Episode 136 – Season 5 Highlights (with Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe)

Summary

Episode Transcript

[00:00:12] Whitney Lowe: Welcome to the Thinking Practitioner.

And welcome to the Thinking Practitioner podcast, where Books of Discovery has been a part of the massage therapy and bodywork world for over 25 years. And nearly 3,000 schools around the globe teach with their textbooks, e- textbooks, and digital resources. Books of Discovery likes to say that learning adventures start here, and they find that same spirit here on the Thinking Practitioner podcast, and are proud to support our work, knowing that we share the mission to bring the massage and bodywork community thought provoking and enlivening content that advances our profession.

[00:00:48] Til Luchau: Instructors in manual therapy education programs can request complimentary copies of Books of Discovery’s textbooks for review in your programs. Please reach out at booksofdiscovery.com and listeners can explore their collection of learning resources for anatomy, pathology, kinesiology, physiology, ethics, and business mastery.

At the same place, booksofdiscovery.com where Thinking Practitioner listeners get 15 percent off by entering “thinking” at check out. Hey, Whitney, how you doing? 

[00:01:19] Whitney Lowe: I’m doing well today, sir. How are you doing? This is a holiday season. So did you have a good holiday? 

[00:01:25] Til Luchau: Yeah, it’s been a good holiday. 

I think we’re gonna air this in a few weeks So, you know, it’s gonna be later maybe if you’re listening to this live, but yeah at this point later january although I don’t think it’ll be that quite that late. 

It’s been a time to think about the year and reflect and we decided to do that together on our season five, our fifth season of this podcast. 

[00:01:59] Whitney Lowe: Again, it’s still hard to imagine that it’s been five seasons that we’ve been doing this, but just want to say I’m still enjoying it and having a great time doing this and thanks for taking the time to continue sharing.

[00:02:10] Til Luchau: Likewise, it’s been great for me and you know, this year was a tough one. I lost my wife in May. Yes, of course. And you took over very kindly and did some episodes there and then worked me back in through the only thing I want to talk about, which was grief. 

[00:02:26] Til Luchau: It was appreciated. The conversations we had there and the way that I was able to come here to the podcast and share those things.

And then especially to the listeners because we got a lot of listener reach outs after that too that was very supportive and very helpful. 

[00:02:41] Whitney Lowe: Yeah, well we appreciate you sharing your life with us and we all send you the very best in the season and time here of thoughtfulness and graciousness and thankfulness for the things that we all still have here.

With that in mind, what we kind of do usually this is our retrospective time, so we’ve got this format where we take some of our top five most thought provoking episodes each, and we’ll run through them. So what’s on your list?

[00:03:12] Til Luchau:  I got a list and just I want to say I love retrospectives for other podcasts because it gives me an overview of where I could go back and really dig in. 

We’ll hit the high points today, but we’ll try to remember to mention episode numbers or something so that you as a listener can go back and listen to the whole thing, if you want. I think, you know, I’m doing a countdown, or count up, maybe, from to my most favorite, which I’ll mention last. But in my top five, I really enjoyed our last conversation. It was 134 about how bodywork changed our lives, our personal lives. It was great to hear your story and reflect back on that.

We mentioned that we started this whole project with interviewing each other about our background. So now here into the fifth season, at the end of the fourth season, we got to do the same thing with each other and look at how our lives had changed as a result of doing this work. And we got some nice mail back for that as well.

[00:04:09] Whitney Lowe: Yeah. You know, one of the things that I found interesting about that. That particular episode and also that question that we asked each other about how it changed us is that especially I saw this from the from the many years of teaching in massage school of watching people come in and who they were when they started this process and who they were when they finished it.

And I got to the place of, feeling like I could say to somebody, when they said they were contemplating massage school, the one thing I can promise you is it’s going to change you. 

And I think that is true for the schooling and education process. And then of course, also for the way in which it changes you throughout your, your practice.

[00:04:45] Til Luchau: People are really different practitioners. Five years. Ten years. Forty years. I’m coming up on my fortieth. Actually, you know what? It’s been forty years. It snuck right by me. Forty years that I’ve been learning and practicing this work. 

[00:04:57] Whitney Lowe: That’s amazing. 

[00:04:59] Til Luchau: So that happens. We change as a result of doing the work as well.

So it’s great to reflect on that together. 

[00:05:04] Whitney Lowe: You don’t see people staying in professions for 40 years very much these days, so kudos to you for, for being there and continuing to share with all of us for, for that time period. I think I’m in 36 years, something like that.

Now I like to do math again, when you add those two together, that’s a scary amount of cumulative time that we’ve been chewing through this thing here. And still, lots left to go. Lots of places left to go with it. 

[00:05:37] Til Luchau: Still things to explore. It evolves with us as we go, and that was a fun part of that conversation.

[00:05:41] Whitney Lowe: How about you? So, I don’t have these in any particular order here, but these were ones that kind of really hid something for me, or, or hid something for me. Back around this time last year, late in the year, we did an interview with Gil Hedley about his nerve tour. 

[00:05:58] Til Luchau: Yes, 110, episode 110.

[00:06:00] Whitney Lowe: This was particularly timely for me in that particular episode because I had just gone to his presentation on the Nerve Tour, and it was a really eye opening process of, of looking at things through different lenses, and he does such an interesting and different type of job with what he does in the cadaver dissections, and I think I was really trying to take a pulse of the audience in his presentation and noticed that it was really impacting people in a lot of different ways.

And I think the same thing with our discussions with him.  I don’t even know, is it still going on or is he finished? 

[00:06:34] Til Luchau: I just talked to him recently. I think he’s doing the online version now after sadly finally being done touring all around the country and some of the world to do this new tour thing.

[00:06:45] Til Luchau: But his, that episode was actually on my list, too, because I just really enjoy Gil. And you’re right, he does an amazingly different perspective of anatomy and the body. It’s very much grounded in the tradition. He was actually a student of mine at the Rolf Institute for his first body work entry.

So it’s very compatible with that point of view of the body. But he’s probably one of the foremost spokespeople now for the evolving state of that viewpoint, which includes both the mysterious and the wonderful, as well as the technical and the arcane and the detailed. He does such a great job of weaving those two together in an enjoyable way.

And a delightful person as well. 

[00:07:27] Whitney Lowe: And story. You know we learned so much through story and, and the, the presentation of what he did was woven so well with story. I mean, as an educator, I really watch these things very closely with people. He did a phenomenal job of just really captivating everyone’s interest and engagement with what he was talking about with the, what could be a very dry, detailed, kind of, anatomical topic about, all these things with the nerves. And especially getting into a lot of the stuff with the nerves that we don’t think about that much. You know, the internal cranial nerves and the things that we don’t touch or think about and manipulate a whole lot.

It really made that whole thing very fascinating. So always great to have some, some time to to be in his presence and hear the things that he’s exploring and looking into 

[00:08:13] Til Luchau: look through his eyes. 

[00:08:15] Whitney Lowe: Absolutely. 

[00:08:16] Til Luchau: What’s next? My next one, well, actually, let me take a second and just mention probably my our guest list was one of my highlights.

Yeah, I couldn’t get them all into my final five Yeah, we had Mosley, Tom Myers, Sharon Wheeler, Jill Cook, Antonio Stecco, Greg Lehman, some really influential thinkers across the spectrum of perspectives in our field. And that was just in the last year. I enjoyed every one of those.

So I’m really pleased at how we were able to have that breadth of conversations with people that are really influencing what we do. 

[00:08:53] Whitney Lowe: And I would also like to just put a plug in for, what we have tried to do here periodically is mix and match some of those things where we bring in some of those people who are very influential that everyone’s heard of and want to see and talk to and then we’ve also brought in discussions from people that aren’t as well known or popular or whatever, but have some very interesting things you know your discussion with Peggy and the the Esalen crew that we had there and then some other things I had a very interesting conversation about performing arts massage and some other things that we did here with people that are not necessarily well known but also you really interesting, doing interesting things.

[00:09:28] Til Luchau: A peek into different worlds. Both the prominent and the everyday ones that are just part of what we’re doing in our work as well. Right. Yeah, very much enjoyed that. But in terms of an episode on my list, my number four, I’d say, was Episode 115 with Kathy Ryan and Erica Slocum about the question of can massage spread cancer and looking at a couple of recent studies that were actually suggesting that mechanisms for our spreading of cancer as a massage therapist, which was alarming, of course, especially that my wife was dealing with active metastatic cancer right then.

But it was, I really enjoyed I had the chance to think that through with the three of you, and I enjoyed that process, too, of looking at a couple of studies and parsing out how does that really apply to our day to day practice? What does this mean that we should be aware of and should be thinking about?

[00:10:24] Whitney Lowe: Yeah, and you know, we mentioned that this kind of got a little bit of this seed for this from the discussions at the Fascia Congress from that study that had come out saying, saying there was some concerns about massage and cancer. And again, there’s, this is one of those places where we just still don’t have a whole lot of information, but I think everybody needs some degree of reassurance and certainty about what they can and should and should not necessarily be doing.

And I thought that was treated well in that episode. 

[00:10:53] Til Luchau: Reassurance and certainty. And I should probably do a spoiler so that you don’t have to go listen to the whole episode to know what the takeaway was. It’s there are concerns and you should be aware of those. And at the same time, there’s so much good we do.

That we shouldn’t be afraid and be holding back in ways too. So that’s, I mean, it’s like, do we massage tumors? No. If you know it’s a tumor, don’t go massage it. Should we touch people? Yes. We should be doing this work. 

[00:11:19] Til Luchau: If you want to dig into the details and the very practical suggestions that those two made, go listen to 115.

Check that out. What’s next, Whit? 

[00:11:29] Whitney Lowe: Yeah, so you kind of mentioned this in our guest list here. This was one, I think, that was probably pretty influential for both of us and for many of our listeners, the interview that we did with Lorimer Mosley on explaining pain. And there’s just so much rich stuff to take out of that discussion of, of looking at it.

I was reflecting on this a bit too, how this has changed so many people’s perceptions in the world of manual therapy in particular about what we’re doing and why we’re doing the things that we’re doing is understanding some more about. How pain really works and also the, the processes of what we do in trying to describe or explain the nature of this to, to the clients that we’re working with.

And, and he definitely had a lot of interesting insights. It was certainly fascinating to talk to him in, in reflection of the time frame that has spanned between that first TED Talk video that he did that went so viral about the nature of pain and how his. His thinking has changed about pain processes and what we’re doing and the things that are beneficial for us.

 

[00:12:31] Til Luchau: So that’s right. That was episode 111. And he really has been the superstar of pain in a way. And like you said, articulated a point of view that radically changed the way people are thinking about it. You’ll recognize the seeds or the roots of that perspective, I mean, the vocabulary that’s developed has been the biopsychosocial perspective.

But so much of it was there already, but he gave, many of us, a clear vocabulary and model to describe the ways that we have of working with pain. It was great to hang out with him and have the conversation and ask the specific questions and hear where he’s at now as well. 

[00:13:12] Whitney Lowe: I think one of the things that was really impactful for me coming out of this was recognizing, again, that there are so many different factors that influence whether or not somebody has pain, and consequently, there are many ways to reduce it and to tackle it.

And it’s not like there’s a pain technique. You know, there’s a thing that, that works on every kind of pain in the same way. There’s just so many different avenues and pathways into that that we can take that might be beneficial in helping people out of it. 

[00:13:44] Til Luchau: He’s a compelling and thoughtful spokesperson for that point of view.

[00:13:47] Whitney Lowe: Yeah, 

[00:13:48] Til Luchau: yeah, 

[00:13:48] Whitney Lowe: for sure. So what was what’s next on your list? Next 

[00:13:52] Til Luchau: on my list, my number three, if I went and ranked them, was our episode 119 with Rochelle Clausen and Nicole Trombley, where we talked about the retinacula. That was the main thing we talked about. We talked about a lot of stuff as, as the ankle’s most sensitive fascia.

That was the title of that episode. I like it because they are up and coming teachers that are offering something really quite refined in a great way.  I believe their  school is called Anatomy Scapes, if you go to 119, you’ll find all about them.

I enjoy their perspective a lot. I enjoy what they’ve taken. Again, that same tradition that Gil Hedley’s in, that I was originally trained in, that fascial point of view. They’ve taken the science and the research and applied it very specifically, so that everything they’re saying is quite backed by the research and the actual clinical observation.

Yeah. You know, out research observations and they’re applying it to clinical context as well. 

[00:14:52] Whitney Lowe: That particular issue episode was interesting for me because it one of the big important shifts that came out of that for me was this idea of looking at the retinacula in more so as a proprioceptive organ and less so as a mechanical tether and pulley system which is the way it’s often described in many of our anatomical approaches is that, yes, it’s holding the tendons close to the joints so they can have their proper angle of pull and so that’s its main function there, but these tissues have rich proprioceptive innervation and consequently are highly refined sensory receptors in there, which I found fascinating as well.

[00:15:31] Til Luchau: What if some of the fascia’s purpose is to help us feel what’s happening. 

Yeah. And 

[00:15:36] Til Luchau: that’s the point of view. They’re bringing out about the retinacular, which has the highest concentration of mechanoreceptors of any fascial tissue, it turns out. 

[00:15:45] Til Luchau: And there is interesting to me too, that their point of view that fascia has a role in proprioception is really congruent with the, with the biopsychosocial perspective that says we’re influencing people’s experience and their brain as much as their mechanics and maybe more even than their mechanics and their structure. 

[00:16:05] Til Luchau: So even though they’re coming from the other side of that debate that sometimes gets juxtaposed as a polarity between structuralism, fascia and pain science and neuro centricism it’s, there’s the people that are diving on unfolding.

Those points of view are converging in various areas to say, well, actually this is a helpful way to think about it no matter what’s your starting point. 

[00:16:30] Whitney Lowe: Yeah. Very good stuff in there. And then, what do you got? Next on my list was our conversation with Greg Lehman. Movement Optimism in Episode 114. I can’t think of a time where I have listened to Greg and not come away with something that either really fascinated me or really challenged my existing belief systems or processes or things that I had been focusing on teaching for a long time.

I remember the first time I met Greg in person a number of years ago back at the San Diego Pain Summit and was just really fascinated with, first of all, his just unparalleled grasp of the literature being able to rattle off and recite the studies off the top of his head that he’s immersed in. He’s somebody who is that immersed in that process and really has developed a really good resounding worldview of the nature of processes associated with rehabilitative manual therapy and his background,  multidimensional background in chiropractic and physiotherapy and biomechanics.

Something that I, of course, find very fascinating and highly inspirational. And I’d like to see his concept of the movement optimism that he was that he was proposing for us. 

[00:17:48] Til Luchau: Movement optimism is that we can be hopeful in, in ways and movement is the key to that. And what’s great about his superpower, as he called it, to be able to give the references, citations, sample size, variables involved for every study that he, for every idea that he has, what’s the great counterpoint to that is his simplicity of his model.

He’s actually asking us to think simpler and think in scale to like the magnitude of effects. Cause he gets really detailed about some of the mechanisms, but in the end, I think a lot of it comes down in his, in his point of view to how significant is this in terms of its magnitude or its effectiveness which is a great variable to put in there, a great way to think about things. It’s like, we can spend a lot of time arguing about finer points, but what really, is significant enough to make a difference in clinical practice. He’s got some great points around there. I always enjoy him too. 

[00:18:46] Whitney Lowe: And, and like he said, I think,  distilling that in, down into simplicity and saying, don’t get so wrapped up in all of these different specific techniques, approaches, and things like that.

Basically, a lot of it is just going to boil down to, calm stuff down, and then build it back up, you know, is his sort of mantra about that whole thing. And I think the more we can think along those lines and recognize that there’s a lot of different paths in the way that we get there. You know, we have these hundreds and hundreds of different modalities and methods and things like that, but we’re all basically, that’s pretty much what we’re doing most of the time if we’re on track with trying to get people back into a pain free state as much as possible.

[00:19:30] Til Luchau: And then his writings, his early writings didn’t really reflect this, but I see as the years go by him mellowing in terms of his ardor for that point of view. Making a lot more room for other perspectives and I think that’s inevitable too as all of us mature and start to, you know, our ideas out in the real world.

We go, okay, so that’s not just one way, perhaps, even though I feel strongly about this perspective, let me, let me find a way to talk about it in a way that makes room for others as well. And I see him doing that too, which was great to see. 

[00:20:02] Whitney Lowe: All right. What have you got?  

[00:20:03] Til Luchau: My turn. Yeah, it was a tough call, but I think my number two, there was the conversation I had with Sharon Wheeler and Wojtech Cackowski about her legacy, her work is what she calls Scarwork, but then the legacy of that work and her personal story.

She really represents to me, Sharon Wheeler, represents and she describes herself this way as to as Ida Rolf’s experiment in love, non-academic learning and practice of this work. And she had no anatomy background, she had very little science background, I think, but just was thrown in as a practitioner, and the experiment was, can she learn this work by practicing?

Her classes, which are still very popular, are poetic, are compelling, people love them a lot, they give people metaphors and ways to work with scars or bones or things like that that aren’t limited, you could say, by the research or by the scientific point of view. And I give her some credit for that, although it’s not, you know, I put a lot of stock in research and empirical understanding, testing things out.

I also honor her and her place in the lineage, the lineage we have, of saying there’s a place in the lineage. For just feeling things and imagining things and working from there and getting amazing results from that as well. 

[00:21:23] Whitney Lowe: Yeah, and I think this really gets us back to paying attention to not being as attached to some of those model descriptions of what, what is exactly happening there.

But can you find a way that works to do what you’re trying to do? Yes. We’ll continue to work towards finding an explanation for why this is happening, but if you’ve got something that is working and is effectively achieving your, your goals with, with people you know, let’s keep exploring that and let’s keep pushing the envelope with it, which I think she has done a great deal over the course of her many years and influenced lots of people in the process.

[00:22:03] Til Luchau: And like you, you made the point, Whitney, that it was as much talking about her legacy and her evolution of her work at the Esalen Institute, where I was a few years later. So that had some personal meaning for me too, to hear her what was happening there just a few years before I was there and she was involved in.

Yeah, 133, check that out if you want to hear more. What do you got? What’s next on your list? 

[00:22:25] Whitney Lowe: I really enjoyed the conversation you and I had about low back pain. Because this is so prevalent for everybody and we just kind of did a, let’s revisit this topic and see what’s new and different and kind of like what’s out there.

 

[00:22:40] Til Luchau: And there’s episode 127, talking about our updates, our own personal updates on our understanding of back pain. 

[00:22:46] Whitney Lowe: Yeah. And we are at this point in the end of 2024, we’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century and we still don’t know the causes of people’s back pain.

I think we’re still in that place of  inquiry and looking into things and trying to find answers for a lot of things. But there’s a lot of help out there that we can offer people through what we do in the manual therapy world. And I’m certainly recognizing my rapidly imbalanced number of days ahead of me compared to those that are behind me at this point of my career.

I just had a birthday last week, actually. I turned 63. But I really, was hoping to see, you know, let’s make some, some very significant strides toward a greater acceptance of the role of manual therapy in addressing low back pain things, and I think we still have a long way to go there, because there’s, I still, in reading the literature and listening to a lot of  the discussions in at least traditional medical environments, that much of what we do in manual therapy is still sort of  poo pooed and brushed aside is not necessarily that helpful for people.

But I don’t think that’s the experience that a lot of practitioners have in terms of what they do in the treatment room. So, and, and, 

[00:24:07] Til Luchau: Yeah, and the client experience too. Some, I mean, back pain is one of those things where sometimes we don’t help as much as we’d like to, but often we do. I get, I mean, I, I slowed my own practice down quite a bit and put it on complete hold in the last year for just in my caretaking role and starting to pick that back up again. But the few clients I saw during that time were back pain clients. Those are the ones that got people motivated enough to come to me and just convince me, like, you gotta see if you can help me with this. This is really hard. So it is so common. It’s so important.

And I think we, we actually do help. Yeah, we’re part of the mystery is what are we doing? How do we explain what we do that helps? Yeah, but it was a great conversation about that and about what we actually do. There’s some very practical parts of that conversation too that I appreciated. 

[00:24:52] Whitney Lowe: And what I think is so fascinating about that is just how we can have so many very different approaches to this that can all work, in various different ways. I know I take a lot more of kind of mechanical, anatomical, orthopedic perspective when I first start looking at things.

That may change as I get through into the process with somebody and find out what’s happening there. But I know that’s, that’s my bias. That’s where I have lived the majority of my career and kind of mindset. And then I’ll see people. I’ll see people. Taking a very different kind of approach and perspective in what they’re doing and also getting great results with people doing, doing different things.

So you know, I think there’s, there’s all kinds of benefits in learning the different things that we learn and, and being able to, to see some of these different perspectives and, and integrate, you know, look at how they’ll work together to, to piece together or something that makes your unique perspective and practice with your clients.

[00:25:49] Til Luchau: And there’s a place for understanding different explanations for what we do that helps me maybe take my own a little less like gospel, or opens me up to other possibilities. I really enjoy that process. And at the other side, there’s a role for really, you know, Fully inhabiting and standing for what I feel and know and see and it seems to work.

Yeah, I remember I’, not Greg Lehman, so I’m not gonna go cite the author and the year of the study, but I remember a study that compared different practitioners confidence in their work Addressing low back pain and they intentionally selected practitioners across a range of disciplines that had actually completely reversed laws of biomechanics they were working from some biomechanics, some schools say that the lumbar vertebrae rotate one way inside bending. The other schools say they actually rotate the other way. So they’re working off of completely complementary laws, biomechanical laws. And this study rated their feeling of being effective in their work. And then they had the practitioners do what they were trained in, and they had to do the opposite way to see what that was like. And, of course, the biggest variable was what you were trained in was the one that you felt had the best results afterwards. 

 

[00:27:13] Til Luchau: And even when you were asked to turn it around, it’s like, we can just imagine what that would be like to do the reverse of what you think should be done.

Even though there’s schools that were getting very good results with those laws, when you do it as a practitioner who wasn’t quite trained that way, the results, you didn’t have as much faith in the results there. 

[00:27:29] Whitney Lowe: And I think that, yeah, so much of that comes back to the discussion we had in that early episode, and I don’t remember our number now, about the confidence that a client brings to, to you as a practitioner.

You know, that has a significant benefit in the benefit, in the outcomes, in the, the therapeutic outcomes that we’re seeing. And that’s, you know, this discussion has come up a lot with all these debates about you know, is this, you know, with the discussions about like how important is technique, how important if we’re saying that all these things aren’t really necessarily based on a particular technique working?

Is it really that important at all? And then, I always kind of come back to the yes and no is that it may not be as important as we thought because of the physiology of what is necessarily happening with that particular way we move our hands in touching our client’s body but the way in which you use your informed hands and your informed touch exudes a sense of confidence in what you’re doing that has incredible therapeutic power to, to that.

And so, that technique does matter, I think, in that instance, because the way in which you touch that person and then engage with them therapeutically based on your confidence in what you’re doing, has incredible power for the beneficial effects we’re trying to get. 

[00:28:50] Til Luchau: That’s right. Yeah. That’s right.

So, we’re up to my top choice. I cheated. I got three for one in my top choice. I did the three conversations we had in the grief series, the three episodes where grief was the focus. And of course that had a lot of personal meaning for me, especially your invitation to come talk to you about my process.

This is only a few months after my wife had passed. That was episode 125. 

Yeah. 

[00:29:19] Til Luchau: You basically just walked me through what that was like to lose my wife, both in the personal sense, but also in the professional sense. 

Yeah. 

[00:29:27] Til Luchau: How that might apply to working with clients or that was taking shape in my own practice, etc.

Yeah, it’s really moved by that and appreciate your your welcome and your gentle facilitation of that. 

[00:29:39] Whitney Lowe: That was a fascinating series of things of and again I just both applaud you and thank you for opening your life up to the rest of us to see this because we got a lot of feedback from people about resonating with what you said from various different things that had happened to them throughout their lives dealing with grief either personally or with clients in these kind of situations and it’s a topic that I think doesn’t get probably talked about a lot as much as it certainly should for the way in which it impacts people a great deal And so you gave us some really good and valuable insights there with those series of episodes that you went through there 

[00:30:19] Til Luchau: Well, the the hidden part of that is we all deal with grief at some point in our life and that so many of our clients are dealing with that in the background whether they’re telling you about it or realizing it themselves or not. That’s often there for people even just in the getting older process.

There’s a there’s a lot there’s loss. We lose things. 

[00:30:37] Til Luchau: Available to us before the other two episodes in that series episode 132 where Rana Moore came in and talked. She’s got a really nice set of examples about how in a massage therapy practice that the those ideas around your grief and grieving were coming in and influencing what she did.

She’s a spectacular presenter in her own right, came in and talked to us about that. And then especially episode 130, The Body of Grief with, that’s what we called it, but it was with J. S. Park, whose, whose book As Long As You Need was a big support for me. Loaned mine out and bought people copies since then, but his manner or his way of showing up in that interview itself modeled a lot about that process.

And it’s probably the one that I’ve, one episode I’ve heard the most about from listeners this year. This episode 130 with JS Park. 

[00:31:26] Whitney Lowe: Yeah. 

[00:31:27] Til Luchau: Wonderful. 

[00:31:28] Whitney Lowe: Well, again, thank you so much for, for sharing that process. It was valuable, helpful just educational and emotionally engaging for, for all of us, I think.

So and we thank you all listeners for giving us input about that as well. So. What’s left on your list? The last one on my list was the conversation I had with Jill Cook, which I had anticipated quite a bit, and it was, it did not come to fruition. You know, did not disappoint at all, mainly because I had heard her say some things on a different podcast or like.

Oh no, this is like completely contrary to what I’ve been saying, teaching, and doing for a long time. I got to talk to Jill and find out what the story is here. So this 

[00:32:09] Til Luchau: was the topic, this is episode 128, and your topic was tendon pain, which is her area of research and clinical specialty. And I, I was really pleased that you were talking with her.

I was sorry I couldn’t make it because she’s been a big influence on my thinking and my understanding about tendons, tendinopathy, and inflammation. I really enjoyed listening to your conversation with her to hear right from her, how she viewed those things. Because she’s often cited in the various debates.

Tendinopathy, tendinitis, and on both sides of that debate. Saying yes, there is inflammatory contribution to tendon pain. No, there’s not. It’s degenerative. Which both, each of those have implications in how we would work as manual therapists. 

[00:32:49] Til Luchau: So to hear her in spite of some refining over the years she’s done of her point of view, just rearticulating that and what that means in terms of load being the main thing, the main variable that helps people.

And she was not a fan, if I remember right, of direct manipulation. Leave it alone, which is certainly an important point of view and something to keep in mind. It’s not like if it’s been irritated, don’t go like scrub on it and make it worse. Yeah. 

[00:33:21] Whitney Lowe: Right. Which is what a lot of us have been doing for a long time, you know.

Now what I still had to wonder about that is like, it does seem like there’s been a lot of reports of beneficial results from doing that. So how did we get those results and, you know, maybe they came from the other things that we were doing in addition to that, you know, it’s hard to know exactly what that was, 

[00:33:42] Til Luchau: My own point of view, because I think a lot about inflammation and teach about it, is that we’re restarting a cycle.

And actually what she said wasn’t in contradiction to that at all. She talked about the effects maybe having stimulating effect on different cells that are in trouble in that process and things like that. And I think that, that’s an explanation that fits a lot about why direct work can help things that are tendinous and painful and chronic.

But it was from her point of view as a researcher and a physical therapist, it was great to hear her articulating that very clear point of view about here’s what we know, here’s what helps, here’s what doesn’t. 

[00:34:24] Whitney Lowe: And I think one of the most fascinating and influential things that I got out of that discussion because I had wanted to ask her this question for so long, and it’s interesting because I heard Greg Lehman on his podcast have a discussion with somebody about tendinopathy just recently as well, that despite all of this research that we’ve been doing, quite honestly, we still don’t know why tendons hurt from tendon pathology.

There seems to be multiple factors involved. Years and years ago, we ascribed this to torn tendon fibers and the inflammatory process associated with them. Now that just has been sort of like, well, no, not really. That’s not what’s happened. 

[00:35:03] Til Luchau: Yeah, Dr. Cook’s point of view was, no, there’s not so much inflammation.

It’s just not the main driver, at least. So that doesn’t explain the pain. Yeah. We don’t know what does. 

[00:35:10] Whitney Lowe: Yeah, and neither does the degenerative process because there’s lots of degenerative tendons that don’t hurt. So, and it’s kind of back to I think a lot of what we were seeing in Greg Lehman’s cup concepts.

Like there’s, everybody brings a cup full of all these different factors to their world and any of them in combination, may be sufficient to set off the body’s alarm system of producing pain.  

[00:35:37] Til Luchau: Stress, dietary influences, exercise influences, sleep influences. All these different things could be in your cup and be part of your pain experience or not.

[00:35:44] Whitney Lowe: Yeah. I mean, I know, I mean, I’ve seen this for myself personally. I know of, you know, I’ve seen this a lot of times in clients and other people reporting, you know, increases in things like tendon pain when they got the flu. Right. You know, so. 

[00:35:58] Til Luchau: Yes, or after the holidays, after eating a whole lot of sugar. I just had someone the other day say, oh yeah, it’s the holidays, I ate too much sugar, my joints all hurt. Yeah. Which is like inflammatory fuel, perhaps. Right. If you think about it that 

[00:36:08] Whitney Lowe: way. All kinds of factors may potentially get jumped into the mix there, but all of these things I think really valuable and really helpful things for us to chew on and think about and, and exploring how we approach our practices and the things that we do in the treatment room with people.

[00:36:24] Til Luchau: It’s been a good season. Thank you for this retrospective and looking back on it. 

[00:36:30] Whitney Lowe: Absolutely. And I am looking forward to season six. Don’t know all the things that we have in store yet, but we have some interesting ideas of things that we want to get into and chew on. And of course this shout out to everyone who is still listening after this number of minutes on the podcast, let us know what you want to hear about, because we really would like to make sure we’re doing things that would be helpful and beneficial for your learning process as well.

So don’t hesitate to let us know what you want to hear about. 

[00:36:56] Til Luchau: I love just going for what I’m interested in and seeing if people listen. And some do. But yeah, I still would love to hear was that good? Is there something else you’d like to hear better? That’s super helpful. So let us know that as well.

[00:37:08] Whitney Lowe: Yeah. And we each have our things that we think are absolutely fascinating and other people like, eh, yeah, whatever. So, all right. Well, I think that will wrap up our, our season five retrospective. Anything else that you want to add into that before we close out today? 

[00:37:27] Til Luchau: No, it was like I said, it was a wonderful year and I’m excited about the coming season as well and really grateful to our sponsors for making this all possible and to you, the listeners.

[00:37:37] Whitney Lowe: All right. That sounds good. And speaking of our sponsors, we would like to mention the thinking practitioner is supported by ABMP, the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals, ABMP membership gives professional practitioners like you a package, including individual liability insurance, free continuing education.

Quick reference apps, online scheduling, and payments with PocketSuite, and much more. 

[00:37:58] Til Luchau: ABMP CE Courses, Podcasts, and Massage and Bodywork Magazine always feature expert voices and new perspectives in the profession, including articles from Whitney Lowe and myself. Thinking practitioner listeners can save on joining ABMP ABMP.com/thinking and if you have a chance to tell ABMP that you heard about it here, that actually really does help the show as well.

Let’s them know that their support makes a difference too. 

[00:38:24] Whitney Lowe: That’s great. Yes. And thanks to all of our listeners for hanging out with us and to our sponsors. As we said, you can stop by our sites for the video show notes, transcripts, and any extras. You can find that over on my site at academyofclinicalmassage.com Til, where can they find that on your site.

[00:38:39] Til Luchau: Advancedtrainings.com, which is undergoing a revision. Excited about our new website. It’s launching soon. Look forward to seeing that. Like we say every episode, we mean it. We want to hear from you with your ideas or input about the show. Send us an email, send us a voice memo, send us a social message.

Email us if you want. [email protected] or find us on social media under our names. My name is Til Luchau,  Whitney, what is your name? 

[00:39:09] Whitney Lowe: Today, my name is Whitney Lowe. You can find me over there on social as well. And also be sure to check out the list of supplies and wealth of resources we have over on our YouTube channel under my name as well.

We’d also like for you to tell really appreciate if you would rate us on Apple Podcasts as it helps other people find the show, and you can hear us wherever you listen on your favorite podcast app. Please share the word, tell a friend, and we will look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

[00:39:40] Til Luchau: Thank you, Whitney.

[00:39:41] Whitney Lowe: All right. Thank you, sir. Have a good year, and we’ll talk to you soon.