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- [00:07]
Jane Pike
Journey on Magic lies within the trails we ride.
- [00:13]
Warrick Schiller
You're listening to the Journey on podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warrick is a horseman trainer, international clinician and author who helps empower horse people from all over the world with the skills, knowledge and mindsets needed to create trusting partnerships with their horses. Warrick offers a free seven day trial to his customers comprehensive online video library that includes hundreds of full length training videos and several home Study courses@videos.warwickshiller.com just.
- [00:42]
Robin Schiller
Because you see what he shows welcome to the Journey On Podcast. This week I am your host, Robin Schiller and I am delighted to share with you a conversation with my really great, great friend Jane pike, who just happens to be staying here with us at our ranch in Paso Robles after the Western States Horse Expo. And so we decided not to pass up on an opportunity to record some thoughts in podcast format. And you know, Jane's been so gracious as I, as I open the door and foray into, you know, the nervous system regulation field and you know, testing the waters out with what I know and sharing it. And you know, I say that because she's like the master of this stuff. She's like got the PhD level while I'm coming in at, you know, the ground level and sharing what I know. And she's just been so gracious about it. And I was in on, I sat in on one of her sessions at the Western States Horse Expo just for half an hour because I didn't have, I was flitting around doing my own thing and then watching the booth and so but some of the things that she said, I was like, I want to ask her more about that. And so that's what we did today in this podcast. It's about an hour long and it's such good information. I hope you enjoy it as much as, as I did. I came out of the office because we were sitting in different, in different rooms and I said, I know nothing, Jon Snow. That's how I feel. But she's enlightened me some more and I learn more from her every day. So here is the conversation between myself and Jane Pike. Welcome back to the Journey On Podcast. This is your host this week, Robin Schiller, and I am here with my great friend Jane pike, who just happens to be in the same house as I am, just in different rooms.
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Jane Pike
Welcome Jane. Thank you so much. This is super fun, if not slightly odd to be able to hear you in the other room over, right?
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Robin Schiller
Oh well, we just, both of us just got Back from the Western States Horse Expo. So maybe we can chat just a little bit about that and what your experience was there.
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Jane Pike
It was super fun. Yeah, absolutely. We had. It was three days, and both of us were actually in the same tent for the whole time. Right, the mind, body, spirit tent. Yep. And we were discussing how just generally amongst it, the fact that there is a space that is called that at a horse expo is a pretty cool thing to have. Yeah. And it was just over the course of three days, each of us spoke on different topics. I looked back at what I nominated for the talks, and I was like, well, this is a PhD course. I'm not sure why I chose such extensive topics, but it was fabulous. We had so many good conversations. And one of the really notable things about the expo this time around especially, was that the people were really, like, everyone was really engaged and kind of part of the conversation, which I always so appreciate as a presenter, because it makes the whole experience much more of a conversation rather than a monologue, which is my least favorite way of talking. How did you find it?
- [04:17]
Robin Schiller
Yeah, so yours was the PhD level and mine was the kindergarten level, so it was perfect. I found it. You know, I thought the addition of that tent was really cool. They. When we both were there, when 2019.
- [04:33]
Jane Pike
Was before COVID actually, I think it might have been 2018 for me.
- [04:39]
Robin Schiller
Okay, so. Okay. Yes. So 2018, we did something together, and we were out in the arenas, and then I think the next year they had a little area in one of the other bigger tents. And I just found the separate tent was really good. Yeah, that.
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Jane Pike
It was.
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Robin Schiller
It was. Yeah, it was a great space.
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Jane Pike
So it really was. And I know both of us are pretty. Pretty delighted because it was a hot lineup. Like, there was so many presenters. When I looked at the program, I kind of lost my way trying to figure out who was on what. What line of the schedule. And I was like, well, I'll just take my book and make myself comfortable, because there is a. There's a lot of stuff to say here, and I'm not sure if anyone's going to come.
- [05:30]
Robin Schiller
Yeah, I had the same thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started. I was first thing. Right. I was first thing on Friday, and I'm like, all right, well, nobody's going to be here. So. And then. Then four. Four of my friends showed up, and they were in the front row, and that was really good.
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Jane Pike
So.
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Robin Schiller
But then there were. Then more people showed up, so. Yeah, it was good. It was good. It was a good experience.
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Jane Pike
It really Was there were a lot of.
- [05:55]
Robin Schiller
Lot of awesome people, for sure.
- [05:58]
Jane Pike
Yeah. Yeah. It was like a. Yeah. A mashup of awesomeness. Yeah.
- [06:03]
Robin Schiller
So I came in on. On one of yours. In between all the stuff that I was running around doing and being at the booth and. And one of the things that piqued my. There's two things that I wanted to talk to you more about. And in that. In the. I forget which one. It must have been Saturday. It might have been Friday. Anyway, it doesn't matter which one it was. Maybe it was your first one and you were talking about stories. You started talking about stories, and I just. I thought that. And now I can't remember exactly what it was. So that's why I wanted to rehash it with you. I thought it was a good conversation. So.
- [06:44]
Jane Pike
Yeah. So we've talked a little bit about this since. And if I'm right, in terms of what the particular interest is, it's about how our perception of the world is curated and affected by our story in different nervous system states. So in order to really understand how that manifests or, like, what it is I'm getting at, I have to give a little bit of background information. Is that. Please, please start from the top. Yes. Yeah. So if we think about how our nervous system functions overall, the primary goal of a nervous system, if we want to reduce ourselves to that, is really to consistently relate us to our environment, relate our animal body to our environment, to be able to answer the question, are we safe? And everything that we do in every moment of the day, our brain is consistently and persistently answering that question, are we safe? Are we safe? Are we safe? And how we respond to our environment is in alignment with the answer, which is either yes, you are safe, no, you aren't safe, or maybe we're kind of not sure. And what that whole equation builds up to and kind of stems from is as we are moving around in the world we have. And I think this figure is changing all of the time. But the last time I checked in that we had 19 different scientifically proven senses that were constantly feeling into our environment and sending information back to this little processing center part of our brain that's called the reticular activating system. And that is the part of the brain that's asking the question. And when sensory information comes in, the more sensory information we have, the more accurately we can answer that question or the brain can answer that question. And then when we send out an answer, the answer is manifested in the world by movement. It's Manifested through our body, through our physiology. And so when we're talking about, and many people are familiar with these terms, when we're talking about parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous system. So sympathetic being the fight flight nervous system, Very simply speaking, parasympathetic, from the position that I teach or the terminology that I work with, this is not inclusive of the polyvagal model. And I think that's just an important distinction to make so that when we hear the terms, we're hearing them within the definition of the conversation that it's having them within. So when I'm talking about parasympathetic, I'm talking about the body and the brain responding to the reality of the moment. Everything is in conversation with itself. So there's no one part of my body that is compromised. And I'm making consistently adaptive responses because my situation is constantly changing. Does that make sense so far? Yes. So what's really interesting and what kind of revolutionized my understanding of the nervous system is that if you were to look at a flow chart of the nervous system, the motor system, which is a system of movement motor, we could just put movement in there is, is what is the umbrella of parasympathetic and sympathetic. And what all that means is that when I'm in a parasympathetic nervous system response, or in a sympathetic nervous system response, how I express that to the world is through movement. It is a motor system. It is a system of movement. So the sensory system is an incoming information system. It's sending information to the brain. And when we think about the parasympathetic and sympathetic, it is an outgoing expression of movement and response. And so if I have a lot of information coming into my brain, a lot of sensory loops that are active, my brain again is able to accurately place me and I'm able to accurately make decisions that tell me whether I should be in my sympathetic nervous system, if that's appropriate or not in my sympathetic nervous system, if that's appropriate. And so the way that I'm responding to the world is through my senses. I'm feeling my way through the world. I'm sensing my way through the world. And when that's in operating within a system that's cohesive and online, and I'm well within myself, my conscious brain, really, the conscious brain's role at that point is just to make decisions, to take actions and to observe the consequence. And so I'm much more, you know, the role of my sensory system, the role of my unconscious is appropriately placed And I'm not in a position where I'm constantly having to cognitively or like in a thought based way, consider everything that's going on, which is one of the things we've kind of got ourselves into as a result of modern living. So where the story part comes in is if we consider the fight flight nervous system. Within the model that I teach and practice, we understand there to be seven different stages of the fight flight system. And the first stage is one that we would sort of naturally click in and out of waking up, for example. So waking up in the morning is the first stage of sympathetic. It just sort of gets the body revved up enough to get up and mobilize. It's the startle response. So for instance, if I was sitting here talking to you and a book fell off the bookshelf and I jumped, I would then my sensory input would naturally lead me to check it out. I would say, okay, it's okay. And I would come back and I would flip back into the parasympathetic nervous system. So the other stages, 2, 3 and 4 are what we would refer to as fight flight and freeze. And they are the active stages of sympathetic, meaning that there's a huge amount of available energy that's in the body to mobilize to for defense or for getting away or for the potential of either. So if we've ever had a horse, which I'm sure all of us have had on the end of a lead rope that's like frozen and you know that at any moment that energy could just go in any direction. That is what we're talking about. Within a freeze state, where there's still a huge amount of energy available, there's a. It's kind of just bubbling beneath the surface. So beyond that, then we flip into a completely different mode of functioning, which is collapse or conservation of energy mode. And there are three different stages that the body would through, the last one being rigor before we left the world. And it's a state where the energy stage is, or the energy availability is no longer what it was in the active stages. So it's very much about hibernation mode. It's very much about the shutdown mode, about us staying around in the world for as long as possible with the least resources possible. And what's interesting or what's important to know about the sympathetic continuum is that from a sensory perspective, as soon as we go into the sympathetic activated chain, the sensory input starts to be turned down. And the reason for that is functional. So that if Someone was to attack me. It's not useful for me to feel all the feels in that moment because it would prevent me doing what I needed to do. And the same in conservation of energy mode. By the time I get to that state, the amount of sensory information that I'm having coming into the body is, Is so minimal that. And again, it's protective because I'm just kind of completely removed from my reality. I'm just inside my own little brain. I'm doing my own thing because I'm just like, la, la la, la la la in that moment. Because from a survival point of view, there are things happening I just don't really want to be tuned into at that moment, if we can think of it in very stark terms. So what's interesting is that each of those, each of those modes of functioning within sympathetic have a way that the body orients itself, so a way that the structure takes shape. That is true for every mammalian nervous system. Um, and so there is a way that the shoulder blades assume, the tail tucks, the pelvis tucks. Like there's a whole list of observable structural changes that the body goes through. For instance, in the. As part of the flight response, it's very much a asymmetric pattern because one side of the body is the I'm going to push off and that's my acceleration side and the other side is twisted towards the exit. So a lot of what we experience with asymmetry in the body, in my experience at least, is very much a flight template that the structures become stuck on, that the brain hasn't had enough information to decide to come out of, basically. So, and that's where biomechanics becomes really interesting, because if we're not looking at structure from the level of the nervous system, then we can consistently be trying to force change on the body where the nervous system is actually the underlying reason as to why it's consistently moving back to that place in the. In the beginning. Is that clear so far as far as what I'm. What I'm saying?
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Robin Schiller
Yeah. And actually that what you just said about the asymmetry. Warwick just went to his therapist for an in person, like, because he's been doing it online and they were doing an exercise and she noticed that when they were doing it, his hips twisted away from her and it was like he didn't notice it obviously, but he, he twisted and so she brought attention to it. And actually the next time they did whatever they were doing, he twisted and actually moved and it like broke stuff Loose. So that's really interesting. Like, he was. He was showing her that, obviously. And yeah, she. She encouraged him to go with it and move to. Actually.
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Jane Pike
Yeah.
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Robin Schiller
Yeah. To follow or whatever. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's so much fun.
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Jane Pike
It's interesting. I mean, we can have. We can have adaptive flight patterns, which is. I'm in a situation and I'm sensing this person is not someone I want to be around, and I'm orienting away from them, and as soon as I'm away, it changes. And that would be an appropriate response. But what many of us find is because the way that we're living our modern life doesn't support the way our systems are designed. And we're not coming out of these states like we're in. You know, we might have developed this asymmetric pattern, this flight flea pattern, essentially in childhood, and it's still with us 40 years later. And that's what my interest is as well, how it is we reestablish adaptability. But the. So along with these structural templates, there's a. There's a fight template, a flight template, a freeze template, and. And they're all observable. You and I were. I was like pointing things out in the supermarket yesterday.
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Robin Schiller
Yeah, and we're going to get to that because. Yeah, I want you to go through that.
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Jane Pike
But. So that's really interesting to me. But along with them, there are behavioral templates that like. And template is a. You know, it's so reductive. I don't mean that it's just for the sake of learning an explanation that we talk about this. But, you know, each of those. Like a flight pattern is. If I'm unable to express the reality of flight in my body, meaning that I do truly want to get away, then often what will happen is my. I will dissociate cognitively or mentally, and it will be. I'm kind of out of the building. I am asking questions in my head that's typical of a flight pattern. I'm just questioning everything that's going on. I'm finding myself in a. In a. Just a different place. And then I come back and I'm like, oh, I didn't even really realize that I left the building. Like, that's very much part of a flight pattern. And again, there are all these different associations. So when we're talking about stories, what becomes really interesting is that the goal, I guess, or the aim of a healthy body and a healthy person is to be responding both adaptively and appropriately. Meaning that you Know, within the situation that's in front of me, there is no goal. The goal is not to be one way. The goal is to be whatever is appropriate for the situation, which could be to be kind of fired up or to be angry or to be, you know, that that's. That is never not appropriate. It's just like, is it appropriate for this situation? And I've got more to say on that, but I'll zip my mouth because I get carried away. But where we go with the story is if we think to the principles of, okay, we have a nervous system that requires sensory information to be accurately and adaptively responding. When we get to. And we think about, again, in principle, the idea of being in the sympathetic nervous system or the fight flight nervous system is we are only supposed to be in it for a short amount of time. We're supposed to just dip in and dip out. Like we are not supposed to be hanging out there. So everything we talk about, the structural changes do create compromise in the body and the sensory. The lack of sensory input is a compromise that the brain says, yep, let's do this, because the priority right now is survival. And so we're just going to not worry about that for a moment. When we get to something like collapse or conservation of energy mode, those first few stages, like around stage five, stage six, that's when we really start to get. If we're in it chronically in more of the depression, the narcissistic cycle exists in here, the martyr cycle, the victim cycle cycle. All of these behavioral expressions exist within the conservation of energy mode or collapse. And that's not to say that each of us can't express that periodically. Like we can all be martyrs periodically. We could all be victims periodically. We can be narcissistic periodically. That's absolutely possible. And I recognize that in myself. But to live there and for that to be our dominant behavioral expression is a different experience. And why that is the case is because again, if you think about in those stages, there is no longer sensory input that's coming into the brain. So my brain is still seeking to answer the question, am I safe? And now it's not getting real information in real time. The only information it has is the database of resources. That has happened before. And so now I start to relate to the world not through my senses, but through my story. And this is where we have conversations with people. And it can be that that conversation is just what puts them in collapse. So that perhaps if I have a really difficult conversation with my husband, for instance, or I'm. I'm upset about something with my horse that's expressing time and time again, someone. If you were to bring that up to me, perhaps that thought process triggers me to that place. And now I start to relate through the story. Or it can be that you're with. I mean, I give this example a lot because unfortunately, a lot of how our elderly population now are predominantly in collapse. And it's like you cycle around on the same story. It's like you cannot get them out of the same story over and over again. And it's because they're just. That is the reality for them. The same in writing lesson situations. It's like, I've taught this person for 40 years, and it's the same instruction, and nothing's giving. And it's because literally that they're not hearing what you're saying. It's from a physiological position. That's. That's the reality. And so it becomes a very useful understanding to say, okay, how can I both steer these conversations in a more helpful direction? And when is it just not useful to be engaging right now because, you know, something else needs to change in order for what we're expressing to be heard? For instance. Yeah. Does that kind of. Is that what you were talking about? Yeah.
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Robin Schiller
Yep, yep. You said you could say a lot more about, like, the adaptive and appropriateness.
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Jane Pike
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can. I think that one. When I started, I. Well, I. Because so many of us, I think, yourself included, and I know I've been talking to Bob Schulte a lot about this, and it's. We started for personal reasons. You know, like, we started because we had some stuff that we wanted to work out for me. I had also family experiences and histories where I was like, how do I not be that? You know, like, how do I not become this situation that I'm. That I'm viewing? And so my beginning point was to think of. There's a goal that I need to be, which is like, I want to be calm or I want to be relaxed, or I want to be free of tension or whatever it is you express. And that can lead us to start to view situations which we perceive or expressions which we perceive as negative, as failures or mismanagements or somehow not. Okay, which is. Which are those more fiery emotions like. Like anger or, like, sadness or, you know, we can express the full range of emotions in parasympathetic. That's what's. It's really important that to be angry is not a sympathetic response. It can be a very True and real experience for the moment. And I guess the important thing to understand that also changed my understanding of everything is that emotions are internal expressions. They're not external experiences, which means that I can have the internal experience of anger. And that does not live together with violence, or it does not live together with shouting, or it does not live together with. With an expression that I deem to be not okay. And so when I am aware of myself and kind of within myself, and again, I'm not thinking my way through the world, I'm sensing my way through the world, I recognize that to really be. Well, okay, I'm going to break it down in a slightly different way. The scientific definition of an emotion is a physiological expression, which just means something has. Something has formed in my body, which is. An emotion is a physiological change. Basically, that's all an emotion is on a. On a scientific level, on a psychological level, the definition psychologically is a physiological change and a subjective interpretation, a subjective label. And that subjective piece becomes really interesting because that means that everything that we're labeling as emotion is. Is part of an narrated, curated experience that we're. That we're calling it. And so what if we're not right? Is the first question to ask ourselves. Like, what if our interpretation is wrong and that we've started to couple together these labels with what's happening in our body in a way that does not actually express the reality of what's happening? And also that the. That physiological expression is incredibly brief, I think, and I'm not 100% sure of this as fact, but it's not so removed to be wrong in that it's something like 40 seconds. Like the expression of an emotion is 40 seconds. So the physiology of anger, if we were to use that or anxiety, the actual physiology of that is very brief. And if we experience something beyond that now what we're experiencing is our story rather than the initial emotion. And so the adaptability or the expression of that means an appropriate. That appropriateness of that means that if I understand in my parasympathetic system I'm constantly responding to the moment. What that means is how I am over the course of my day is constantly going to be different because each moment is different. And as each moment can't be predicted, neither can I. And so if I allow myself to be new, if I allow myself to show up as Jane on this Sunday morning in California, and I don't know what Jane is going to be like today because she hasn't met today yet, that means that I Give myself the opportunity to create and to be responsive to what is in front of me, rather than waking up in the morning, which, you know, all of us have had an experience of as well, and kind of deciding how the day is going to be or holding with me a number of stories about how Robin's going to respond to me this morning or how this podcast is going to be, which means that now my story precedes my reality. And that's where we start to. When we don't let ourselves be new, when we expect nervousness or we expect anxiety or we expect upset without allowing ourselves to be in the experience and seeing what happens, then we start to create emotional experiences which we can recognize as our personality or our character traits or the way that things are in relationships, because, again, we're. We're arriving with a mode of functioning rather than allowing a mode of functioning to express as a result of that situation.
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Robin Schiller
Yeah, I can. I can see that. Just. Yeah, I can see that in my dad, and I can see that in myself, and I can.
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Jane Pike
Yeah, yeah. It's. It's like that we have to. We're so bad as adults at letting ourselves be new, like, letting ourselves learn. And. And as I say that, like, I'm sitting here thinking, oh, I've been playing out a story, like, in response to a couple of things happening in my life, you know, where I'm, like, a little bit anxious about something or a little bit worried about something, and. And I am perpetuating the narrative to an extent. So it's a constant. It's a constant dance of remembrance. Yeah, yeah. And I think, as well, just to throw in there, like, part of the challenge. I mean, there's so much. You and I both teach this. There's so much that we can do on an individual level that we need to be responsible for. And it's kind of shitty in a way, because the nervous system shouldn't be something that we need to take care of. But because of the way that modern life is, all of a sudden, it becomes an individual responsibility to wellness and to being in life in a way that is okay, because the culture does not support it. The way that we live does not support the way that our system is designed. And so within that conversation as well, there can be a huge burden that lies on the individual for reconciliation and for wellness, when actually, what we also need to consider is, what is the community responsibility here? Like, what is the community responsibility to each other? How do we take care of each other?
- [30:34]
Robin Schiller
What.
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Jane Pike
What is that? And I don't necessarily have the answers. But what I know is this is not supposed to be always an individual conversation because the burden of that is way too much. And it is not our fault necessarily that we've got here, but it is our responsibility to get out of it. And that is a challenge. And so that's why groups and community support and taking care of each other is so important because we don't have those containers anymore that allow for us to step into them and to be taken care of. And so when the, when the role for that always falls on individual shoulders, it starts to get kind of heavy after a while, I think. Yeah, yeah.
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Robin Schiller
And that's why the popularity of your joyride program. I mean, you've got that community and that support and then you're guiding people through all of this.
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Jane Pike
Yeah, yeah. I think that it's the community element. It's not a bonus, you know, it's like essential. It's an essential part of just recognizing what's going on and to be able to, like we were just saying, like, support each other, but also, I mean, we all do this and it's a fascination to me in so many different ways and observing myself included in that. We delude ourselves that we're the only one having this experience and everyone else has got it together. And like, oh my goodness, that makes it even worse. We sort of start to compound things on it. So even just the sharing of stories and the exhale that you can find with realizing, oh, I'm not crazy, or if I am, everyone else is too. So that's good. And you know, this is a relatively. It's. It's become a normalized experience. I don't want to say it's normal because my big thing at the moment is dysfunction has become normalized. And just because something is normal does not mean it's not still dysfunctional. But it's such a relief to say there are other to see and to be in communities that uplift each other. For sure. Yeah. Yeah.
- [32:48]
Robin Schiller
Let's talk about our observations yesterday at the. Yeah, so like, we've talked about stories, but what about the patterns of like that we saw the man in. And you said his physiology shows me what state he's in or, you know, lives in, basically.
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Jane Pike
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people watching, it becomes so much more interesting or even more interesting. I think. I'm an avid people watcher when you're looking at structure as well. So if we think about what happens when someone goes into a fight flight response, the first thing that happens is that the fascia dehydrates. And we have several layers of fascia in the body. We have the skin bag of fascia, which is, if you were to lay me on the ground and take out my skin bag of fascia and lay it next to me, it would be the perfect outline of my body. So you can tell the shape and size of someone after they've passed away by their fascial bag. And we have the fascial bands, which is horizontal support structures that hold the skin bag off the underlying movement trains or underlying fascial trains, which are what mobilize the body. And so fascia is just everywhere. We have this bag, we have the bands, we have fascia around all the different individual component parts. And also we have an organ bag of fascia, which is like a big Santa sac that contains our organs, that connects at the tongue at the top end and connects at the anus at the bottom end. And it's part of the deep front line. And so when we go into sympathetic, the fascial system contracts and it brings everything closer to midline. And so we shorten from top to bottom and also from side to side. And the purpose of that is to bring the bony surfaces of the body together. So in sympathetic, we lose joint space and we lose space between the vertebral bodies and we lose height, actually, because. And the reason for that is that if the bony surfaces are together, we have more surfaces of basically surface area to power off, which increases our acceleration and increases our force. And so it's a. It's an adaptive. Nothing is not functional, basically, as far as what we do. The organ bad contraction brings all of the organs together and typically takes them towards the left, but some people, it goes towards the right. So we have a habitual kind of motor pattern for where the organs sit. And interestingly, because I used to be a yoga person, I'm not now for various reasons, but when I used to twist, you know, when you go into a twist, I used to think, oh, I'm tight on one side and kind of loose on the other. And then when I got into this work, I understood it's actually the organ bag sitting more to one side, and I've got more of a mass on one side of my body than the other. And as it started to. As my sort of sympathetic patterns have started to abate, I don't have that experience anymore, which is really, really interesting. Yeah. And so what that precipitates is change in structure depending on the priority of the body. So the priority of fight is different to the priority of flight and so on and so forth. And actually just to drop in one more nugget. The fight response is always only ever defensive, never offensive in fight. It's the truest form of fight in terms of I only ever am protecting myself. If you come at me. If I arrive to a situation and I'm defensive and I'm in an. In a kind of fight mode of operation, it's actually collapse. It's the narcissistic phase where I'm arriving in a fight mode that's not adaptive or responsive. I'm not in defense. I'm actually bringing the fight to the party, which is not the true physiological survival mechanism of fight. And that's interesting to think about as far as horse responses as well. Like if you're arriving and they're immediately defensive, it's probably more of a shutdown type response rather than I'm going to come at you and now I'm going to try and defend myself, which is. It's been interesting to me to think about that. But as far as the structure, everything starts to get more and more compressed, more and more pulled towards midline. The further down the sympathetic chain that we go. And so the organs change their positions. The heart and the lungs change their positions. All organs change their positions for protective reasons and also for reasons of efficiency. So the blood has less further, sorry, not as far to travel. My lungs are protecting my heart. Like there's all different reasons why that occurs. Digestion switches off, reproduction switches off. Like they're just not priorities. In sympathetic, certain muscles switch on, other muscles switch off. So in parasympathetic, the all muscles and all organs and all systems are functioning as a cohesive whole, basically as a conversation. In sympathetic, we prioritize. And so some are off, some are on or like really turned down. And the same with muscles. There are some muscle groups, the big muscle groups get really fired up. The other muscle groups get switched off. And so also the way that the body mobilizes movement is different. Meaning that how I walk around, how I rise to the trot, how I move through my life is different if I'm in a fight flight nervous system compared to the parasympathetic. And in fight flight, the way that I create movement is through the lumbar spine and through the cervical spine. And so the lumbar spine, the movement of the lumbar spine is what powers and mobilizes the pelvis. The movement of the cervical spine is what powers the shoulder girdle. And again, if you think about the prevalence of lower back and neck pain and arthritis, all sorts of different joint issues, digestive issues, reproductive issues, all of these things, the joint spaces are no longer in sympathetic. So if we're in sympathetic for a long time and the bony surfaces start to rub on each other, then we have degradation. If we're in sympathetic for a long time and digestion is not prioritized, then we have digestive issues. Reproduction is not prioritized, reproductive issues. And so this manifests differently in the individual. But it's interesting to think of it from a nervous system level. But also the structure is observable, like the way that the structure orients itself. When you develop an eye for it, you can start to see very obvious indicators of structure being in a place that signifies this is a dominant. The dominant nervous system place for this person at this moment. And it doesn't mean it has to be true for the future. That's what. What we do, but that's what we've changed. But so in the supermarket, the man that we saw at the checkout had a very obvious collapse pattern. And one of the collapse patterns is where the cervical vertebrae at C7 starts to. It's sort of. It doesn't detach, obviously, but it's like its articulation is different. So the neck is really forward of the body. And if you think of the chin. So the chin and the manubrium, which is the point, the bony structure between the collarbones, if you were to put your cell phone, for instance, there, ideally it would be a fairly vertical line between the. Between the transition point at the body of the breastbone and the chin. And what you have is this disarticulation where it's like the chin is really forward of the body. So there's that funny situation happening at C7. And also, if you think about organs, organs are huge structures in the body. And ideally in the parasympathetic, they are what support posture. So we have internal pressure systems in response to different movement patterns that happen in the body. And the organs which are pressing on different fascial trains to support structure. So in the parasympathetic, and this is important because of what we're about to go into. The lungs sit quite high in the body. And the top of the lung sits in the bottom of the neck tube. And so. And the top of the heart also sits just below the. The thyroid or kind of like just below where your Adam's apple would be. And they're. Part of that function is that Those two really big organs, or those three, if you want to think of the lungs together, press on the deep front line. And they support the neck vertebrae, they support the cervical vertebrae. And when they drop now, they're putting a lot of pressure on the deep front line in the upper thoracic. And so you get the bulge at the back of the body in very unpc and not very nice terms. It's like Dalwage's hump, that widow's hump that happens at the back. And that from the perspective of what we teach is the lungs. The lungs have dropped down into a sympathetic place where they're now pressing on that part of the body that's causing the rounding to occur in the upper back. So the structure is interesting and somewhat of a superpower because the. It's objective, it's not subjective. And a lot of where we get ourselves in trouble with nervous system, with self diagnosis of where we're at from a nervous system perspective is I feel this way. That feeling isn't necessarily accurate, but structure is always accurate. And so being able to observe structure tells me a lot about that person at the checkout's tendencies. Tells me a lot about what I could probably expect because it is, you know, just part of that. Part of the way that we all behave and operate when we're in that place.
- [42:58]
Robin Schiller
Yeah, that's interesting because it makes sense. Like for my dad, you know, he just had back surgery because his back was collapsed. Like it was collapsing on itself and he couldn't. It was all squished. And so he actually had to have surgery, which totally makes sense for him because he's lived his life in sympathetic. So. Yeah, so my question. I notice my pelvis is like tilted, so my back arches a lot. So that's.
- [43:31]
Jane Pike
Yeah, and that's because probably, yeah, there's a couple of things. So the first is one of the first things that happens. And you can see this in any animal. Dogs are great for this, actually, because they can be like. And then if they get a fright, the tail tucks and the pelvis scoops underneath and they like shoot forward. And so the first thing that happens is the tail starts to tuck and then the pelvis starts to tuck. But of course, if you think about what that means, if we were to sit in the reality of that, what that would mean is that we would be. Our torso would be way behind the pelvis. Like, we'd be in that real chair seat. And to sit up straight would be. Would require what you're talking about, which Is now in order for my body to be upright on my pelvis, my lumbar spine or my lower back has to go really far into the tube. It has to go forward in order for my rib cage to be over the rest of over my legs, essentially. And so we develop these patterns of compensation that are essentially just designed to keep us upright for the way that the nervous system is kind of orienting the body. And so the biomechanics of this become really important from a nervous system place where if we can just increase sensory input and get that sensory system back online, then the brain has information to take it out of the template that it's chosen. Because all it's expressing really is a maladaptive pattern. It's saying if we're in sympathetic and we're not coming out of it, what that tells us or we're expressing that more than 50% of the time. What that tells us is that for whatever reason, the brain just doesn't have the information it needs to be making the change. And then second to that as well, which I think is an important piece of the puzzle. No amount of nervous system work will change a body that is responding to the reality. Meaning that if you're genuinely afraid or if your body is in a flight pattern that is true for the moment, maybe you're in. You are afraid of your horse, or you're not in a good relationship or you don't like your trainer, you can't regulate yourself out of that. Do you know what I mean? I think this is really important. And so a lot of the nervous system work will get you to a place of realizing actually what has to change is outside of me before what changes inside of me is going to make any kind of consistent showing up. And it's a combination of those things often where, you know, sometimes the things that we need to change on the outside are so big and so overwhelming that when we come to this type of work, we're just not in a place to be able to do that. It just. It's too. It's way too much. And so the chipping away and the small pieces and the support and it just means you have choices and just means you're able to notice the things that are true for the outside. And maybe you don't change them and maybe you don't want to change them, and that's completely fine. But still being able to recognize the reality of a situation is really important to stay empowered within it. And so that's kind of. Yeah, that's kind of an important piece as well. I do have something to say about aging though. Can I throw that in there?
- [46:49]
Robin Schiller
Yes, please.
- [46:52]
Jane Pike
You know, we have a really funky relationship with aging in the west. And aging is not synonymous with degradation. They don't live together. They don't. They do, that is. And again, that's the difference between something that's normalized but not necessarily normal. For instance, my husband, his job prior to letting me do mine was working with tribes that still hunted with traditional methods. So he used to work in the Congo, he'd film in the Congo and lots of different places all over the world where they were at that stage unfettered by western civilization. And the elder people of the tribe were completely like, right up until when they were close to passing away, they would be just fit as a fiddle, like out there hunting, doing all the things, teaching the younger people. The structure of their body was the same as a 17 year old, you know, with a little. They looked older, of course, but like they were fit and they were, they were healthy and they're kind of out there and the same for the women. And I think that the nervous system's role, when we, when we get to the stage of having a natural death, a death that means that we're in a fortunate position where we've lived the fullness of our life and we kind of slip out. There's a period of about six weeks where we slowly become a little more removed from the world. And then the nervous system is actually designed to hold us, hold our hand as we transition out of this life. And what we've got into is a situation in the west where the way that our body, our body's needs and our body's sensory needs, our body's movement needs aren't being intrinsically taken care of, they're becoming choices. And choices are hard when you're met with so much stimulation and so much distraction and so much dysfunction as far as how we're told that we need to live our lives. And then we get into a stage where we're in collapse for like 40 years, you know, and, and I say that with a smile, but it's, it's, it's not funny. But we're in collapse for 40 years and we're only supposed to be there for a short period. And now what's happening is so many people are in that that the majority becomes the, you know, the petri dish experiment where we're like, oh yeah, as you get older, you do experience this like, lessening of height, which all that Is. Is a loss of joint space. And there's all of these diseases or all of these dysfunctions that come as a result of that loss of mobility, all of this, you know, all of these different things. And I just. I don't accept that as the way that it has to be or the way that we're designed to be. It is the way that we've been designed into as a result of what's going on. But what that means is, if we're aware of it, if we're one of the fortunate people that are aware of it, there are things that we can do to assist ourselves. And I think that I'm not so arrogant to assume that we're not the same as any other animal on the planet in terms of we're not susceptible to diseases or we're not susceptible to breaking down in the same way. We absolutely are. But the way that we've designed, you know, we've kind of engineered our lives into comfort to the extent where we've kind of comforted ourselves out of wellness. I don't think a lot of what we see of aging is natural. Yeah, I think it's far from that, actually. Yeah. Was that a little bit of a.
- [50:35]
Robin Schiller
No, that's great.
- [50:36]
Jane Pike
A wrong sentence?
- [50:37]
Robin Schiller
No, that was great. So I want to go back to the tongue. Can you. For people who haven't heard that before, can you explain, like, how you can determine where you are through your tongue?
- [50:50]
Jane Pike
Yeah, I can. Yeah. I love the tongue. So as part of what I teach there, and this is part of the holistic biomechanics model as well, there are black and white indicators in the body that immediately change from sympathetic to parasympathetic. So you can use them kind of as diagnostics, if you like. And that's useful for a variety of different reasons. And the tongue is one of them. The tongue changes its position depending on what your nervous system state is. The tail also does. But. And there are, again, other indicators. But why the tail is less obvious to us is. Well, most of us don't know where our tail is. If we were to just tune into our tail. And the other thing is that because fascia behaves in a particular way, the different structures of the body, even if they change within the nervous system state, if the fascia has become dehydrated to a chronic level, it takes about six months for it to rehydrate, and so it becomes difficult for us to tune into those parts. But the tongue is part of your deep front line. And specifically, when we're looking at tongue position, we're considering the tongue tendon and how the tongue tendon behaves. So if you remember back to the conversation we had about the organ bag and how the tongue is the top of the organ bag and the anus is the bottom of the organ bag, the tongue, it's actually all part of that deep front line. And so as the sympathetic, as I go into fight flight, my organ bag gets pulled closer together from top to bottom and side to side. And if it's attached to the tongue tendon, then where the tongue tendon sits in the mouth is affected by how my organ bag is behaving. Does that make sense so far? So if my organ bag shortens, it pulls my tongue tendon back, it pulls the tongue tendon back in my mouth. And if my organ bag lengthens and goes into parasympathetic and sort of relaxes, then the tongue tendon relaxes as well. So the tip of the tongue is typically what I teach as an indicator. And when the organ bag is in parasympathetic, there's no sort of contraction from the fascial bag. The tongue tendon is really far forward in the mouth. And what that means is that the tongue actually curls up and over and the tip of the tongue starts to sit on the roof of the mouth. And so oftentimes, if you're doing this with us now, tongues, especially if you're quite a thinking person, can be tricky to tune into. But if you just, like, move your tongue around your mouth and get a sense of where it's sitting in your mouth and then just let it rest, like, don't do anything with it, and see if you can get a sense of where the tip of the tongue is sitting. And you may not. And that means just move the tip of your tongue and then relax it again and see if that gives you more information about where in the mouth it's sitting. And if it's sitting on the roof of the mouth, what that tells us is it's in the parasympathetic. And then as the tendon starts to pull back in the mouth, it means that the tongue is pulled back. And when the tip of the tongue now sits in front of the top teeth, that is more of an active fight flight position. So if the tip of the tongue is touching behind the top teeth, we consider that more active fight flight. And then as the tendon gets pulled further back, as the tip of the tongue is on the bottom of the mouth, that's more of a collapsed conservation of Energy mode. The thing to remember about this is we flick between these states really fast. I can have a thought that puts me in collapse and a different thought that takes me out. So it's like, really easy to move between, but it's a really good indicator of what my subjective experience is compared to the reality of my experience. So it's a way to break things up. But I did talk about this at the first summit, and one of the things that people confuse is that I can't force my nervous system to change. I can only give it information that allows my brain to make the changes. So me forcing the tongue on the tip of my mouth does not make me parasympathetic. It just means now I force the tongue on the tip of the mouth. And so to change that. If you think about, okay, I'm observing my position right now. I observe my tongue is in X position. And I do as a lot of my movement work, a lot of sensing work. So if I was to sense the end of my tongue, which is to put my awareness. Not to see it as if I'm watching a movie, but to put my awareness on the tip of the tongue and then have a second point of reference, which could be the roof of the mouth, and just sense those two points, your tongue position will most likely start to change. It will start to change to a different place, if that is what the brain deems to be appropriate. And so the changing consciously of the tongue is not what. It won't influence your nervous system is what I want to say the sensing will, because it's not about forcing the change. It's just observing it.
- [56:05]
Robin Schiller
And so that's. You're like the program that you. That you lead people through. That's what it's doing, right? You're. You're. You're teaching movement patterns and sensory information that is actually like supporting the parasympathetic. Is that right?
- [56:22]
Jane Pike
Yeah, it's. Yeah. So it's broken down into a variety of different sections. The movement piece or the. So if we think about, okay, why is someone stuck in sympathetic. They're stuck in sympathetic because their sensory system has lost its ability to transfer messages to the brain. And so the movement work that I teach is very much about reactivating the central. Reactivating the sensory system. And then it exists alongside other things, which is. Okay, now we also have to understand how our perception might be feeding into it, because our thoughts can pull us into our sympathetic system as much as our physiology. And so where's the. What's the way in you know, is it because we're having habitual thought patterns which are taking us into this sympathetic place, or are we having a physiological response which is pulling us there in a way that isn't adaptive? And so the work that I do is about rehabituating, kind of. It just means sort of getting your sensory system back online. Looking at how our perceptions about what's happening might not be the reality and how it is. We can find ways of being in the world, basically, which just increase vitality is the way that I like to think about it. Yeah.
- [57:40]
Robin Schiller
That's awesome. And how can people find you just everywhere, Robyn?
- [57:46]
Jane Pike
Just everywhere.
- [57:47]
Robin Schiller
You are everywhere.
- [57:48]
Jane Pike
My website is the best place. ConfidentRider Online is my website. And you can see Joyride is my membership program. And all the information about it is on there as well. Yeah.
- [58:02]
Robin Schiller
And you have a good Facebook Confident Writer page.
- [58:07]
Jane Pike
Yeah, Confident Writer on Facebook. The Confident Writer. And I have a podcast too, the Confident Writer podcast, which I'm going to get you back on. So we were like sweeping. We're switching, switching, switching things around. Soon I'll be on the other side of the mic. Yeah. But the Confident Writer podcast.
- [58:21]
Robin Schiller
Yeah, perfect. Awesome. Well, thank you. I think that was a lot of good information. My brain's like full, so I think that's super helpful. And yeah, I hope you. I hope a bunch of people run over there and, and dive in. I think that'd be great.
- [58:38]
Jane Pike
Thank you so much. It's so fun talking with you even from the other room.
- [58:42]
Robin Schiller
Then now I'll come in and join you.
- [58:45]
Jane Pike
Yes, perfect. I'll finish my coffee.
- [58:47]
Robin Schiller
See you in a minute.
- [58:48]
Jane Pike
Thank you so much.
- [58:52]
Warrick Schiller
Thanks for being a part of the journey on podcast with Warrick Schiller. Warrick has over 850 full length training videos on his online video library@videos.warwickshiller.com Be sure to follow Warrick on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to see his latest training advice and insights.