like yoga or pilates. And that's how GSC kind of came out is that I was like I sat down one weekend with my sister. And I'm like, we have to kind of really she was working with me at the time. She was a Pilates teacher. And I said, Let's try to qualify and quantify what we're doing and what are actual physical techniques, what's technology here, and what's like, you know, different principles of movement, or different teaching pedagogy kinds of things. And we came out with this fact that there's like five different things that we do that are really specifically driven towards fascia, and the physiology, because fascia doesn't just respond to anything. It's very highly sophisticated in terms of what it wants to respond to, and how it's going to remodel. I also was really interested in changing my entire body. And it started with the pain. But then I was like, Well, if I can get rid of my IVs, could I change the length of my leg and the shape of my quad. And so I depth dipped into the aesthetic side to wow,
Katie Fogarty 7:33
I am so excited to explore this. This is like I'm amazed by what you what you discovered. I love the fact that you said you've really opened the aperture and took a wider lens at looking at your body beyond, you know the very narrow scope of what maybe a medical expert wants to work on. And we're going to talk about those five things that you do and how you sort of change your fascia, and explore some of the modalities that you do with patience. But let's let's just take a minute now. And I know I gave a very top line overview what fascia was when we when we started the show when I introduced you, but for our listeners as a starting point, you know what is fascia for somebody who's unfamiliar with the term and why is this connective tissue so integral to our health.
Speaker 1 8:19
I like to just make clarification that fascia is the easy term and the popular term and it's just referring to a type of body tissue. It's kind of as a generic term as saying, My shirt is made from cotton. And it is this fabric type material that does a lot of amazing things for your body. If you look at it just through a tissue lens, it connects all the body parts and body systems. It protects as a shock absorber and glides, and eases friction is also deeply involved in your autonomic nervous system and immune response. It organizes and keeps like track of your organs and muscles shapes and body system it synchronizes all of your electrochemical and mechanical functions. It irrigates with total cellular tissue organ hydration, it lubricates and reduces frictions on organ and protects that way on the deep physiology. But what makes it even more significant is when you take the look of fascia and apply it to the whole body system. And so fascia organizes into an entire body system like your digestive system that comes with organs. But these are not these are not like mast organs, like your heart or your kidney or your colon. They are layered organs that run kind of like sedimentary beautiful striation or striations in sedimentary stone, not stone like but to picture what it's like. It's kind of like if you took a bunch of paint and you start it together and you could see the different layers and faster runs in these different layers throughout your body. And the connective tissue system has a greater even greater function when you look at it through how energy is being organized by these processes. And so it's a communication system. It forms of fiber optic like way of communicating, and it has way more density of receptors than any other tissue in the human body. It's a sonic system that responds to vibrational frequencies. It's a transportation system is responsible for delivering of all your cell, your cellular nutrition, and your fluids and your lymph and your blood. It's a detoxification system for waste removal. And it's a motion system that initiates motion on all levels of your physiology. But the most significant when you take the whole thing together, you know, you look at the digestive system, and you're like, it's about digestion. The fascist like big arcing thing is this body smart grid, it is the energetic system in the body that exchanges the energy, like the smart grid on the planet. So for example, you have high voltage energy that you come in contact with every day. That's like weight load bearing from being in gravity, picking up your weights, picking up your kid carrying your groceries, that's high voltage, it's high stress into the tissues. And then you have low voltage energy, which is like produced from your cells from your heart beating next to your lungs, it's the reason that you can have energy output from your heart. And it doesn't interrupt with the energy I'll put up your lungs. And it's constantly modulating and kind of distributing this high energy frequency. And it's this fascinating thing, because when we move movement ends up becoming a metabolic process, where energy is the it's the elimination of energy from the system that fascia has metabolized in and through your body. And when you mess up your motion, and you restrict certain things, then the body or the fascia connective tissue system starts talking to you and being like, whoa, we have overload here, let's call it pain. This is overload over here. And my digestion system is not working, my microbiome is compromised. And so it's what's communicating to you the wellness or the state of wellness in your body. homeostasis,
Katie Fogarty 11:59
you describe this so beautifully. And by the way, you know, I love all the different analogies that you use when you first started talking about this are you talking about as an energy grid and in the striations of like a beautiful layer? Something kept popping up in my mind. I'm like, fascia sounds a lot like a mom, like, like the mom in the household, like, makes all the systems run, you know?
Unknown Speaker 12:20
Exactly.
Katie Fogarty 12:22
And I was like, I don't know if other people are thinking that but I'm like, fascist sounds really busy as
Speaker 1 12:27
fascist. It's so interesting as I actually use that analogy. I'm like, fascist kind of the conductor of a symphonic orchestra of motion where every organ is playing, but it doesn't have to play in synchronicity. It has to, you know, run smoothly and highly efficiently. And so yeah, it is the mother of all living things.
Katie Fogarty 12:46
I love love. It's such a great analogy, and we're heading into a quick break. But when we come back, I want to explore what happens when fascia, you know, when the conductor's not working, when things get stuck, we'll be back after this break. And we're back from the break, we talked about fascia being this, this conductor that keeps all of the instruments playing correctly and beautifully, to make the orchestra to make the body work. I know from being on your website, that there are specific areas, you know that we all say I just know this from being somebody who drove here, in a lot of traffic, you know, in a lot of stress during a challenging time in my life. I've got a lot going on right now. My mom's been having some health issues. I have a child home with some health issues. I've got client work, you know, I'm experiencing all that modern stress where things get stuck, you know, let's talk specifically about you know, how it affects things like head and neck tension, you know, how do we release stress and tension and make our fascia you know, more comfortable and use it to mitigate pain?
Speaker 1 13:52
Great, great question. Okay, so the first thing you have to know about this is that fascia responds, first and foremost to load. And the way we load our tissue comes in two forms, psychological loading, the chemical cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters, that creates stress response, that's a type of loading, I call it psychological loading. And it also responds to physical or mechanical loading, like working out, sitting all day or going hard and doing things physically. And so all of a sudden, faster relies on the ability to be efficient at offloading, load at metabolizing and distributing load. One of the things that I think is important to bring up here just for a quick second is that fashio is redefining our perspective of the human body and what it needs for health. Because fascia is 70% water and 30% fiber and that means that your body when it comes to how it relates to load, how it relates to movement, how it relates to stress. How it relates to gravity is more like a water balloon flying through the air than a stick And so when you start looking at this different functions are necessary in order to restore fascia to its optimal ability to offload excess load to be able to metabolize and get rid of the stress that we constantly put on our body. So, in this model, instead of seeing pain as something that you are, is because you're not strong enough, or you're not stable enough, like you go to physical therapy, and I learned some Pilates that if you have low back pain, it's because you don't have a tight enough core, you don't have strong enough abdominal muscles, if you have head and neck problems is because you need to pull your chin back and like pull your shoulders down your back. And it's like all of these locking structural make things more solid to protect, rather than maybe the answer is that we are so rigid, and we are so stuck, that we really need to add some water, add some fluid motion, add some lubrication, and pain will actually leave the body system because when you lock it up, you take away the essential ingredient. For fascia to be able to be healthy, which is motion, you must have motion on every level of physiology. And so that's the greatest source of the information of pain that fascia gives the body as that fascia has, like about 40% of your sensory nerve endings are free nerve endings, they mean that they're not allocated to like chemicals and sensing light and sensing heat and sensing, you've got all these sensors that are like programmed to read things. And in fascia that are the most densely populated sensors in the entire body, and they're constantly listening. And so when you have a sense of pain, it's the body it's not a good or bad. It's just information. And it's saying something here in the energy grid is high voltage, and it's fritzing out, and I need some help offloading this system, I need help clearing this, like load that is pushing in on me and creating pain. If you don't learn how to offload fascia, you can easily take these nerve endings and they become no see receptors, they actually will tell your body that it's a toxic load. And that's when it can become chronic. That's where chronic pain starts to be complicated with the nervous system, we won't go into that. But what I want to say is that if you don't deal with the initial communication of fascia telling you, hey, we've got high voltage overload here, and I need you to do some movement, either clear the psychology or clear the the physical load, I'm going to start having chronic, you know, messaging telling you I'm in pain. And so the way you have to do that is to start creating hydration in your tissues start creating flow. And that is usually directly in contrast to the way we actually engage with our bodies in our workouts. Yeah, absolutely activity.
Katie Fogarty 17:50
So when you say hydration, because I didn't read a little bit on your website. So are we talking and just I want to clarify for both myself and maybe a listener? Is this adding more water? Is a drinking more water? Or is it getting? Are the water that already exists in our body to move? Or is it a combination?
Speaker 1 18:06
That's a really great question. It's a combination, right? So think about all the ways that you engage with water on the planet, like you can drink water, but that's more kind of like a river flowing through. And it is really important, but it's very difficult for it's not the system that is used to get water deep into your cells, you need to start having like low, like low. It's not like voltage, I mean, come back. It's like this irrigation system where you have slow drip. That's what the word is trying to come up with slow drip water. So that comes from actually changing how you consume your hydration. And that's usually through eating your water rather than drinking your water. choosing foods that are high in water content, which when you have that additional fiber, it slows down. It's almost like when water is poured on to you know, smooth concrete, it creates a flood. But if it goes into gravel, it'll start to distribute and lead out and start to move into deeper and deeper cellular restoration. But the second thing about is not just the consumption for hydration, it's actually this mechanism of fascia that when you load into it, it's like pressing to it's kind of like a sponge that has water in it and you can push and it will soak in the water and expand and create the hydration as it moves through the system. So it's a hydraulic action that will take the existing water that you give your body and start to move it and distribute it to the places that it needs the most.
Katie Fogarty 19:35
Like my mad man it like how do I how do I move my neck so it doesn't feel so good? Comfortable?
Speaker 1 19:41
So cute. Okay, so here's a really quick easy tip. Yes, the reason you have neck pain is because of how you're holding your core and how you're placing your ribs. The very first thing that will ever free up your neck is to lift your ribs as much as you can as high as you can sticking your chest out. Lifting Your boobs lifting your chin and hanging constantly through, you know, bathroom stalls off your corner doors, you have to create more suspension in your upper hemisphere, you're all of our training and all of our lifestyles, take out every suspensory system in the body. And so your neck is literally being vise down. Because all of your structures are sedimentary, they're pulling on you, rather than lifting you.
Katie Fogarty 20:24
I am lifting my ribs right now and I'm so wishing I had like an overhead bar because I would love to hang that's such so that's such a great tip. And it makes so much sense that that sort of compression How do you go anyway you
Speaker 1 20:39
want to do is just a tip for the listeners is that women need to start looking around at their life as a jungle gym, we never have time to be able to like set us I don't I mean 30 minutes to work out if I didn't do GST would be really hard for me to find the time to like devote to this. And so the idea is like be like fascia and layer yourself into the day you should be doing micro movements and looking at the life and being like what are is my jungle gym, I'm waiting for my coffee, I can hang off the handicap ramp poles. Where is my I just parked my car, I'm going to use the meter to hang off and create some traction and open my ribs. When I'm at my desk and I'm rolling back to get the filing cabinet. I stretch and I create traction. And I just need to learn these things. Because then life becomes my jungle gym. And I'm constantly creating and boosting my metabolism faster is responsible for your base elemental metabolism. And so you can burn all you want like in calories and cardio, but it's not actually stoking the cellular fire, and that comes through fascia anyway. So if you layer it into your day, each moment, you're hydrating, opening, offloading stress. It's like this multiple truly integrative and holistic approach to being able to be healthy. And let's face it, we also don't want to do in our workouts what we did when we were 30. Right, I hear it all the time who wants to go and beat their body up? No, no, absolutely ever.
Katie Fogarty 22:00
I think that, you know, that's definitely a common refrain. And midlife too. I've had a lot of fitness experts on the show that come in and talk about like functional fitness versus like, I want to look great in a bathing suit, you know, we want our body to to work for the long haul. And when you said micro movements, I nodded my head. I mean, you had me at micro movements, because that this notion of micro is something we've explored on the show and many different ways we had a wonderful guest come on Cindy Spiegel, who wrote a book called micro joys. And it's about accessing small moments of joy throughout our day, in order to fuel a sense, a better sense of self and wellness and well being versus waiting to just be happy. You know, we can we can access joy at any time. And at any movement. Anytime even. We're deep in grief. We've had Dr. Christine CO, who wrote this wonderful book and who hosts the podcast, edit your life talked about the notion of micro goals, right? Sometimes we get in our own way. Because if you don't have time to do a big, sexy, audacious goal, we do nothing. But we can take micro steps towards where we want to be. So I love this notion that fascia can be addressed through micro movements throughout the day. You gave some other great examples for listener right now. I mean, I would I would say please everyone, you know, head to the GST body. I know Anna's gonna share a great offer at the end that she's making available to listeners. But there are wonderful examples, both on the website and on your Instagram have these sort of micro movements? So let's let's talk a little bit about what what a micro movements that you use in your day? And what you might recommend to a listener if there's like two or three? Or does it? Does it depend upon where somebody is struggling in their body? Or is there something that's just sort of universally good that people should be doing? Yeah,
Speaker 1 23:45
it's great question. I, after 25 years of trying to explain the most complex human body system, I think I've run, I've tried to crystallize it down. Everybody needs the same thing, on the very most holistic level. And if you look at fascia being a fluid rather than a solid, it works on hydraulics. And so there's three things that your body needs, repetitively throughout your day. And one is called, I want you to kind of picture actually, before you get it, because you'll understand this, the idea of Do you guys remember those Chinese finger toys where they're woven, little stockings? Yes, shorten. And so that's a very, very good illustration of how fashion works, and that the fibers of that toy would be gel. That's like a water gel. And so when you take the finger toy and you shorten it, it's called compression. And then when you pull your fingers against it, and you pull back, it's called traction. So you compress and it's like dunking a sweater in water and it loosens the fibers. And then when you pull in traction, it's like pulling the sweater out and all of the waters pulling down and washing the tension out of the fibers. And then the third step is rotation. And rotation is actually ringing out these additional stresses in the tissues. And so when you look at human and now Atomy biomechanics, there's every single movement is based on those three steps compression, traction and rotation. So, compression is doing like a primal squat. Okay, that's the most basic form. So find ways to get down on the floor with your kids find ways to hold on to your coffee table and get into that primal squat, there's a million different exercises. But if you get that idea and start integrating that into your life, the compression moves are bringing your body closer to the center and allowing the tissue when you compress, the tissues get to actually spread kind of like when you put your fist in a ball of dough, the compression actually increase the circumference and helps with the length. The second one is traction. So find your sink, your bar on the at the you know, ramp the monkey bars at the kids playground, and look around for places to hang your body. And there's a bunch of exercises. But if you understand what traction is, you're looking for ways to pull your body apart. And what's nice is that fascia reworks, the idea of strength for fascia strength is length muscles, we think that strength comes from contracting and shortening a muscle that for fascia strength comes from length. So tractioning is a stretch but also strengthens you. So look for places to hang off of car doors, you're just gonna like chain link fences on your walk, I mean a million different ways to be able to traction. And then the last one is one that's a little bit not harder to do, it's actually easier, but it's something we never do. And rotation is one of the most essential, it's arguably probably more important than the other two. But literally take your arms out to the side you see this, like if you watch, you know, Chinese people in the parks, they're constantly taking their arms and rotating and letting their arms hit their body. And what are the benefits of this is number one organ motility which is getting your organs to exfoliate and have better cellular turnover for health. But it's also important for spinal activity and tissue health to rotate your spine and rotate your body. So those are the three things that I would encourage you to do right away compression, dunk the sweater traction, pull the sweater and then rotate and wring it out and you'll feel a million times better.
Katie Fogarty 27:13
First of all this is I'm by the way I am doing this with my arms right now. So I don't know if anyone can hear me banging my arms while we're doing this, and I love that you shared such real world practical ways to do this. Like you know we've all walked by a fence or we all maybe have like a heavy door that you can hang a door jamb or whatever because you know I know from looking at your website and your Instagram like a lot of the stuff and you're doing it in the studio you have you know devices that allowed people to hang and stretch and and when I was literally looking at your Instagram last night said to my husband I want Anna to move in with me and do all these things because as I share it I'm experiencing a moment of extreme stress in my life I have too much going on that feels very stressful. And I can physically despite the fact that I'm showing up in my Bikram yoga studio, you know looking to release this which it does I'm still feeling this these levels of tension so I so appreciate I haven't been hanging on anything and you better believe I'm going to I'm like gonna go find a chain link fence when this is over and give that
Speaker 1 28:16
a try nice is when you work with fascia movement becomes an addiction, you actually entices you, it encourages you it's part of of a natural reflex, actually, you have a fascial reflex that feeds to the same part of the brain where you have thirst and your hunger is oriented. And so fascia is inspiring you to move and usually a lot of the movements we do, even if it's stretching, like I said, isn't targeting fascial release, there are specific requirements. And so you will start to notice as you traction and as you go about your life applying more fascial principles, all of a sudden you will crave it and it will inspire you to move rather than you having to like mind over matter. And that's where you really start to feel like all these benefits it feels like fascia work and GST feels like you've done a deep tissue massage rather than a workout and and then bought in the first like part of my career is really hard to convince people who were used to if it doesn't hurt, it's not working, or I want to be tight to the tone. And I had to change people's mind to be like actually you're way more effective in your workout if you're feeling like you're gonna hit D massage anyway so just do it just implement these little things and then your body will want more and you will find that you it'll be a great complement to what you're working on in your Bikram.
Katie Fogarty 29:27
I love that I'm definitely employing some of these techniques. I want to ask you to switch gears for a minute and ask you about something that I saw on your website where it says the GST can help you develop a strong core without crunches. And this caught my eye for a couple of reasons. I hate crunches. I was like tell me more Tell Me More Anna like I want to know about this. And I also know from recording this show and having other guests on and from talking to women in my life. You know and from talking to different people and like hearing the feedback from listeners. Women are often can concern when our midsection changes in midlife, and it happens for a variety of reasons, you know, there's hormonal reasons why your body is changing. You're, you know, if you're not doing a lot of like protein eating and muscle building, you're less efficient and burning fat. And this is not about again, losing weight. This is about you know, how can I know that the core is an important part of like keeping our whole muscular skeletal system up right and working well? How can how can we use GSP and fascia principles to work our midsections to develop the strong important core? You know, without crunches?
Speaker 1 30:35
Great, that's a great question. I'm gonna say two different things. One from the in. These are fascial lenses. But one of the major reasons that it doesn't matter about age that we actually have problems with our core, is because we lock it down. And we have been taught that we need to create a solid core, connect your ribs to your hips and tighten your only soft spot in the entire torso. We look at the body and we're like, oh, that must be a wrong design. It's soft. So let's make it hard. And that's the first problem is if you create something in your body that is inactive and inanimate, you're taking down the metabolic activity in that area. So if you go out and run a five mile track, you will burn fewer calories than if you run an eight mile track. Most of our core work works on a five mile track, we crunch and we crunch and we crunch what the spine and what the core, the new definition from the fascial perspective is that the core actually is not your abdominals, it runs the entire length of your central nervous system, from the base of your skull in your brain to the base of your tailbone. And your core is supposed to be the most animated and active dynamic part of the human body. It is what houses the central nervous system and all your vital organs. And so you have to change your perspective of core, we're not looking for solid, we're looking to make the body move and the spine move in the widest ranges of motion possible we want that torso to run a 10 mile track every time we're moving it. And so all of a sudden core work is not a setup. core work is side bending, rotating, spiraling hinging all these like there's eight spiral motor or spinal motions that have to be dynamically worked to be able to move. If you want a very simple way to start changing your core, lift your ribs and start stretching your diaphragm. Because stress also puts weight in the center of your body and shuts down your organs from being able to have highly effective metabolism. So that starts without even doing a single crunch and the world. Then once your colon is contracting synchronistically with your esophagus and food is moving efficiently and nutrients are being extracted. Then you can go in and start to shape and contour your core with really huge spinal movements. And that will keep your torso running on a 10 mile track. Do you know if you look at body types, you have long torsos and you have short torsos. Yeah, I call them axial advantages and appendicular advantages. You ever see a long torso woman with really flabby middle.
Katie Fogarty 33:18
Ever, probably not ever, almost every model
Speaker 1 33:21
that you ever see, has a nice long torso might have long limbs too. But the longer the torso the longer the muscles have to stretch. And the greater activity they have to and energy they have to produce shorter waisted women who have long limbs have beautiful limbs, their limbs are toned and long, but their torsos are short. And they really struggle to get a nice abdominal and core. They are taught to do crunches and they're shortening the distance between their muscles have to actually run and move. So there's a lot of different things that you can address first before you're like how many more core exercises am I going to do which locks me out which decreases my organ motility, which makes my muscles pull at shorter distances and overall locks up hormonal distribution of your hormone. So it's kind of this base fashion shows you that if you deal with fascia, you'll have less symptoms to monitor in the other things that you're trying to change in your body.
Katie Fogarty 34:16
This is so fascinating. And Anna, you're reminding me when you're talking about the core is sort of from your you're reminding me of when I had a pelvic floor therapist. Come on her name is Dr. Anne, Duke and she shared again about one of the most we were talking about pelvic floor health and sexual wellness and she said you know one of the key exercises you can do is deep breathing, you know and that you really need to think she too was saying to you like let's stop thinking of just your abdominal muscles. You have a pelvic canister and the Canis the canister has to work well to make all of your functions work it's for bowel health. It's for you know bladder incontinence, less painful sex. And you know you that if you're if you're toned well it's working better metabolically. But you know, the potential upside is, you know, having the fitting into your skinny jeans although that that is not the the goal. But
Speaker 1 35:13
I want it though don't I mean, we want both right? We want the bodies that feel good and also looked good. And I was after that. I mean, I don't think that that's a shame. I think that what we've been doing is that we do things to favor the aesthetics. And then we ended up in our, you know, midlife being like, oh my god now everything else was falling apart. What did I do wrong? Because I tried so hard. A lot of my people were like, I followed all of the right things. And I did everything that people was telling me and it's opposite to everything you're telling me to do opposite. And I'm like, I know, I'm really sorry. They're going away, and it'll fix really quickly if you just pay attention to
Katie Fogarty 35:46
exactly Oh, this is why we have these conversations because we learn a lot of things in midlife. And you know, the Brit, I wanted to have this conversation with you because I knew that you brought a new lens to this that not everyone's familiar with, and I myself have heard of, you know, fashio exercises. I think I first encountered the term when I was reading goop at one point, you know, I know what it is. I was actually fascinated in prepping for the show to learn I still thought more of it as connective tissue. I was fascinated to learn more about how it fascia has nerves and that it's it's regulating our nervous system as well. It's so it's so clear to me that we need to treat our health holistically. I've learned that a lot from from creating the shelf, I'm talking about menopause, talking about how, you know the loss of estrogen impacts every organ of your body. And you know, sometimes that people think menopause means you're just not getting your periods any longer. You know, I think getting to midlife teaches us that we need to approach things holistically in order to drive the results that allow us to thrive and feel good. We're heading into you know, the near the latter part of our show, we're going to move into a speed round in a few minutes. But I just want to give you the chance a little bit to talk about I know that you sort of work in three main practice areas movement medicine, which we talked about for pain, conscious conditioning, you know, being intentional, that caring for your fascia, but there's also something called Ophea aging, and I would love just sort of a top line of what the aging component is, and why in midlife, where most of my listeners are, is it really? Is it too late to do something? And, you know, what are the changes that we should be making to make sure that we're going to, you know, have active aging?
Speaker 1 37:31
Such a great question. Okay, so aging as our program, just as really encouraging, you know, the lifecycle is that you start at a certain place in what you think and then you end up in a totally different place. And that's the beauty of aging, right, is that we get wiser, and we get more refined and we get more cultivated in in curating our lives so that we do things that are better rather than more and the quality is better than quantity. And so we want to apply that to our body care. And so most people come in with some brokenness in their body and movement medicine is really kind of the answer to fixing those things and starting to heal. Unconscious conditioning is for the people who just want to have a fashion focused fitness that is not undermining their goals for longevity in their body. And then Elvia aging is like the sustainability. And fashion allows us to address very specifically all of these stages in life, because it's full body, and it's the foundational system of everything else. And so, obviously, in aging, you want to focus on, you know, all types of fluid production, right? Healthy lymph, detoxification, things slow down, our tissues naturally get rigid, we want to be able to focus on cognitive health, we want to create synovial fluid we want to, so we target a little bit more of the, like, smarter, not harder, instead of trying to peak and optimize performance. Healthy Aging is like I just want my body to run the long race, I just want to be able to be at and get down on the floor with my grandkids. And so it's kind of designed, it's not gentle, more or less gentle than anything else. It's really just this drive towards, can I do this and sustainably and if you apply the fascial principles, you still have the aesthetics, you still look your best at 50 and at 60. But then you start feeling your best at 50 and 60. And I constantly hear that is that people come back and they're like, I feel better than I did was when I was in my 30s working out five times a day or a week sorry, when there are those people but we don't suggest that so far. So anyway, I think that it's just kind of like the lifecycle of what your body's in and just really loving it where it is. And I call it body care not fitness because body care is first you start with the fact that you're a carbon life form and that you are your body and it's not separable and then you want and love and appreciate it and then you invest in it and it's not something that you go out and have to get done and the list of things to do. It's like, this is my sacred time. This is the way that I choose to embody my life. And because fascia allows you to take care of everything, like everything, then all of a sudden you're doing one thing that is so nutritious, that all these other things, you don't have to worry so much about what am I eating, like your body's metabolism is showing up. So have your wine and a cake too, and then go out and just feel good in your body. And so I think that that's kind of the freedom that fascia offers us as women who are aging is that beauty can look different. Vitality is totally accessible, and that it's never too late. In fact, fascia is restoring faster than any other cellular tissue in your body. So within three months, you can have significant I think something like 60% of your fascial tissue is new, is new. Wow. So within a like six to nine months, you are capable of remodeling your body. And that was maybe another one point that I would say is that because of my issues, and because of my injuries, and my just stuff I wanted to remodel, I didn't want to just roll out and feel good. And then I go to dance and my symptoms would come back and I was like I just can't, my body can't be something I manage another thing in life I manage, and I want to live freely inside of my body. And so that's what fascia the gears of GSC were like, sustainable and longevity and permanence inside of impermanence, right? So there's all these spiritual lessons too with fascia, but that's kind of you know, that's such a beautiful genius directed towards that's such
Katie Fogarty 41:36
a beautiful way of looking at it feeling comfortable inside my body. I think getting to midlife allows us to feel a lot more comfortable in our in our mind and our attentions, our goals, it's very clarifying. But there's this beautiful notion of feeling comfortable in your body and caring for it for the long haul is something that's just so intriguing. I've have so enjoyed this conversation. I'm gonna encourage all anyone who's listening to it to go check out GST body at the end, when we wrap will will direct you to where to go and we'll tell you about the offer the ANA has for you all which I know personally I will be taking advantage of because as I said, when I looked at her Instagram, I want Andy to move in with me and have her help me with all these exercises because they look amazing, but we'd love it. But we are moving into our speed round. This is just one to two word answers to bite, you know, quick question to kind of end on a high energy note. Are you ready? Let's do it. Okay, let's see. Creating GST body and launching it out into the world felt
Unknown Speaker 42:33
like an effort of joy.
Katie Fogarty 42:34
Nice. I start every morning with this GST body movement, traction. I end every day with this GST body movement, mindful compression. Ooh, what does that look like? What's mindful compression?
Speaker 1 42:50
It actually allows me to decompress the rest of the body. It's an exercise that we do in our movement meditations that I can show you
Katie Fogarty 42:56
some time. Okay, nice. All right. I understand that people are busy, but I wish women would prioritize this one key move for betta fascia health. Oh, traction traction, okay. Find a chain link fence ladies. That Jalen, think about adding this fascia friendly food or beverage to your diet. Hmm. Chia seeds, chia seeds, okay? Even fitness and wellness practitioners get stressed. What is something that helps you manage daily stress beyond GSD
Speaker 1 43:30
so great. What's funny is that it becomes a lifestyle and the same principles that I use to take care of my body are the exact principles that I use to de stress my mind. Exact
Katie Fogarty 43:42
Nice. Okay, finally your one word answer to complete the sentence as I age I feel more at home. Love it so beautiful. Anna, this has been such a fantastic conversation. I I am so intrigued by your work. I think it's so special. You explained it so well. I love all your analogies. This was absolutely a treat.
Speaker 1 44:05
Thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure and I really love being able to share just what fascia can do. It's life changing and so I want to be able to share that gift.
Katie Fogarty 44:16
Yeah, and you you you bring such enthusiasm to it and explain it so well. So before our listeners though, say you know before we say goodbye, how can our listeners find you learn more about GST body and your work and your offerings.
Speaker 1 44:29
Great, the landing ship, the mothership, I would go to an array.com It's a great place to land and then you can get to the online studio and the GST body. Shop body shop, but it's Anna Ann a rahe. It's pronounced Ray like ray of sunshine, but it's more sonically raw here. So that's again Anna a nn arahe.com And if you sign up for my newsletter I answer and communicate directly with people so I really like that connection that I can make and help people so email me but if you sign up for the newsletter you'll get 10% off of any kind of service or subscription to get you just started and trying out how fascia can help you.
Katie Fogarty 45:12
I love that. So if you sign up for his newsletter 10% off, this is going to help you run the long race and we are here for it. Thank you, Anna, thank
Unknown Speaker 45:19
you so much.
Katie Fogarty 45:20
This wraps a certain age a show for women who are aging without apology. Want more of a certain age, sign up for our newsletter age boldly over on our website a certain age pod.com or follow us on Instagram at a certain age pod. We share bonus content giveaways links and mid life resources come hang out. Special thanks to Michael Mann see me who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly beauties.