Mastering Movement: The Key to Aging with Strength and Mobility with Jana Barrett

00:00 - Andrea (Host)
Welcome. Welcome, yana. I am so excited to have you here on this podcast. 

00:05 - Jana (Guest)
Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. Such a pleasure to be here with you. 

00:08 - Andrea (Host)
Yeah, you have such a unique perspective and when I came across you and your profile and what you do, I was like, oh, I want to talk to you more and learn more about what you do. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So, if you don't mind, can you give a brief I know it's hard to keep it brief Like overview of what you do and what got you to the point where you're at today. 

00:33 - Jana (Guest)
Thank you. I'm a fitness and movement coach and I've been coaching people for over a decade now and essentially I coach people in midlife so women and some men as well in my face to face business over 40. So I help them gain strength and lifelong fitness. I help them with mobility and get strength and confidence so they can age well and pretty much live their lives to the fullest to kind of simplify it. 

01:06 - Andrea (Host)
Oh, that's so powerful, it's such an amazing thing of what we can do with our bodies. So what is your specific approach in fitness or mobility? 

01:18 - Jana (Guest)
So I have moved slightly from the conventional and traditional fitness modalities like weight training and gems and now I coach my clients with slightly unconventional tools like kettlebells, which are probably quite common. Most people will have handled kettlebell in their life if they are into exercise, but I also do clubbells and for the last three years my favorite is the steel maze, which probably a lot of people haven't had. A lot of people haven't held in their hands and haven't probably encountered. But it's a thousands and thousands and thousands of years old tool. Primal humans used to manufacture steel maces just from a rock and a stick, so it's somehow, I feel, wired into our DNA to be the winging something. It's got a heavy thing at the end of it and I think the earliest depictions of the steel maze are about 2000 years ago from like Tibet and India. So they used to use them to condition warriors, fighters, soldiers and wrestlers, and it has come to the West only about 10 years ago. So it's still relatively new and I would say slightly kind of underground fitness tool, but in my opinion it's I can't really, and I've tried so many different things I, if I had to pick one, that will be the steel maze as a kind of the best tool for human optimization, because what I love about it that it's not only about strength but it has the mobility built into it. So not only it's getting stronger on a muscular level, it is also really strengthening joints and connective tissue and kind of helping the joint to move in a full range of motion. And that's probably how I, where I, see the limitations in traditional weightlifting. It's a very two dimensional movement, there's a very little complexity, whereas if you have a look on my website or over any kind of steel maze videos, you can move in so many planes of motion and you can twist and you can lunge and you can, you know you can kind of combine so many movements Together. 

03:32
And I think that with some of the more traditional fitness styles we're not really tapping into the possibilities of the human body and and you know, explore all of the ways we can move our human bodies. It's not just up and down inside. You know we are capable of such complex. You know like I'm a keen surfer and when you think about surfing I need from my exercise to get me fit for that. There's so much in surfing. There is rotation, going up and down, feeling the. You know the nuances of the wave and then you need the brutal strength to pedal out. You need full range of motion in your hips and your shoulders. You need to kind of understand biomechanics and how to pedal without frying your rotator cuff and your shoulder muscles. You know there's so much in there and I found that for life and for sports, this deal maze has proven to me to be the kind of the best tool there is. 

04:37 - Andrea (Host)
And that's so cool and for anyone who wants to kind of picture, but I recommend Google. And it's like this, like long steel, stick with that, like the ball at the end is. Yana said we actually got one at the last or two clinics ago that I worked at. It was close to when I left, so I didn't get to play with it much. I got to play with it a little bit, and it was like there is something so primal about it. It was like I was like, oh, this thing is cool and that clinic was really good. 

05:03
They were always introducing new like tools and sandbags and playing with different things, but I never got to like take a course on it and really learn how to play with it, and so when I saw you use it, I was like, oh, that just like reminds me of it, because there was something about picking it up that just felt real powerful and you're right like using all the range of motion. And so I would love to back up, though, and even define mobility for those that might not understand the difference of like mobility versus flexibility, or even what we. You know what you mean by that, by the different dimensions of motion. So do you mind going into that a bit. 

05:41 - Jana (Guest)
Not at all. No, because there's. Probably the most common question was the difference between mobility and stretching, or very often people ask me was the difference between mobility and yoga? Yes, you know, and that's that's. I love answering these kind of prickly questions because the yoga enthusiasts are so protective of their yoga, you know. And so mobility essentially, if you really boil it down, is strength training for the joints and connective tissue. 

06:06
First to stretching. Mobility is dynamic and active and it's exploring kind of the full range of motions in the joint. Stretching is a passive activity. You're basically just stretching the muscle in usually just one kind of direction. By doing mobility you are taking your joints through the full range of motions. It's more active and you're also building strength in the end range, where the end. That is where a lot of people get injured because they don't have full mobility, like in shoulders or hips, and they are loading their shoulders with overhead presses and they cannot access that final range of motion. Suddenly the biomechanics changes and that's usually where you probably seen that. That's where people get injured. So mobility, and often people kind of leave mobility behind. They really focus on strengthening their muscles. It's all about the muscles, muscles. But if your connective tissue and your joint is not strong. Your strong muscles are no good because you will be in that injury cycle. 

07:15
And you know I used to coach a lot of weight lift umpire lifters, weight lifters and bodybuilders and they can lift phenomenal weight and then you ask them to do a simple mobility movement and they just aren't, or they really muscle bound and very stiff and a lot of tension in the body. So that is the fundamental kind of difference between mobility and just passive stretching and some of yoga. It's quite active but a lot of it is promoting the kind of stretching and stretching more and more and more which I often see leads to destabilization of the joint. You're just stretching the ligaments and you're stretching the small stabilizing muscles around the joint and you're not building strength in it. So more for yoga for like mindfulness and movement and destressing and meditation and breath work. But if you want functional strength and mobility in your joints, then mobility work and mobility, systematic targeted mobility training. It's always going to give you more and a bang for your back. 

08:23 - Andrea (Host)
Yes, I so, so agree, and I think you mentioned one group, because I feel like there's there's always a spectrum of where someone just is and I'm like everyone's just kind of born somewhere on the spectrum. You are naturally going to fall in like the more muscle bound like you said, like somebody who is just tighter and struggles with flexibility and so for them, mobility like you're. You know, the weight lifters that you're talking about. It's like you both need to gain the flexibility and the mobility. But what I see a lot of and I think it tends to, I'm curious what you, who like, what body type you tend to work with. Or maybe it's the whole, the whole gamut, but what I have found is the subset of those that I work with with chronic pain, which often are women, often on the more people pleasing, perfectionist, type a like spectrum. Not always so, by no means is this always correlated, but I would see a high, high percentage also tend to be on the more hyper mobile end of the spectrum, meaning that they have a lot of flexibility. So if you're doing a hamstring stretch, it's like you can, you know, if you're doing a yoga fold, you can just like fold over and completely like be, you know, belly to die on flexibility, but they don't have the mobility piece, which is exactly what's so important, meaning that they don't have any control over their range of motion. And I feel like, exactly like you said, it's such a common area to get injured. 

09:59
When I the first clinic I worked with, we worked with dancers. Yeah, I feel like, oh my gosh, you, I mean what do you see a spectrum? But we worked with like Professional dancers and it's like you want to talk about people who have like amazing mobility. It's like these people can, these dancers could, bring their leg, you know, to all the way up so it's next to their ear, but not through momentum, right? It wasn't just like, oh what, someone's picking it up for them. It's like they have the strength to bring it up and hold it there and control it at that end range. It's like Mind-blowing amounts of strength, like just try it, like notice, how far can you lift your leg up on your own, versus like if someone picked it up for you. That's the difference between mobility and flexibility. And it is like Astonishing how weak I mean. I know I am in my end rages motion because I need to work my mobility more. 

10:53 - Jana (Guest)
You're inspiring me and that's how I usually demonstrate the different. Which difference between flexibility and mobility is that if you use, if you're standing up and you're using momentum and you want to flick your leg, as far as we'll go, we'll go very Coifar, usually for most people. Right, you might possibly hurt yourself while you're doing it as well. Disclaimer yeah. But if you're actually going really slowly, you suddenly are Completely different and you feel the weakness around the the hip right, and that's usually how I demonstrate the difference between flexibility and mobility. It's just entirely different. 

11:30 - Andrea (Host)
Oh, yeah, and that whole range of motion that you, your body, has access to through flexibility but not mobility. I think, like what you said, it really is areas where, especially if you're doing things like surfing or you know when you might be thrown into those ranges of motion, that is where injuries can happen, because we just don't have the control there. 

11:51 - Jana (Guest)
Yeah. Yeah yeah, and I've worked with dancers. I've worked with a lot of gymnasts as well. I usually get them kind of in their 40s and 50s when they were really dealing with the full aftermath of that. You know that back extension, you know those really swayed backs, and I also actually have coached a lot of yoga teachers. They tend to have terrible issues with their lower backs and their their pelvis is because of the constant stretching and stretching and stretching and not building strength at the same time. 

12:25 - Andrea (Host)
Oh, yeah, yeah, and I I'm a crossfitter All right, used to be, and now I've started it up again, but it really is. And I feel like before, when I was doing cross but I just recently started again I could always have like the clinic, like I worked in the clinic the whole time and it's amazing how demonstrating exercises and things like that it kind of keeps your own self in check and I'm realizing I'm like, oh, I don't have that, like I'm not kind of proving anything to anybody or like demonstrating Exercises anymore and I'm like I need to be really careful because I remember it's so easy to in these weight-lifting Lifting moves, to only move in these like certain planes of motion and totally lose strength than other ones. 

13:07 - Jana (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, totally, and I often get a lot of cross, a lot of people from these high intensity classes and I think it's quite nice to Either do lots of mobility to supplement and kind of complement these or do a little bit of functional training on the side just to promote those more complex movements, because CrossFit tends to be quite kind of traditionally weightlifting, you know, up and down it's a bit of rotation, I think as well, but um, the kind of, because I sometimes look at the steel mace training as a bit of a Kind of weighted mobility too, especially when you're doing some of the mace flows. So those are just lovely kind of complimentary fitness exercise style to to help you with, you know, some kind of high performance exercise like Weightlifting or powerlifting. 

14:02 - Andrea (Host)
Nice, yeah, so do you tend to use it more as like supplemental, or it's like in your when you're training people? Is it like the thing? 

14:12 - Jana (Guest)
It's both, okay, it's both, and that's really lovely. So I I tend to attract a lot of ex athletes or very active people, so a lot of surfers and runners, martial artists, you know a lot of people like that. But I do have some clients who just want to be fit for life. There are maybe parents. They want to be able to keep up with their children. They don't want to live in pain, they want to have that overall Kind of level of strength. 

14:38
They don't they're not trying to do anything Extreme or performance based. They literally just want to be able to feel good. They want to be strong enough to pick up their kids, to pick up a couple of bags of groceries, do a few eyes of gardening. And I've also noticed a lot of people, and especially women, are now starting to think about Not losing muscle mass and not losing bone density. So I have noticed in the last few years, instead of the weight loss and Looking a certain way, the goals have really shifted for people into more longevity, preserving the functionality of their bodies, aging well, not having fractures, injuries, and basically kind of maintaining their independence till they are very old. 

15:27
So once you lose your mobility, you can't get in and out of a car, you can't get in and out of bed, you can't clean your own home. At the end you are going to have to move somewhere else. And I think Women in their 40s and 50s are often seeing their parents deteriorate and start moving into assisted living or suffering from mental health issues because they are in chronic pain, because they can't move, they can't do the fun things they used to, and so that is the kind of horrific example where lack of strength and lack of mobility can take you in your 60s, 70s and beyond. So that's been kind of quite exciting goals and the shift from. I don't really essentially care how I look, that's not my number one reason. I mean it comes with it. You know it's always that right. 

16:21 - Andrea (Host)
Because it's grown up and you're suddenly a little good. 

16:24 - Jana (Guest)
You've got great posture and you're kind of functional and strong. But I have been really excited about the number one reasons, especially for women in midlife, to seek my support. That's been quite exciting. 

16:41 - Andrea (Host)
Yeah, I think that's amazing that you're seeing that shift. I'm seeing that shift too, and I think it's so important and I really want to address that piece that you were speaking to of. Without mobility, like that is kind of where things end, and I hate fear mongering and I think there is a degree of how important it is for people to become aware of what happens when movement is lost, because I think if you don't have aging parents, or maybe you're not seeing it in a certain way, I think people in the clinic, especially I, would get women in their 40s and 50s that could no longer get up and down off the floor, like they were already really had regressed and for no really good like not that there's ever really a good reason, right, but there was no like good explanation. It was just solely lack of like movement and exercise, and then because of that, they are, of course, in pain, which is why they're ending up in physical therapy, and so obviously, this podcast focuses a lot on the mind body side of things, and that can't really be separated out when you're in a state of feeling like you don't have control over your body. However, I think sometimes the angle is more about approaching it from getting mobility back first, because that when you feel like you can move in your own body, your confidence and your connection with your body is gonna just improve as a byproduct. And yeah, I mean I think it was for me, it was something that was really stuck with me and was so eye opening and it was one of the big motivators why I stay active and wanna stay strong and now why I'm a little hyper aware of like, okay, I gotta make sure I'm balancing out the crossfit as I've moved back into it with making sure I'm not losing my mobility here. 

18:33
Because, yeah, when you witness someone not being able to like get up and down off the table or bend over to tie their shoe like I mean, I had so many patients being like, hey, can you tie my shoe for me, right? It's like they couldn't do it themselves and it wasn't from a pain or injury, it was solely lack of mobility, and they kind of get in the habits of their husbands doing it for them. Or they have shoes that you know are easy to slip on, which are all wonderful. You know things to use. What do you need to? But those things like slip away, right, it's like it starts so subtle and then I feel like it snowballs really fast. So I don't know if you want to speak to any just of the importance of mobility from a really functional standpoint, if there's anything else that's coming up, yeah, Absolutely, and I have had clients in their 40s and 50s who cannot get off the ground. 

19:20 - Jana (Guest)
So, I'm totally familiar with that. It's really tragic when people end up like that because the solution is so tragically simple. It's literally 10 minutes of mobility every day. That's all it is, and I often I don't know if you found it, but I really deeply resent the I'm just getting old, excuse me, oh, yes, oh, I'm just getting old, it's okay, I had people in their 30s tell me that and I'm like I am older than you, but you can't and I'm not that old Like I. 

19:52 - Andrea (Host)
Literally remember having someone who was 32 tell me that and I was like no, you're not. 

19:58 - Jana (Guest)
No, no, they're not, and it is so simple. And I think that it's really irresponsible to allow yourself to get to this stage because, like I don't want to be a burden on my family when I become old, I don't want to be burden on my husband, I don't. I want to be a functional human being. I don't have to deadlift one and a half times of my body weight, I don't have to be able to run a marathon, but I really want to be able to tie my own shoelaces and mop my own floor or pick up something off the ground If I drop it. And also I really my children are teens and I am really mightily looking forward to being a grandmother. 

20:39
And where do babies exist? They exist on the ground, and toddlers as well, and so I think sometimes people don't look at. Sometimes I wish I could give people a glimpse of what their lives would be like if they don't do mobility, you know, because when they realize it's too late, it's often too late. Like I had a client who was 60 and she didn't have enough strength to pick up her eight month old baby granddaughter out of a cot. Now that is a heartbreaking moment. That is when it all kind of comes crashing down, I feel. So you don't have to be lifting weights, you don't have to be running marathons, you don't have to do martial arts or anything, but you just need to be able to preserve, to a certain extent, your body's ability to move freely without pain. 

21:44 - Andrea (Host)
Yes, yes, and it's like, while it's never too late to do something, ever like there's always something you can do to improve your mobility, it's never too old, never too broken or anything like that. 

22:00 - Jana (Guest)
Never too anything. No, it's 10 minutes a day, Andrea. Yes 10 minutes a day, but it's 10 minutes a day every day. 

22:07 - Andrea (Host)
Yes, I think that's so important. 

22:11 - Jana (Guest)
Everyone can find 10 minutes a day. 

22:13 - Andrea (Host)
Yeah. 

22:14 - Jana (Guest)
As soon as you start doing mobility movements, you feel more energized. Everything's just flowing better. Obviously, you're really supporting your lymphatic system and drainage. You are lubricating everything. So, rather than moving around like a dried twig, you are more supple, you're warming up the synovial fluid in your joints, you're not so creaky, you're getting rid of all the tension, the stiffness, the little niggles that we have. And, let's be honest, we're all sitting in front of computers. We're all sitting a lot, and it's what we have to do for work. I spent a lot of time in front of a computer, but I do five minutes of mobility here and there and I'm not adapting that poor posture and tight hips and so lower back and the neck is all jutting forward and round its shoulders. So it's actually. I think I wish more people knew how simple it is. 

23:14 - Andrea (Host)
Yes, oh, totally, I'm so with you. I mean, it can be a few simple exercises, and I think what you spoke to of being able to show people, if they carry things forward, about where things are going, because I think another thing that people sometimes don't realize, especially women we do have, if not checked, a decline of muscle mass. If it's not used, it's like use it or lose it. It is just the reality of being in a human body. So I think, for what I see, the mistake people make is being like well, I can get around, ok, fine now, but it's like things are only going to get worse unless you're actively doing something to counteract it. 

23:58
And I think what happens, especially in chronic pain and I'd love you to speak to this piece especially is that there's then the fear of movement comes in, so then less movement happens and it gets to a point where it's like the decline is both very physical and then, from the mind-body perspective of the fear builds up. And again you have these two things that just like are this really unfortunate? Like rapid vicious cycle that happened and unless it is intervened on at, whatever the cool thing is, you can intervene on it wherever feels most doable for you first. So that might be the mind, body place, or it might be like, like you're saying, moving for 10 minutes a day, or starting with one minute a day of mobility, or a simple stretch Because it just has to be intervened on because things will not get better otherwise. It's just the unfortunate reality. 

24:52 - Jana (Guest)
Absolutely. I totally agree with that and I often see that with people post injury, like maybe post fracture. You know, once that, you know, you know the statistic as well as I do that one in three women over 50 will have a fracture post four due to a four. And I often see it with women who have either had a fracture or women who have had some surgery or some kind of traumatic event like that. They completely lose confidence in their bodies so they suddenly they are very hesitant to walk down the stairs it's probably what you talk about, or they. You know, if they step on the stool they're not sure if they're going to be okay. If they jump off the stool or thinking about picking something off the floor, I don't know if I'll be alright. Would I tweak my bag? 

25:50
And I think often when you need to start very gently and very slowly, to start building the confidence in your body's physical ability up again, mobility is such a lovely start. You're often grounded onto the. You know you're often doing them on the floor, so you feel supported by the ground. There is no lifting of things, you only just working with your body and it what I really love about mobility and that's where kind of that emotional component, mental component comes in is that it allows you to observe. It allows you to get out of your head and into your body and observe. You kind of think, hey, my right hip is feeling a lot tighter than my left hip. Wow, I've got this tension in my shoulder blade. I didn't even know that was there. You know, it's almost like a body scan and then you can start kind of delving deeper. Why do I have that tension in my shoulder blade? How come my right hip is moving better than my left hip? 

26:52
What is going on and I think I've seen it so many times before where, post some kind of traumatic event, it could be mental health event as well. It could be a massive doubt, you know, bout of depression or anxieties and things like that, where women have or people have started with gentle mobility and it just kind of eased them into movement and recovery and really building that confidence back in their body, like, yes, my body can do this, I'm okay again, I'll be fine, and then and then they can eventually move into a bit of strength training and prevent the injuries or recover from their surgeries or their mental health issues. I work with a lot of people with severe mental health issues, people with severe OCD and people who have been severely depressed because of chronic pain or some you know surgery. I've had people with very sudden traumatic surgeries as well and often that mobility that really helps them in that first stage of recovery. 

27:57 - Andrea (Host)
Oh my gosh, yes, a thousand times. Yet I think that is one of the hardest things about what I do now, because it is all virtual and because I am working a lot with more like the nervous system and mind, body and teaching people about emotions and I'm a physical therapist I'm like I need to see your individual movement. It was a very hard decision but I'm like I just have kind of stepped out of like any type of exercise or movement unless it's like a one on one person where we are getting really specific about it. But I do see, I think that is a mistake that happens in the mind-body world of so much emphasis on hey, we need to work on this fear of movement, which is super important to do from the mind-body side, but it's like it can't be done in a silo. You can work on it through inner work and I have all kinds of tools and processes and ways to talk to your body, but you have to have something that you are then taking it into action and showing your body how movement can be safe. You can't sit on a meditation cushion and build safety around movement. 

29:08
If there's fear there, there has to be an action taken and it's just figuring out where can you start. What does feel safe, what does? Or working with someone like yourself who can really help guide people on this really personalized level to build confidence. But it's like I don't think you can get confidence without the actual action. I'm seeing that more and more on the online space as this mind-body work is becoming more accessible, which is great. But I feel like this is kind of the shadow side of it, as people kind of being like, well, I'm not going to work out until I feel totally comfortable and confident in my body. It's just like that is a problem. You're going to jam up somewhere, you're going to get, you're going to really plateau along the pathway. 

29:55 - Jana (Guest)
Both you and I know that you cannot separate the physical, the mental and the emotional. We are one thing, we are one organic entity that is the blend of all three. You can't just work on the physical, you know, just with exercise you can't just work on the emotional or mental. But what I've found because obviously movement is that's my jam and that's what I do and that's what I have expected I often see people processing emotions and trauma through movement, because for some people it's the meditation, for some people it's hypnotherapy. For me it has always been movement. 

30:34 - Andrea (Host)
When. 

30:35 - Jana (Guest)
I'm in a dark place mentally or emotionally. I go and surf, I move with my steel mace or something you know like that. So I think that people can you know, we all know that stuck emotions and trauma manifest in the body in a physical way. Right, you get tight somewhere, you have an injury or you kind of stuff it down, and I think that movement, things like dance, perhaps, you know, or yoga for some people, or mobility, or steel mace flow for some people, can really ease that kind of stuck emotion and trauma out of the body in a really nice way. You just have to find what works for you. You know that's what's always worked for me. 

31:17
I have a lot of people who will sometimes cry or feel really sad when they are working out and or, you know, they tell me about something while they're moving and the tears just come. So it is all just that freak. It's almost like you just give them a safe container in which to process what has been happening to their bodies. I had a client who almost died in childbirth. There was, there was, a long journey of recovery, of kind of reconnecting with the body, because the things sometimes people who go through trauma are very disconnected from their physical body, because you probably see that with your clients, right? Oh yes absolutely. 

32:00
With the body because it caused you some trauma and pain. And this client went through like 12 surgeries in the first year post traumatic birth where she almost died. So there was so much trauma that it took six months for her to be okay living in her body again. So, and that's through exercise careful, very careful, very gentle, very supported one-on-one exercise of course, but it's, it's possible for some people to heal through that. 

32:34 - Andrea (Host)
Oh, absolutely, and I love that you brought this in because it's actually having a conversation with a client the other day and it's not the first time I've heard this is I feel like I'm kind of ripping on the mind body space on this podcast, but, as I'm in it, but it's like we all will look right, it's like we all have this bias in view of the world, and so what my client was talking about was she was feeling very obligated from another program that she was in. It was all these here's, these like meditations you need to do and questions you need to ask, and it was, to me, a ridiculous amount of things that she was kind of shitting on herself to do every morning. So I was like let's actually go through your two hour morning mind like mind body routine, because absolutely insane, where did you get this from? She's a new client, so I was like, okay, first we need to back up, you do not need to be adding anything else, we need to be taking out right. 

33:29
And so I got to this place where I'm like, okay, let's just like scrap it all. What do you want to do, what would feel like joyful and amazing for you? And she's like to go for a walk with my dog. And I was like okay, so, and are you doing that? She's like well, I sometimes don't have time because I have to do this and this, and like I'm supposed to do this. And I was like oh my gosh, okay. I was like but it's like physically she can do it Like there's no pain, like the pain does not stop her from going for a walk with her dog. And she's like to me it feels like very meditative. And I was like so do that instead of meditating? Like that is your meditation. And she was like but I thought that was dissociation and I was like no, not when you feel that it's meditative, right that when you're having that experience of like oh, when I'm gone, this walk in the presence of nature, and she's like I just get to look at my dog and how cute he is, and I just feel so in the moment and I just forget everything else. And I was like that's your meditation, right? Like that way, more valuable than the whatever 20 minute guided process they told you that you have to do and I think so many women had this experience of because of what you talked about earlier, that's luckily shifting, but where it's like exercise was associated with hey, I need to look a certain way that for so many, exercise is dissociative. 

34:53
Right, it's like I got to go move my body. There's like where you see, like a you know a quote unquote over exercising I have issues with that term, but we'll use it right now when it's like I got to go to the gym and be on the elliptical for you know, an hour and a half because I have to burn this many calories, and it's not from any type of embodied or connection state, and I think there's at least a lot of my clients that a lot tend to have the history of eating disorders or you know a lot of body dysmorphia, and so I do see it very commonly where exercise does become dissociation or it's like when they start moving, they do immediately dissociate because that's been the their experience. But what I love about what you're talking about is that's like you're bringing it back into the connection with their body, that it doesn't have to be that way and that is that's where the healing is happening is reconnecting them to their bodies. 

35:50 - Jana (Guest)
Absolutely, and it could be anything. And I think you know women, women still use sometimes exercises, punishment. 

35:57
Yes, I had a doughnut and now I have to work it off at the gym. And yes, and I you know, I love how you said that you know, for your client the walk was the pleasurable and she was. And I think that a lot of people think meditation is sitting in a room with closed eyes in a lotus position, thinking about nothing. But I was working with a hypnotherapist who was also a client and he said that's rubbish. Meditation can be anything where exactly you said where you're in the moment. 

36:32
For some people that's exercised, for some people, for your client that's walking, For me it's movement and cooking. I found cooking immensely nourishing, like figuratively and metaphorically as well, but that is often my meditation, when I just shut myself in the kitchen and I'm just very present and I'm just making food. So I think it can come in so many forms. And how wonderful to find for your client to find something that is meditative and so good for you as well. Exercise, it's de-stressing, it's time in nature which women, humans really crave being out in the elements and feeling the wind on your skin and sun or rain or hail or snow. 

37:22
You know it's very beautiful, yeah. So I think people just need to find don't go and stand on that, you know, do a treadmill for an hour. Just find something that brings you joy. Exercise should be sure. It should be something you look forward to most of the time. 

37:40 - Andrea (Host)
Yes, I love that and I think that's where I'll bring back in the steel mace concept is finding what works for you or what gives you that empowered sense you know of, I mean for me. That's why I do love CrossFit. It was so funny. When I went back I was like man, I miss the feeling of my hands, feeling like they are being tore up, and I was like, maybe this is a little weird, but like there's something so satisfying about it, right, and I was like, oh, my goodness, I got to rebuild up all my calluses. But like I was watching, like your videos or like the steel mace, and I'm like, oh, there's something that's so like, like following that, just that gut urge of like this would feel so good. The other thing I really want to try is like the acro yoga with the like ribbons where the people like hang from it. I was like, oh, absolutely, that sounds so cool. And I was like it gets me fun. Like what? What likes you? You? 

38:35 - Jana (Guest)
up what lets you up and I think you know, go somewhere where you get a lot out of your exercise. So for me, the steel mace is about feeling like a warrior, feeling invincible, powerful, strong, yet feminine. I love that because it's a bit of a dance, so you get to kind of feel quite sensual as well. But it's getting stronger and so you know, like, what do you get from CrossFit? You don't just get exercise and strong muscles, right, you get the empowerment. You feel confident and you feel powerful and you've got you know your palaces to prove it. You know you look at it every day and it's so, yeah, fine, everybody needs to find exercise that it's just giving them a bit more than just the strong bones and strong muscles. 

39:24
But you know, I know that when I put a mace in a woman's hand, she gets that look immediately, you know that kind of warrior, look like, wow, this is cool. And it's very dynamic, very kind of organic tool because it moves with you. It's very nuanced as well. It responds to the slightest. You know movement and it's yeah, it's very organic. That's what I love about it. 

39:50
It feels very alive in your hands, yeah. 

39:53 - Andrea (Host)
Yeah, and so if someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, I'm not in New Zealand where you are located, and they are interested in like trying out the steel mace, what do you, what do you recommend they start? 

40:06 - Jana (Guest)
So if you want to buy steel mace, they're very readily available on Amazon. They're not expensive and they're very portable. It's a very portable tool. It's so easy to chuck it at the back of your car. You can take it, I take, I take my mace on holidays, I go and exercise in the garden or on the beach, so they're very easy to access. Very inexpensive, start somewhere, very small. 

40:26
So I usually start people on four kilos or roughly about seven, eight pounds, because it is not like a barber or dumbbell, it's. It will be unlike anything you've ever held in your hands before. And then I have a fully you know, a full program of steel mace, which has steel mace flows and steel mace interval training as well. But I have a lot of videos on my YouTube channel and I teach people inside my Facebook private Facebook community as well. So you can absolutely start for free. Just start playing around with it. Get yourself one from Amazon or from Techfit, which is the certification that I hold they sell a very beautiful mace as well and just start playing around with it a little bit to see what it feels like and see if it speaks to you. That will be my recommendation. Yeah Go, I've got quite. 

41:19
I tend to post a little bit more beginner videos too because I found that quite often on social media and YouTube you find these very elaborate, complicated mace flows and people get a little bit, you know, overwhelmed. 

41:32
So I have made a point of really starting from the beginning, learning how to switch the mace in your hands, learning some just mobility with the mace, because it's a lovely just to do weighted mobility with it. You can do some quite lovely movements for that and then very slowly starting maybe doing a mace flow just with two movements. It's very simple because it's a lot of coordination that's happening in there. You know, when you're combining things like lateral lunges with vertical presses, because generally you're combining very, very kind of complex movements, kind of multi you know they involve a lot of muscles and a lot of joints and are very complex. So it's kind of nice to start at the beginning and build the foundational movements very well. Before you start swinging it with one hand and you know, and kind of aspire to people that you know have been doing it for a very long time, it takes definitely an exercise in patience and, and you know, being kind of humble with it. 

42:36
And once you wake, yourself on the head a couple of times, you realize that maybe you shouldn't rush the process. You know it's an instant feedback. You know, if you, if you're exercising with the steel mace, with a bit of ego, it will punish you quite quickly. 

42:50 - Andrea (Host)
I'm like you're so making me want to go try one right now. Okay, I think this is so like I didn't like love hearing all of that, because I just never thought of it in any of that way, and I'm like, oh, what a cool tool, because so often we tend to respond in life in certain ways and it's like one of them is like this urgency, like I need to, you know, get to where I'm going right away. And also this I think it's so common, for perfectionism is like we look at the expert and are then mad somehow that we're not already there, which is like such a ridiculous expectation which I find myself doing it in certain you know places as well. But it's like why? Why would you be good at it if you've literally never tried it? And I think it's kind of cool as, as you were talking about it, I feel like what's cool about having this thing? That's not common and it's so like, like you said, it's like it's unlike anything you've ever like played with, is it? 

43:49
I think that almost sounds like it would be so much easier to be so humble and start from the very beginning, because there's almost like no expectation, because, like I know, for me going back to CrossFit now. You know it's a little hard sometimes when I'm like man I used to be able to squat like 100 pounds more right, like I'm having, like I had a baseline that I'm having to like bring myself down from, whereas like this I'm like I have zero ego in it and I'm like, oh, what a cool way to like not only get all the benefits you've talked about, but also bring in what you were just saying of like learn how to put your ego aside and be humble and like meet yourself completely where you are and go with it from there. Oh, that's so cool, I love it. 

44:36 - Jana (Guest)
And I love what you said. You said the word play and I think, that is the key. 

44:40
You know, like I don't feel like I'm exercising with the maze. Quite a lot of times I feel like I'm playing with it. I'm playing and I'm exploring and I think I love that component of that. It's very playful and I think, you know, we suddenly arrive in adulthood and we stop having fun. We stop having fun. Everything is so serious and exercise is so serious and I have to be strong and I have to have strong bones and people forgot that exercise and movement should be playful. You know, look at children. You know, look at children wrestling, look at children just exploring their environment. And I think that's what I probably love about this. The Omaze 2 is that play component and you just exploring movement and it's it's just really nice, it's fun. It's fun and a lot of my clients say like this is just so much fun and exercise is not a chore anymore, is it? If it's fun, it can't be chore. 

45:46
Right, oh, either, or Either fun or it's chore, yeah, yeah, that's that's what I really love and that's what my clients, that's the feedback I often, often get. It's fun and it keeps the brain really engaged because you're moving in such complex ways. As soon as your mind wanders a bit, it goes terribly wrong very quickly and it gives you instant feedback. You know when you're swinging the maze around your body, you cannot wonder, your mind can't wonder, and if you are doing complex flow and you're going from side to side, from movement to movement, as soon as you start thinking about what's for dinner or your deadline at work, you get lost. 

46:31
I think it's that again, that you need to be so connected and so present in your body and all you think about is how you're moving, where you're going next, what you need to do to perform that movement. Well, so it's actually really nourishing, I think, for the mind, because it gets to switch off. Yes, you know you can get infected with the thoughts of well, I had a fight with my teenager before I came here. What's for dinner tonight? We ran out of toilet paper. I've got this deadline at work. You know all that kind of incessant thousands of thoughts that we get every single day which overwhelm us and stress us, and suddenly you, just for 20 minutes, you get to move and you don't, you can't think about any of that. 

47:19
So I think, in terms of the mental health and having coached people with severe OCD and you know really significant, you know challenging mental health issues, that is their break, that is where they don't get to be affected as much by their condition. And I have clients, specifically this one with really severe OCD, who said if I don't move every single day, my day is awful, but if I do that 20 minutes every single day I can keep everything, I can kind of keep the lid on it, just yes, it doesn't kind of overflow. So I think that what a lot of people don't realize that exercise is not only good physical health but it's extremely potent for mental and emotional well-being as well. 

48:17 - Andrea (Host)
Yes, yes, yes, oh, my goodness, that's so. It's so beautiful, Like what a beautiful gift your client is giving to herself of like just doing those 20 minutes and it's it really is. I think sometimes because it seems almost so simple or easier it's just 20 minutes, right, Like it doesn't feel like enough, especially for perfectionists, because I know what that's like it really is. I think we underestimate, yeah, how much of a freaking difference it can make. 

48:48 - Jana (Guest)
I actually feel that people overcomplicate exercise. Oh yeah. Really, I think even if you just boil it down to 10 minutes of mobility every single day and a walk, you probably going to be fine. 

48:59 - Andrea (Host)
Yes, oh, I love that so much. Thank you so much. I feel like I could ask you so many more things. We can talk about that. 

49:07 - Jana (Guest)
We can talk about how I was and how I was and how I was and what I feel the same way. 

49:12 - Andrea (Host)
I love this. Any well, let's let people know where they can find you and then, if you have any like last words that you want to leave people with, feel free to do that. 

49:23 - Jana (Guest)
You can find me. I have a website where I have a lot of free content, a lot of freebies too. To get you started with mobility, I have a six day free mobility challenge where people get a lot of phenomenal results in just six days, which is free, so you can download that quite easily off my website. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and I have a private, exclusive community on Facebook as well for women. That's where I run training and that's probably where people can access my support in the most kind of direct way. 

49:58
And then, last words of wisdom Just just move. Move your body and enjoy. Enjoy what you were given. I mean a physical body that you know. Your body that moves well, without pain, is such a gift, and your body is essentially the vessel in which you get to experience life on this planet. So look after it. Yeah, we spend so much time looking after our positions and we. Once your body is gone, it's gone. And also, the last spin of a human joint is 120 years, so if you are having joint replacements at 60, you're not doing something right. 

50:41 - Andrea (Host)
Yes, Look after your joints. 

50:43 - Jana (Guest)
Look after your joints people with mobility and it really is as simple as five to 10 minutes a day. That's it. That is it that will keep you out of time and moving till you are very, very old, Beautiful. 

50:58 - Andrea (Host)
Beautiful, beautiful. All the links to Yana's information will be in the show notes. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your knowledge and inspiring me to like want to go look into getting a steel mace for myself because I don't need more gym equipment, but that sounds amazing. 

51:15 - Jana (Guest)
Thank you so much for having me, andrea. It's been such a wonderful conversation. Yeah, it's been a real pleasure and real honor. Yes, thank you, thank you.