Healthy Matters - with Dr. David Hilden
Dr. David Hilden (MD, MPH, FACP) is a practicing Internal Medicine physician and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Hennepin Healthcare (HCMC), Hennepin County’s premier safety net hospital in downtown Minneapolis. Join him and his colleagues for expert knowledge, inspiring stories, and thoughtful insight from the front lines of today’s hospitals and clinics. They also take your questions, too! Have you ever just wanted to ask a doctor…well…anything? Email us at healthymatters@hcmed.org, call us at 612-873-TALK (8255) or tweet us @DrDavidHilden. We look forward to building on the success of our storied radio talk show (13 years!) with our new podcast, and we hope you'll join us. In the meantime, be healthy, and be well.
Healthy Matters - with Dr. David Hilden
S02_E23 - 10 Tips for Reducing Pain at Work!
10/29/23
The Healthy Matters Podcast
S02_E23 - 10 Tips for Reducing Pain at Work!
There's no doubt about it, Monday mornings can be painful. And for many of us, the pain doesn't stop there! Work is a part of life, and there's nothing we can really do to speed up the day or make your boss a little less nagging, but in this episode we'll explore 10 tips for reducing the other pains we can experience at work, with Hennepin Healthcare's Catherine Justice (PT, DPT, CST, C-IAYT, E-RYT).
Catherine is an Integrative Physical Therapist and the Program Manager for Integrative Health at Hennepin Healthcare and she'll walk us through 10 essentials for making work, and life in general, a little less painful. From the importance of hydrating and fidgeting (!)- to the benefits of active and passive rejuvenation and improving your ergonomics, this episode has lots of great tips to help get you through the day with less pain. Join us!
If you live in, or near Minnesota, here's a great link to non-opioid, non-pharmacological pain treatment methods, options, and providers across the state: nopainmn.org
Got a question for the doc? Or an idea for a show? Contact us!
Email - healthymatters@hcmed.org
Call - 612-873-TALK (8255)
Find out more at www.healthymatters.org
<silence>
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Healthy
Speaker 3:Matters podcast with Dr. David Hilden , primary care physician and acute care hospitalist at Hennepin Healthcare in downtown Minneapolis, where we cover the latest in health healthcare and what matters to you. And now here's our host, Dr. David Hilden .
Speaker 1:Hey everybody, it's Dr. David Hilden , your host of the Healthy Matters podcast. And welcome to episode 23. We are gonna talk today about how to make work less painful. Joining me today is Katherine Justice . She is an integrative physical therapist at Hennepin Healthcare where I work here in downtown Minneapolis. And recently she has been on Hennepin healthcare social media sites with 10 practices that can help make your work less painful. So we thought it would be great for our listeners to hear right from Catherine what these tips might be. Catherine , welcome to the podcast. Thank
Speaker 2:You so much. This is really exciting for me to be a part of this. It's
Speaker 1:Great to have you on here. And before we dive into to your 10 ideas for reducing pain at work, tell us what you do. I've identified you as an integrative physical therapist. Could you please say more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd love to. And I, I'm a little nervous about telling you because I think I have the best job at Hennepin and I'm scared if I talk about it people are gonna try and take it. So don't steal my job. But , um, one of , uh, the roles that I hold here is of an integrative physical therapist, which is a physical therapist that specializes in whole person approach to physical therapy. So using holistic means like yoga, mindfulness and breathing and lifestyle practices, trauma-informed practices to help people heal, not just their physical body, but to really explore their connection to their body, finding more joy in their physical body and exploring how to heal through a whole variety of mechanisms. And then my other job at Hennepin is as the program manager for integrative health. And so for that, I get to run around the city and bring programming to people all throughout the city and throughout the state. I'm helping to spread kind of whole person wellness for our community. I bet
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people smiling and nodding right, right now and going , not only does she have a good job, but she has a needed job and why don't we have a , a lot of those Yeah . <laugh> , that's what I would imagine.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, in the whole field of integrative physical therapy, it's actually really unique that we have this specialty. I don't think anyone else in the country has the program that we do. And it's a really new specialty integrative pt. It's not board recognized yet, but there's a growing movement of PTs that are really looking at this whole person approach to care. So I think we're on the cutting edge of something here. We have something really special.
Speaker 1:Love. It sounds terrific. Let's get into the topic of the day. You have 10 tips for reducing pain at work. I'm just gonna read them to you and let you tell us about them. Okay, great. First one, stand and walk. What do you mean?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, a lot of people in their jobs are sitting for much of the day, probably not you, I'm guessing you are up and moving and a lot of people in the medical community are up and moving, but a lot of other people are sitting. And you know, there's the catchphrase, I don't know if you've heard it, of sitting is the New Smoking.
Speaker 1:I have heard a little bit about
Speaker 2:That. Yes.
Speaker 1:And I do spend a little bit of my day sitting. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I, I do like to tell people smoking is still worse. Like we don't need to have like a big competition of who's worse for your health. But smoking would win. However, sitting is not good for us to do for long periods of time. So even small breaks where we stand, where we walk, one of my favorite things to try and encourage people to do, which is coming back into our repertoire of work activities, is a walking meeting. When you have a meeting with only one or two people consider, rather than doing it on teams or on zoom of taking a walk. And you might find that your ideas are more creative, that you open up to a new way of thinking as you move your body. Because thinking, cognition and movement are really linked in how our bodies and brains develop together. Our bodies feel better when they move.
Speaker 1:I wanna like put my hands above my head and go, hallelujah. She's saying that we shouldn't all sit there on virtual meetings. Right. I would love that. <laugh> . Okay. In the Department of Medicine in Hennepin, we might seem more walking meetings and people are gonna look at me funny and I'm gonna blame you.
Speaker 2:I love it. <laugh> . Okay,
Speaker 1:Tip number two, fidget and stretch. Okay, I get stretching. What are you talking about fidgeting?
Speaker 2:So there was a really interesting study done in the United Kingdom where they had people self-report whether they were very still when they sat, whether they fidgeted a little or fidgeted a lot. And what they found is they followed these people over the course of 10, 20 years, that it's the people who self-reported as high fidgeters. People who fidget a lot, didn't have any of the negative health benefits of sitting too much, even if they did sit too much, even if they didn't exercise. Just the act of fidgeting. So the more we move our body, even little movement, it really matters. Our bodies are really have evolved to love movement, that if we think of our hunter gatherer background of humanity, we would move in a gentle way frequently throughout the day, sit and rest when we needed to, and move vigorously when we needed to. But most of the day was spent in gentle movement. So even fidgeting in your chair, even stretching, that can be a form of gentle movement that helps to keep our body healthy and pain-free. Because when we, or less pain, maybe not pain-free, which is something I would like to mention, that pain is actually okay. It's normal. It's a healthy part of our body and our nervous system. It's only when pain causes excessive suffering that we wanna maybe intervene. But when we feel pain from sitting too much, it's usually because things get tight and stiff and dehydrated. And that's where movement comes in. It can help to hydrate the tissues. Even fidgeting can help to keep our tissues supple so that they don't get too stiff and sore.
Speaker 1:So we shouldn't be too judgmental of the person who's bouncing their knee around because, well, first of all, that person's me. I'm very <laugh> . Yes . All the time. Finishing . I feel very redeemed here. <laugh> ,
Speaker 2:You should, because yeah, if the person next to you is like bouncing their knee or wiggling or you hear like a squeaky chair moving in your mind, you can just say, good for them, good for them.
Speaker 1:Great
Speaker 2:Tip. They're doing it right.
Speaker 1:Great tip <laugh> number three, ergonomics. Please explain what that means and how would I know if I have good ergonomics?
Speaker 2:Well, ergonomics are less about you and your body and more about the world around you. So it's is your workplace set up in a way that's going to cause pain or maybe even injury to your body, which is crazy to think. Sometimes it can be a little extreme to think that our work environment could injure us just of how we have our computers or our keyboards or our chairs. But it really can over time add up. So just making sure that you've got your monitor at eye level keyboard, if you're on a computer that is should be at around wrist or um , elbow level. Maybe a little lower than elbow level. Making sure if you're not tall enough for your feet to touch the floor, maybe you bring the floor up to your feet, put a little footstool or some books or something under your feet. Little adjustments like that, especially for people who are working from home. Now ergonomics can be really challenging. Laptops are really hard. So finding ways of adjusting your work environment so that it's not so hard on your body. And
Speaker 1:I like what you said about that working from home, so many people work from home and Yeah . And , and it's probably not everybody has a perfectly ergonomically ideal workstation.
Speaker 2:Right? Probably nobody does. And you know, another thing that's really helpful at home is , um, blankets, which not to wear over you and keep you warm, but to fold and place around you. So a folded blanket under your arms or behind your back, or even under your hips, depending on the height of your chair, they're a really powerful way of helping to reduce strain on your body. So getting creative about what you've got at home and using those things. Then you don't have to buy a fancy chair necessarily. Yep .
Speaker 1:Something many people can do in the , with what you have. Yeah . I'm really worried about this next one. And I am going to fix the way I'm sitting <laugh> and say that number four says, you have to fix your posture. This is the one I'm so, so bad at.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, you know what , um, I can tell you that nobody on this planet has perfect posture. That's not a thing. It doesn't exist. There's no such thing as perfect posture. Really. When we talk about posture, it's not even necessarily how we sit, although that's part of it. Posture for me, what I think of is how we carry our body when it's still or in a state of little movement. Like what position are we in and how are we supporting our body in that state of stillness? So if we are super hunched over, if our head starts jutting forward and we stay that way, you can kind of imagine how some muscles get tight, how some places in the body have to work extra hard. So I know, right? It makes me hurt .
Speaker 1:I'm , I'm hurt . I'm literally reaching neck , my neck because it's tight in the back of my neck.
Speaker 2:So , um, for me , uh, thinking about posture with sitting and standing, 'cause even sleep is a posture. When we position ourselves when we sleep, that's, that's a form of posture. But when we're sitting or standing, it's really about thinking about creating support from below. So if we have our feet on the ground, if we are even , um, relatively even left to right and how our weight is on our hips or our feet relatively even front to back , not too much weight forward, not too much weight back, we can create like a foundation that then everything else can kind of balance on it . It's like , um, building blocks with kids. Like if that foundation is tippy, there's no way that you're gonna be able to support that tower. So we wanna kind of build ourselves a good foundation and then everything else will oftentimes just fix itself. It'll just find its way home. Sometimes I describe it as like our chest, our neck, our shoulders. We can take so much stress off of them by looking at our foundation.
Speaker 1:I love that. Okay, Catherine , let's get one more in before we break hydrate.
Speaker 2:This is a great one to do before we break, because one of the things that I like about encouraging people to hydrate is that they then need to take more bathroom breaks, which means they need to get up and walk more. So it kind of hits all
Speaker 1:Oh , you get
Speaker 2:A lot
Speaker 1:Of 'em . Yeah ,
Speaker 2:Exactly. In one thing. And hydration is something that people really underestimate. A lot of people forget to drink throughout the day. And what that does is when we start to lose water in our body, the first place that we lose it from is our soft tissues. Like our muscles and our joints and our skin. And our bodies are smart. So we lose it in these places because our body conserves water for our brain and our organs, which are more important when it comes to sustaining our life. However, we might not even feel thirsty, but we could be dehydrated because if our brain still is getting enough water, our skin and our tissues could get dehydrated. And that, if you think of one of my chiropractor colleagues, she referred to it as the difference between tenderloin and beef jerky. Now I'm a vegetarian, so I'm not a huge fan of that metaphor, but I think it's pretty descriptive of we don't wanna be beef jerky like that. You can even just imagine if your body was like beef jerky.
Speaker 1:Totally. It's
Speaker 2:Gonna be painful. It's gonna hurt Whether if it's like a nice juicy tenderloin. Oh , okay. Um , <laugh> for my,
Speaker 1:That metaphor's actually working for a lot
Speaker 2:Of us. Oh , most of you probably can enjoy that . Um, so I , I don't have a good corollary, like a dried shiitake versus a grill .
Speaker 1:I was , because maybe , maybe a carrot that's been sitting out
Speaker 2:For too long. I don't know . I don't think it works in the vegetable world, <laugh> . But when you have, your tissues are well hydrated , they're gonna feel better. They're gonna glide and slide and move better and you're gonna feel less pain. We
Speaker 1:Are talking with Catherine Justice , an integrative physical therapist at Hennepin Healthcare. We are halfway through. She's got 10 tips for reducing pain and discomfort at work. When we come back from the break, we'll hit the next five. Stay with us. We'll be right back. You are
Speaker 2:Listening to the Healthy Matters podcast with Dr. David Hilden. Got a question or comment for the doc , email us at Healthy matters@hcme.org
Speaker 1:Or give us a call at six one two eight seven three talk. That's 6 1 2 8 7 3 8 2 5 5 . And now let's get back to more healthy
Speaker 2:Conversation.
Speaker 1:And we're back. Catherine , I was thinking during the break that these tips you're giving us kind of could apply for life in general, not just at work.
Speaker 2:I think that's very wise of you to have init that, that sometimes in the field of integrative health we talk about , um, sort of a Trojan horse phenomenon that we really are talking about one thing and then it uncovers that there's something else that we're talking about that's sort of hidden or deeper. And I would say some of the hidden deeper things in this list are, it's not just about pain at work. And it's not even just about pain in our lives, but really it's about how we engage with our bodies, how we take care of our bodies, and how we connect to our physical body. And that opens up a whole doorway of how we manage stress, how we interact with other people. When we enter that state of embodiment, it opens up a whole new world of our ability to enjoy our lives and connect with other people and live our fullest self.
Speaker 1:Indeed. Let's hit the next five. Great. Number six through 10. Your tip number six is belly breathe . Belly
Speaker 2:Breathe .
Speaker 1:Say what?
Speaker 2:<laugh> . Right. Um, so belly breathing is another name for diaphragmatic breathing, which the idea behind that is when we breathe, there's a whole set of muscles that we can use to breathe. One of the biggest is the diaphragm muscle, which lives underneath our lungs. And it's kind of parachute shaped . So as we breathe in, that parachute drops down. And so when it drops down, our belly needs to get out of the way. So that's why we call it belly breathing. 'cause it kind looks like the belly is breathing. The belly will expand when we breathe in and it will release when we breathe out. And why that matters when we breathe that way, where we get our diaphragm moving is one, if we're not using our diaphragm a lot, we're probably using these muscles up in our neck and shoulders that rise when we breathe in and fall when we breathe out. I don't know about you, but that's where all of my tension sits most of the time.
Speaker 1:Me too,
Speaker 2:Right? Is up in that neck and shoulder area. So we overwork those muscles when we breathe there. So when we breathe from our belly, from our diaphragm, we're giving an opportunity for those other muscles to relax. And there's also a really wonderful magical things that happens when we belly breathe. Our autonomic nervous system, or our stress response is physiologically linked with our breath. And so when we engage in this slow, relaxed belly breathing, it's kind of like sending a message to our nervous system that it can relax too. It takes us out of that fight or flight response. So if we can change the way we breathe, we can often change that nervous system response. And pain and stress are like these evil twin sisters that if we let them run amuck, they're gonna just destroy our house . They're gonna tear it to pieces. And so if we can get one under control though, the other usually calms down. So if we can get stressed under control, our pain levels usually decrease and vice versa.
Speaker 1:So I suppose we're just gonna have to get used to watching our bellies get, I know you know that, you know, a lot of people are thinking, oh man , it's , it's unattractive. You know, Catherine ,
Speaker 2:It's , that is a response a lot of people have.
Speaker 1:I have actually heard that. That's why I'm saying.
Speaker 2:But it's true. I've, you know, and I've had some patients flat out refuse just say, I will not do that. Which, that's their journey. That's where they're at. But I will say that if our bellies were supposed to be small and hard and immobile, why don't we have bones on them ? Like our bellies are made to be soft. Our physiology says our belly should be soft. We need it to be expandable for not just our breath, but to digest our food. If you're in a body that can carry a baby in it, our belly needs to be expandable for that. And even just movement to be able to bend and twist and turn and fold our body in different positions to just tie our shoes, we need our belly to be soft. So this idea that our bellies should be like washboard hard, it's really sad and it's not based on physiology.
Speaker 1:What a great way to think about that. <laugh> . Let's go on to the next one. Practice mindfulness. Many of us have heard of that. What do you mean by it?
Speaker 2:So the way I like to think about mindfulness is imagine a jar that you put three ingredients into the jar. So into the jar, gonna go one intention, which means that you're gonna do something on purpose, you're gonna decide to do it. Second thing you're gonna put in the jar is attention to the present moment. So just paying attention to this moment right here, right now. And then the third is non-judgment. So you're gonna pay attention to the moment on purpose, but you're not gonna judge it as good, bad, right or wrong, you're just gonna be with it. So those three ingredients are mindfulness, but the jar, the container you put them in can be a whole lot of other things. So it could be meditation. That's an often a way that people practice mindfulness. That's one jar. Yoga or other forms of mindful movement like tai chi, qigong , that could be a jar walking. You could walk in a mindful way, you can eat in a mindful way. You can communicate with another person in a mindful way. So that jar can be a whole host of things. And there's uh , a lot of research that shows that the more mindful we are, the more present we are with each moment in a way where we let go of judgment of that moment, that pain and stress tend to go down again. This is like calming those wild twin daughters running through the house.
Speaker 1:That resonates with me. Let's move on to number eight, which is plan for active and passive renewal. Hmm .
Speaker 2:So active and passive renewal are important activities that we all need to put on our calendars. We need to actually plan them out. 'cause a lot of people get stuck at work where they're just like running through their to-do list meeting, to meeting without any breaks. So active and passive renewal are breaks, they're opportunities to pause. And active renewal would be doing something like taking a walk, stretching, taking a moment, a break where you're physically doing something. And that often helps to raise our energy levels. It helps to calm our nervous system . Sometimes reduce stress. But if you're really exhausted, if you're running on empty movement or active renewal might not actually help you. Especially, you know, I think of some of the residents here that are working night shifts or people who do shift work, like really tiring work. You might need passive renewal, which is like close your eyes for 30 seconds and just do nothing. Or even like, if you're able to take a five minute nap somewhere, you know, curl up under your desk, you know , whatever. And if you're working from home, you can literally curl up in bed. Or again, meditation would be another form of passive renewal where your body, it doesn't have to exert energy, but you can take a pause, you can take a moment to reflect and take a break. And I think there's some compelling research that shows like no one can do anything well for more than 90 minutes without needing a break. So finding your own rhythm. You know, some people, it might be more like 60, some people might be able to go a little longer than 90, but finding what your own rhythm is and putting those breaks on your calendar, putting them in your schedule, not just like ignoring your watch every time it tells you to be mindful or things like that. Like turning off those alerts. But actually listening to them and taking, you know, the , there's a lot of research that shows a one minute break, a one minute pause actually makes us more productive. It helps us get more done when we have those pauses. Then if we try and push through it and exhaust ourselves,
Speaker 1:It strikes me that it , it can be a short period of time.
Speaker 2:Oh, it does not have to be long. And a lot of these
Speaker 1:Things long to five minutes even if you can find that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Oh, 30 seconds. Yeah . Sometimes it really is not a lot. And a lot of these habits, these practices aren't things that take time. And in fact, sometimes they're better if they don't take time. I often tell people brief and often is the best way to create change. And our body, it only learns anything by repetition. That's how we learn little things frequently is way better than killing yourself at work. And then taking an hour long yoga class at the end of the week. It
Speaker 1:Strikes me as that in, in my many of my days, and I'll bet many of our listeners days, we don't do that. Um, we go from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting, and we don't even give ourselves time to reflect on what we did at the meeting. You know, we just go to the next one or whatever our jobs might be. We don't just take a moment to pause. Yeah,
Speaker 2:I
Speaker 1:Like that. Just close your eyes or meditate for a minute or breathe for a minute. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's, that's all about workplace culture too, which it's, it's can be hard. Mm-Hmm , <affirmative> . 'cause a lot of cultures just are designed to push and push and push and go, go, go. So it, it takes a lot of intention and it , it almost feels like swimming upstream sometimes to take those pauses, but it's really powerful when they're there. Great
Speaker 1:Tip. Let's go to number nine. And I'm really curious of what you're gonna say about number nine, adopt an anti-inflammatory lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I was talking about those two daughters of pain and stress and running around the house, but they actually, they're triplets. There's a third one, which is inflammation <laugh>. So those, they're kind of three wild daughters that if you let them run amuck, they're gonna feed off of each other and make each other worse. It's
Speaker 1:Like my three sisters,
Speaker 2:I know
Speaker 1:I do have three sisters. <laugh> ,
Speaker 2:There we go. I've got three sons. So I don't know why three daughters is what comes up for me, but it , I , yeah, but that's, that's the metaphor that, that makes sense in my head at least. So the idea behind inflammation is our body can have a systemic state of what they call chronic inflammation. So as opposed to like where you hit your elbow and it swells up and gets red, that's like an acute inflammation, a short term , but in the long term stress and not eating healthy, not getting enough sleep, not hydrating, all of these things not moving creates more of this, what they call systemic low level inflammation that can really increase pain in our bodies and set us up for a lot of other negative health outcomes. So anti-inflammatory lifestyle is a lot of the things I've already talked about. It's getting enough sleep, it's moving your body regularly in a healthy way. How we eat really influences inflammation, which means that how we eat can influence pain and the basics behind any anti-inflammatory , um, eating strategy. One, I would say listen back on the , uh, healthy Matters podcast at Dr. Shaft's episodes 'cause they're excellent for more information on nutrition. But the basics of it is eat the rainbow, brightly colored fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds. That that should be the foundation. And now you get the vegetarian talking here. <laugh> . But
Speaker 1:Say more about it though, because I think I just this morning was talking to a group of med students and the case we were talking about was somebody who ate a lot of meat and we talked about eating lower on the food chain. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Preferably
Speaker 1:Plant-based. Yeah . There that is not only, it's good for the planet, but it's also good for our bodies. Yeah,
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is. And that's again, the foundation of our diet being mostly this rainbow of plant-based foods. As we move up the chain, it doesn't mean you can't eat meat, it just means that's, you know, if you think of it as a pyramid though , it's smaller on the pyramid where the meat comes in, then particularly gearing yourself towards if you're going to eat meat, fish is lower on the pyramid than most other meats because of the omega three fatty acids in it. So things like that, you can pick some foods that are particularly anti-inflammatory and people are often surprised at how, when they change the food that they eat, how different their body feels
Speaker 1:On more than one occasion. Dr. Kate Schau has been on this podcast, so browse through the archives and you can find the shows where we talk about food and nutrition, because it's a gold mine of information in there as well. So thank you for bringing that up. We've now done one through nine. You have 10 bits of advice, and the last one on my notes says, seek help. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Could
Speaker 1:You say more about that, please?
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, sometimes you're doing your best, you've done all of these things, or you're doing your best at all of them and you're still hurting and still struggling. And that's where, you know, we're not alone in anything that we do on this planet. We are a community and we do it together. And that means that there's help out there. And particularly when you're thinking about pain in your body, some help that you could consider would be looking at things like acupuncture, physical therapy, yoga therapy, chiropractic care, massage therapy. There's evidence behind all of these. There's some good evidence around tai chi and pain too. Um, and if you're interested in your happen to live in the state of Minnesota, there's a great resource that you could look at, which is no pain m n.org . So it's N-O-P-A-I-N-M n.org . And it's an interactive map where all of the non-pharmacological evidence-based pain management providers in the whole state of Minnesota are mapped out. And I guarantee there's someone close to you, there's people on that map everywhere.
Speaker 1:We're gonna put a link to that on the show notes. Um, if you happen to live in the state of Minnesota, and if you don't, 'cause many of our listeners from around the country and indeed , um, around the world, look for these kinds of , uh, helpers in your community if you can. Yeah . Because it seems to me really sound advice. We have gone through 10 of your , uh, bits of advice for reducing pain at work or as we've said basically in life. So we have number one, stand and walk. Two , fidget and stretch, three ergonomics. Four, fix your posture. Five, hydrate, six belly breathe. Seven, practice mindfulness. Eight, plan for active and passive renewal. Nine, adopt an anti-inflammatory lifestyle. And number 10, seek help. Thank you for this list of sometimes small interventions, but perhaps life-changing interventions for our listeners.
Speaker 2:You know, I think even a list of 10 can sometimes be kind of overwhelming for people. So I would say one thing to think about is just pick one. You know, just find someplace to begin any entry point. And sometimes, again, whatever you pick, pick the easiest thing, the easiest thing to change . So I should just
Speaker 1:Keep fidgeting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, keep fidgeting, you know, whatever it is, and, and then pay attention. And then, oh, well I'm fidgeting, but I'm now I'm paying attention to it. So I'm, I'm fidgeting mindfully. Excellent. And then you might find that they grow and build on each other. And the other thing to keep in mind too is to just keep a light heart around it, of a sense of playfulness and a sense of compassion. Knowing, again, things like posture, like no one's perfect, we don't have perfect posture. It's not a thing, it's okay. We can throw that idea of perfection out the window. It's really just about connecting to your body in a way that brings you more joy and makes you feel a little more at home in your body. And you're gonna feel better when you feel that giving
Speaker 1:Ourselves the permission to have a little joy is a great way to leave our episode today. We've been talking to Catherine Justice Integrative physical therapist here at Hennepin Healthcare, just in time for physical therapy month, which is the month of October, right?
Speaker 2:That is true. In case you didn't know,
Speaker 1:Celebrating all of our physical therapy colleagues here at Hennepin and around the world. Thank you for everything you do. Katherine , thanks for being on the show today. Thank
Speaker 2:You so much. This was so much fun.
Speaker 1:I learned a ton and I absolutely hope you'll come back to a future episode.
Speaker 2:I would love it.
Speaker 1:Listeners, I hope you also have learned a ton and found some tips for your own life as I have. I hope you'll join us for our next episode . And in the meantime, be healthy and be well.
Speaker 3:Thanks for listening to the Healthy Matters podcast with Dr. David Hilden . To find out more about the Healthy Matters podcast or browse the archive, visit healthy matters.org. Got a question or a comment for the show, email us at Healthy matters@hcme.org or call 6 1 2 8 7 3 talk. There's also a link in the show notes. And finally, if you enjoy the show, please leave us a review and share the show with others. The Healthy Matters Podcast is made possible by Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and engineered and produced by John Lucas At Highball Executive Producers are Jonathan , CTO and Christine Hill . Please remember, we can only give general medical advice during this program, and every case is unique. We urge you to consult with your physician if you have a more serious or pressing health concern. Until next time, be healthy and be well.