Episode 90
Erica Ziel:
The Surprising Benefits of Gentle Movement and Breathwork for People with Autoimmune Issues
In this enlightening interview featuring Erica Ziel, health and movement specialist, we delve into the transformative power of gentle movement and breathwork.
Erica shares her journey from knee pain to wellness, the importance of fascia, and how you can alleviate pain, enhance mobility, and boost overall health.
Dive into the surprising benefits of breathwork for those with autoimmune issues.
First Aired on: Jun 5, 2023
Episode 90
Erica Ziel:
The Surprising Benefits of Gentle Movement and Breathwork for People with Autoimmune Issues
In this enlightening interview featuring Erica Ziel, health and movement specialist, we delve into the transformative power of gentle movement and breathwork.
Erica shares her journey from knee pain to wellness, the importance of fascia, and how you can alleviate pain, enhance mobility, and boost overall health.
Dive into the surprising benefits of breathwork for those with autoimmune issues.
First Aired on: Jun 5, 2023
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Erica Ziel, a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, board-certified holistic health coach, personal trainer, Pilates instructor, and postnatal exercise specialist.
Our conversation centered around the significant role movement and breathwork play in achieving overall health and wellbeing.
Erica's journey began when she experienced excruciating knee pain, which led her to study exercise science. She discovered the importance of fascia, a connective tissue that wraps around muscles, organs, and nerves, and how strengthening muscles could lead to a reduction in aches and pains. Also, a personal experience with mold toxicity led her to become an FCM practitioner.
We discussed the importance of proper nourishment and hydration, mineral balance, and sleep for reducing bodily pain.
Tight fascia can cause pain and discomfort, and creating space between bones through proper posture and movement is crucial. Structural issues seen in MRI scans don't necessarily lead to chronic pain, and understanding how to breathe correctly can also improve mobility.
Overall, understanding the power of movement and breathwork can lead to a healthier, pain-free life.
If you'd like to hear more, be sure to check out the full transcript below.
Our conversation centered around the significant role movement and breathwork play in achieving overall health and wellbeing.
Erica's journey began when she experienced excruciating knee pain, which led her to study exercise science. She discovered the importance of fascia, a connective tissue that wraps around muscles, organs, and nerves, and how strengthening muscles could lead to a reduction in aches and pains. Also, a personal experience with mold toxicity led her to become an FCM practitioner.
We discussed the importance of proper nourishment and hydration, mineral balance, and sleep for reducing bodily pain.
Tight fascia can cause pain and discomfort, and creating space between bones through proper posture and movement is crucial. Structural issues seen in MRI scans don't necessarily lead to chronic pain, and understanding how to breathe correctly can also improve mobility.
- Effective breathing unlocks stuck areas, improves posture, and helps alleviate pain.
- Gentle movements, such as using a soft ball to release tension, can significantly improve mobility.
- Consistency is key, even if it's just 10-15 minutes daily, and incorporating breathwork can reduce inflammation and pain.
- Emotions can get stuck in fascia, manifesting into physical pain, and practicing movement and therapy can help let go of these emotions.
Overall, understanding the power of movement and breathwork can lead to a healthier, pain-free life.
If you'd like to hear more, be sure to check out the full transcript below.
Other Resources:
Connect with Erica Ziel
Episode Transcript
Julie Michelson: [Page//00:00:00] Welcome back to the Inspired Living with Autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Michaelson, and today we're joined by Erica Ziel, functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, board certified holistic health coach, personal trainer, Pilates instructor, and postnatal exercise specialist.
Erica is on a mission to help women live a healthier, active life, pain free and heal their bodies through movement and breath work. [Page//00:01:00] In today's conversation, we explore how movement should be nourishing your body not punishing. And if you experience pain, it may not be coming from where you think.
Our fascia is our body's superpower and we can change the way it functions at any age.
Erica, welcome to the podcast.
Erica Ziel: Well, thank you Julie, so much for having me.
Julie Michelson: I am thrilled that you're here and I know an awful lot about you. But I don't know how you got to be doing what you're doing. I have a, a funny feeling, it may be connected to being a mom of three, but I don't know as a fellow mom of three.
Erica Ziel: Yeah,
Julie Michelson: Share with us. How did you get so deep into this functional medicine space and, and the body?
Erica Ziel: Yeah, so I really feel like it's just been my whole life. it actually goes back to starting at the age of five. I started having excruciating knee pain, just that [Page//00:02:00] inflammatory achy pain. I just remember. So many nights, going to bed all curled up because being in that balled up position helped me feel a little bit better.
And I just remember taking way too much Motrin. And of course my mom, you know, took me to the doctor's and they kept saying, no, it's growing pains. It's growing pains. Well, finally, by the time I was 17, um, my mom was finally like, okay, this is not growing pains. She stopped growing three years ago, so we actually went up to the Mayo Clinic, which is only like three hours from here, and met with a specialist and he says to us, he's like, well, she needs to strengthen her legs.
And Julie, that was like, Like the very first like big light bulb moment. I was like, wait, I've been in all this pain for all these years, and you're the first person to tell me that. And so that was the piece that catapulted me into movement itself. I started lifting weights. I just started doing Olympic lifting, like learning how to do it correctly, not just doing it for weight.
Actually form and why [Page//00:03:00] form mattered and working on strengthening my body. And so that's what gave me the bug to study exercise science, in college. So that's, so I went that route, really started to see on my own body, but also working with others, the power that movement has to really help to heal our body.
So then fast forward, I ended up studying Pilates. I was really into pre and postnatal training. I know that sometimes sounds crazy. Some people don't really fully understand what's that have to do with the body and fascia. Well, it actually taught me so much, going through three pregnancies myself, um, a mom of three, but also working with so many, so many different women.
And through all of that, I started looking outside the box, right? To learn, not just inside the fitness realm, because I was starting to see a lot of dysfunction happening and what I was teaching wasn't causing dysfunction. I was preventing a lot of aches and pains. We were healing bodies left and right, and it was amazing.
And I started learning more about the pelvic floor and this thing called fascia. Which I didn't learn anything about in college, right? I had to take these [Page//00:04:00] intense classes, for exercise science, and I, we didn't learn about fascia, right? It's all about muscles and bones and all of that. So that's like the movement side of it.
And then the piece that took me even deeper into my health journey in becoming an FCM practitioner was 2018. I dealt with mold toxicity and oh my gosh, it just like about derailed my entire life. But it was the piece that I just knew, I was like, this is the piece that's gonna catapult me to be healthier than ever.
And, I don't wish it upon anybody, but my husband and I even say today, like, we would go back and do it again because of just everything. It did, it brought us closer. It, it ultimately led me to learning more about the body to a deeper level. And so, yeah, I love helping people heal their bodies and movement is such a key piece.
Julie Michelson: Well, it is such a key piece and I, I feel like mold toxicity will just bring [Page//00:05:00] you to your knees.
And it appears so different in everybody, right? It just, it'll take, it's so opportunistic. Um, people say like, you know, what are the symptoms? I'm like, well name a symptom. It
Erica Ziel: Right. Exactly.
Julie Michelson: mold toxicity.
So that's amazing. I, I want to talk about, and I really wanna start at square one. What is fascia right here? You studied exercise science, and like you said, it was all muscle and bone. And muscle and bone. Tell us what fascia is, because then I wanna dig deeper and dive
Erica Ziel: Yeah,
Julie Michelson: yeah.
Erica Ziel: of course. So, I like to explain fascia and we look at definitions of it is really, it's what connects everything in the body together. It is, you know, it is our connective tissue. It is what makes up our ligaments. It wraps around all of our muscles. It wraps around every single muscle spindle. It wraps around all of our nerves.[Page//00:06:00]
And if you were to say, take off one of the outer layers of fascia, of the, of the body, it would be the entire outline from our head to our fingertips. All the way to our toes. And so when we can understand that fascia really connects everything together, it wraps around our organs. We also have, and this is always fun for women, I think, to visualize and understand that pelvic floor conversation, right?
It's not just about muscles, it's about the fascia, but also above the pelvic floor musculature in our body, we have fascial layers, and so we get so fixated on the muscles and strengthening the muscles, and it's like, yeah, that's important to a point.
But when we actually start to look at the body from a fascial perspective, it will make you more muscularly strong. If we just focus on the muscles, yeah, you're getting, you're gonna strengthen your fascia to some degree, but we're thinking individual, individual pieces.
And I feel like this, like when we think of the body as fascia, we're thinking of it in many different depths and modalities and in, in a complete thought versus, [Page//00:07:00] and even in health, I feel like it's the same way. It's like, you know, in functional health we look at all the pieces. And in standard medicine it's like we piecemeal it together. And it's kind of that same analogy. It's kind of how I look at fascia.
So it's. Pretty incredible. And the couple things about fascia is that we can change the way fascia functions in our body no matter what your age is. This is really where it's, it's such a superpower to that every one of you has, you just have to understand how to unlock it and we can create more fascia again, no matter your age.
I, of course, as we get older, that cellular rejuvenation can slow down, but it doesn't. Stop. And so I always like people like, oh well this hurts or That hurts cuz I'm getting older. Like yeah, that's just kind of an excuse because it doesn't have to.
Julie Michelson: absolutely. I always, when people say, oh no, I feel fine, you know, and then they list the, well, I, I should be tired in the morning. I should have aches. I should, I'm like, no, no, no.
Erica Ziel: Yeah. [Page//00:08:00] No you shouldn't. You don't have to.
Julie Michelson: So, and, and so this ability to regenerate and, and strengthen throughout our life, is that why you consider it a superpower?
Erica Ziel: Yeah, absolutely. Because when we start to tap into how to move our body better, how to breathe better how to hydrate our body well mineral, balance, all of those things, and sleep well, right? And nourish our body well. When we understand and put all those pieces together, we can help get the body out of pain.
And when it comes to movement, one of the biggest things is understanding that we can create more space. In our body, and that's where pain for so many people comes from is they start to lose space between their bones. Like I'll try to break it down and keep it like super simple when we understand that. so much pain is because we lose space between our bones. And how many people have been told, oh, you've got a bad back. And they think it's structural, they think it's bone related. Now, I will also say there are [Page//00:09:00] always outliers, but this is, I mean, I've worked with thousands of people today and it, I don't see structural issues hardly ever.
It is the, the structure kind of gets. The blame, but it's really the fascia that's holding the structure in place because if we think about it, all of our bones are held together by what? Fascia at the end of the day, they're all held together by fascia. And so as think about if, you know, our tissue gets dehydrated, as we sit more we, we get, we lose that space or we're rounded, we're on our computers, on our phones, we get that kyphotic roundedness that we see so many people start to get more of as they get older.
And I will tell you, it's starting so much. I see it in high school, especially high school girls that get tall really fast. So when we lose that space, well, if we're always like that a lot, then what happens is our fascist forms the way that we move. So if we're sitting a lot and we're around it a lot, the fascia is gonna get tighter in that position.
But if we start to pay more attention to how we're moving, how we're holding [Page//00:10:00] our body, You know, it's not gonna happen overnight, but in time we can remold that fascia and remind it like, oh, it needs to be stronger in a lengthened position so that we have more space between those vertebrae of our spine, for example, right?
When we are talking about back pain. Same with the hips, right? So many problems, so much pain really stems from the hips and the pelvis and. We don't always understand, especially if you haven't, you don't have any anatomy background that your pelvis is all bony structure held together by fascia at the end of the day.
So this is where I want to get help, get people excited to realize we can work at improving the balance of your pelvis, the balance of your spine and your core function by understanding how things all work together and. It's amazing time and time again. I love using the SI joint pain cuz that's so common that for example, like say you have SI joint pain on your left side and you go to the chiropractor and you're getting adjustments and you're doing this and [Page//00:11:00] doing that.
Maybe we're even getting cortisone injections, things like that. But what if that pain isn't actually because of the left side? What if it's actually because you're, it's getting your left side's getting cranked on by the right side. And we've been looking at this all wrong because so many times I see this all the time where we feel the pain is not the root cause of the pain.
Yes, you have pain there. I'm not negating that there is a pain in that left SI joint, for example. But it really could be that the right side of your pelvis, maybe the you're around your hip. That ball and socket joint, maybe you're really restricted around there on the inside of that hip bone or the pelvic floor on that right side.
And it's, it's just causing an imbalance. Maybe that whole right side of your pelvis has shifted forward. And because it's all body structure held together by fascia and not a one of us. Has perfect alignment. And it's not about having perfect alignment, but it's about being able to move your body pain free.
That's where I always wanna get people. So we have to [Page//00:12:00] start looking at movement differently, looking at our body differently so that we can understand how to approach it and how we many times need to change the way that we're moving our body, change the way that we're breathing, change our fitness routines things like that.
Julie Michelson: Oh my goodness. So many things I wanna dig into. I wanna touch on for. First because it, it caught my attention when you said it the first time. And, and I feel like what you said just totally reinforces, especially when you're talking about back pain. You know, you, if you take a hundred people and you do an an M r, I.
You're going to see a lot of structural issues. Many of those are gonna be in people that are pain free. And so so often I see this all the time and I get it. We, you know, when we're in pain, we want an answer and we want relief. But it, it's so frustrating to me when, you know, I have clients who are experiencing, whether it's an injury or you know, a, a chronic condition, back pain.
[Page//00:13:00] And then they panic cuz they're like, well, and I have this, and I have that. And you know, they, they have this like doom and gloom, they're gonna be in pain forever because their MRI showed structural. Issues. And it's like, but that's not necessarily where your pain's coming from, just because you can, and I, I understand, you know, that's kind of the same, you know, diagnosis, prescription mentality of like, Ooh, we see something out of place.
Let's inject that. That must be where the pain's coming from. So I love that you said it and, and I actually just recently went through I'm not even totally on the other side yet, and an SI issue, which is so not my norm. And that's exactly what it is, was the compensation problem. You know I know, I know for me the pain was on the right side, but the issues on the left and, and so.
No, I, I have firsthand knowledge of, and the, and the body is, I mean, it's, it's just [Page//00:14:00] brilliant. It's phenomenal. You mention breath
Erica Ziel: Yeah.
Julie Michelson: and so I want to dig a little bit into, because I've heard you talk about this and I, I love, I love this topic. How can in improving our breath, improve our mobility?
Erica Ziel: Oh my goodness. We could talk for hours. Just about breath. So the short of it, Julie, is that, well, we know breath in general can calm our nervous system. And if we are living in fight or flights, which a lot of us are, a majority of our days. Our fascia responds to that and tends to tighten up and be tense.
We tend to breathe more shallow. We tend to. Maybe again, con like condense our body, be rounded forward more so we're not really getting good breaths and things like that. So when we learn to breathe better, and here's how we should be working on our breathing, is we should be breathing slowly through our nose, down into our body, [Page//00:15:00] out into our, the sides of our ribs, and into our back.
Most people are told, oh, belly breathing, belly breathing, and I have nothing against belly breathing by any means. Please continue belly breathing, but. To breathe better, more effectively for your body. We actually want to breathe and to get our diaphragm to activate, you need to breathe into your ribs. So you think about breathing out to the sides of your ribs and into your back.
And when people start doing this, they'll usually say, Eric, I have no idea how to do that. I'm like, well, that's okay. We have to, we have to be aware of it. Yeah, we have to be aware of it first or we'll never. We'll never be able to get there. Something that can really help just for everyone listening to start to breathe into the back is lay on your stomach and practice visualizing that breath going all the way down to your sacrum all the way down into your pelvis even.
And again, people will say, well, Erica, my lungs don't go all the way down to my pelvis. I know they don't, but that magical thing called fashion in your body. It's all connected. So when we learn to breathe deeper, we will [Page//00:16:00] get a relaxation response down to our low back and in our pelvis. And I've seen time and a time again, people just doing that breath practice releases so much tension in their low back and their sacrum.
So, The SI joint pain, like breathing into your back. But as we learn to breathe out to the ribs and into our back, we're gonna activate our diaphragm so much better. And so many people are really locked up in their diaphragm and inside their body. And you know, even the best cranial, sacral therapists you know, people that do body work, it can still be really hard to get that deep inside fascia.
We have a lot of stagnation of fascia in our body. We can have fascia adhesions in our body and specifically, It can happen for a couple reasons. I find it common in women who've had multiple babies or even maybe even just one, because with pregnancy, think about it. I know for maybe women listening that are like, yeah, Erica, like my kids are like 30 years old or 20 years old, or whatever it is, and you think it doesn't apply to you.
It does so much of this stuff. Like I kind of said before, like I learned so much about the body by [Page//00:17:00] understanding what happens with pregnancy and postpartum recovery. And with pregnancy, we go back to that and we think, oh, our organs get shoved up into our ribcage and our diaphragm and they get shoved down into our pelvis.
And if we've never done any work to work on that fascia of underneath our ribs and our diaphragm and our hips hip bones. You can get fascial adhesions there, especially if you have multiple babies and it's happened time and time and time again, and those fascial adhesions can be causing your pain.
And so especially when we're talking ribcage area, pelvic floor function, all of that, we can't get optimal deep core pelvic floor function without optimal breath. It's just not possible. So all the pelvic floor work that women do, if you're not learning how to breathe effectively, We, you're missing likely a big part of that pelvic floor deep core.
And when I say deep core, I'm talking from the pelvic floor, which is the base of your pelvis, right? All the way up through your abdomen, inside all the organs, [Page//00:18:00] your diaphragm, your ribcage, your intercostal muscles, which are the muscles that go in between your ribcage, even your mid back, all of that.
Encapsulates your core, and so many times we think our core is just our abs. So when we are able to breathe more effectively, we can start to unlock stuff that has been stuck inside of our body for so long, and I find so many times. Women are really locked down in their rib cage. Right? We're, again, it's that kind of forward motion and there's different, there's so many different postures, but these are all point out.
The more common ones that I see is when we're forward and down a lot, the front of those ribs would be really locked and we might be working so hard to extend our spine, extend our spine from our back. But we're not locked from our back. We're locked from the inside of our ribs and our diaphragm, so we could do all the back extension work we want.
Or maybe when you do back extensions, they hurt your back. You're like, I can't even do them because they, they hurt me. Okay, well, one, don't do movements that hurt because we need to change the way we're doing them. But we also need to start looking [Page//00:19:00] at what's happening on the opposite side of the body.
And the ribs get so they just don't get enough attention. And breathing is the best way to start to unlock. Stuck stuff in our ribs, in our diaphragms. So breathing matters. And I teach a lot of really soft movement. Like I have a, a ball that's like, I dunno, it's like what a nine inch ball. I think it's, it's really soft.
And so as my career has gone on, I work more with more and more people. I've taught more and more gentle release work ball, rolling work. And it's so funny cuz. My clients and students will say, they're like, Eric, I feel like I'm not doing anything. But when they're done, they're like, oh my gosh, I can breathe deeper.
I have a little bit more movement and mobility. I'm like, yes, because you were nice to your body and fascia likes gentle. So I will, we will just, I will continue to agree to disagree with people that like that say that that really intense deep. Tissue work works. I'm [Page//00:20:00] not saying it doesn't work. There's probably a time and a place for it.
My experience has been that less can be more gentle, can be better, and when we do something like a soft, gentle ball that has a lot of give to it, Like, I even have clients who start, they'll roll their ribs you know, on the wall. And we're doing a couple things. We're stimulating the brain to retrain the brain how to breathe better.
But it also gives them a tactile feeling of like, oh, I wanna breathe into the ribs. So they feel that ball rolling on the ribs, and then their brain starts to see, oh, that's where my breath is supposed to go. And so you're getting that very gentle feedback. And I always will tell clients, start on one side.
Do it on one side first, and then.
Julie Michelson: the
Erica Ziel: Step away, see what it feels like, and then you'll be like, oh wow, I'm really stuck on my other side. Then you go balance it out. And so we, we've gotta get away from this thought that everything has to be like, go hard or go home. You have to be working in the sweat. I have to feel the pain that, you know.
Again, there's the time and a place for a hard workout, but if we're dealing with health issues, [Page//00:21:00] we've got pain in the body cuz we've got massive inflammation. We really need to be working on these tools and techniques to get into our fascial system, to work on our breathing things that are gentle and really nourishing our body.
I'm really a big. Big, like scream this from the mountaintops about when we're doing movements, it should be nourishing for our body and we should never be using that as a form to beat our body up, to burn the calories, to lose the weight, things like that, because that just leads us into more fight or flight and restriction.
And we look at our movements and we focus on. Breathing forward, like how are we breathing when we're moving? I, I initiate every single move. I teach my clients with a cue of how they're breathing, and in the beginning you're probably all backwards and that's okay. We all have to start all sorts of doing things wrong and backwards to eventually get there because it's not just training your body.
There's a lot of brain training involved with starting to really incorporate. Breath with our movements and being gentle with our movements [Page//00:22:00] and articulating through our spine and doing all these different things that are so many times so foreign to us when it comes to movement and exercise.
Julie Michelson: Amazing. And so if somebody's just starting, so someone's listening and they're like, oh, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna start by lying on my stomach and I'm gonna be in, you know, take intentional breaths. Is there a, a magic num, you know, how often, how long, you know, what, what do you, where do you start people so that they can really start to move the needle.
Erica Ziel: So, I mean, if we can do it daily, that's ideal. A really good time to practice it honestly, is at night when you get into bed because then our body we're calming down. Right? We're, we're, we're. We're moving into that time of like our body should be calming down. So it's a really good time to practice that back breathing.
When you get into bed, just roll over onto your stomach. Just, I mean, I don't have a magic number as to how many [Page//00:23:00] to do, but maybe you find, maybe you find it takes you 10 breaths and then you start to feel something open. But as you do it more, you'll start to get it on breath five and then breath two, and then before you know it, Breath one opens it up.
It is it is really a, you know, where are you at with your body? And so it's very, very individual, but I can't stress enough the importance of consistency. Starting to take little things and apply them to your movement on a daily basis. Even as simple as start to bring more awareness to your posture.
That is huge because we can do all the right movement practice, and if our postures we're not working on our posture during our day, paying attention to how we're sitting, then our breath is gonna be more shallow, which then means we're gonna be likely more in fight or flights, and then that the movement practice you're doing is not gonna be as effective.
So everything I teach, I'm always, always reiterating to my clients is that, What you're learning from me, I don't want you just doing it. When you're doing your movement [Page//00:24:00] practice, you need to take those concepts and apply 'em to your daily life. How you're sitting, how you're moving. If you're carrying children groceries, walking up the stairs, like it's all of it.
It's, it's It's a new way we have to start looking at it really in a new way. And it's almost going into it thinking like, okay, everything I've ever learned about movement and fitness, I'm just gonna like, kind of wipe the board clean and we're gonna start over. And I'm telling people that all the time when they enter my world because they're like, wait, Erica, so much of what you teach is like the opposite of what I've been doing my whole life.
And I'm like, yes, but. That opposite of what I teach is why people are in pain. So we have to remember if we want different results, we have to change the way that we're doing things.
Julie Michelson: Amen. it's the same, you know, it's with movement, it's with nutrition, it all the, it's the, it's what would you and I, these are the conversations we have all day long.
Erica Ziel: exactly. Yes.
Julie Michelson: Oh no. You know, fat is bad. No, it's not.[Page//00:25:00] So I, I'm thinking about, you know, I started this podcast because it was so impactful to me in the beginning of my healing journey when I would listen to podcasts and I would either get inspired, get information, or, you know, learn. And I'd try this and try that.
And so I am like channeling myself 10, 15 years ago listening to this conversation and I think the thought that would've been going through my head is, well, this is really interesting, but I have rheumatoid arthritis, which is, you know, affecting my joints. And so she sounds smart, but the fascia thing isn't, isn't gonna help my pain go.
Erica Ziel: Okay, so actually the, the way that I teach Maria, I talked about breath and gentle and how less can be more, that is actually the best for people in pain [Page//00:26:00] and inflammation because we're working on. When we're simulating fascia, we know that we're actually, we actually have energy electrical currents that run through fascia, which is quite fascinating to think about that.
We're doing gentle movement with breath work and I know with people with autoimmune issues, we can tend to overdo it really easily. And then you get really sore for days and then you like, oh, I can't move my body. I've been there. I know what that feels like. So, This is why actually doing doing less learning the techniques that I teach.
It's, it's so gentle. It's like the most gentle way of moving, but yet it gets amazing results for clients. And honestly, I will tell people 10 to 10, 15 minutes a day, sometimes that's all you need. And sometimes that's maybe all you can do. And I'll tell you that 10 to 15 minutes of gentle movement is going, can be moving you forward to help strengthen your mu, your fasa and your muscles help to create more space.
Help to give you a little [Page//00:27:00] boost of your energy. And this is why a lot of times I teach. A lot of the movement videos I teach are 10 to 15 minutes because one, everyone's busy. But then, especially if you are dealing with health stuff too, sometimes that 30 minutes or more seems like, oh, I just can't do that.
But you know what? 10 to 15 minutes, I hear all the, they're like, I can do 10 to 15 minutes. I'm like, I know you can. And then they go do that 10 to 15 minutes, and then they're like, okay, I feel so much better now. I'm so glad I did that. Now I wanna do a little bit more and. You know, I teach such a variety of, of different movements, so, you know, maybe in the beginning it's more ball work.
It's like you're spending your time improving your breath and doing really, really little things that don't, sometimes you may not even think they, how could this be doing anything for me? But it makes you feel a little bit better. And when you do that on a consistent basis, before you know it, it's that.
Part of that missing piece that's, that you need and it's doing the movement in the right way. It's when you ask that question. Cause I actually just today read a, a [Page//00:28:00] testimonial from one of our students in my core rehab program, and she was basically saying how much pain she'd been in and she was like, you know, she had to shift her perspective on her workouts and she was like, I'm so glad I'm doing your program, because it was the.
Like absolute best thing for me because it's gentle, but I'm feeling such a difference in my body and we've been so brainwashed by the fitness industry that we have to go hard or go home. And like I said, there, there may be a time and a place for hard workouts. You know, I'll do a hard one here and there, but I also know like, You know, I also have to be careful not overdoing it as well.
And so I'm doing my movement stuff all the time because it's what makes me feel good and keeps my bones from getting out of place and prevents pain. So
Julie Michelson: And I, as you know, was being de playing devil's advocate because I, I want, it's part of that changing the conversation and, and shifting perspective. And I always joke, [Page//00:29:00] you know, people think that when. You know, I'm working with a client as a health coach, you know, I'm getting them to exercise more. No, for the most part, my autoimmune clients especially, they're totally overdoing it.
They're doing it all wrong and, and driving their inflammation. And I, I will say for listeners, literally, if you just do the breath work, You will. It's, it's not just even if, and I, I chose, you know, RA intentionally because people get so stuck on, well, it's joint pain and so, you know, maybe the fascia conversation doesn't apply to me.
Even just the breath work will reduce your inflammation, reduce your pain, get you out of flight or flight, you know, it's fight or flight. It, it is amazing. And I just love that you are j just. You know, having this conversation of really changing our perspective, we need to be on the same team as our body.
[Page//00:30:00] And you know, we, I, I know that especially when people are living with chronic pain, whether it's from autoimmunity or not we do tend to kind of, Try to separate ourselves from our body and, you know, we, we get frustrated and no, we need to realize like, you, you can be being kind and gentle is how you're going to make the progress.
So I love that message. Like, really it should be in all caps.
Erica Ziel: Exactly, yes. It changes. It changes so much when you are working with your body and being kind and you, it's, it's so, and again, it comes back. It's the brain piece, right? We've been ingrained, so we just have to keep reminding that voice inside of our head that's saying, oh, well, you're not doing enough.
This isn't doing anything. When the reality is no, it's exactly what your body needs, and it is going to make you more progress because when you overdo it, that just sets you back. So much farther, and then you can work out for a couple [Page//00:31:00] days when if you do less and you're kind to your body and gentle, you can slowly keep moving, moving forward and mobility is huge and I am sure you talk about this with clients.
It's like if we start to lose our mobility, it also decreases our health. And we sometimes don't think about that so much. We don't talk. I talk about it all the time. I sometimes have a younger audience, but because I see pain start so early, like it is amazing in my audience it's mostly 30 to 45 year olds and I, and they're in pain.
Right. To think about that is almost mind boggling,
Julie Michelson: I'm not in pain now, but I was in my thirties and forties, so I, I get it.
Erica Ziel: It's, it's you know, it's, it's mind boggling. And obviously my story goes way back. I was in pain from a very, very young age and you know, so we just, we have to just keep sharing this message that, no, we can move our body. We need to move our body, but we need to change the way we are doing it.
Julie Michelson: I [Page//00:32:00] love that. I love it. I. I'm gonna kind of ride you under the bus. You, me? So you mentioned stuck fascia, you used the example of pregnancy. And I love that you said, you know, cuz my kids are in their twenties, they're all in their twenties. And I, I'm guessing because you were saying it's never too late, that even if we've got stuck Pasha from pregnancy, you know, even in my fifties, I can, I can do the work and unstick it.
Erica Ziel: Absolutely. Absolutely. We have a lot, I have so many moms in their thirties and forties that end up doing my core rehab program and they're like, my mom needs to do this. And so then she gets her mom into it and doing it and yeah, it's, it's amazing. It's just I always get, get so excited when I hear like, how women's lives are changing at any age, you know?
So it really never is, is too late to start to make. These adjustments with your body and how you're moving and how you're [Page//00:33:00] breathing, and you know, really at the end of the day, what I teach is not mainstream. That's why people don't know about it, right.
Julie Michelson: Right. No, it's, it's, but it is, it's so effective and, and accurate which is why we're having this, this conversation. What about, I have heard, and, and maybe again, if people haven't had fascia conversations, they may be like, huh, what? What do you think about emotions getting stuck in fascia
Erica Ziel: Oh yes, that's a real thing. For sure, especially for women around the pelvic region and pelvis area, and, you know, I'm not like a trauma specialist or anything, but they'll, a lot of times things will kind of be talked about as trauma, big teeth, little tease it, it doesn't matter what it is. I don't even care if you know what it is or not.
I'm a big believer that if you're feeling these emotions coming up, then that's, to me, that's a sign that you're, [Page//00:34:00] you need to start to let go of it. Whether, how we express it in a very, Safe, healthy way. Whether that's crying, whether that's go punching a pillow, whatever it is. But we do hold so much and I will always tell my ladies when they start, cuz we start, so much of what I teach starts with the pelvis.
Even if you're having neck pain, I'm gonna start you with pelvic work cuz we just have to start there. And I will tell them, remind them, hey, like it's very normal that you may start to feel like you just wanna cry and you're doing pelvic tilts and you have no idea why. Or you may know why, but we, it doesn't matter.
It's all about you recognizing, listening to your body, tuning into what your body needs, and it's time for you to cry that out and move on because that's also part of why maybe there's some pain, physical pain can be. Manifested with emotional stuff and maybe there's more work that needs to be done, therapeutics stuff, things like that.
But honestly, like I have seen. Wonders done with movement and starting to get deeper into the body, moving that fascia moving, [Page//00:35:00] that stuck energy, stuck emotions. It's quite amazing. And, and because again, I do work with so many, you know, moms there will be conversations and all of a sudden I'll. Kind of have that conversation, like I just said in one of my group calls, and a mom will be like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I was holding onto so much from say, the birth of her last child.
She's like, even though it went fine, it didn't go as planned, and I held that against myself. Like it could be as simple as that. Like it, it doesn't have to be anything bad. And I think so many times we think, well, it has to be something really bad. And it's like, no, it's all about how your body per.
Receives it and if your nervous system perceives it and you were hard on yourself, maybe you had some postpartum stuff going on, and again, this could have been 20 years ago. It doesn't matter if you're still hanging onto it, it's time to let go of it so you can move on and move forward. Enjoy your life, go be active and and pain free.
That's my biggest message for women.
Julie Michelson: I love, and I love that you said that because I, I do think so often[Page//00:36:00] We, we don't need to know what it is, and we may not know, you know, what it was from, I believe that so much of that stuck emotion is from those of us that sh shove it down. Shove it down, and so I love that you highlighted like, no, when you feel stuff come up, if you need to cry, cry.
If you need to scream or punch, scream or punch, you know, Because I do think often that's hell got stuck to begin with, right? Either it
Erica Ziel: I agree.
Julie Michelson: or it wasn't safe to express or whatever the myriad of of reasons. And, and so that is, that is how you can just then let go, just move on. And I have had those experiences of, you know, people doing fascial work on me and I just.
I'm crying and it's like, is it from the pain? No,
Erica Ziel: M No.
Julie Michelson: No. It's like, ooh. I don't know what that was, but I'm glad to let go of it.
Erica Ziel: Yeah, it's, it's really incredible. The body is so incredible and [Page//00:37:00] so many times we overwrite it with our mind and we need to actually get and step into our body. And when we start to let our body guide us and not let lead it all from our, our mind, the ego, logical brain it can just open. I feel like it opens up such a world for, for people, and I hear all the time from.
For my clients that, you know, in the beginning they're trying to like force the connections, force the breath of trying to force what I'm queuing her and what I'm asking her to have her body do. And it's foreign to her. Right? And so the more you try to force your body to feel the things, the slower the progress is actually gonna be.
There's, I like the word surrender. I think when we actually. Can almost like surrender to our body and be like, you know what? I'm here to learn about my body. Things that I have never learned before. This may feel uncomfortable. This may feel foreign. I may feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. Like you feel like a fish out of water.
Right? But [Page//00:38:00] we have to get, we have to be there. To get to the other side so many times, and when we actually do that and we move a little bit slower, we take our time working through the program or whatever you're doing, then it's amazing how all of a sudden there'll be days where you're like, I felt something new today.
Like something woke up inside my body, or oh my gosh, I can breathe a little bit deeper today because we're not. Forcing it when we're trying to force the results. And I feel like this is true for anything with health, right? And sometimes, sometimes it's like it's trying to knock at the door and we're like not listening.
Instead we're trying to force our way through the healing journey and we have to almost have this place of surrender, whether it's with movement or other things. And I definitely felt that when I went through mold for sure. There was definitely a big surrendering thing I feel like I had to do to be like, Hey, What am I supposed to do now?
What? What am I supposed to learn? What, what, whatever. And it's so true with this type of movement. And when you do that, I hear all the time from my, [Page//00:39:00] my students will be like, Erica, I finally truly listened to you the third time through. And you know what? Oh my goodness. Like her whole, she's like, my whole world has changed.
She's like, but the first time through, I just wanted to get the results. And I did get results. But then, you know, and so I try to speed it up for people. Be like, don't wait till the third time you go through. Like do it right away. Start at the beginning of being more open. But it's so foreign to us because we live in this.
Go, go, go get the results yesterday. And that's not what our bodies were designed to do. And I'm the first person to say, yeah, I'd love to have results yesterday. But I also know, because of the work I do, the stuff I've been through, I'm like, It's, we're in on the journey. It's, you just have to almost think of it as a journey.
And you know, in some aspects there is no destination. It is the journey we are on and it continues to, to evolve. And I'll even say too, like there'll be an exercise. That I do today, that I've been doing for 20 years, and I'm like, I feel it so much different today than I did even [Page//00:40:00] three years ago, and I've been doing this forever.
And it's just this, we, we have got so ingrained of like, okay, we're here. We wanna do this program, we wanna get these results, and then we're done. And it's like, no, no, no, there's no getting done.
Julie Michelson: There's no done
Erica Ziel: no done. It's just, it's a
Julie Michelson: you're done. But we're not rushing that,
Erica Ziel: right. We're not, And you're continuing to learn and evolve and better your health and your body and your mobility.
And when you start to look at it that way, like I just, I feel like it becomes a little bit easier because then we're not in this rush and this forcefulness, we're again that surrender of letting it be and be like, okay, this might take me longer than I want. Everything always takes you longer than it wants, right?
Let's face, that's everything in life. Like it just
Julie Michelson: All the important stuff. Yeah.
Erica Ziel: But in a sense, you'll get there faster because you're learning more along the way.
Julie Michelson: So amazing. Sage, Sage advice. I, and I always say, and it is, I know I, I'm sure when you're talking to your clients in the beginning too, you know it, it's [Page//00:41:00] such a paradigm shift to you say surrender. I say allow, Same, same concept. You know, because we are also purpose driven and, and then in the beginning people are like, how am I s you know, how am I supposed to allow?
What does that mean? So I love allow surrender, just stop pushing,
Erica Ziel: Yes, exactly. Stop forcing.
Julie Michelson: So I, I always love in my own head to guess the answer to this question before I ask it. I, I certainly have plenty to choose from, but what is one step that listeners can take starting today to improve their health?
Erica Ziel: So because we're talking about fascia and movement, I will leave everybody with, do not forget the cube to lengthen through your body. So if you're sitting right now, if you're standing, just think about, just like this gentle lift and lengthen all the way through your body to the top of [Page//00:42:00] your head. So it's very gentle.
It's not like, oh, I'm standing soldier straight and stiff, cuz that's not good either. But if we could just start to think about just being lighter and gentler and lengthen through our body, you're going to start to wake up your deep core more. We're gonna start to activate our fascial system better.
We're going to be able to start to breathe more effectively. And again, it's not gonna happen overnight, but we have to start to bring awareness to it. And you can do that all the time. You don't have to be working out to do it. You can be doing it, sitting, standing, walking, doesn't matter. So I. I love leaving people with that.
That cute to think about. So stand tall all the time. Sit tall, you know, lengthen upward.
Julie Michelson: Love it. See, and that's not what I thought you were gonna say, so Yay. Amazing. For people that listen on the go like I do and aren't gonna check the show notes, where's the best place for people to find you?
Erica Ziel: Well, Julie, first up, thank you so much. [Page//00:43:00] And for everyone listening, you can find everything over on my website. It's erica zeal.com. My last name is spelled Z i E L and everything's on there. And of course I always encourage, you know, reach out if you have questions. If you're like, I'm not sure if what you do would be good for me or not, you can always, always reach out to me.
It's fun to have chats on Instagram cuz I get to voice message people back.
Julie Michelson: Love it. Love it, and take advantage people. She's such an amazing resource, and what you're doing is so important. You are leading the shift in the conversation. And it is past time that we learn how to move properly.
Erica Ziel: Thank you so much, Julie.
Julie Michelson: Erica, thank you. You have shared amazing gold with us today. For everyone listening, remember, you can get the transcripts and show notes by Visiting InspiredLiving.Show.
I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.[Page//00:44:00]
Erica is on a mission to help women live a healthier, active life, pain free and heal their bodies through movement and breath work. [Page//00:01:00] In today's conversation, we explore how movement should be nourishing your body not punishing. And if you experience pain, it may not be coming from where you think.
Our fascia is our body's superpower and we can change the way it functions at any age.
Erica, welcome to the podcast.
Erica Ziel: Well, thank you Julie, so much for having me.
Julie Michelson: I am thrilled that you're here and I know an awful lot about you. But I don't know how you got to be doing what you're doing. I have a, a funny feeling, it may be connected to being a mom of three, but I don't know as a fellow mom of three.
Erica Ziel: Yeah,
Julie Michelson: Share with us. How did you get so deep into this functional medicine space and, and the body?
Erica Ziel: Yeah, so I really feel like it's just been my whole life. it actually goes back to starting at the age of five. I started having excruciating knee pain, just that [Page//00:02:00] inflammatory achy pain. I just remember. So many nights, going to bed all curled up because being in that balled up position helped me feel a little bit better.
And I just remember taking way too much Motrin. And of course my mom, you know, took me to the doctor's and they kept saying, no, it's growing pains. It's growing pains. Well, finally, by the time I was 17, um, my mom was finally like, okay, this is not growing pains. She stopped growing three years ago, so we actually went up to the Mayo Clinic, which is only like three hours from here, and met with a specialist and he says to us, he's like, well, she needs to strengthen her legs.
And Julie, that was like, Like the very first like big light bulb moment. I was like, wait, I've been in all this pain for all these years, and you're the first person to tell me that. And so that was the piece that catapulted me into movement itself. I started lifting weights. I just started doing Olympic lifting, like learning how to do it correctly, not just doing it for weight.
Actually form and why [Page//00:03:00] form mattered and working on strengthening my body. And so that's what gave me the bug to study exercise science, in college. So that's, so I went that route, really started to see on my own body, but also working with others, the power that movement has to really help to heal our body.
So then fast forward, I ended up studying Pilates. I was really into pre and postnatal training. I know that sometimes sounds crazy. Some people don't really fully understand what's that have to do with the body and fascia. Well, it actually taught me so much, going through three pregnancies myself, um, a mom of three, but also working with so many, so many different women.
And through all of that, I started looking outside the box, right? To learn, not just inside the fitness realm, because I was starting to see a lot of dysfunction happening and what I was teaching wasn't causing dysfunction. I was preventing a lot of aches and pains. We were healing bodies left and right, and it was amazing.
And I started learning more about the pelvic floor and this thing called fascia. Which I didn't learn anything about in college, right? I had to take these [Page//00:04:00] intense classes, for exercise science, and I, we didn't learn about fascia, right? It's all about muscles and bones and all of that. So that's like the movement side of it.
And then the piece that took me even deeper into my health journey in becoming an FCM practitioner was 2018. I dealt with mold toxicity and oh my gosh, it just like about derailed my entire life. But it was the piece that I just knew, I was like, this is the piece that's gonna catapult me to be healthier than ever.
And, I don't wish it upon anybody, but my husband and I even say today, like, we would go back and do it again because of just everything. It did, it brought us closer. It, it ultimately led me to learning more about the body to a deeper level. And so, yeah, I love helping people heal their bodies and movement is such a key piece.
Julie Michelson: Well, it is such a key piece and I, I feel like mold toxicity will just bring [Page//00:05:00] you to your knees.
And it appears so different in everybody, right? It just, it'll take, it's so opportunistic. Um, people say like, you know, what are the symptoms? I'm like, well name a symptom. It
Erica Ziel: Right. Exactly.
Julie Michelson: mold toxicity.
So that's amazing. I, I want to talk about, and I really wanna start at square one. What is fascia right here? You studied exercise science, and like you said, it was all muscle and bone. And muscle and bone. Tell us what fascia is, because then I wanna dig deeper and dive
Erica Ziel: Yeah,
Julie Michelson: yeah.
Erica Ziel: of course. So, I like to explain fascia and we look at definitions of it is really, it's what connects everything in the body together. It is, you know, it is our connective tissue. It is what makes up our ligaments. It wraps around all of our muscles. It wraps around every single muscle spindle. It wraps around all of our nerves.[Page//00:06:00]
And if you were to say, take off one of the outer layers of fascia, of the, of the body, it would be the entire outline from our head to our fingertips. All the way to our toes. And so when we can understand that fascia really connects everything together, it wraps around our organs. We also have, and this is always fun for women, I think, to visualize and understand that pelvic floor conversation, right?
It's not just about muscles, it's about the fascia, but also above the pelvic floor musculature in our body, we have fascial layers, and so we get so fixated on the muscles and strengthening the muscles, and it's like, yeah, that's important to a point.
But when we actually start to look at the body from a fascial perspective, it will make you more muscularly strong. If we just focus on the muscles, yeah, you're getting, you're gonna strengthen your fascia to some degree, but we're thinking individual, individual pieces.
And I feel like this, like when we think of the body as fascia, we're thinking of it in many different depths and modalities and in, in a complete thought versus, [Page//00:07:00] and even in health, I feel like it's the same way. It's like, you know, in functional health we look at all the pieces. And in standard medicine it's like we piecemeal it together. And it's kind of that same analogy. It's kind of how I look at fascia.
So it's. Pretty incredible. And the couple things about fascia is that we can change the way fascia functions in our body no matter what your age is. This is really where it's, it's such a superpower to that every one of you has, you just have to understand how to unlock it and we can create more fascia again, no matter your age.
I, of course, as we get older, that cellular rejuvenation can slow down, but it doesn't. Stop. And so I always like people like, oh well this hurts or That hurts cuz I'm getting older. Like yeah, that's just kind of an excuse because it doesn't have to.
Julie Michelson: absolutely. I always, when people say, oh no, I feel fine, you know, and then they list the, well, I, I should be tired in the morning. I should have aches. I should, I'm like, no, no, no.
Erica Ziel: Yeah. [Page//00:08:00] No you shouldn't. You don't have to.
Julie Michelson: So, and, and so this ability to regenerate and, and strengthen throughout our life, is that why you consider it a superpower?
Erica Ziel: Yeah, absolutely. Because when we start to tap into how to move our body better, how to breathe better how to hydrate our body well mineral, balance, all of those things, and sleep well, right? And nourish our body well. When we understand and put all those pieces together, we can help get the body out of pain.
And when it comes to movement, one of the biggest things is understanding that we can create more space. In our body, and that's where pain for so many people comes from is they start to lose space between their bones. Like I'll try to break it down and keep it like super simple when we understand that. so much pain is because we lose space between our bones. And how many people have been told, oh, you've got a bad back. And they think it's structural, they think it's bone related. Now, I will also say there are [Page//00:09:00] always outliers, but this is, I mean, I've worked with thousands of people today and it, I don't see structural issues hardly ever.
It is the, the structure kind of gets. The blame, but it's really the fascia that's holding the structure in place because if we think about it, all of our bones are held together by what? Fascia at the end of the day, they're all held together by fascia. And so as think about if, you know, our tissue gets dehydrated, as we sit more we, we get, we lose that space or we're rounded, we're on our computers, on our phones, we get that kyphotic roundedness that we see so many people start to get more of as they get older.
And I will tell you, it's starting so much. I see it in high school, especially high school girls that get tall really fast. So when we lose that space, well, if we're always like that a lot, then what happens is our fascist forms the way that we move. So if we're sitting a lot and we're around it a lot, the fascia is gonna get tighter in that position.
But if we start to pay more attention to how we're moving, how we're holding [Page//00:10:00] our body, You know, it's not gonna happen overnight, but in time we can remold that fascia and remind it like, oh, it needs to be stronger in a lengthened position so that we have more space between those vertebrae of our spine, for example, right?
When we are talking about back pain. Same with the hips, right? So many problems, so much pain really stems from the hips and the pelvis and. We don't always understand, especially if you haven't, you don't have any anatomy background that your pelvis is all bony structure held together by fascia at the end of the day.
So this is where I want to get help, get people excited to realize we can work at improving the balance of your pelvis, the balance of your spine and your core function by understanding how things all work together and. It's amazing time and time again. I love using the SI joint pain cuz that's so common that for example, like say you have SI joint pain on your left side and you go to the chiropractor and you're getting adjustments and you're doing this and [Page//00:11:00] doing that.
Maybe we're even getting cortisone injections, things like that. But what if that pain isn't actually because of the left side? What if it's actually because you're, it's getting your left side's getting cranked on by the right side. And we've been looking at this all wrong because so many times I see this all the time where we feel the pain is not the root cause of the pain.
Yes, you have pain there. I'm not negating that there is a pain in that left SI joint, for example. But it really could be that the right side of your pelvis, maybe the you're around your hip. That ball and socket joint, maybe you're really restricted around there on the inside of that hip bone or the pelvic floor on that right side.
And it's, it's just causing an imbalance. Maybe that whole right side of your pelvis has shifted forward. And because it's all body structure held together by fascia and not a one of us. Has perfect alignment. And it's not about having perfect alignment, but it's about being able to move your body pain free.
That's where I always wanna get people. So we have to [Page//00:12:00] start looking at movement differently, looking at our body differently so that we can understand how to approach it and how we many times need to change the way that we're moving our body, change the way that we're breathing, change our fitness routines things like that.
Julie Michelson: Oh my goodness. So many things I wanna dig into. I wanna touch on for. First because it, it caught my attention when you said it the first time. And, and I feel like what you said just totally reinforces, especially when you're talking about back pain. You know, you, if you take a hundred people and you do an an M r, I.
You're going to see a lot of structural issues. Many of those are gonna be in people that are pain free. And so so often I see this all the time and I get it. We, you know, when we're in pain, we want an answer and we want relief. But it, it's so frustrating to me when, you know, I have clients who are experiencing, whether it's an injury or you know, a, a chronic condition, back pain.
[Page//00:13:00] And then they panic cuz they're like, well, and I have this, and I have that. And you know, they, they have this like doom and gloom, they're gonna be in pain forever because their MRI showed structural. Issues. And it's like, but that's not necessarily where your pain's coming from, just because you can, and I, I understand, you know, that's kind of the same, you know, diagnosis, prescription mentality of like, Ooh, we see something out of place.
Let's inject that. That must be where the pain's coming from. So I love that you said it and, and I actually just recently went through I'm not even totally on the other side yet, and an SI issue, which is so not my norm. And that's exactly what it is, was the compensation problem. You know I know, I know for me the pain was on the right side, but the issues on the left and, and so.
No, I, I have firsthand knowledge of, and the, and the body is, I mean, it's, it's just [Page//00:14:00] brilliant. It's phenomenal. You mention breath
Erica Ziel: Yeah.
Julie Michelson: and so I want to dig a little bit into, because I've heard you talk about this and I, I love, I love this topic. How can in improving our breath, improve our mobility?
Erica Ziel: Oh my goodness. We could talk for hours. Just about breath. So the short of it, Julie, is that, well, we know breath in general can calm our nervous system. And if we are living in fight or flights, which a lot of us are, a majority of our days. Our fascia responds to that and tends to tighten up and be tense.
We tend to breathe more shallow. We tend to. Maybe again, con like condense our body, be rounded forward more so we're not really getting good breaths and things like that. So when we learn to breathe better, and here's how we should be working on our breathing, is we should be breathing slowly through our nose, down into our body, [Page//00:15:00] out into our, the sides of our ribs, and into our back.
Most people are told, oh, belly breathing, belly breathing, and I have nothing against belly breathing by any means. Please continue belly breathing, but. To breathe better, more effectively for your body. We actually want to breathe and to get our diaphragm to activate, you need to breathe into your ribs. So you think about breathing out to the sides of your ribs and into your back.
And when people start doing this, they'll usually say, Eric, I have no idea how to do that. I'm like, well, that's okay. We have to, we have to be aware of it. Yeah, we have to be aware of it first or we'll never. We'll never be able to get there. Something that can really help just for everyone listening to start to breathe into the back is lay on your stomach and practice visualizing that breath going all the way down to your sacrum all the way down into your pelvis even.
And again, people will say, well, Erica, my lungs don't go all the way down to my pelvis. I know they don't, but that magical thing called fashion in your body. It's all connected. So when we learn to breathe deeper, we will [Page//00:16:00] get a relaxation response down to our low back and in our pelvis. And I've seen time and a time again, people just doing that breath practice releases so much tension in their low back and their sacrum.
So, The SI joint pain, like breathing into your back. But as we learn to breathe out to the ribs and into our back, we're gonna activate our diaphragm so much better. And so many people are really locked up in their diaphragm and inside their body. And you know, even the best cranial, sacral therapists you know, people that do body work, it can still be really hard to get that deep inside fascia.
We have a lot of stagnation of fascia in our body. We can have fascia adhesions in our body and specifically, It can happen for a couple reasons. I find it common in women who've had multiple babies or even maybe even just one, because with pregnancy, think about it. I know for maybe women listening that are like, yeah, Erica, like my kids are like 30 years old or 20 years old, or whatever it is, and you think it doesn't apply to you.
It does so much of this stuff. Like I kind of said before, like I learned so much about the body by [Page//00:17:00] understanding what happens with pregnancy and postpartum recovery. And with pregnancy, we go back to that and we think, oh, our organs get shoved up into our ribcage and our diaphragm and they get shoved down into our pelvis.
And if we've never done any work to work on that fascia of underneath our ribs and our diaphragm and our hips hip bones. You can get fascial adhesions there, especially if you have multiple babies and it's happened time and time and time again, and those fascial adhesions can be causing your pain.
And so especially when we're talking ribcage area, pelvic floor function, all of that, we can't get optimal deep core pelvic floor function without optimal breath. It's just not possible. So all the pelvic floor work that women do, if you're not learning how to breathe effectively, We, you're missing likely a big part of that pelvic floor deep core.
And when I say deep core, I'm talking from the pelvic floor, which is the base of your pelvis, right? All the way up through your abdomen, inside all the organs, [Page//00:18:00] your diaphragm, your ribcage, your intercostal muscles, which are the muscles that go in between your ribcage, even your mid back, all of that.
Encapsulates your core, and so many times we think our core is just our abs. So when we are able to breathe more effectively, we can start to unlock stuff that has been stuck inside of our body for so long, and I find so many times. Women are really locked down in their rib cage. Right? We're, again, it's that kind of forward motion and there's different, there's so many different postures, but these are all point out.
The more common ones that I see is when we're forward and down a lot, the front of those ribs would be really locked and we might be working so hard to extend our spine, extend our spine from our back. But we're not locked from our back. We're locked from the inside of our ribs and our diaphragm, so we could do all the back extension work we want.
Or maybe when you do back extensions, they hurt your back. You're like, I can't even do them because they, they hurt me. Okay, well, one, don't do movements that hurt because we need to change the way we're doing them. But we also need to start looking [Page//00:19:00] at what's happening on the opposite side of the body.
And the ribs get so they just don't get enough attention. And breathing is the best way to start to unlock. Stuck stuff in our ribs, in our diaphragms. So breathing matters. And I teach a lot of really soft movement. Like I have a, a ball that's like, I dunno, it's like what a nine inch ball. I think it's, it's really soft.
And so as my career has gone on, I work more with more and more people. I've taught more and more gentle release work ball, rolling work. And it's so funny cuz. My clients and students will say, they're like, Eric, I feel like I'm not doing anything. But when they're done, they're like, oh my gosh, I can breathe deeper.
I have a little bit more movement and mobility. I'm like, yes, because you were nice to your body and fascia likes gentle. So I will, we will just, I will continue to agree to disagree with people that like that say that that really intense deep. Tissue work works. I'm [Page//00:20:00] not saying it doesn't work. There's probably a time and a place for it.
My experience has been that less can be more gentle, can be better, and when we do something like a soft, gentle ball that has a lot of give to it, Like, I even have clients who start, they'll roll their ribs you know, on the wall. And we're doing a couple things. We're stimulating the brain to retrain the brain how to breathe better.
But it also gives them a tactile feeling of like, oh, I wanna breathe into the ribs. So they feel that ball rolling on the ribs, and then their brain starts to see, oh, that's where my breath is supposed to go. And so you're getting that very gentle feedback. And I always will tell clients, start on one side.
Do it on one side first, and then.
Julie Michelson: the
Erica Ziel: Step away, see what it feels like, and then you'll be like, oh wow, I'm really stuck on my other side. Then you go balance it out. And so we, we've gotta get away from this thought that everything has to be like, go hard or go home. You have to be working in the sweat. I have to feel the pain that, you know.
Again, there's the time and a place for a hard workout, but if we're dealing with health issues, [Page//00:21:00] we've got pain in the body cuz we've got massive inflammation. We really need to be working on these tools and techniques to get into our fascial system, to work on our breathing things that are gentle and really nourishing our body.
I'm really a big. Big, like scream this from the mountaintops about when we're doing movements, it should be nourishing for our body and we should never be using that as a form to beat our body up, to burn the calories, to lose the weight, things like that, because that just leads us into more fight or flight and restriction.
And we look at our movements and we focus on. Breathing forward, like how are we breathing when we're moving? I, I initiate every single move. I teach my clients with a cue of how they're breathing, and in the beginning you're probably all backwards and that's okay. We all have to start all sorts of doing things wrong and backwards to eventually get there because it's not just training your body.
There's a lot of brain training involved with starting to really incorporate. Breath with our movements and being gentle with our movements [Page//00:22:00] and articulating through our spine and doing all these different things that are so many times so foreign to us when it comes to movement and exercise.
Julie Michelson: Amazing. And so if somebody's just starting, so someone's listening and they're like, oh, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna start by lying on my stomach and I'm gonna be in, you know, take intentional breaths. Is there a, a magic num, you know, how often, how long, you know, what, what do you, where do you start people so that they can really start to move the needle.
Erica Ziel: So, I mean, if we can do it daily, that's ideal. A really good time to practice it honestly, is at night when you get into bed because then our body we're calming down. Right? We're, we're, we're. We're moving into that time of like our body should be calming down. So it's a really good time to practice that back breathing.
When you get into bed, just roll over onto your stomach. Just, I mean, I don't have a magic number as to how many [Page//00:23:00] to do, but maybe you find, maybe you find it takes you 10 breaths and then you start to feel something open. But as you do it more, you'll start to get it on breath five and then breath two, and then before you know it, Breath one opens it up.
It is it is really a, you know, where are you at with your body? And so it's very, very individual, but I can't stress enough the importance of consistency. Starting to take little things and apply them to your movement on a daily basis. Even as simple as start to bring more awareness to your posture.
That is huge because we can do all the right movement practice, and if our postures we're not working on our posture during our day, paying attention to how we're sitting, then our breath is gonna be more shallow, which then means we're gonna be likely more in fight or flights, and then that the movement practice you're doing is not gonna be as effective.
So everything I teach, I'm always, always reiterating to my clients is that, What you're learning from me, I don't want you just doing it. When you're doing your movement [Page//00:24:00] practice, you need to take those concepts and apply 'em to your daily life. How you're sitting, how you're moving. If you're carrying children groceries, walking up the stairs, like it's all of it.
It's, it's It's a new way we have to start looking at it really in a new way. And it's almost going into it thinking like, okay, everything I've ever learned about movement and fitness, I'm just gonna like, kind of wipe the board clean and we're gonna start over. And I'm telling people that all the time when they enter my world because they're like, wait, Erica, so much of what you teach is like the opposite of what I've been doing my whole life.
And I'm like, yes, but. That opposite of what I teach is why people are in pain. So we have to remember if we want different results, we have to change the way that we're doing things.
Julie Michelson: Amen. it's the same, you know, it's with movement, it's with nutrition, it all the, it's the, it's what would you and I, these are the conversations we have all day long.
Erica Ziel: exactly. Yes.
Julie Michelson: Oh no. You know, fat is bad. No, it's not.[Page//00:25:00] So I, I'm thinking about, you know, I started this podcast because it was so impactful to me in the beginning of my healing journey when I would listen to podcasts and I would either get inspired, get information, or, you know, learn. And I'd try this and try that.
And so I am like channeling myself 10, 15 years ago listening to this conversation and I think the thought that would've been going through my head is, well, this is really interesting, but I have rheumatoid arthritis, which is, you know, affecting my joints. And so she sounds smart, but the fascia thing isn't, isn't gonna help my pain go.
Erica Ziel: Okay, so actually the, the way that I teach Maria, I talked about breath and gentle and how less can be more, that is actually the best for people in pain [Page//00:26:00] and inflammation because we're working on. When we're simulating fascia, we know that we're actually, we actually have energy electrical currents that run through fascia, which is quite fascinating to think about that.
We're doing gentle movement with breath work and I know with people with autoimmune issues, we can tend to overdo it really easily. And then you get really sore for days and then you like, oh, I can't move my body. I've been there. I know what that feels like. So, This is why actually doing doing less learning the techniques that I teach.
It's, it's so gentle. It's like the most gentle way of moving, but yet it gets amazing results for clients. And honestly, I will tell people 10 to 10, 15 minutes a day, sometimes that's all you need. And sometimes that's maybe all you can do. And I'll tell you that 10 to 15 minutes of gentle movement is going, can be moving you forward to help strengthen your mu, your fasa and your muscles help to create more space.
Help to give you a little [Page//00:27:00] boost of your energy. And this is why a lot of times I teach. A lot of the movement videos I teach are 10 to 15 minutes because one, everyone's busy. But then, especially if you are dealing with health stuff too, sometimes that 30 minutes or more seems like, oh, I just can't do that.
But you know what? 10 to 15 minutes, I hear all the, they're like, I can do 10 to 15 minutes. I'm like, I know you can. And then they go do that 10 to 15 minutes, and then they're like, okay, I feel so much better now. I'm so glad I did that. Now I wanna do a little bit more and. You know, I teach such a variety of, of different movements, so, you know, maybe in the beginning it's more ball work.
It's like you're spending your time improving your breath and doing really, really little things that don't, sometimes you may not even think they, how could this be doing anything for me? But it makes you feel a little bit better. And when you do that on a consistent basis, before you know it, it's that.
Part of that missing piece that's, that you need and it's doing the movement in the right way. It's when you ask that question. Cause I actually just today read a, a [Page//00:28:00] testimonial from one of our students in my core rehab program, and she was basically saying how much pain she'd been in and she was like, you know, she had to shift her perspective on her workouts and she was like, I'm so glad I'm doing your program, because it was the.
Like absolute best thing for me because it's gentle, but I'm feeling such a difference in my body and we've been so brainwashed by the fitness industry that we have to go hard or go home. And like I said, there, there may be a time and a place for hard workouts. You know, I'll do a hard one here and there, but I also know like, You know, I also have to be careful not overdoing it as well.
And so I'm doing my movement stuff all the time because it's what makes me feel good and keeps my bones from getting out of place and prevents pain. So
Julie Michelson: And I, as you know, was being de playing devil's advocate because I, I want, it's part of that changing the conversation and, and shifting perspective. And I always joke, [Page//00:29:00] you know, people think that when. You know, I'm working with a client as a health coach, you know, I'm getting them to exercise more. No, for the most part, my autoimmune clients especially, they're totally overdoing it.
They're doing it all wrong and, and driving their inflammation. And I, I will say for listeners, literally, if you just do the breath work, You will. It's, it's not just even if, and I, I chose, you know, RA intentionally because people get so stuck on, well, it's joint pain and so, you know, maybe the fascia conversation doesn't apply to me.
Even just the breath work will reduce your inflammation, reduce your pain, get you out of flight or flight, you know, it's fight or flight. It, it is amazing. And I just love that you are j just. You know, having this conversation of really changing our perspective, we need to be on the same team as our body.
[Page//00:30:00] And you know, we, I, I know that especially when people are living with chronic pain, whether it's from autoimmunity or not we do tend to kind of, Try to separate ourselves from our body and, you know, we, we get frustrated and no, we need to realize like, you, you can be being kind and gentle is how you're going to make the progress.
So I love that message. Like, really it should be in all caps.
Erica Ziel: Exactly, yes. It changes. It changes so much when you are working with your body and being kind and you, it's, it's so, and again, it comes back. It's the brain piece, right? We've been ingrained, so we just have to keep reminding that voice inside of our head that's saying, oh, well, you're not doing enough.
This isn't doing anything. When the reality is no, it's exactly what your body needs, and it is going to make you more progress because when you overdo it, that just sets you back. So much farther, and then you can work out for a couple [Page//00:31:00] days when if you do less and you're kind to your body and gentle, you can slowly keep moving, moving forward and mobility is huge and I am sure you talk about this with clients.
It's like if we start to lose our mobility, it also decreases our health. And we sometimes don't think about that so much. We don't talk. I talk about it all the time. I sometimes have a younger audience, but because I see pain start so early, like it is amazing in my audience it's mostly 30 to 45 year olds and I, and they're in pain.
Right. To think about that is almost mind boggling,
Julie Michelson: I'm not in pain now, but I was in my thirties and forties, so I, I get it.
Erica Ziel: It's, it's you know, it's, it's mind boggling. And obviously my story goes way back. I was in pain from a very, very young age and you know, so we just, we have to just keep sharing this message that, no, we can move our body. We need to move our body, but we need to change the way we are doing it.
Julie Michelson: I [Page//00:32:00] love that. I love it. I. I'm gonna kind of ride you under the bus. You, me? So you mentioned stuck fascia, you used the example of pregnancy. And I love that you said, you know, cuz my kids are in their twenties, they're all in their twenties. And I, I'm guessing because you were saying it's never too late, that even if we've got stuck Pasha from pregnancy, you know, even in my fifties, I can, I can do the work and unstick it.
Erica Ziel: Absolutely. Absolutely. We have a lot, I have so many moms in their thirties and forties that end up doing my core rehab program and they're like, my mom needs to do this. And so then she gets her mom into it and doing it and yeah, it's, it's amazing. It's just I always get, get so excited when I hear like, how women's lives are changing at any age, you know?
So it really never is, is too late to start to make. These adjustments with your body and how you're moving and how you're [Page//00:33:00] breathing, and you know, really at the end of the day, what I teach is not mainstream. That's why people don't know about it, right.
Julie Michelson: Right. No, it's, it's, but it is, it's so effective and, and accurate which is why we're having this, this conversation. What about, I have heard, and, and maybe again, if people haven't had fascia conversations, they may be like, huh, what? What do you think about emotions getting stuck in fascia
Erica Ziel: Oh yes, that's a real thing. For sure, especially for women around the pelvic region and pelvis area, and, you know, I'm not like a trauma specialist or anything, but they'll, a lot of times things will kind of be talked about as trauma, big teeth, little tease it, it doesn't matter what it is. I don't even care if you know what it is or not.
I'm a big believer that if you're feeling these emotions coming up, then that's, to me, that's a sign that you're, [Page//00:34:00] you need to start to let go of it. Whether, how we express it in a very, Safe, healthy way. Whether that's crying, whether that's go punching a pillow, whatever it is. But we do hold so much and I will always tell my ladies when they start, cuz we start, so much of what I teach starts with the pelvis.
Even if you're having neck pain, I'm gonna start you with pelvic work cuz we just have to start there. And I will tell them, remind them, hey, like it's very normal that you may start to feel like you just wanna cry and you're doing pelvic tilts and you have no idea why. Or you may know why, but we, it doesn't matter.
It's all about you recognizing, listening to your body, tuning into what your body needs, and it's time for you to cry that out and move on because that's also part of why maybe there's some pain, physical pain can be. Manifested with emotional stuff and maybe there's more work that needs to be done, therapeutics stuff, things like that.
But honestly, like I have seen. Wonders done with movement and starting to get deeper into the body, moving that fascia moving, [Page//00:35:00] that stuck energy, stuck emotions. It's quite amazing. And, and because again, I do work with so many, you know, moms there will be conversations and all of a sudden I'll. Kind of have that conversation, like I just said in one of my group calls, and a mom will be like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize I was holding onto so much from say, the birth of her last child.
She's like, even though it went fine, it didn't go as planned, and I held that against myself. Like it could be as simple as that. Like it, it doesn't have to be anything bad. And I think so many times we think, well, it has to be something really bad. And it's like, no, it's all about how your body per.
Receives it and if your nervous system perceives it and you were hard on yourself, maybe you had some postpartum stuff going on, and again, this could have been 20 years ago. It doesn't matter if you're still hanging onto it, it's time to let go of it so you can move on and move forward. Enjoy your life, go be active and and pain free.
That's my biggest message for women.
Julie Michelson: I love, and I love that you said that because I, I do think so often[Page//00:36:00] We, we don't need to know what it is, and we may not know, you know, what it was from, I believe that so much of that stuck emotion is from those of us that sh shove it down. Shove it down, and so I love that you highlighted like, no, when you feel stuff come up, if you need to cry, cry.
If you need to scream or punch, scream or punch, you know, Because I do think often that's hell got stuck to begin with, right? Either it
Erica Ziel: I agree.
Julie Michelson: or it wasn't safe to express or whatever the myriad of of reasons. And, and so that is, that is how you can just then let go, just move on. And I have had those experiences of, you know, people doing fascial work on me and I just.
I'm crying and it's like, is it from the pain? No,
Erica Ziel: M No.
Julie Michelson: No. It's like, ooh. I don't know what that was, but I'm glad to let go of it.
Erica Ziel: Yeah, it's, it's really incredible. The body is so incredible and [Page//00:37:00] so many times we overwrite it with our mind and we need to actually get and step into our body. And when we start to let our body guide us and not let lead it all from our, our mind, the ego, logical brain it can just open. I feel like it opens up such a world for, for people, and I hear all the time from.
For my clients that, you know, in the beginning they're trying to like force the connections, force the breath of trying to force what I'm queuing her and what I'm asking her to have her body do. And it's foreign to her. Right? And so the more you try to force your body to feel the things, the slower the progress is actually gonna be.
There's, I like the word surrender. I think when we actually. Can almost like surrender to our body and be like, you know what? I'm here to learn about my body. Things that I have never learned before. This may feel uncomfortable. This may feel foreign. I may feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. Like you feel like a fish out of water.
Right? But [Page//00:38:00] we have to get, we have to be there. To get to the other side so many times, and when we actually do that and we move a little bit slower, we take our time working through the program or whatever you're doing, then it's amazing how all of a sudden there'll be days where you're like, I felt something new today.
Like something woke up inside my body, or oh my gosh, I can breathe a little bit deeper today because we're not. Forcing it when we're trying to force the results. And I feel like this is true for anything with health, right? And sometimes, sometimes it's like it's trying to knock at the door and we're like not listening.
Instead we're trying to force our way through the healing journey and we have to almost have this place of surrender, whether it's with movement or other things. And I definitely felt that when I went through mold for sure. There was definitely a big surrendering thing I feel like I had to do to be like, Hey, What am I supposed to do now?
What? What am I supposed to learn? What, what, whatever. And it's so true with this type of movement. And when you do that, I hear all the time from my, [Page//00:39:00] my students will be like, Erica, I finally truly listened to you the third time through. And you know what? Oh my goodness. Like her whole, she's like, my whole world has changed.
She's like, but the first time through, I just wanted to get the results. And I did get results. But then, you know, and so I try to speed it up for people. Be like, don't wait till the third time you go through. Like do it right away. Start at the beginning of being more open. But it's so foreign to us because we live in this.
Go, go, go get the results yesterday. And that's not what our bodies were designed to do. And I'm the first person to say, yeah, I'd love to have results yesterday. But I also know, because of the work I do, the stuff I've been through, I'm like, It's, we're in on the journey. It's, you just have to almost think of it as a journey.
And you know, in some aspects there is no destination. It is the journey we are on and it continues to, to evolve. And I'll even say too, like there'll be an exercise. That I do today, that I've been doing for 20 years, and I'm like, I feel it so much different today than I did even [Page//00:40:00] three years ago, and I've been doing this forever.
And it's just this, we, we have got so ingrained of like, okay, we're here. We wanna do this program, we wanna get these results, and then we're done. And it's like, no, no, no, there's no getting done.
Julie Michelson: There's no done
Erica Ziel: no done. It's just, it's a
Julie Michelson: you're done. But we're not rushing that,
Erica Ziel: right. We're not, And you're continuing to learn and evolve and better your health and your body and your mobility.
And when you start to look at it that way, like I just, I feel like it becomes a little bit easier because then we're not in this rush and this forcefulness, we're again that surrender of letting it be and be like, okay, this might take me longer than I want. Everything always takes you longer than it wants, right?
Let's face, that's everything in life. Like it just
Julie Michelson: All the important stuff. Yeah.
Erica Ziel: But in a sense, you'll get there faster because you're learning more along the way.
Julie Michelson: So amazing. Sage, Sage advice. I, and I always say, and it is, I know I, I'm sure when you're talking to your clients in the beginning too, you know it, it's [Page//00:41:00] such a paradigm shift to you say surrender. I say allow, Same, same concept. You know, because we are also purpose driven and, and then in the beginning people are like, how am I s you know, how am I supposed to allow?
What does that mean? So I love allow surrender, just stop pushing,
Erica Ziel: Yes, exactly. Stop forcing.
Julie Michelson: So I, I always love in my own head to guess the answer to this question before I ask it. I, I certainly have plenty to choose from, but what is one step that listeners can take starting today to improve their health?
Erica Ziel: So because we're talking about fascia and movement, I will leave everybody with, do not forget the cube to lengthen through your body. So if you're sitting right now, if you're standing, just think about, just like this gentle lift and lengthen all the way through your body to the top of [Page//00:42:00] your head. So it's very gentle.
It's not like, oh, I'm standing soldier straight and stiff, cuz that's not good either. But if we could just start to think about just being lighter and gentler and lengthen through our body, you're going to start to wake up your deep core more. We're gonna start to activate our fascial system better.
We're going to be able to start to breathe more effectively. And again, it's not gonna happen overnight, but we have to start to bring awareness to it. And you can do that all the time. You don't have to be working out to do it. You can be doing it, sitting, standing, walking, doesn't matter. So I. I love leaving people with that.
That cute to think about. So stand tall all the time. Sit tall, you know, lengthen upward.
Julie Michelson: Love it. See, and that's not what I thought you were gonna say, so Yay. Amazing. For people that listen on the go like I do and aren't gonna check the show notes, where's the best place for people to find you?
Erica Ziel: Well, Julie, first up, thank you so much. [Page//00:43:00] And for everyone listening, you can find everything over on my website. It's erica zeal.com. My last name is spelled Z i E L and everything's on there. And of course I always encourage, you know, reach out if you have questions. If you're like, I'm not sure if what you do would be good for me or not, you can always, always reach out to me.
It's fun to have chats on Instagram cuz I get to voice message people back.
Julie Michelson: Love it. Love it, and take advantage people. She's such an amazing resource, and what you're doing is so important. You are leading the shift in the conversation. And it is past time that we learn how to move properly.
Erica Ziel: Thank you so much, Julie.
Julie Michelson: Erica, thank you. You have shared amazing gold with us today. For everyone listening, remember, you can get the transcripts and show notes by Visiting InspiredLiving.Show.
I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.[Page//00:44:00]
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Erica Ziel
Erica Ziel, mom of three, received her Health and Human Performance degree from Iowa State University, is a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, Board-Certified Holistic Health Coach, personal trainer, Pilates instructor, deep core and pre/postnatal exercise specialist. Her mission is to help women live a healthier, active life pain-free and heal their body through movement and breathwork. Erica is the founder and creator of Core Athletica®, The Core Rehab Program, Knocked-Up Fitness® program, her Pre/Postnatal Exercise Specialist Course, and host of The Core Connections Podcast. She believes that anything you want to improve about your health and life, you can!
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