A Routine to Help with Menstrual Cramps, Bloating and Headaches
I was back at The Social with a great routine to relieve menstrual pains like cramping, headaches and bloating. Watch here
We didn’t have time for the last stretch which is great for relieving neck tension, headaches and jaw pain. It’s a facial yoga pose as well so may help you look more sculpted.
NECK STRETCH
How to do: Turn your head to one side and gently tilt your chin up and slightly back, lengthening out the opposite side of your neck. You should feel the stretch down the side of your neck and into your shoulder. Keeping your head turned to the side, stick out your tongue and stretch it towards the tip of your nose to activate the muscles further. Hold this for a count of ten. Release back to centre, then repeat the move on the opposite side. Feel the tension leaveyour neck, shoulders and jaw as you hold the stretch.
Benefits: With PMS and during our period, we often find we hold tension in our neck, shoulders, and jaw area - which can contribute to headaches. This stretch helps to reduce the tension thus helping with headaches. Since it also stretches one of our key lymphatic points at the front of the neck - it also encourages lymphatic drainage which can ease bloating.
And this face yoga move may even help your face look more snatched!
Your Weight Gain May Be a Result of Emotional Stress and Trauma Stored in Your Fascia
If you’re holding on to extra weight, it may be due to the emotional stress or trauma you’re holding in your fascia.
There are an array of factors when it comes to weight gain and weight loss. We often hear about calories in - calories out, hormonal balance and the psychology behind it. What we don’t talk about is how storing fat can be related to us storing trauma in our fascia.
When we store stress and trauma in our fascia, this can increase our levels of cortisol (stress hormone) which encourages our body to store fat. And there’s more to it than an increase in cortisol - when we are holding on to things, we feel it as tension and stiffness in our body. Sometimes we even feel detached from our body. This holding pattern and detachment can encourage your body to freeze and hold onto fat as a survival instinct. Your body feels you’re in danger because of how much tension you’ve stored in your fascia, so it holds onto fat because it thinks you’ll need it.
By releasing the stored trauma in your fascia, you can encourage the body to let go of not only the emotions and memories it’s holding onto - but also the weight. That feeling of heaviness when you’re stressed can send feedback to your brain and it can encourage the body to add heaviness - or in some cases the opposite effect where the body tries to balance the minds heaviness with lightness.
If you tend to lose weight when you’re stressed or depressed, then your body is balancing the heaviness of the mind with lightness in your body.
If you tend to gain weight when you’re stressed or depressed, then your body is marching the heaviness of the mind with heaviness in your body.
In both cases - releasing the tension and trauma stored in your fascia can help create balance in your body.
This is why often patients will note that they start losing weight without changing their diet as we release stored trauma from their fascia. Part of this is that as you release the tension, you’re able to move better and thus you move more. It also encourages lymphatic drainage which means that your body will also let go of excess water weight that you’re holding on to.
As we release the tension from our fascia, we create safety in our body so that our body can let go of what we’re holding onto including excess weight and mental strain.
If you feel like trauma or emotional stress has you holding on to things you want to let go - you may benefit from myofascial release treatment.
I’m here to help and can see you in person for myofascial therapy or virtual to talk and share self myofascial release techniques.
Breakfast Television - a routine to ease piriformis syndrome
If you sit at a desk all day or even on the couch you may experience vague discomfort and pain where you sit. We call this lower cross syndrome, gluteal amnesia dead butt syndrome or more recently office chair butt.
In this syndrome, muscle tightness and weakness combine to create an imbalance. Constant sitting weakens the gluteus medius, the main stabilizer muscles in the buttock. The job of the gluteus medius is to stabilize your hips and pelvis. When it’s weak and can’t function properly, you may experience varying levels of hip and lower back pain when you sit and sometimes when you move. It also causes the hip flexors to tighten and since these muscles attach to the spine - can lead to back pain.
With minutes of sitting down - the nerves that activate glutes can shut down which can cause your glutes to atrophy (lose muscle) over time. This can cause your glutes to become weak, sag and flatten.
Dr. Liza Egbogah shares tips to combat office butt and exercises that will help your butt and back feel better. These exercises will also help lift and round your glutes so it doesn’t look like you’ve been sitting all day.
Watch the segment here: https://www.breakfasttelevision.ca/videos/the-harrowing-and-very-real-effects-of-sitting-down-for-too-long-and-how-to-fix-it/
How To Ease Shoulder Pain From Sleeping (Hint: NSAIDs May Not Be Your Best Bet)
Shoulder pain can be caused and aggravated by the way you sleep 🛌 💤 I spoke with the Woman’s World about the cause of shoulder pain from sleeping and strategies to prevent and reduce pain.
And of course I shared my favourite posture stretch that’s one of the best things you can do for shoulder pain 🧘♀️
Read the full article here
Could fascia massage derail the beauty industry?
It was a pleasure to contribute to this Dazed article on fascia and how myofascial release can affect the way we look. This topic is very misunderstood, so it was great to shed some light on a technique that I started in 2009 before it became mainstream.
“While academic studies are still lacking, anecdotal endorsements are stacking up. Dr Liza Egbogah, a Canadian osteopath and posture expert who has a doctor of chiropractic, has used fascial techniques to help people like Jennifer Lawrence and George Clooney with their posture. She tells Dazed, “if we were to remove all of your bones, you would still maintain most of your shape because of fascia. As such, fascia can be manually manipulated to change our appearance and structure.” Dr Egbogah says that many signs of “ageing” in our modern digital age are from stress and spending too much time looking down at phones and computers. “This behaviour changes our facial posture because knots in the fascia developed from looking downwards will also pull your face down as well,” she says. “Myofascial release can counteract these effects. Even wrinkles can be a result of knots in the fascia and when you release those knots the wrinkles can essentially be erased.”
Read the full article here
The Social - Travel tips from a body and posture expert to look and feel your best when you land
As an Osteopath and Chiropractor who specializes in aesthetic myofascial release and a frequent flyer - Dr. Liza Egbogah shares tips that will have you looking and feeling your best when you deplane. Travel can take quite a toll on your body. Standing for long periods in line, hauling bags through the airport, lifting them into overhead compartments and off the conveyor belts, sitting in cramped seats, the pressure of the cabin, elevation and overall stress of travelling can leave you arriving at your destination tired, achy and not looking your best.
Dr. Liza Egbogah shares exercises you can do on board so you won’t deplane hunched, lymphatic drainage acupressure points so you won’t be puffy and travel recommendations - so you can arrive feeling and looking your best. All these tips are tried and tested on long hauls including a 17.5 hour flight!
The Social - Chair Yoga to Improve Your Posture
Improving our posture while sitting can reduce inflammation and help us feel better both mentally and physically. Body and posture expert Dr. Liza Egbogah returns to The Social with chair exercises to ‘undo the hunch’
Canadian Business - How Dr. Liza Egbogah Started a Celeb-Approved Supportive Shoe Business
I talked with Canadian Business about my journey to founding dr LIZA shoes - my line of beautiful supportive shoes that have been worn by celebrities like Kate Winslet, Cynthia Erivo, Viola Davis and Priyanka Chopra.
Read the full article here
Fascinating Fascia and it’s Role in Trauma and Emotional Stress
Myofascial release is one of the most effective forms of therapy to release stored up emotional trauma from our body. Hopefully with this post I have helped to highlight the role that fascia plays in our mental and physical health, how we look and how we live our life and relayed that the health of our fascia is essential for us to function our best.
It is no coincidence that the words fascia and fascinating start with the same 5 letters as fascia is indeed the most fascinating part of the human body (in my humble opinion). Made up of a network of connective tissue that creates much of the structure and shape of our body (if you were to get rid of all your bones – you would still maintain your shape thanks to fascia) – it also acts similarly to our nervous system. Given this significance we would expect that everyone would be talking about fascia and how it affects our physical and mental health and really – our entire life. But alas one of the things that makes fascia so fascinating is its elusiveness because not everyone can feel the adhesions or knots that can build up in the fascia. Many who can really feel the fascia (like myself) consider it a gift to be able to. You know when you’re getting a massage or myofascial release treatment and you feel that crunching over certain areas – those are knots or adhesions in the fascia being released. Sometimes you’ll get a treatment and not feel any of the crunches and then you’ll see another practitioner and feel lots of crunches. The practitioner who you feel the crunches with is one that can feel the fascia.
So that’s fascia. But the part that makes it so fascinating is its role in emotional stress and trauma. Different layers of fascia have different levels of innervation and research has shown that the visceral (around your organs) fascia is rich in autonomic innervation, the superficial fascia shares with the skin mechano- and thermic-receptors, and the deep fascia has a role in proprioception. But where there is little research is when it comes to trauma and fascia’s role in memory storage. In my over 16 years of myofascial release and manipulating fascia – this role is what lead me to consider fascia - fascinating. I have had patients recollect memories from childhood, burst out in tears, be engulfed with anger, tremble for hours after treatment and experience states of euphoria as we released adhesions in the fascia.
There was a patient who I saw early in my practice who was seeing me for chronic low back pain. She had tried everything under the sun including physiotherapy, massage therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic and spinal decompression. Nothing worked and a colleague referred her to me for myofascial release to see if I could help. As is the case with most people with lower back pain – her hip flexors were very tight and there were significant adhesions in the fascia surrounding her psoas muscle. As I released those adhesions she started to cry. I stopped and asked if the pressure I was using was too much as I thought that was the reason for her tears. And she responded “I was sexually assaulted as a child. I was sexually assaulted as a child. Somebody touched me. Can we stop for now?” It was a revelation as she had dissociated from this experience and blocked it from her memories and instead stored it in her fascia. The fascia around the psoas is one of the most common areas I have seen patients store trauma.
It makes sense with trauma that when our brain is not able to process what is happening it stores it away in the fascia. Our brain and sympathetic nervous system are concerned with survival so it can’t process what is happening at that moment – it just needs you to survive so provides a ‘fight or flight’ response. What does it do with all that information its ignoring for survival? In my clinical opinion – it stores it in the fascia. I have actually felt this trauma in my patients. I had a patient in her early 20s who had come in for headaches and shoulder pain. As I was working along the fascia I was drawn to her elbow and when I started to release her elbow, a deep feeling of sadness overtook me. I asked her if anything ever happened to her elbow and she replied “no injury but as you were doing that, I felt my ex grab me there. He was abusive and use to grab that elbow and throw me to the ground”. It was an eye opener for me – by feeling the facia I was also feeling what was stored there and that’s the day I started to read everything on fascia.
I think the fascia is one of the keys to addressing trauma and its sequelae. We know from books like ‘The Body Keeps Score’ that we are storing trauma in the body and its significantly affecting our mental health. If emotions and trauma are stored away in our fascia it means that we won’t be addressing it. It’s like the stuff we store away at the back of cupboards or under beds only discovering them years later when we eventually organize or move. It’s a difficult task to address trauma that has been moved to the background so it requires a release to heal. I think that releasing the fascia in conjunction with psychotherapy is a method that can significantly change people’s lives. When we talk about the mental health benefits of yoga, dance, tai chi and exercise some of this release is because with all of these we are working the fascia.
The fascia also plays such a large role in our posture, alignment, how we move and how we feel and can also affect the production of feel-good neurotransmitters like endorphins and stress hormones like cortisol. This is why most of my work is based on the fascia and I use myofascial release to improve posture, fix chronic injuries, take years of aging off the face and help people heal from trauma. When we talk about adhesions and knots in fascia – a lot of that is caused by inflammation so think about how the fascia is affecting inflammation in our body and how by releasing these knots we can alter inflammation in our body. This is important since inflammation is the cause of so many chronic illnesses and disease. They say laughter is the best medicine but I’d say myofascial release is a top contender given its array of benefits.
Myofascial release is one of the most effective forms of therapy to release stored up emotional trauma from our body. Hopefully with this post I have helped to highlight the role that fascia plays in our mental and physical health, how we look and how we live our life and relayed that the health of our fascia is essential for us to function our best. It’s truly FASCInating!
Some interesting articles on fascia:
The Social - Treatment and exercises for bunions
Dr. Liza Egbogah returns to The Social with the bunion fix - exercises and self-treatments that won’t get rid of your bunions but will make them look and feel a whole lot better. Dr. Liza shares 4 foot exercises and 1 self treatment that you can to to strengthen your feet, minimize the pain from bunions, prevent them from getting worse and have them looking better.
And if you're looking for shoes that are great if you have bunions visit drLizashoes.com
The Social - Improve your Posture and Breathing
Dr. Liza Egbogah joins CTV's The Social to share exercises and tips to improve your posture and breathing. This can help reduce inflammation, aches and pains and energize you.
Woman's World - How To Get Rid of Your Neck Hump
Read the article here for 3 exercises that reduce neck and back pain
Introducing the Cloud Collection Socks
Proceeds from the sale of the dr LIZA cloud collection socks go towards providing socks for unhoused persons in Toronto. Support your feet and our unhoused friends by wearing these awesome socks.
Not only do these socks look great - they have arch support, moisture wicking yarns, strategic venting and stay up compression that will boost circulation and have you feeling great. And they are literally the perfect gift for all!
Knit with moisture wicking, breathable, and durable 48% Nylon, 32% Polyester, 20% Spandex performance yarns.
One size fits all (5-13)
THE KIT: Which running shoes are for which purpose?
Foot support is a serious subject
“Our feet are the base of support for our entire body. If we are bearing all our weight on our feet and they are not functioning properly, then the rest of our body will be out of alignment.” READ MORE
Breakfast Television : A Quick Routine to Improve Your Posture
Body + Posture expert Dr. Liza Egbogah shares an easy routine of exercises that you can do to improve your posture, mobility and core strength.
Here are the 5 exercises:
Thoracic extension with side bend
Pec stretch with back bend
Arm windmills
Side leg lifts
Hip figure 8s
CTV News | A Routine to Improve Your Posture and Mood
Body and Posture expert Dr. Liza Egbogah shares a dance routine that both improves your posture and boosts your mood on CTV Calgary's News at Noon.
Dance moves that improve your posture and mood
Improve your posture with these dance moves
Dancing is a great functional movement that can help with flexibility, conditioning and mobility. It’s also a great mood booster. This combination of dance moves will help improve your posture by targeting muscles that tighten up from too much time spent sitting and on devices. Dr. Liza has put together a series of dance moves that can be used to ease tension or to loosen up after a long day of sitting. These moves help to improve posture while improving your mood at the same time by giving you a much need boost in endorphins (feel good chemicals). Even kids can benefit from this routine