The Empowered Performance Podcast

In this episode I speak to Ansku Kangas, a Health, Mobility and Recovery coach specializing in helping people restore balance in their life and training after a burnout or traumatic life events. _______________ In this episode Ansku shares her personal journey as a coach and how her own burnout had a huge impact on her view of coaching over the past 3 years after many years in the industry. She discusses what it’s like to have an unhealthy relationship with exercise and how her high achieving mentality allowed her to ignore the warning signs. She shares the popular quote, “stronger than my excuses” which she reframed as “stronger than my feelings” to explain how she over-rid the signs. She talks about how oftentimes as women we stuff down our anger and that was something she did and how this eventually led to chronic pain and how important it is to really process through what is going on. She talks about how she feels about education and how there actually may need to be a limit to learning or looking for a system or course to at times so she could use her intuition rather than intellectualizing and furthering the overwhelm. She talks about the importance of the learning process and how important it is to take a break and allow for the application of the information. We discuss the age of information overload and what happens when you take course after course. I ask her for advice she would give to a trainer about how to make information more usable. She talks about how she approaches her training for clients and incorporates the physiology piece by making sure she really learns and understands them and how important it is to ask questions. I ask her about how she structures her on demand membership to support a broad range of people and give them quality information. If you are thinking about how to scale your business and provide a lower price point offer you may enjoy hearing this. We discuss using complex breathing drills, like those of PRI and how it can be hard to let go and not place certain outcomes on the drills and end up overthinking it. We discuss social media and click bait posts and how to navigate the space to find quality content that can help people truly learn about their bodies. You can learn more about Ansku by clicking the links below: Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@ansku.kangas/videos Website https://movabilitycoaching.teachable.com/p/home Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ansku.kangas/

Michael is a clinically-based athletic trainer with over 30 years of experience in rehabilitation and performance training.  He is the owner and clinician at “Integrative Rehab Training” which provides rehabilitation, training services, consulting and educational programming based out of Cumberland, Maine. He is on Clinical Adjunct Faculty at the University of New England, is a licensed Physical Therapy Assistant, and is a Certified Clinician through the Postural Restoration Institute®.  He has provided consultation, treatment and/or presentations to numerous professional athletes and teams, universities, professional associations, and other national and international organizations.  He is an internationally recognized speaker on topics related to sports medicine, rehabilitation, training and performance and has been published in numerous professional and informational capacities. In this episode, Michael shares his inside out view on the human system. He talks about how we develop in utero as 99% fluid and explains his view of the body as a hydro-bio-dynamic system. He uses the concept of flow to create an image to his clients about what he is trying to help them achieve. He explains his view of suction within the body using an analogy of stepping in mud. “If you take a step and you step in mud, and it’s dense mud and you stand in it for a period of time and you go to pull your foot out, it’s holding you hostage, really sucking you down. If you step in it and move quickly or it’s too fluid, then your body is just able to move out of it easily.” He explains how this works in the diaphragm and uses his body to animate this concept of turning around his internal structures. This is definitely one you may want to watch on YouTube. He explains how this model applies to strength training when we need to develop power and have more compression but we also need to decompress. He explains the role of the connective tissue / fascia and what happens when the tissues aren’t fluid. What does this look like from a more traditional view of movement and pathology and how can this change the resting position of our joints. He talks about how society pushes messages of stability and how he wants his clients to feel safe with instability. He wants them to be able to wobble, not brace for optimal recovery. He explains his viewpoint of asymmetry and gives a great overview of the internal dynamics of our organs and the turn or procession that happens, which creates a leftward spin and opening, and right side bias. He discusses the left and right side of the brain in controlling these dynamics. He gives one of the best analogies I’ve ever heard for understand movement from the inside out. He describes our bodies as a snow globe and how we need to get the stuff inside of us to shake up so it can settle and redistribute better vs. having all of the stuff settled to the bottom or towards one side for long periods, usually our right side. He explains why senses are so important to our nervous system and how our current society can make us less focused on the present because of the over stimulation or focus on past and present. He explains how our brain is impacted. I ask Mike as a movement professional, where should we start, autonomics or somato-sensory? He explains how coaching and therapy is an art and how he has zero expectations and what that means to him and his patients. He says, “When the student is ready, the master becomes clearer”. I ask Mike what his thoughts are on pursuing more education so that we have tools to handle some of these 21st century problems, like rises in dysautonomia and how he talks to clients with potential trauma in a way that creates dialogue. If you are a movement professional this is a must listen! We bring things full circle with a bit of a deep dive into the emotional side of us and then Mike talks about the power of breath work and finding presence in your everyday. Mike gives 2 great pieces of advice for how to start using and tapping into some of these concepts for movement professionals and for anyone wanting to move and feel better. Again, you might want to watch this live on you tube so you can see what he is demonstrating. You can check out more about Michael at his website: https://www.mjmatc.com/ His Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mjmatc/

David Bidler is an author, speaker, and social entrepreneur seeking to reshape education for the 21st century. As President of the nonprofit organization Physiology First David is organizing health and fitness leaders to lead a revolution in education for the next generation. By teaching our youth the science of health, fitness, and human potential we can put the power of mind and body at the foundation of the learning process. David and I start the show discussing something I heard him say, “what would it be like to learn about us before we learn about every other thing in the world.” The information he shares on how to provide a new perspective for kids is something everyone should hear. He discusses why it’s important to use 21st century language to create a revolution in education that is not reliant on institutions that have opted out of investing in the health of kids. If you are a parent, coach that works with kids, or anyone that wants to help reshape the future of health, our children are our future. He explains how physiology is not psychology and explains when you demystify states that have been stigmatized culturally, and you begin to define it you “take the teeth out of the monster”. He teaches kids how to experience different states using tools like exercise and different breath patterns, to experience the physiology of anxiety in a fun environment, created by the kids, to create a paradigm that doesn’t stigmatize physiology. “The future is learning how to turn the dials of our physiology.” David shares a study, “Kids distraction helps them out perform adults on data processing and acquisition.” He explains how adults are myopic but kids are still taking it all in and this allows them to feel and explore movement and physiology in a level of depth that takes far longer for adults. He explains dopamine levels and how social media impacts our levels and creates a draining process that leads to a neurophysiological depletion of critical neurotransmitters and what we can do to restore these levels and how we can teach this to kids. He talks about how important it is to ask kids, “what gets your heart on fire”, and how simply thinking about this can get the dopaminergic ball rolling. He talks about how important it is to plant these seeds in your own community and that anyone can learn how to do this. This is the foundation of their certification program. Learn more about the mission of Physiology First at physiologyfirst.org or follow them @physiologyfirst on IG Their Functional Physiology Certification program is held four times per year to prepare coaches and health professionals to build bridges to mental and physical wellbeing for the next generation. Next certification begins on September 10th:  https://physiologyfirst.org/functional-physiology-certification/ Physiology First Instagram Watch on YouTube Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional health advice. Anything shared here is strictly personal opinion of the host and guests.

Emily is an expert in the neurophysiology of trauma and has over 25 years of experience as yoga instructor, wilderness guide and EMT and River guide. She has worked with combat Veterans, athletes and anyone looking to enhance their stress tolerance, heal from trauma and learn skills to improve their lives. She created her own blend of neurophysiology and yoga nidra called Neuro Nidra. She is also my personal coach. Emily talks about about her “why” and her life circumstances that guided her to this place. 2 mantras she created from her experiences are “Don’t miss it” and “Just put me to work”. This was the beginning of her understanding she could create an internal place of peace so she could face life and help others do the same. She spent her childhood in the mountains, thanks to her mother, who supported a low pressure environment, which she says is not too late for anyone to create in their life. She began as a river guide in the summers and a wilderness EMT in the winters, and after 5 years she wanted to pursue more. She followed her love for yoga to work more around preventative healing. She early on discovered that breath was key to managing fear and pain. She explains acute stress vs. chronic stress exposure and what that means in the body and mind and how awareness is so important. She discusses stress and how it can be healthy or unhealthy based on how well you can respond to it. When being overstimulated by our modern attention economy, she explains, “we are incredibly mentally overstimulated while being physically disconnected, this means the physical system is not getting a chance to process the stress in a healthy way.” She discusses how you can create awareness without judgement. She talks about the zones of connection, which is the model they use at Shift. She is currently working on educational resources for therapists and counselors to help them integrate some of what she teaches into mainstream medicine. She talks about her work and learning from combat veterans. She explains her model of Read / Regulate / Reinforce. She very interestingly explains the ptsd response of veterans and the chronic stress response and how the talk therapy model is often not working for them ad can leave them frustrated. She gives a real life example of this, by relating it to being at the bottom of ski lift with a bunch of people and starting to overanalyze and increase in the stress response and gives a practical breath strategy that can help change this response. “It’s not just the same as saying, take a deep breath.” I discuss a bit about how I’ve integrated some of this understanding into my own teaching with my clients and my students so they can recognize when positional breathing drills and tuning into certain areas of the body, might be frustrating and not work with people. Working with these tools prior to these drills might allow for a better experience in their body so you give them a better connection with their body. Emily talks about the importance of not placing importance on “outcomes” but instead “creating more loving awareness and present time in the tissues.” She loves eastern philosophy; “when the student is ready, the teacher appears” vs. “I have something to give you, you need this, I’m going to fix you…” Links: Shift Health - https://shiftadapt.com/ Decoding the metabolic breath print of disease - https://shiftadapt.com/product/3-part-talk-decoding-the-metabolic-breathprint-of-disease-and-mind/ Shift Health Course - https://shiftadapt.com/shifthealth/ Instagram: Emily Hightower: https://www.instagram.com/intrinsic_way/ Shift Health: https://www.instagram.com/shift_adapt/  

Welcome to THE EMPOWERED PERFORMANCE PODCAST! I am so incredibly excited to have you here. I have been wanting to create this podcast for almost a year now but I wanted to be in a head space were I could listen to what my body was telling me and connect deeply with other professionals who have a passion for movement that goes beyond the traditional approach. The goal with this podcast is to HELP YOU CREATE A LOVE OF MOVEMENT FOR YOURSELF, AND IF YOU ARE A COACH, HELP YOU CREATE A LOVE OF MOVEMENT FOR SOMEONE ELSE, by connecting and learning from professionals who use movement to ENHANCE THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE. In todays episode, I pick up from where I left off a year after my son's accident, when I recorded a single solo episode. You can listen to that episode here. I dive into how I navigated the waters of PTSD and hormonal dysregulation to come out on the other side with a more rich and fulfilling experience in my life. I talk about the 1 on 1 coaching and tools I have used that have made the biggest impact. I dive into the reality of depression and long term treatment with SSRI's, starting at the age of 16 and how I am navigating coming off of medications for the first time in 30 years. I talk about my thyroid numbers and medications, as well as the nervous system regulation tools that have helped the most. I discuss the importance of listening to what your body is telling you and creating boundaries that are healthy for YOU. At the end I give you some insight into my WHY, which is something I will ask of all of my guests. "What is your movement why?" I hope you enjoy this episode. Resources: Emily Hightower Instagram Shift Group Shift Resources The Myth of Normal The Body Keeps the Score Neuro Nidra Webinar Free Yoga Nidra  Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional health advice. Anything shared here is strictly personal opinion of the host and guests.      

I recorded this episode one year after my son's accident. Warning, it is a lot to listen to from an emotional perspective, especially if you are a parent or anyone who has experienced significant trauma regarding your children. If you are interested in the context for my newest project, The Empowered Performance Podcast, and specifically Episode 1 then you may find this episode helpful. Show Notes: There is no video for this one. I just wanted to be able to speak as raw as possible. I talk very frankly about how Quincy's accident affected my life. I am no longer the same person. I literally feel like my brain and my body split for a long time and through the help of amazing people I was able to find my way back to a new me with a brain and body that could coexist. I talk about the accident, which is pretty graphic, so if you can't listen to that part, fast forward about half way and then you can hear about the recovery aspect from a mental state. Around 44 minutes I get into how this has truly impacted my relationship with myself and my family and my entire life. Song: Holly Humberstone - Falling Asleep at the Wheel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILPo-HdvfHA Emily Hightower - https://shiftadapt.com/about-us/emily-hightower/