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Healthy Wealthy & Smart: Where Healthcare Meets Business. The Healthy Wealthy & Smart podcast, hosted by world-renowned physical therapist Dr. Karen Litzy, offers a wealth of knowledge and expertise to help healthcare and fitness professionals take their careers to the next level. With its perfect blend of clinical skills and business acumen, this podcast is a one-stop-shop for anyone looking to gain a competitive edge in today's rapidly evolving healthcare landscape. Dr. Litzy's dynamic approach to hosting combines practical clinical insights with expert business advice, making the Healthy Wealthy & Smart podcast the go-to resource for ambitious professionals seeking to excel in their fields. Each episode features a thought-provoking conversation with a leading industry expert, offering listeners unique insights and actionable strategies to optimize their practices and boost their bottom line. Whether you're a seasoned healthcare professional looking to expand your skill set, or an up-and-coming fitness expert seeking to establish your brand, the Healthy Wealthy & Smart podcast has something for everyone. From expert advice on marketing and branding to in-depth discussions on the latest clinical research and techniques, this podcast is your essential guide to achieving success in today's competitive healthcare landscape. So if you're ready to take your career to the next level, tune in to the Healthy Wealthy & Smart podcast with Dr. Karen Litzy and discover the insights, strategies, and inspiration you need to thrive in today's fast-paced world of healthcare and fitness.
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Jan 11, 2021

On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Dr. Shannon Leggett, PT, DPT to talk about how to infuse yoga principles into physical therapy practice. Dr. Legget is a manually-based orthopedic physical therapist with 21 years of experience. I understand the complex nature of pain and the necessity to use a comprehensive, individualized treatment approach.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • Shannon's journey to becoming a yoga teacher
  • How to infuse the principles of yoga, not just the moves or poses, into PT practice
  • Cases studies in applying yoga principles in PT 
  • The importance of breathwork 
  • How to be more present through yoga 
  • And much more! 

 

Resources:

 

More About Dr. Leggett:

Dr. Shannon Leggett I am a manually-based orthopedic physical therapist with 21 years of experience. I understand the complex nature of pain and the necessity to use a comprehensive, individualized treatment approach. I perform a thorough evaluation looking at movement, strength, flexibility and balance, as well as lifestyle. I believe that how we live influences our ability to heal. I combine my extensive background of treating musculoskeletal injuries with my training in mind-body techniques to formulate a holistic plan of care

 

Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart:

Website:                      https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com

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Spotify:                        https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73

SoundCloud:               https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart

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iHeart Radio:                https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927

 

Read the full transcript here:

Speaker 1 (00:07):

Welcome to the healthy, wealthy, and smart podcast. Each week we interview the best and brightest in physical therapy, wellness, and entrepreneurship. We give you cutting edge information. You need to live your best life. Healthy, wealthy, and smart. The information in this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as personalized medical advice. And now here's your host, Dr. Karen Litzy. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am your host parents in today's episode is brought to you by

Speaker 2 (00:41):

Net health. So net health now has net health therapy for private practice. This is a cloud-based all-in-one EMR solution for managing your practice. It handles scheduling documentation, billing, reporting needs. Plus lots more in one super easy to use package. And right now net health is offering a special deal for healthy, wealthy, and smart listeners. If you complete a demo with the net health team, you'll get a hundred dollars towards lunch for your staff. Visit net health.com/see to get started, and you'll also get access to free resources for PTs like eBooks on demand, webinars, and business tools. Once again, that's net health.com/l I T Z Y my last name now onto today's episode, we are going to be talking about how you can infuse yoga into your orthopedic physical therapy practice. And this is more than just infusing some yoga moves, but really infusing the background and philosophy of yoga into your physical therapy practice and to help us navigate that I'm really happy to have on the program, Dr.

Speaker 2 (01:53):

Shannon Leggett, she is an orthopedic, a manual physical therapy with 20 years of experience. She understands the complex nature of pain and the necessity to use a comprehensive individualized treatment approach. She performs thorough evaluations, looking at movements, strength, flexibility, and balance, as well as lifestyle. Shannon believes that how we live influences our ability to heal. So she has been able to successfully combine her extensive background of treating musculoskeletal injuries with their training and mind body techniques to formulate a holistic plan of care. And in this episode, we talk about just that, how to infuse yoga into your regular physical therapy treatments. And like I said, it goes beyond just some yoga poses and stretches, but really infusing the background and the philosophy of yoga in with your patient in with your patient treatments, but also with infusing your whole philosophy of physical therapy and how you work with your patients. So a big thanks to Shannon and everyone

Speaker 3 (03:00):

Enjoyed today's episode. Hey, Shannon, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you on. Thanks, Ken. I'm really happy to be here. So today we're going to talk about how you have been able to infuse yoga and not just yoga the movements, but yoga, the principles into your physical therapy practice. And just for the listeners, I actually took one of Shannon's yoga classes online and it was wonderful. So thank you for having me joining. Yeah, it was great. So before we get into how you do this within your orthopedic physical therapy practice, I would love for you to let the listeners know how you yourself came into the practice of yoga. Well, it's actually kind of a funny story. I was probably in my mid thirties, which I'm not going to tell you how long ago that was. I'm not dating myself here, but I ended a relationship and I think as so many women do, it's like you either cut or dye your hair or you try something new. Okay.

Speaker 3 (04:06):

So trying to rock the pixie cut back then, like, I couldn't do anything with my hair. So I, I walked into my first yoga class of the New York health and racquet club on first Avenue on the upper East side. I know it, and there I was. And now that I know yoga, it was an Iyengar class, which is very alignment based very slow, very methodical holding poses. And I remember waking up the next day and being so incredibly sore and like a muscles. I mean, basically I should know what the muscles are, but like, Oh my God, that's what those feel like when you use them for long periods of time and the physical practice that, that sensation, that feeling kind of kept me going back for more. And then as time went on, I started to recognize the mental aspects of the practice that whatever I was walking into the yoga studio with or holding onto was kind of magically disappeared at the end of the class.

Speaker 3 (05:13):

And I am an anxiety sufferer, which I only have come to understand and realize what that was. And till like in a, within the last 10 years and yoga then became a very strong coping strategy for me. I found being connected to my body and connected to my person and putting an hour of self-care aside for me was absolutely essential. So it's definitely become one of my go-to tools to kind of handle the day in and day out stress of living, working in, in New York city. So I would think, especially now, during the times, yeah, hands down now it is. And I, and I was home for a couple of months, like everybody else. And it was, I was on my mat every single day. And then decided while I was home, I was like, well, why not see who else wants to practice?

Speaker 3 (06:14):

But yeah, so I, it has always been in the last like 12, 15 years, very much part of my life on a personal standpoint, it has led me to travel. I've met great people, I've taken amazing classes and explored studios in different forms. But it wasn't until probably within the last five or six years that I started to connect some dots professionally, right? Like how, how could this fit into what I do professionally? I, in terms of like a stretching standpoint, a strength building standpoint, yoga is amazing, but what about the body, the mind body connection. And I started to notice trends with a lot of my female patients I've been treating in Midtown for most of my career. And women would be walking into the clinic with your like standard orthopedic injuries, shoulder impingement, low back pain, and their response to an injury that would not necessarily be anything like, okay, just the pain was off the charts and difficult to get under control and not necessarily responding to what you would consider standard practice and you start to talk to them and they have fertility.

Speaker 3 (07:38):

They've had fertility issues. They've had gastrointestinal issues. They're working full time. They are full time moms too, trying to be the best they can be in both realms and self-care is last. They don't sleep well, they don't eat well. And I realized that the stress component was driving their inability to heal or meaning their ability to, you know, kind of get back to what they enjoyed. And I just was said to myself, well, how can I as a clinician kind of break into that stress cycle, how can I maybe help them Crump, you know, calm down some of their chronic systemic inflammation, how can we help them with negative thought patterns and, and whatnot. And that's not something that we traditionally are taught in physical therapy school and it, and is it my scope of practice and kind of going back and forth.

Speaker 3 (08:38):

So I started taking some continuing ed classes in the yoga world, and I've done some work with a clinical psychologist in Boston who treats her anxiety and depression patients with, with yoga and bodywork techniques. And, and she's a ton of research as to how mindfulness begins in the body that studies have shown that, that kind of short circuits, that stress response in your brain. So that kind of led me in that direction. And then I walked into my restorative yoga training, which I had never really taken, but it intrigued me. And because I just kind of felt intuitively that it was going to be the, like the last, not the last piece, because there's never a last piece, but a piece of the puzzle that I was missing. And it basically is how we can go from our sympathetic or fight or flight part of our nervous system into our rest and digest our parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system and how much our nervous system can drive, how we feel.

Speaker 3 (09:41):

And so often we have patients with chronic neck pain, chronic low back pain, like the massage, they feel better for an hour. It comes back and just this idea of chronic tension versus chronic tightness. And what restorative training does is it brings you into yoga shapes, but they're basically supported with props and it's a guided meditation and breath work. And as you move through the shape or state in the shape, you can flip the switch that vagus nerve stimulator, vagus nerve, and move into that rest and digest part of the nervous system. And I mean, in theory, like, okay, great. But four days of training and I always have neck pain, always. And I just attributed to everything we do. And that role was that from holidays and, you know, that's stressful time, but the month of December, yeah. Within four days, my neck pain was gone.

Speaker 3 (10:52):

It was incredible to me, how much of that pain was actually chronic tension and not necessarily this orthopedic tightness. So it was a kind of an aha moment for me in terms of what patients might carry. And I have used the teaching, the methodology in my treatment sessions, patients don't necessarily understand clients don't necessarily understand that they hold habitual tension. And so much of us, like when we say like, Oh, we have to relax. Like we sit down on the couch and drink a glass of wine and, you know, watch eight hours of Netflix. We're like, we're totally just chilling. But yet, like are holding our belly. Like our shoulders are up here, like clenching our jaw. Like we don't even know because we're relaxing. And part of, part of the restorative yoga is understanding where those patterns are. You get to know your body. Like for me, I'm a draw puncher, I'm a shoulder up late year. And, and, and once you understand that you kinda like kinda, I do like some check-ins during the day, like where are my shoulders? Where's my jaw. And taking a deep breath and kind of like letting that go.

Speaker 4 (12:11):

Yeah. As, as you say, this I'm unclenching my jaw a little bit. I'm a jock ledger also. So as you say this, I'm like, relax, the jaw, drop the shoulders. I am the same way. Well, it's, it's pretty amazing because it sounds like for you, and this happens, I've heard this over and over again, that it's this sort of personal experience. You have that aha moment. And then you say to yourself, well, I'm a clinician I'm trying to help people. So what can I do to improve my understanding as a clinician to help my patients? So you go, you take restorative yoga training, and then you are able to infuse that into your therapy sessions. And we were joking a bit before we went on the air. And Shannon said, well, it's not like I'm having someone who just had a labral tear, do a shoulder stand. Like that's not what it means to do, like yoga and PT. So when people think of yoga and infusing yoga into PT, I bet a lot of people think, Oh, you must do a lot of downward dogs and a lot of shoulder stands, but can you explain for a little bit more about what, what that means in, in your PT practice?

Speaker 3 (13:26):

Absolutely. I, if somebody comes in at, like, I was thinking a case, a case study, let's do I have a frozen shoulder? And how much of that again, tension versus tightness, how much of that tightness is being driven by the nervous system? So I'm, I always ask about stress levels. What's going on at home at work. You know, things that people do to, to, to maybe calm down or relax. And I might say, Hey, we're going to have a little bit of an experiment today. Okay. I am gonna prop you. We, I pull off of the blankets and the pillows and I'll put them in a very gentle chest opener because oftentimes you're doing a ton of stretching with a frozen shoulder or a lot of soft tissue work. If there's a level or component to stress or anxiety to that, that cranking is just going to cause your, your nervous system just clamp down and, and, and they're going to, you're going to get the exact opposite of it.

Speaker 4 (14:32):

Yeah, absolutely. And even like, we know if you're cranking on an arm and the, those first three to six months. No good, no good, no good. Not, not good for the patient, not good for the shoulder,

Speaker 3 (14:46):

Not at all. So I might spend a couple of sessions with a patient props, kind of guiding their nervous system into letting go. Typically the, you know, shoulders are rounded, pecks are tight, upper traps. So if I can kind of guide them into relaxing, letting go, I typically find a little bit more space. They're a little more trusting of me to like, maybe move them. Maybe I can modulate their pain a little bit. So they will be a little bit more, or a little less fearful of movement themselves because it's a big deal I'm to us are in pain and they don't want to move. They don't want to go in any direction that that is going to maybe reproduce their symptoms.

Speaker 4 (15:35):

Of course. Yeah. And, and so much goes into that sort of bucket when you're talking about pain. So there's so much that can fill that up. You know, we look at things through a bio-psycho-social lens, you know, you're asking about sleep and stress and all that goes into this, this sort of bucket. And then it gets to the point where the nervous system senses danger. And it's like, okay, that's it. We're gonna it's time. You know, the brain makes that decision. It's dangerous enough pain, right? Yep.

Speaker 3 (16:06):

We're going to fight, we're going to flight or we're going to freeze and think about a frozen shoulder, how much of that could be nervous system driven. And you know, and also too, just bringing in some of the mindfulness component of yoga, you know, the yoga sutras, which are kind of like the blueprint of yoga, the philosophy of yoga, the first Sutra is yoga is now that is, I mean, that is mindfulness. That is in the moment. That is the definition right there. So I use that idea of mindfulness or the tool of mindfulness to bring in throughout the day. Like I mentioned earlier, like doing a little check-in with yourself, oftentimes with my patients, I'll say, you know what, in the midst of your day, when you're like, Oh my God, if one more person calls me or how am I going to get these emails done?

Speaker 3 (16:54):

Or like, I have to make the train to get home to the kids. No, one's competing now. I want you to tap in or tune into your body and come back and tell me where you hold your attention. I want to know, are your shoulders up? And your ears are your jaw clincher. So often, do you hold your belly in? You think about our patients with urinary stress incontinence with low back pain. You know, I mean, if you're clenching your belly all day, that's, that is going to be, maybe unclenching will be part of the solution. So that idea of being present of checking in that is a tool I use throughout the day with my patients. That's great. And you know, with so many we're so externally focused, everything is outside. We're always 10 steps ahead. We just become very disconnected with our physical being. And I love bringing patients back into their body to teach them something that they didn't even know. You know? And I, I love when people are like, Oh my, my quadriceps. And they're like holding their hamstrings. Like we have this tool that we've been given this machine that we've been given, but nobody really educates us on how to use it or what it's about or how it moves. And I love bringing that idea of mindfulness and mindful movement into the physical therapy practice. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (18:17):

I think it's great. And the other thing, as you were talking about putting people into these different restorative poses that can then be transferred over to a home exercise program,

Speaker 3 (18:27):

Easy. I mean, honestly, like laying down on the floor, throwing your feet over the couch, the restorative doesn't even have to have props. It's basically the idea. Now don't get me wrong. The props are delicious, but the restorative is learning how to let go of that tension. As you breathe, it's letting the ground hold you up. It's letting the couch hold you up. It's letting, it's starting to kind of give into something else. You know, how much of us, like we put a coat of armor on every day, like, especially now to get through the day. And so in order to survive, we, we put on armor. Yeah. It's just in a physical structure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. On the floor, legs on the couch, close your eyes and just breathe. And honestly, that's yoga.

Speaker 4 (19:21):

It doesn't have to be too complicated,

Speaker 3 (19:23):

Not at all. And sometimes when I start to bring things up, people like, Oh my God. Cause they think Instagram, they think poses, they think exactly very like thin, cute people, like by a pool. And it's just, it's mindfulness. It's the breath it's awareness. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be twisty and credit. And I think, I think my practice is in twisting.

Speaker 4 (19:48):

Yeah. I think that's good to know, because I think a lot of people will look at yoga and they look at the show of it. You know what I mean? The spectacle, the show of, wow. Look at this person being able to, you know, do a handstand or a headstand and look at this and look at the positions. They can go, Oh, I can never do that. So

Speaker 3 (20:06):

I'm just not going to do it exactly like that. It's not for me. Or people feel ashamed and mean, especially like the, the men, they will not walk into a class because they don't want their I'd be embarrassed. And like, no one is looking at you. No one. And that's the thing I love about a studio. Like I'm an orthopedic physical therapist. I have, I'm not athletic. I love athleticism. I am not athletic. So when I love about the studio is like, I can move. I can breathe. I can exercise. No one's watching. Yeah. It's true. It's like in their own little world and that's speaks to the introvert in me like nobody's business.

Speaker 4 (20:49):

Yeah. Although sometimes I will say, if I go to a class, I will be looking at other people that being said one of the best yoga classes I ever did, we were blindfolded. All of that's extraordinary because it was a, it was a charity class for a charity called Achilles and Achilles supplies. Pairs runners who are hard of sight. Yeah. To do all different kinds of races from a 5k up to a marathon. And because the people they serve are usually blind. We did the whole class folded and I was thinking, Oh my God, I'm going to fall over because you know, vision is a big part of balance, but it was the best yoga class I'd ever taken because I wasn't comparing myself to everyone else. The instructor was giving really clear instructions and my balance was better because I was actually paying attention to myself versus looking at what everybody else was doing.

Speaker 4 (21:46):

Absolutely. And you really had to talk about a journey inward. Yeah. Right. And having to be in touch with like what your own body was doing and how you're going to assimilate. Yeah. Yeah. It was really interesting. The only weird part was the woman next to me, kept trying to hold my hand and I had to keep like, I'm like, what are you doing? And then after it, she was like, Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were my friend. I'm like, I kind of kept taking me out of the vibe a little bit, but that is a loving community. Community is a loving community. Yes. But I really, I really loved the way I felt after that. And it, it, you know, it really got me thinking like, wow, this is something that I should be doing with my patients when we're just working on general movement is kind of have them close their eyes and really feel the movement and get into it. But now let's you, so you talked about some of the the tenants of yoga. One is yoga is now being very mindful. What other aspects of yoga aside from, you know, positioning people, restorative, what other tenants of yoga are you using with your clients or with your patients?

Speaker 2 (22:59):

And on that note, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. And we'll be right back with Shannon's answer net health therapy for private practice as a cloud-based all in one EMR solution for managing your practice. That's right. One piece of software that handles all of your scheduling documentation, billing and reporting needs. Plus lots more and one super easy to use package right now, net health is offering a special deal for healthy, wealthy, and smart listeners completed demo with the net health team and get a hundred dollars towards lunch for your staff. Visit net health.com/see, to get started and get access to free resources for PTs like eBooks on demand, webinars, and business tools. Once again, that's net health.com/l I T Z Y

Speaker 3 (23:49):

I definitely, yes, I use the restorative, but I also use a little bit more of the, the poses, the strength building poses, the even some small sequences. I, I look at maybe look at the system as a whole, right? The fascial system, everything is connected especially my patients that sit all day. So that front body, everything is tight. Tip lecturers, chest front neck. I will give them maybe sequences of some easy poses that they can do at home to open that whole space. My runners runners don't like to stretch. They just want to run. So I always say, okay, we need to do some flexibility. And some mobility work to keep you running healthy. There's nothing better than yoga as far as I'm concerned. Thank for the buck. Especially looking through like fascial systems, you give someone a downward facing dog.

Speaker 3 (24:54):

Well, they're opening their shoulders, calves, hamstrings, low back. They're working on their core. So I love, I love the physical poses to help my runners, my sequences, my restorative, my breath work. How could I forget my breath work pranayama? Right? What's one of the eight limb path of yoga is breath work. And I pretty much teach every single patient who walks into my space to breathe. It is one of the most powerful tools that we have to connect to ourselves to calm our nervous system. But again, our low back pain patients, our neck pain patients, how many neck pain patients do we see that are breathing they're with their accessory muscles. So using maybe even to dossena another pose mountain pose, which is basically standing straight it's posture. So everybody learns to Dawson. And then from 2000, and once we get into that, that rib cage of pelvis alignment, we work on our breath and diaphragmatic breath, finding the belly, maybe then connecting to pelvic floor, especially for my women.

Speaker 3 (26:15):

So I definitely use Tadasana as my, like one point as to finding, finding a good position, finding a good home base and breath and how they can use breath work to help them with their stress response. And part of what I love is sometimes I'll teach my core patients and I don't even tell them what the breathing like. I'll tell them, listen, you know, reading is important for core, and it might with your neck pain and low back pain. So we're just, that's what we're going to start. And what I love is when a couple of visits later, they're like, you know, we feel really calm. I feel calm after I do that. And I'm starting, and I'm starting to use that like during the day. And I secretly love that

Speaker 4 (27:02):

Really giving tools that they can use throughout the day and that they can also see the difference. And we know that once people see the difference in the tools, we give them, they'll use them.

Speaker 3 (27:13):

Yes. And that's how I listen. Some people I know right off the bat that I can like infuse and introduce yoga and they're going to be all for it. Other people I know that are going to be skeptical. So that's,

Speaker 4 (27:25):

That's a good point. You bring up because a lot of people like yoga. So how do you, and so do you use then use the breath work to kind of open the Gates a little bit

Speaker 3 (27:34):

Sometimes, or I'll say, Hey, you know, the yoga has some amazing, you know, stretches that might help you with what's going on. And because they stretch multiple fascial systems, they can be very effective or, you know, not effective, but efficient everybody in the city wants to be efficient. True. So if you give them a couple of things and then they become more curious or I'll work on some mindfulness, or I will educate them, maybe how stress response can be driving their pain how having a hobby or movement can like also be an effective part of their healing process. So I, I kind of sneak it in, in, in different ways. Got it, got it. No, that makes a lot of sense. And also too, for like my, my runners, I have run a bunch of half-marathons. I did in New York city marathon in 2018, yoga is a tremendous compliment to running and read, like, it got me to the finish line. I don't think I'll ever do it again, but you never know. I've never say never, never say, never say never. So that's where, you know, anytime you tell a runner that you could help them be better, faster, stronger of they're onboard. Yeah. Very, very true.

Speaker 4 (29:04):

Now, what advice would you have to other physical therapists or other clinicians

Speaker 3 (29:10):

Who maybe

Speaker 4 (29:11):

Are interested in yoga or interested in infusing yoga into their practice? What are some good starting points

Speaker 3 (29:20):

For them? I would say, start taking some classes, yourself, understand how it makes you feel, understand the language, the sequencing the poses, you know, I, I think experience is one of the teachers. I learned by doing things in my own body and that makes me a much more effective clinician sometimes. So I would say, start taking some classes, notice the benefit yourself, listen to maybe even how yoga teachers instruct. I learned some of the best cues and best instruction from some of the yoga teachers that I have gone and work with. And starting to maybe infuse it a little bit in your sessions, in your, in your PT sessions and see how the patients respond. And then from there, there are continuing ed classes out there for physical therapists who don't necessarily want to take the 200 hour training that can learn how to use yoga in healthcare.

Speaker 3 (30:30):

Yeah. I took a, a great one threes, physio, yoga they are amazing. They're, they're great to follow on Instagram, if you want to learn a little bit more. I have, but they have they just did a class that I took, do I want to, no, it was maybe last year again, it's the whole thing of how to infuse yoga and physical therapy. So there there's plenty of stuff out there. There's plenty of PTs out there that are, that are doing this, that have Instagram pages. So just starting to follow, take classes easy. That's what I would do. It is so easy. It's easy. Yeah. I mean, I didn't do my yoga training until, you know, 2016, but I was using the poses and using some tenets like long, long before I was just from my own experience.

Speaker 4 (31:22):

Yeah. No, I love the advice to kind of take it yourself, see how you see how it feels. Cause listen, you may think you want to infuse it into your treatment and then you may take it yourself and be like, Oh, I don't, I'm not feeling this. And that's okay. You can, you can.

Speaker 3 (31:37):

Okay. Absolutely. It doesn't resonate with everybody.

Speaker 4 (31:40):

That's right. That's right. That's right. And that's okay. Awesome. So now before we kind of wrap things up, I think we, we have your one biggest takeaway is to start taking yoga classes yourself. Anything else that you want the listeners to walk away from this conversation?

Speaker 3 (32:03):

There are many modalities out there to help the healing process. And there are many practitioners that have different ideas to help you get there. And I think that I encourage people to find what works for them. And that sometimes some of the less traditional practices can be extraordinarily helpful. I mean, I think I personally think yoga is an extraordinarily powerful tool from the mind body perspective, we understand how much chronic pain does become a central nervous system, you know, issue that it's not just all biomechanical. So we do have to treat the whole person. We have to treat mind as well as body. And I think that yoga can be a very powerful tool, the combination and to, to, to seek and to try and to find what resonates and find what helps you. And to just, you know, it's not ever linear, it's not ever a straight trajectory. Healing is totally a journey and to not give up and just because you've tried one thing, does it mean nothing? Nothing is going to work, update, curious, stay active stay moving, find something you love to do. It doesn't have to be yoga, but move and movement is meditative. It's mindful. You know, the body, the body responds to movement.

Speaker 4 (33:53):

Absolutely. And now before we wrap things up, this is a question I ask everyone knowing where you are now in your life and in your career, what advice would you give to your younger self who graduated right out of PT school, a newly minted PT.

Speaker 3 (34:11):

I wish I had forged my own path earlier. I wish that I had listened to, you know, nothing has ever really fit for me until I brought yoga into my profession. It speaks to me. It makes sense to me. I wish I had, you know, when we did the webinar with sturdy, like let your freak flag fly, you know, be like, don't be like everybody else. I wish I had listened to that earlier, like towards my own path to not try to not try to fit myself into someone else's business model. Yeah. It's okay to want something different. It's okay. To think outside the box. It's okay.

Speaker 4 (35:01):

And sometimes,

Speaker 3 (35:02):

You know, what, what you think at first is going to work doesn't and then you find another tool. Totally have a huge toolbox. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:12):

Oh, I know. That was such good advice, you know? Cause I think so often, especially in physical therapy, as we discussed during that webinar, it's like physical therapists tend to be type a, we want to, you know, we want to be the best we wanted. We want to do good. We want to help others. And so we tend to kind of just stay in the lane totally. And are afraid to like, let the freak flag fly if you want is very hard to say, but it's true. It's true. And I thank you for reminding me and reminding the listeners of that now, where can people find you? Yes. Be true to yourself and where can people find you speaking? You can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram and what's your handle on Instagram? That's funny. That is, that is my nickname. My family, my nieces call me Shanny.

Speaker 4 (36:03):

S H a N N Y O G a P T and my C O very long. Very cute. I get it. I get it. Shen yoga, PTM, YC. Perfect. Perfect. Awesome. So people can find you there and we will have links to all of what Shannon spoke about today, resources and things like that. We'll put them all into the show notes at podcast on healthy, wealthy, smart.com. So one click will take you to everything we discussed today. So Shannon, thank you so much for coming on and talking about how to use yoga in your physical therapy practice. So thank you. Oh, thank you, Karen. It was a pleasure. I love, I love, I got to share the best of like my favorite part of the world. Awesome. Thank you so much. And everyone who's out there listening. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

Speaker 2 (37:01):

Big thank you to Shannon for sharing how she incorporates her passion, which is yoga into her physical therapy practice. And of course thank you to net health for sponsoring today's episode net health therapy for private practice is a cloud-based all-in-one EMR solution for managing your practice. One piece of software that handles all of your scheduling documentation, billing and reporting needs. Plus lots more in one super easy to use package net health is offering a special deal for healthy, wealthy, and smart listeners completed demo with the net health team and get a hundred dollars towards lunch for your staff. Visit net health.com/ let's see to get started and get access to free resources for PTs like eBooks on demand, webinars, and business tools. Once again, that's net health.com/l I T Z Y.

Speaker 1 (37:53):

Thank you for listening and please subscribe to the podcast at podcast dot healthy, wealthy, smart.com. And don't forget to follow us on social media.

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