Episode 4: All About Dynamic Body Balancing

Click here to listen to Episode 4 hosted by Dr. Elyssa.

Dynamic Body Balancing

Dynamic Body Balancing (DBB) is a craniosacral myofascial unwinding technique originally developed by Dr. Carol Phillips. The practitioners at Body & Balance are trained extensively in Dynamic Body Balancing and use it with nearly every patient. DBB is three parts:

Craniosacral
Myofascial unwinding
Dynamic

Your Craniosacral System

We all have three primary metrics of health: your heartrate, respiration (breathing) rate, and cranial rhythmic impulse.

The latter is what pumps fluid in and around your nervous system, bringing nutrients in and flushing toxins out of your brain, at about 12-15 rounds per second.

In Dynamic Body Balancing, practitioners clear any restrictions in your craniosacral system and help you find balance.

Myofascial Unwinding

Fascia is the spiderweb-like connective tissue that encases all of your muscles, ligaments, nerves, bones, and organs. When something gets “stuck” in your fascia, it can create all kinds of discomfort.

In practice, myofascial unwinding as part of Dynamic Body Balancing can look like rocking or shaking. You might even roll off of your chair (gently) onto the floor!

While you are moving around, your practitioner is tapping into the receptors that talk to you brain and activating them so your brain can show the body what needs attention and the body will respond with unwinding.

Dynamic

The “Dynamic” part of Dynamic Body Balancing means you’re sitting up or standing in gravity, rather than lying down for the entire session. This allows your body to more easily find “stuck” points and torsions.

Torsions can come from many sources, including old injuries, traumas, repetitive motions, and inutero. We often see torsions from car accidents, falls, and student athletes. Athletes who play golf, tennis, lacrosse, soccer, baseball, plus dancers and snowboarders all have built-in torsions from their sport.

Bodies can become unbalanced from a single torsion event (e.g. car accident) or a lifetime of layered torsions. Our bodies are smart – once a pattern locks in, the body will reorganize around it to try to compensate. Over time however, these reorganizations can become uncomfortable or painful.

Is Dynamic Body Balancing right for me?

If you’ve tried other modalities of healing and they’re not lasting, or something’s missing, Dynamic Body Balancing is a great option.

While everyone can benefit from DBB, we most frequently treat the following groups:

Infants
Toddlers
Pregnant mamas
Chronic pain

Bonus: Since Dynamic Body Balancing works with your nervous system, it can also support relieving anxiety, digestive issue, and organ systems.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

What Dynamic Body Balancing (DBB) is
Dr. Carol Philips
Dr. Elyssa’s history with DBB
The three metrics of health
Your cranialsacral system
How myofascial unwinding works
How torsions show up in your body
Who benefits from DBB most

Full Episode Transcript

Dr. Elyssa Wright 00:00:00:00

Hi everyone. I am Dr. Elyssa Wright and welcome back to the Trimester Bubble. I’m a chiropractor and dynamic body balancing facilitator at Body and Balance Chiropractic. We support mamas, mamas to be and babies by helping them live their best lives. Here on the podcast, we bring you educational content for the pregnancy journey from both us and our guest specialists.

00:24

Whether you’re thinking about starting a family or already pregnant or maybe kiddos already at home, each episode is here to help lift you up. We know that this is often a confusing and lonely time, and all of us here at the trimester bubble want to support you on your journey. That is mama hood and raising little ones. If you are local to the Boulder, Colorado area, I’d love to invite you to our free quarterly pain free pregnancy class.

00:52

It meets in-person at the Community Roots midwife collective and we get together to discuss why pain in pregnancy is common but not normal. Plus, you leave with things that you can do at home to help you alleviate that pain. Also, you get to meet other moms and build your community.

01:10

So we meet on the second Tuesday of the month at 5 p.m. for one hour plus time for a little Q&A. Our next class is October 10th. So for more information and to sign up, head over to our website WW W dot Body and Balance chiropractic dot com. Click on the schedule online button and select classes and support groups.

01:31

And as always, if you like this episode, please share the link to your friends and family to spread the word of the trimester bubble. All right, let’s get into the episode.

01:51

this week’s episode of The Trimester Bubble is about one of my favorite things to talk about to work on with patients. And it is called dynamic body balancing.

02:02

And I just want to, you know, I say it and every intro and it’s something that we talk about with patients, but a lot of people don’t know what dynamic body balancing is. So what dbx is what I call it for short. But what Deb is, is it is a cranial sacral myofascial unwinding technique. And the question is, what does that even mean?

02:28

So Dr. Carol Phillips is a chiropractor that has been practicing for a few 30 plus, 40 plus years at this point. And she develops dynamic body balancing. So about almost ten years ago now, I came across Dr. Carol’s work and fell in love with it. When you work with a lot of pregnancy and a lot of newborn bones, I quickly realized that less is more and that the system responds really, really quickly.

03:05

When you listen to a body and when you ask that body what it needs. And so I began my journey of taking a few hours here and a few hours there and diving into the world of dynamic body balancing. And fast forward almost a decade, I am now one of the instructors for the technique and Body and Bones Chiropractic.

03:33

We use it on every single patient that comes in the office. I have seen magical things happen after someone has been unwound and balanced. And so I want to take a few moments and kind of talk about what it is, what we work with and who might benefit from this type of work. So dynamic body balancing is a cranial sacral and a myofascial unwinding technique.

04:08

What does that mean? Always the number one question. Okay, cool, cool. Dr. Elyssa but what do you mean by that? And there are two different systems that that include. So first is the cranial sacral system and we have a rhythm in our body called the cranial rhythmic impulse that pumps fluid around and through our nervous system. So I’m sure all of you now have heard of your heart rate.

04:41

You can put your hand on your heart and feel your heart, feel your heart beating. Our respiration rate, which is our inhales and our exhales, and how quickly we breathe at a resting place. And then we have our cranial rhythmic impulse, which when we are trained to feel into the cranial sacred rhythm, we can also feel that pulse.

05:04

And it’s about 12 to 15 rounds a second. And this is what pumps the fluid around our nervous system. So we open up and pull in fresh plasma from our blood, which brings nutrients to our brain, nutrients to our spinal cord, nutrients to all of our nerves, and then it pulls the toxins out of our nervous system. So this pump is nutrients into our brain, toxins out of our brain, nutrients in, toxins out.

05:41

And that is the nitty gritty of what the cranial sacral system does. And so within this work of DBB, we are tapping into that system and seeing if it’s balanced, seeing if that pump is pumping the way that it should be pumping and making sure that there aren’t any restrictions along that line. And what makes dynamic body balancing extra special is we also include myofascial and winding within that work.

06:19

So it is called dynamic because unlike traditional cranial sacral work, the patient is sitting up and by doing the work in gravity, we allow the body to be able to find stuck points throughout the whole system versus no gravity where we be working on the head or somewhere in the body and we don’t have as much feedback to the brain.

06:45

So things move a little bit slower. So it’s dynamic and our patients will unwind and twist away any organ in accidents that they may have had. And this can go all the way back to in utero. I am sure you guys have heard a mom who has said this baby is stuck right here underneath my rib and they are kicking and punching and kicking and punching or had heard of a delivery where baby is coming down and then it’s always the word stuck.

07:25

And what we don’t think about is that baby. If they are stuck in utero, then their little bodies are out of balance before they even make it to this side of the womb. And so I always go all the way back talking to the birthing person, the mom, about what’s going on in their body during their pregnancy and what was that like, What was delivery like?

07:57

Getting as much information as we can all the way back to figure out when these patterns started. And it gives us a really good sense of how many layers we need to unwind. So with Diane body balancing, we have that cranial sacral with the myofascial unwinding piece and they come together to allow the body to find a state of balance.

08:31

When we are doing this work, our job is to activate the receptors. And I can get real sciency here, but I’m going to hold on to that for a later moment in time. But we activate receptors. We activate the little parts of your body that talk to your brain and tell your brain what’s going on. And then the brain comes back and goes, Oh, sweet.

08:53

Thank you for hearing me and activating that. Let me show you what’s wrong. And so it’s a very neurological brain led process where we just tap in, activates the process, and then the patient’s body does the unwinding and it unwinds all types of things. One of the major things that we look for in our history is whether or not there was any type of torsion injury.

09:24

So what does that look like? Well, it might look like a car accident where we had a seatbelt on and we twist around that seatbelt and get some whiplash. It might look like being a student athlete where I know for me personally, I was a golfer and a pole vaulter and a dancer. So everything I did put rotation in my body.

09:54

If you think about a golf swing, that’s a spin. If you think about a pole vaulting, that’s a spin. And I can’t even tell you how many tens of thousands of spins I have probably done in the world of dance. So all of those are taureans and twists. We also see it a lot where slipping down the stairs where you reach up and grab the arm rail and your body keeps going, that’s going to put a twist through your system, learning how to walk and you grab on to that coffee table with one hand and you don’t quite get that other hand on and you spin and land on your bottom.

10:36

That’s a torsion injury. So each one of these pieces, through all the phases of our life, can lock these patterns into our body. And then our bodies are really smart and they figure out how to compensate for it, and they reorganize here and reorganize their So that way we look all square and perfect and upright. But in reality, we have put layers and layers of compensation patterns on top of those initial injuries.

11:07

And if you’re not seeing me, I’m air quoting injuries because we don’t think about learning to walk as an injury. We don’t think about playing golf as an injury. But all these little things through our body off of balance can amplify and stack on top of each other layer by layer by layer. So that’s the fun for us as facilitators to dig into.

11:33

To what layer are we working on today? What are we releasing from the body today and how can we make a difference in our patients pain today? And so that’s what we are looking for when it comes to what is TB and what is that cranial sacral and what is that myofascial unwinding piece? The next question that I get asked a lot is like, Cool, how do I know if this is something that would help me?

12:11

And that’s always a great question. Like, okay, cool, this sounds interesting. This sounds like something different. How is it going to help my body? And what I always say to patients is, okay, let’s go through and see where it might help. And we go through a history and talk about all of these things at the end of the day, I am a firm believer if you have something that traditional allopathic medicine hasn’t been able to help, if you have something where you’ve gone to chiropractors or physical therapists or occupational therapists and you get like 90% of the way there, but nothing seems to stick, nothing seems to hold.

13:04

You’re always like, I just need a little something else. Those are our favorite types of patients to work with of, okay, how do we get you that last 10%? What is still stuck in the body that is keeping the body out of balance? And spoiler alert, if one part of your body is out of balance everywhere and your body is out of balance, I always explain the work with fascia.

13:40

Fascia is kind of like if you’ve ever seen a piece of chicken and there’s that white, there’s that white film around the outside of the chicken, that is the fascia, and it covers and intertwines all of our bones and muscles and tendons and ligaments and nerves. And it’s wrapped up of every piece of our entire body. And as this is wrapped up, intertwined, those little injuries that I mentioned before come in and they’re like little spiders in this web of fashion.

14:18

And we get one little spider. And if you can imagine a spider being caught in a web, it changes the entire shape of that web. That little that little bug changes the whole shape. And so we get one little bug while we’re in utero where our arm is up by our head and not quite in the right spot.

14:39

And then we come out and we have that tension in our shoulder. These are my babies that come in that don’t want to turn their head one way, are having trouble opening up their jaw to latch, are really, really fussy, colicky, maybe constipated. And so we have this little tight shoulder that then our bodies figure out how to compensate.

15:05

And usually around five, six months, some of those symptoms start to lift up. But then we move into being able to crawl. And you know what? Now that little bug in the shoulder is another little bug in the hip flexor. So we have trouble getting our leg underneath us to start the crawling process and then we start to walk and we’re falling on our bottoms.

15:27

And every time we hit our bottom, it’s another little bug in the system. So you can see how these bugs collect and that’s where this work can be super helpful in finding those bugs and unwinding them. And that’s where we see our patients getting that last little bit better. And so those are the big things. One, it is great with newborns who are dealing with all those things that I was just talking about, two toddlers as they’re learning how to walk, three pregnant mamas to make sure that your body is in balance.

16:07

Because if your body is in balance, it helps your baby’s body be in balance. Mom and balance baby in balance. And then four is anybody with chronic pain of you just can’t get to the root cause of it. And so those are the top four people that we always talk about in our practice of how can this work help, Why is it important for me?

16:32

And it is super gentle, which is why it works for every age range and every person is there is no force, there is no pushing. We follow the body with what it needs to come to balance. Okay, So a quick recap of all things DB I’m sure you can tell I could talk about this for about 3 hours and really settle in, but I just want to do a little bit of a tester for you guys and like a little taste test of what goes on with DBB.

17:10

So we work at balancing the cranial sacred them, which is how we get nutrients in to our brain and spinal cord and toxins out. And then from there we balance the fascia, which is that wrapping around everything in our body to help release any hidden tension and release what may be keeping you from getting that last 10% that you’ve been looking for and hoping for.

17:41

And this technique is good for everyone. We find it especially powerful for newborns, toddlers, pregnancy and chronic pain. And with all of the support, sort of the nutrients in and out of the nervous system, it has a really calming effect on the nervous system and brings you out of that fighter flight stress place. So a lot of our patients also find that they get extra bonus benefits with their anxiety, with their indigestion, with their organ systems, the nerves talk to the organs.

18:24

And so when we clean up the nervous system, we can, as extra bonus, get clean up in the organ systems, too. So as you listen to this, if any questions come up, you love to learn more about dynamic body balancing. You can check out the show notes. We have more information on our website and we also have more information on the Dynamic Body Balance Income website.

18:52

And if you’re interested in joining us and learning this technique, be sure to reach out. We have our 2024 schedules for there are, I think, seven of us teaching now, maybe eight, but we teach around the country. So if this speaks to you and you’re like, Man, I’d love to learn more, please reach out and I can help support you on that journey too.

19:21

All right, everybody can’t wait until next time. We’ll see you soon.

19:34

Thank you for joining us on The Trimester Bubble. We so appreciate your support. If you know another mama or mama to be who could use the information in this episode, please send this link to them. We also love hearing from you, so send us a message and let us know your thoughts or any questions about this episode.

19:55

I’m Dr. Elyssa with the Trimester Bubble and we’ll see you soon!

Resources in this Episode:

Learn:

Connect:

Boulder Locals: Join our free, in-person Pain-Free Pregnancy community each quarter. Register here!
Body & Balance: New patients start here
About Dr Elyssa and Dr Katherine
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Disclaimer

This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of such advice or treatment from a personal physician. All readers/viewers/listeners of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Elyssa Wright nor Body and Balance Chiropractic. LLC nor the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading, listening or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.

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