Let’s talk with a Licensed Massage Therapist about pain while making art.

^^ Check out this conversation with Abigail McCoy - artist and LMT. She details how to deal with pain all over the body. Really great info!

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Hi friends, Sarah D here.
This is the transcribed conversation made via HappyScribe.
We know some people like to read more than listen and vice versa, and we will always try to provide both when we can. HappyScribe is roughly 80% accurate.

Also a huge thanks to our guest:
Abigail McCoy
Website • Instagram • Twitter
Kriota Willberg "Draw Stronger"

Happy Art Making!
-Sarah
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Interview with Abigail McCoy Transcribed Conversation

Speaker 2 (00:00)
Hey folks, this is Sarah and Sarah with Abby McCoy today for mindbodyartist.Com. And today we're going to be talking about life as an illustrator and also life as a licensed massage therapist. So thank you, Abby, for joining us. And if you don't mind, would you tell us a little bit about yourself and where to find you on the internet so people can support you? And then we'll get into the industry.

Speaker 1 (00:26)
Thank you for inviting me. I was very flattered and you can find me. I have a website, abigailmccoy. Com. I have an Instagram and a Twitter. You should both be able to find those at abigailmccoy. Com. If not, there are links on my website that you can follow through for social media. I do have a co five at the moment. It's not completely up and active running, but hopefully by the time this errors, it will be and that's also under my name and should be linked with everything else as well.

Speaker 1 (01:03)
And that's where you can find me online at the moment. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:07)
Thank you. We should also intro who is your parakeet?

Speaker 1 (01:12)
My parakeet. His name is Remy. He is a yellow parakeet. He's about five years old and he is very vocal.

Speaker 3 (01:20)
Yes, he's part of the conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:22)
Robbie joining us with us as well.

Speaker 1 (01:26)
Which you will hear is commentary.

Speaker 2 (01:34)
I had parakeet when I was a kid, so I love them, but anyways, yeah, how did you get your start?

Speaker 1 (01:41)
Originally my first training, my first education is as an illustrator. I went to Do Mass, Dartmouth for about two years and then transferred in 2011. If I'm not misremembering, I went to MassArt in Boston for the next four years, graduated in 2015, and I came out of school pretty much more confused about what I wanted to be as an illustrator and how I wanted to run a business as an illustrator than I did coming in. I have many opinions about art education and that won't make me popular.

Speaker 1 (02:22)
But to simplify things, I was not driving as an illustrator. I always love doing it, and I do it for myself now, and I want to get into sort of a more Patreon style business. But I was broke and depressed living at home with my parents and I knew I was going to have to get a day job in order to semi fund the illustration business because illustration businesses cost money as much as any other business. If you're selling actual pieces of artwork, you need to frame them.

Speaker 1 (02:54)
You need to promote them. You need to ship them. And I knew the money had to come somewhere, but it was not going to come from the illustration business because I was just not driving. So I knew I had to get a day job, but I didn't want it to be something that sucks the soul from my body and just left this desiccated husk that had no energy or time to do artwork. I had always been interested in alternative health care and alternative health, but especially massage.

Speaker 1 (03:21)
I would buy little books for myself and practice on my family and my boyfriend and the community College. River Valley Community College, up in New Hampshire, had a massage therapy program, and I thought, Heck, let me try this out. It's one to two years long. If I don't like it, I'll just quit. I'll quit it and do something else, ended up loving it, ended up getting my certification. Even I finished up in the midst of Covet, which was fun, got my first job, which is in Keyne, New Hampshire, and moved to Keen, and I've been a licensed massage therapist for a year, and I was afraid that it was going to draw me away from illustration more.

Speaker 1 (04:08)
But I've been realizing that they feed each other. But the one thing I've been really passionate about is understanding body posture and body mechanics in terms of working as an illustrator. And I kept on finding that there were all these ways that artists were not taking care of themselves physically, maybe more so in our generation than other generations. But I realized that everything I was learning as a massage therapist to help people who weren't artists would 100% apply to artists. And so I went to a Lux Con this past year, which was wonderful.

Speaker 1 (04:49)
And they were looking for people to do presentations. And I was going, hey, I would really like to do a presentation about posture for artists and self care in terms of posture. And so I made a presentation, which was how you guys found me. I put a post on the sisterhood of Fantastical Art for Fantasy Art on Facebook, and it was this little voting post that said, hey, I'm doing a presentation. What parts of you hurt the most.

Speaker 3 (05:25)
Button that was all of these parts hurt?

Speaker 1 (05:29)
Yeah, I don't know. I might have had all of the above, but I don't think I did because I really wanted to know if my assumptions were correct because there's me as the artist and how I work, and there's parts of me that hurt. But I wanted to know if that translated to other people's experiences. And so I had people vote. But the really helpful part, and I'm glad I insisted on this was people voted for what issues they felt were the worst. And then if it was like, not listed above, they talked about it in the comments, and some of them even talked about how they resolved their issues.

Speaker 1 (06:07)
And I know one person mentioned chiropractic care, massage, self care, and I was like, oh, yes. Okay, good. There's anecdotal evidence for what I want to talk about in my presentation. And so I set this all up, and I presented at Alex Con, and now I have a presentation that I would like to make into a sellable PDF on my website. Hopefully by the time you guys air this.

Speaker 2 (06:34)
Oh, that'd be really cool. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (06:37)
Great. And I also have a presentation that I would love to present at other art schools if art schools want to hire me as like, a presenter for a day and get me out there because there's a lot of things we're not taught about in art school, and I think that's a whole other podcast on its like episode on its own. But one of the things that we're not taught is how to take care of our bodies because our bodies are as much art tools as like a paintbrush or your computer technology.

Speaker 1 (07:12)
If you draw digitally and we know how to maintain our physical tools, but we don't know how to maintain our bodies as a tool.

Speaker 3 (07:21)
Yeah, I won't let people use my colored pencils. You can't use my colored pencils because you don't treat them right, but I'm not going to stretch.

Speaker 1 (07:31)
Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (07:32)
I won't move for the next 12 hours.

Speaker 1 (07:35)
Yeah, that's a great segue into what I want to talk about next is I started this presentation. I was like, okay, what do I want to say with this? And the thing I discovered and I feel very strongly about you were talking about organizing your workspace ergonomic setups and buying these expensive chairs and these expensive tables and all that stuff. They will help, but they're not the thing that's going to save your body from damage. The thing that will save your body from damage is not working for 12 hours free in one position.

Speaker 1 (08:15)
That is the thing that will kill people's bodies the quickest and caused the most injury. You don't have to buy all these very expensive materials. They will help to a certain extent, but you need to stretch and you need to exercise and you need to drink water and you need sleep. You need all these things that we're taught in school that we shouldn't put as much value on as like a $300 set of colored pencils. Or we were taught.

Speaker 3 (08:51)
They should be put aside because you've got art to make art to be in the studio. So if you didn't or you didn't sleep.

Speaker 1 (09:02)
It'S such a weird, archaic holdover from again, this is Abby McCoy opinion corner here. This is a two pronged problem, right? You've got this very like, there is no painting without pain attitude about art, and then you have as well what's happening at the same time, the devaluing of art in our culture. So you have this attitude that's happening and is taught by other artists that you need to suffer for your art or like, it doesn't matter unless you get as many hits or like you're as brought down as the previous generation, which is bizarre.

Speaker 1 (09:44)
At the same time, art school is becoming more expensive. But culturally, people are not taught to give art a monetary value. In art schools. We're not taught how to bill our time by an hourly wage. Right. So you have this ignorance on top of this very self destructive attitude and then you get a lifestyle, which is one I would like to encourage people to not do anymore, which is self destruction for short abuse, for sure.

Speaker 2 (10:15)
I have broken myself very badly with that lifestyle.

Speaker 1 (10:19)
Yes. And you shouldn't have to. It's awful.

Speaker 2 (10:26)
Again.

Speaker 1 (10:28)
I have many opinions about it that probably won't make me very popular, but I'm going to veer back into the presentation I did and the information I have and I want to explain a little bit why hours upon hours of continuous work or like freezing yourself in a certain posture, even if it's good or bad. So you have bad posture, right. The classical basement troll over your desk, working in no lights and just turning out artwork and horrible postures. Yes. Absolutely bad. That is just 100% back.

Speaker 1 (11:08)
But then we have this idea that there's like this perfect posture, like if you angle your table right and you angle your screen right and you sit with a 90 degree angle on your knees with your feet flat on the floor or whatever, that will be fine. But even in that posture, you can't sit in that posture for 12 hours at a time. You're still going to get tension and repetitive stress injuries because you're again pushing your body to do something it's not designed to do by evolution, and it's not going to benefit you in your lifetime, maybe your grandchildren's lifetime.

Speaker 1 (11:56)
It's not worth it. Some people can concentrate for longer periods of time than other people, but most humans, they really can't produce their best work or concentrate that much more than about 2 hours. After 2 hours, you get distracted, you make mistakes, you get fatigue, so it behooves you to get up at least every few hours and stretch, get some water, take a walk around the block, clear ahead and come back to your work and you'll produce better work by taking those breaks and working within your best focus time than you would just grinding away for 8 hours or 12 hours.

Speaker 1 (12:40)
That is sort of the thesis. Yeah. Talking about neurotypical neurotypical people is usually some people like people with add, they need constant distraction and the whole day is just like getting up and getting down or they get hyper focused and they can't help but work 8 hours straight. That's fine. As long as they don't do it all the time. You got to work within what's best for yourself. But you have to make time for the self care when you can. You have to build it into your lifestyle and your work lifestyle.

Speaker 1 (13:26)
Yes. I have two modes.

Speaker 3 (13:27)
I have working while tweeting all day, and then I have turned off social media and listen to an audiobook and work for like multiple hours straight. Those are my two modes.

Speaker 1 (13:38)
That's it. And again, I will say that's. Okay. As long as you pepper some stretching or some movement throughout the day with movement.

Speaker 3 (13:51)
Like I'm at a standing desk. And I yes, all day.

Speaker 1 (13:57)
That's okay. And remember, with the standing desk, the fallacy of the standing desk. And I found this as a massage therapist working on people who started to work from home, or they went back and they made all these ergonomic changes to their office is that they would have a stand sit desk. But then once they started standing for too long, they would have hyperlordosis. So that's, like, really extreme curve in your lower back. Well, the thing about a stand sit desk is that you can't be standing or sitting for too long.

Speaker 1 (14:37)
You have to swap it out. Or if you find yourself fidgeting and you've been standing too long, do a few squats, tuck in that pelvis, squeeze those ABS, squeeze those butt cheeks and do a couple of squats.

Speaker 3 (14:52)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:53)
Actually, if we can get around to it at some point, that curve in the lower back. I'd love to know how you would address that, because I'm trying to minimize mine as well, because I think it's not, like, extremely too curvy, but I think it is perfect.

Speaker 3 (15:07)
You've seen mine?

Speaker 2 (15:08)
Yeah. Yours is a little out of control. Mine is less so, but still, I would like to minimize it.

Speaker 1 (15:14)
Oh, no. See. Okay. I will talk about this. It's just hard to do it in terms of a podcast, but I will talk about what causes the pain in the lower back. And I have my presentation in front of me, and I'm just sort of going through that. I'm summarizing it for a podcast. I don't know how long your podcast is.

Speaker 2 (15:34)
It's as long as you need. Really?

Speaker 3 (15:36)
I would say, like, a summary. And then we can link people to your stuff. If you've got that videos and PDFs and things that you're going to be putting out, even if you're just getting started.

Speaker 1 (15:46)
Yeah. I've only been doing this for a year, so all of this is way brand new, but I'm really excited about it. I'm going to just talk about what causes certain pain and what you can do to change your project in your studio.

Speaker 3 (16:04)
You want to go from.

Speaker 1 (16:05)
Like, top down, sort of. Yeah, pretty much. I'll go through that. So I'll talk about what causes pain in certain parts of your body. I think you had a list of neck, shoulders, entire back. Do you want me to talk about shoulders and wrists and elbows as well? A little bit.

Speaker 2 (16:29)
Definitely selfishly. My elbows have always been a problem. So if we can do some elbow stuff, I would love anything about the elbows I'm interested in.

Speaker 3 (16:38)
Thumbs are my problem.

Speaker 1 (16:41)
Yeah. So elbows are interesting because they are a joint. You don't think about using a lot when you create artwork, maybe more. So if you're a sculpture or you're a painter on a large scale, but they do like, a lot happens at your elbow. You have your radius and ulna connecting to the bottom of your femur, and then you have your I'm trying to make sure I pronounce this correctly. Olecron process. I've heard it pronounced different ways. I think it's O-L-E-C-R-O-N. But it's the nub you feel at, like, the pointy part of your elbow.

Speaker 1 (17:26)
And those you have your radius and ulna, and they flex and rotate. And there are muscles above and below your elbow joint that help you do that. And people talk about having hand pain or shoulder pain or wrist pain, basically. And sometimes the pain is located in your wrist, depending on what's happening. If you have carpal tunnel, it's definitely located in your wrist. But sometimes the pain actually starts from the top of your forearm closest to your elbow. And it's because all of the power of flexioning and extension of your hands and wrists come from that pack of beats those muscles at the top there.

Speaker 1 (18:12)
And so what happens is your forearm gets really tight and you lose power because the muscles are not contracting or expanding to their full capacity. So you don't actually have full range of contraction, and they become weaker as they become more hyper extended and the nerves become more active and constantly spasming and contracting your muscles. So that's a bit of what's happening there. Sometimes what else is happening is that you're actually, because your elbow is not angled at a correct or a neutral position and you're not working with the free range of your elbow as you're working, you're sort of holding your elbow and working from your wrist that can cause discomfort.

Speaker 1 (19:03)
I'm going to backtrack a little bit, actually, and we're going to start with what I'm talking about in terms of these injuries. So you've got the most common type of injury for artists is repetitive stress injuries. And that's what can lead to, like, carpal tunnel. Thoracic outlet syndrome, which is pain that starts locally in your shoulder is thoracic outlet syndrome. It's a type of issue. Cubital outlet syndrome is what's happening in your elbow. Sometimes fiatica just general pain, numbness, tingling and weakness. Repetitive stress injuries is damage or pain resulting from overuse or repetitive motion.

Speaker 1 (19:47)
So carpal tunnel comes from people who are doing a lot of small Mark making over and over and over and over again. Also over gripping your pencil. If your fingers are white, your fingertips are white. You're just ripping that pencil so hard and your knuckles are white. That's going to cause repetitive stress injury and strain. So you got to loosen your grip. Another thing that's happening is there are three different types of muscle contractions. Let me know if I'm going a little too into the nitty gritty.

Speaker 2 (20:24)
No, I think this stuff is really important because just going back to what you're saying about the elbows and about what happens to the muscles in the form. I don't have elbow pain now, but if I knew that when I was having my elbow pain, it would have helped inform my decisions on how I treated it. So I think knowing kind of the nitty gritty and why stuff happens is important so people can then know how they want to proceed.

Speaker 3 (20:59)
Just pause once in a while and say, do you have any questions? Because I'm the ADHD kid, and I'm going to write down the questions as I think of them. But I also might just forget them. And then you get to the end of your thing. And I had a question like 20 minutes ago, but now it's gone.

Speaker 1 (21:11)
Okay. I'll take more pauses. So you have the repetitive stress injury, which is one of the issues that happens with artists. And then another thing that's happening is that you are making your muscles go through something called isometric contraction. Let me double check that. That is correct.

Speaker 3 (21:36)
Well, you're double checking. That the thing. The thought I had earlier was like, So you've got these artists who know that they should be doing this stuff right. There's going to be artists who are listening to Utah right now and they're going to go, oh, I'm going to stretch right now because they just didn't. They haven't been thinking about it. I just sat down on the floor and stretched my wrist because I haven't done it yet today, and we're talking about it. So I did it now.

Speaker 3 (22:01)
It's like, man, half the struggle is just remembering this stuff for me.

Speaker 1 (22:05)
Yes, I suggest cell phone timers as much as possible, just like, either you have them throughout the day of, like, 08:00 stretch, 12:00 food stretch. Either you have it listed that way, or every time you sit down, you set up like a cell phone alarm for every 2 hours. If you're someone who's very forgetful or has add, I would set up the whole apparatus with doing timers throughout the day or just a very hyper focused.

Speaker 3 (22:41)
I find what works best for me. Timers are probably great for a lot of people. What works best for me is Association. So it has to become a routine. So it's like, have breakfast, stretch, have lunch. So those things go together. That's how I get the cat litter done every day because it's eat dinner, finish dinner, put dishes away. Go do the cat litter.

Speaker 1 (23:07)
No, that's great. Another thing like if you have pets or if you have a dog, that's great to break up your day because the dog is going to bug you to know all about.

Speaker 2 (23:18)
That is literally the reason I have a dog. I got a dog for that exact purpose specifically for that exact purpose because I was really bad about just working straight through. And I had had a lot of RFI in the past, and when I went freelance, it came back. I had a really terrible flare. And so I was like, what can I do? What can I do? And what can I not ignore? And you can't ignore a dog at walk time?

Speaker 3 (23:49)
You know what else you can't ignore? I wouldn't recommend having children for this purpose, but boy, they do help too.

Speaker 1 (23:55)
Yes. What's great about kids? I don't have kids, but I've heard enough about kids to have an opinion about them. At this point, you get closer to 30. And as a woman, I think you just are expected to have opinions of children. But what's great about kids is that you can do these things with them. And so as you're teaching them to do these things, you're relearning and instilling these things in yourself because I've got the best way to learn anything. Okay.

Speaker 3 (24:24)
She gets home from school, she goes in, hey, Mom, here's my bag. Blah, blah. Here's my papers. Straight to the computer, you know?

Speaker 1 (24:31)
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:32)
So I've got to have those conversations with her now like, you can't game for 4 hours straight, like you can, but it's going to not be good for you. Here's stuff you got to do. You got to look away from the screen every half an hour. You got to go do some other thing you have to save.

Speaker 1 (24:53)
The game is paused anyway.

Speaker 3 (24:56)
And then she comes to my office and says, yeah, hey, Mom, I want a snack. I say, okay, go do two laps around the house while I get your snack. So I know she's doing something and moving. She's a fidgety kid. She's probably also ADHD. So she's moving around a lot. Anyway. Sometimes I go in there and she's like, sitting on the edge of the couch with her legs up behind the couch. And then she's also playing Minecraft. And I'm like, how are you? Yeah. She's seven.

Speaker 1 (25:29)
Yeah. Her tendons and ligaments are all very fresh and new.

Speaker 3 (25:37)
Not just sitting there. I mean, I want her to game. I want her fun gaming. We have a gaming family. Her dad works in video games, so it's not going to go away.

Speaker 1 (25:46)
But I wanted to take care.

Speaker 3 (25:48)
I wanted to build up those good habits now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:53)
And that's not my endeavor with this presentation or any of the advice I'm trying to give. And my point is, a massage therapist is not to tell you to stop doing the things you enjoy, but help you find a way to enjoy those things without hurting yourself.

Speaker 3 (26:09)
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (26:09)
That is my ultimate goal. And also in terms of artistic creation, some people they will not create artwork at like a traditional desk set up. It's just not when their inspiration gets fired or works for them. I know for me I need to move around my apartment like I'll start at my desk and then end up on my couch and then go back at my desk. And it's okay to sit on your couch for 2 hours with your legs crossed and hunched over, but you just can't do it all the time forever.

Speaker 3 (26:41)
Yeah. Gremlin mode for 14 hours.

Speaker 1 (26:44)
You can't. You can't because your body is like you have to sharpen your pencils when they get dull. The same thing goes with your body. You need to stretch out your body. You need to hydrate it. You need to move around those tissues. Our bodies are not designed. It's not like we're some other creatures are designed by evolution to just be still forever. And you'll look at their muscles in their body systems, and they have different needs. They are made in a different way. Humans are not designed to do that.

Speaker 1 (27:14)
We are designed to be able to get up and move at an instance. And we're supposed to move around. Our joints are actually designed to be lubricated by movement. Our limp system, which is the system that is a good deal part of your immune system. It doesn't have its own pulse. Like your blood system. Like your circulation system. Your heart is a big muscle that moves that blood around and keeps you alive. But your limb system needs your muscles to contract and relax in order to push the fluid through your system.

Speaker 1 (27:52)
This is why people who exercise usually don't get sick as quickly or as often is because they're literally flushing the viruses and other bad things that we have to be in contact with every day to be human. They're flushing those out with exercise. With movement.

Speaker 3 (28:11)
I had no idea that everyone's, like exercise is good for you, but that alone is like, what?

Speaker 2 (28:20)
That's so crazy because I exercise. I exercise the most out of everyone in my household, and I always get everyone I know. Sarah, I always get sick last, or I don't get sick. And it's funny because my parents are like, oh, you know, the dollar jeans, the dollar jeans. But pretty much my entire family regularly works out as well.

Speaker 3 (28:44)
Yeah, because they're all type. Go getters that can't physically stop.

Speaker 2 (28:48)
Exactly. Yeah. If we stop, the anxiety finds us.

Speaker 1 (28:58)
I run not for my health, but to get away from my anxiety.

Speaker 2 (29:03)
You're not wrong.

Speaker 1 (29:05)
Exactly. You just get into the anatomy of our bodies. We're just not designed to sit forever. We get bed sores. If we are in one position for too long, our bodies are just not designed for it, and that goes actually into the next thing I wanted to say. Any questions before I move, try to get back into muscle contraction.

Speaker 3 (29:29)
I love this conversation because I'm learning a lot and the fact that this is just a real fluid like that. You're not doing a structured presentation, and we're just kind of moving through with all of our thoughts. Like, this is so good for me. I'm so happy right now. I'm learning, and it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (29:44)
It's the only way you can talk about everything you want to do. And I still want to be on track because it all does link up, and it will all answer your questions in the end. Awesome.

Speaker 2 (29:57)
No, I think this is great. Let's just keep rolling because, yeah, this is awesome.

Speaker 1 (30:01)
So going back to the sitting for too long and that causing injury and intention. So you have three types of contraction for muscles is isometric concentric and eccentric. And concentric is basically you fully contract a muscle and something moves right. So muscles don't push, they only pull. So the way your muscles work in your body is that when you contract it, it pulls a joint into flexion or extension. And that's pretty much the basis of most that's, like kinesiology. One very basic. So what happens with eccentric is that you are contracting a muscle while also pulling like a limb or a joint more open or farther away from each other.

Speaker 1 (30:56)
So the basic I can say is you do a bicep curl, right. So concentric contraction is you bring that weight up and you bring your fist closest towards your shoulder, right. And you're contracting that bicep and it looks beautiful and beefy. And that's concentric contraction. Eccentric contraction is when that muscle is still being activated. That bicep muscle. But what you're doing is you're slowly letting the weight go down and your fist go away from your shoulder and down towards the floor. But your muscle is still so it's being contracted, but also lengthened at the same time.

Speaker 1 (31:36)
So that's eccentric. And I'm just telling you these things so that you understand isometric contraction a little bit better. So isometric contraction is when you contract a muscle, but there's no movement at all. You're not bringing anything closer to a joint or you're not opening a joint again with some contraction. And isometric contraction causes the most tension I find as a massage therapist, and the reason it does that is because you're basically telling your muscles to get stuck and your muscles are really good at adapting to posture in order to accommodate whatever you're trying to do at that moment.

Speaker 1 (32:18)
But that can be used for good and for evil. And what happens is your body goes, okay, I guess we're in troll position forever, and they shorten muscles that shouldn't be shortened, and they lengthen muscles that shouldn't be lengthened and puts your body into a position where it's not using its muscles to the way they were designed. And so their best strength. And I find that sometimes when I'm working on artists or people who do fine motor stuff, they're right. So they're right hand dominant or left hand dominant.

Speaker 1 (32:55)
Right. Well, let's say they're right hand dominant. I'll find less tension on the dominant side than on the non dominant side because the dominant side was allowed to fully contract and expand their muscles. And so you had the ability of releasing muscles and so building up less tension. But the nondominant side was forced to stabilize the body as that dominant side was working on those fine movements, and so someone will be like, oh, well, my right shoulder kind of hurts, and that makes sense because I'm dominant, and I'll be like, okay, I'll work on that right shoulder, like, well, that was kind of okay.

Speaker 1 (33:36)
And then I'll get to your left shoulder, and it's just a brick. It's just solid math. And it's because it was not given an opportunity to relax lax. So, like, maybe their right shoulder was hurting. So they sort of rolled their shoulder front and back. But they didn't think to do that of their left shoulder. And so their left shoulder and their left side of their upper back is just still stuck in a contracted position. And I find that in itself can cause more problems in terms of muscle tension, not more problems than repetitive stress injury.

Speaker 1 (34:11)
That's still an issue. But it's something that I've seen as massage therapist, but it's not as talked about. So when you're stretching, get this side that wasn't being used as well. Don't concentrate mostly on your dominant hand, even though it is working more. Your non dominant side still needs the stretching and the massage if you make that part of your lifestyle and the exercise because we are beings that have two sides.

Speaker 3 (34:42)
Sarah recorded a great thing about rolling out muscles with, like, whatever you've got. I've got a can of condensed milk that's, like, four years expired, and I'm, like, Never throw this can away. This is the can that I use to roll out my arms. My husband's like, oh, there's a can of expired milk.

Speaker 1 (35:01)
I'm, like, just leave it. I need that can as long as you don't use soda cans, right? Or, like, pooches that have not been opened yet.

Speaker 2 (35:09)
Oh, no. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the frozen water bottle. Like, if you just take a water bottle and freeze it and put it in a sock.

Speaker 1 (35:19)
Too, so that you're not having direct contact with the ice.

Speaker 2 (35:24)
That's a good one. I like the Sock edition socket.

Speaker 3 (35:28)
Add a note on that one, Sarah.

Speaker 2 (35:30)
Yeah, I should. Actually, I like tennis balls.

Speaker 1 (35:32)
Tennis balls and lacrosse balls. Lacrosse balls are harder than tennis balls. So if you want a deeper massage or self massage, a lacrosse ball is great. Actually, this is a good segue. So I would like to talk about that in a little bit about what you can use at home. But let me go through what hurts. Why? A little bit, if that's okay.

Speaker 2 (35:58)
Of course. Yes. Please.

Speaker 1 (35:59)
Let's go to that.

Speaker 3 (36:00)
Any questions I'm making notes for myself about things that hurt me to ask you about if we don't cover it.

Speaker 1 (36:07)
Okay. That's great. No, I love that. Thank you. Because then I can add that in if I don't talk about it, because I want to build on this presentation and do it more and more if I can. One thing I want to say before, so we talk about injuries. Okay, big thing. One of the best ways you can prevent pain is by listening to your pain when it happens and just stopping whatever you're doing. One thing you can do at home. I wanted to just talk about this briefly because it's not talked about right away in terms of repetitive stress injury or injury at all in terms of artists.

Speaker 1 (36:50)
But there's the rice method. So R-I-C-E. Method, it's rest ice compression and elevation. And this is like, basic first aid for if you think you've sprained or strained your ankle or something like that. But this also can be applied to elbow wrist injuries, lower back injuries. So what you do is you rest, you stop whatever you're doing cause the pain. You apply ice to the area no more than ten minutes because you want the cold sensation and you want your blood vessels to constrict, but you don't want to go quite numb.

Speaker 1 (37:29)
You want to stop just before numb. And in terms of ice packs, you should always put a layer of cloth or something between your skin being directly contacted and the icy thing. Like, some icy packs can actually burn your skin because they're colder than ice, and you don't want to get, like.

Speaker 3 (37:55)
Frostbite, right?

Speaker 1 (38:01)
I was saying I was like, freezer burn. I was like, no, that's not.

Speaker 3 (38:06)
It's kind of the same thing you don't want to do to your chicken, chicken to your arm.

Speaker 1 (38:12)
Yeah. And then compression. So that's when the wrist braces come in and like, the elbow brace or the knee brace, because what's great about compression is it again, sort of constricts the area a little bit. And then what I'll also do is it'll neutralize the joint and make you not use it, like, Flexit or extend it, if that's what's causing the issue. Some things you can do that like if you have sciatic pain, you can't wrap your butt. But like, damn it. But you can put a heavy weighted ice pack on it while you're lying on the floor is not going to hurt.

Speaker 1 (38:53)
The last one e is elevation. So if possible, elevate the area of pain above the heart. So again, if it's your butt cheek that hurts lying on your couch and drooping over it might not help that much, but it can help. Like if you think you've hurt your wrist, you can raise it above your heart and above your art. Just drop a pencil and raise your hand up. The idea about the compression and the ice and the elevation is that we have a healing process. And one of the stages of the healing process is inflammation, and inflammation is important.

Speaker 1 (39:31)
But sometimes what can happen is your body becomes stuck in that stage, and then it's just constant inflammation. And that happens sometimes, not often. But this can reduce the likelihood of it or reduce that phase more. So this is something that so I read a book called Draw Stronger by Cryota Wilberg. And this presentation is a combination of what I know as a massage therapist and what I read in this book. So I will be sending you a link to her book just so that her book can get out there, too, because it's really great.

(40:11)
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (40:13)
And she talked about the Rice method, and I read this in her book, and I was like, God damn it, you'll have to bleed me, I guess. But why didn't I think of that? Of course, because it is a first aid injury. Why are we not treating it like a first date? We just got to walk it off.

Speaker 3 (40:28)
So anyway, you can watch your content here. We're talking mostly to adults.

Speaker 2 (40:34)
Yeah. So no worries.

Speaker 1 (40:36)
Okay, cool. So we're not freaking taught to treat our bodies like we've done a first aid injury. Like, if we were athletes, any acre pain would be like, no, that costs us money. But as artists, they're like, limp along, no one cares. It's like, no, that's not great. So let's talk about hand, wrist or elbow pain and what can be causing hand, wrist or elbow pain. So the bullet points I have for this is what can be causing that pain is over gripping at drawing materials, drawing with immense pressure.

Speaker 1 (41:14)
So, like, if you're one of those people that just grinds on the paper with intensity, that's not great. Not keeping your wrist elbow in a neutral position or your shoulder in a neutral position, doing repetitive, tiny detail strokes for far too long without taking a break. And again, just not taking a break at all when you're in that position. So what happens when you're over gripping your tools is that you are causing a long period of isometric contraction, which we've already established causes muscle tension. And another thing that happens is that if you contract a muscle for too extremely or for too long, the muscle will actually be locked in that position and unable to release itself without self massage or stretching because your body thinks that this is what it has to do now to do whatever you're doing.

Speaker 3 (42:18)
You'Re teaching it bad things.

Speaker 1 (42:21)
You are. Well, you are. But your body has the ability to unlearn these abilities as much as they've learned them. And you have as much ability to reteach it what it needs to be doing. But if you don't know what's wrong in the first place, how are you supposed to know how to fix it? Right? Again. Any questions so far? Does that make sense? Was there something you wanted like, did you want more technical specific explanations of what can be causing hand, wrist or elbow pain?

Speaker 3 (43:00)
No, this is great stuff. And I think a lot of artists are going to listen to this and be like, that's why that happens.

Speaker 1 (43:07)
Yeah. And when I say neutral position, I do mean, like, don't twist yourself into a pretzel to draw something or if you're going to do that, take more breaks and be aware that it's going to cause you pain in terms of the neutral position and also over gripping. I know that I've had this happen to me because I am an anxious person, but I'll get into something and I'll get focused and I'll find that I am clenching all the way up my arm. So like, I'm grabbing onto my pen or pencil or whatever I'm using for dear life for some reason.

Speaker 1 (43:46)
So I'm doing hyper contraction all the way up, and I'm not allowing anything to move freely or feel like it can move freely. You don't want to draw and feel like you're shoved in a box and you can't move if you want to make bigger strokes, make those strokes from your shoulder, medium strokes from your elbow, tiny strokes from your wrist, but alternate how you move your arms throughout the strokes that you're doing. So you're not trying to do big motions with your smallest muscles. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (44:25)
This makes me think about when I used to illustrate because I don't draw anymore. Yeah, I stopped drawing for a bunch of different reasons and moved on to other art, but I used to do color pencils, and I pressed hard, man, and it was a look I wanted I had to layer that waxy pencil down really hard to get that effect that I wanted. And years of doing that, ten years of doing that and I started having involuntary finger movements and all this pain and problems. And that part of moving away from that art was like I couldn't make that art in an ergonomically, better way.

Speaker 3 (45:11)
I knew it was bad for me, and so for a multitude of other reasons, I kind of just walked away from that art style, and I know now that if I go back to drawing, it's not going to be that no.

Speaker 1 (45:24)
And you can use different, like, I don't use acrylic washes and then colored pencil on top of the acrylic washes. Now that's my go to medium combination, and I don't use wax based pencils pretty much for that reason is because I have to wrestle with them so much. I use oil based colored pencils because they're a bit softer. They're not as vibrant in some cases, but they're softer and they melt better. And also you really have to think about what kind of paper you're drawing on. So if you're drawing on super smooth paper, that's good to a certain extent, but it won't catch the pigment in maybe the best way.

Speaker 1 (46:09)
So you have to decide, do you want paper that's going to hold the pigment and really catch it sort of like, sort of like a Sandy surface. Or do you want a smooth surface that shows off those pencil strokes at their best? And that's another thing going into, like, ergonomics, and being an artist, another thing you can do is if you're a sculptor sharpen your tools more the more force you're using it's probably because your tools are not sharp enough or they're not yielding enough to you.

Speaker 3 (46:43)
When I'm trying to push a sewing needle through 16 layers of ribbon and then my hand hurt after it's like, oh, maybe I should get some sharper sewing.

Speaker 1 (46:52)
Yeah, that's something like that's. Not really. Again. Things that are not taught to us. The list. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:57)
I never would have really thought of that.

Speaker 1 (46:59)
A lot of materials. Yeah, you need to change. So every time you're using an Exacto blade through paper, you are cutting through wood, you wouldn't tell the lumberjack to not sharpen their axe every time they cut a tree. You're using a little tiny axe on a very sliver, smooth, thin sliver of tree. But you're still cutting through wood, and you need to replace your tools as often as you can to keep those sharp, but also so that you're not putting as much old force. Another thing you might want to do if you're working digitally, go into your weekly tablet.

Speaker 1 (47:34)
I use an XP tablet screen because they're cheaper, and I like them better and go somewhere not nice. But one of the things you can do is you can get into those material. You can get into those settings and soften the settings so that your pen becomes super reactive to the slightest of pressure, so you don't have to grind on your screen or grind on your tablet to get the fluctuation of pen stroke. You want you have the control to go in there and lighten things up so that you don't have to press so hard on the screen to get the line thickness variation that you would like adjust everything.

Speaker 1 (48:18)
We have these tools, but they are for our accommodation. We don't have to accommodate for them. And that's the point. If something's uncomfortable, it's not you. That's the problem. Accommodate what you're working on first. Like, if you are leaning into your screen to read the text, you can blow up the text. On most website pages. There are like a bunch of handicap settings that are on our computers that we can use as people who are not inherently handicapped to our benefit, called a curb cut. It's really fascinating.

Speaker 1 (48:53)
Yeah, actually, that's a great segue into the neck computer work. So we talked about arm pain, wrist elbow pain, a little bit shoulder pain. I'm going to go into neck pain and upper back pain as well. And one of the things that causes neck pain in terms of a postural sense, is leaning your head over and lowering your head down. So instead of looking at something straight on or sort of at an angle, you're just totally hunched down, sort of like the typical texting while standing stance is most known for this.

Speaker 1 (49:36)
And the reason why it causes so much neck pain is because the angle of your head changes the weight of your head on your body. So as you lean your head forward, you actually can add up to £60 of weight from your head on the muscles and the structures of your neck.

Speaker 2 (50:00)
I had no idea it was that much. There's so much weight.

Speaker 1 (50:05)
It'S so much weight. And the thing about our necks is that we have front neck muscles and back neck muscles and muscles are the shape and the density they are because of the jobs they're designed to do. So we have these thick muscles called the sternoclitomastoids in the front. And like when you draw a neck, that's the muscle that makes that little V shape at the base of the neck in between the clavicle bones. Those are two muscles you're seeing the two tendons attached to the clavicle and sternum area.

Speaker 1 (50:42)
And those muscles are big and needy because they're designed to keep your head level as you sort of lean your head back a little bit. They're the ones that keep your neck upright, and they help pivot. And there are other muscles that help pivot as you stand as you have your next straight and the back of your muscles are extensor muscles and attachment points. There are other muscles that start in the middle of your back and then attach to the base of your skull. And those are thinner and really not as strong because they're only meant to sort of contract in a linear way to keep your neck vertical.

Speaker 1 (51:22)
They're not designed to keep your neck up while at an angle because they're just not designed for it. And so what happens is we over stretch and over stress those muscles, and then we shorten the muscles that were beefy enough to do the job they were supposed to do. And so you have weakness at the back of your neck and too much strength at the front of your neck, and it causes all this contradictory pulling of your muscles while the angle is adding more weight to your neck and stressing out the structures around it.

Speaker 1 (52:01)
So that's what's really causing the neck pain, and that's why you really should lift everything up and put everything at an angle. Or if you really can't work in any other position or like, you can't get into the zone, you have to get up and stretch out and bring your neck back and let it fall backwards and do those head rolls because you're stretching out structures of your neck that were not designed by evolution to do that. So that's why your neck hurts. Any questions?

Speaker 2 (52:36)
So for that because of the injury I did to my arm, like, so long ago, I can't work vertically, like how people stand at a canvas. So I do look down like I have Cintiq and I slip it down.

Speaker 1 (52:52)
But I usually this also applies to when you lean your head forward. So people who are at canvases if their canvas is not close enough or they're not moving enough they'll still end up bringing their head forward sort of like a Vulture. So it happens at the same time as that. I just wanted to clarify that it is good to know.

Speaker 2 (53:10)
Too, but I usually rest my chin, like on my other handle a lot, especially if I'm drawing traditionally. So is that good or bad?

Speaker 1 (53:23)
I think that's fine. As long as you are stretching, as long as you move those structures around, you need to be careful about that, because when you're leaning on one hand, depending on the angle of your shoulder and your wrist and your elbow, you might be overextending or hyperextending your wrist. So I think that's fine. I mean, you probably don't. Do you do that for a solid more than 2 hours?

Speaker 2 (53:52)
No, Sarah, no, because I have because I have a dog.

Speaker 1 (53:59)
And that's what I'm saying is you're now aware of it. Right. So you'll know, as soon as the pain starts, why the pain is happening and you'll know what to do to rectify it. And you're not doing it for more than 2 hours and you're moving and as long as you're stretching and rolling out your shoulders, stretching out your neck and making sure you're not doing it to the point of pain and injury, I think that's fine.

Speaker 2 (54:24)
Good. That is good to know. I also fidget a lot when I'm in that position, so I'll move where my hand is on my face and stuff like that, too.

Speaker 1 (54:37)
Yeah, that's fine again, because you got to work and you're comfortable working in a certain way and you can't really run on a treadmill while you're painting. That's just not going to work. And that's not good either. You don't want to do that because you might lose focus of running and then start lapping your feet. So like, everything was in moderation.

Speaker 3 (55:02)
We don't have to do it all at once.

Speaker 1 (55:04)
We have to do all the things as well as separately and making sure you don't do it to the point of pain, right? As soon as you start to feel uncomfortable. That's probably why you're fidgeting is because sort of subconsciously, you're feeling uncomfortable and you're moving unconsciously. So it's sort of already a habit for you. So just continue doing that.

Speaker 2 (55:31)
Excuse me. Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (55:32)
That's good.

Speaker 2 (55:33)
To know.

Speaker 1 (55:37)
Any other questions about the neck?

Speaker 3 (55:40)
I think that probably most artists are going to I feel like that's probably the biggest problem area. A lot of artists I know complain about their neck, and we know a lot of the things that we're doing that is causing this pain. So like, maybe, I guess, do you have any advice for, like, I can stretch and I can do that when I get stiff in sore. I know I can stretch my neck, muscles and stuff. I've got like, one of those we call it Robot Husband.

Speaker 3 (56:10)
It's one of those little over the shoulder neck massage. You put it around your shoulders, and it has little balls that rotate nice. So I use one of those a couple of nights a week, especially when I know I'm feeling like if I've had, if I had what I consider a good workday because having a kid means that sometimes my work days are very disjointed. So if I have a good workday, probably my neck is sore for me doing that a couple of nights a week.

Speaker 3 (56:43)
It was an investment. It cost whatever it costs to have it. I think it was like 50 or $80 or something like that. And I was thinking so cheap. Yeah, but for some people, it's going to be like a lot of money. It might be like, but the reward of that guy a couple of nights, I'm not at a point budgetary where I can be like.

Speaker 1 (57:06)
I have a massage therapist.

Speaker 3 (57:08)
I may get there at some point. I'd love to get there, but right now it's just like doing what I can at home. So for people to listen to this, what tools can they use to sort of rub out those muscles? If they can't get it done or they don't have something at home? What's some techniques for those shoulders and neck areas.

Speaker 1 (57:29)
So basic warm up movements are always great to start with.

Speaker 3 (57:33)
Right?

Speaker 1 (57:33)
You do the stretching, you do the shoulder rolls, you do the head roll. That's always great to start with, because you're warming up and activating those muscles. I always suggest heat, especially if you've had a muscle that's been contracted for a long time. The heat will dilate your blood vessels and push more nutrients into your muscles. So, like, your muscles get hyper contracted, they need calcium and magnesium to uncontract as well as contract. So you want to bring blood flow into the area to push those nutrients into the muscles.

Speaker 1 (58:13)
So heat is always a good idea again, not too hot. Have a towel between your skin and the source of heat. I have a corn bag, which I love to use because it's a little heavy, so it does a little compression. Another thing you can do is that you can self massage with a tennis ball or lacrosse ball along the sides of your spine while lying on the floor. So you have your trapezius muscle. And it's a huge diamond shaped muscle at the bottom on your upper back.

Speaker 1 (58:47)
And because it's so huge and has so many contact points and connection points on the bony landmarks of your skeleton, it often has a lot of tension in it, and you can relax it. And by extension, relax some of your neck and shoulder pain by massaging its attachment points along the upper part of your spine. And so you have a tennis ball. You put it to, like the left or right. You want to get it in the meat. Do not put a tennis ball on your bone.

Speaker 1 (59:17)
It will hurt and what you can do is you can lie on the ground and either let your body sink in and relax on top of the tennis ball or lacrosse ball. And then you can relax completely. Try to breathe into it, try to consciously relax your muscles. If they're really tight, it's going to hurt, but it should hurt for a little bit and then start to feel a good kind of hurt. Ache.

Speaker 3 (59:45)
That good ache.

Speaker 1 (59:46)
And then you can either readjust it, rest on it again and then move it up or down. Or if you're feeling real like you want a challenge, you can roll on top of it on the floor.

Speaker 3 (59:58)
I've never been able to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01)
Yeah, it takes a little finangling for people who don't do a lot of movement on the floor or who are new to this. I would suggest just moving the tennis ball up and down the upper back and relaxing onto it as much as possible, because then you're also cultivating some postural awareness.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22)
Thank you for that advice, because I've always wondered how I can do that, how I can roll out those muscles when I can't really lay on my back and move very well. I have, like, coordination.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32)
Another thing you can do if you really want to test your coordination is because your traps connect along the upper part of your spine, and then they spread out and they attach along your scapula. In some places, they go over, they attach to your collarbone, and then they also attach to the base of your skull. So it's this huge, expansive muscle. And one of the other things you can do is you can dig a tennis ball into the base of your skull.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08)
Oh, I love that feeling a little upside down. You on the back of my head. Yeah, I love living there. Why does that feel good?

Speaker 1 (01:01:17)
Tell me that because there are so many attachment points there that get sore from us having a forward head posture. We have our trapezius attaches back there. We have our Levator SCAP attaches back there. Spleen is Capitus. I think one of your scaling muscles, you just have a ton of attachment points at the base of your skull. And there's also the tiny, tiny muscles that go along the sides of your vertebrae and in between your vertebrae. And that tension leads all the way up to the base of your skull.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54)
So there's just a lot going on in there. And if you have this forward head posture, it just adds even more tension, and that can cause tension headaches. So if you have a headache that spreads over the top of your head into your forehead, that can be from muscle tension in the back of your skull. They're like ice balls. You can take an ice ball or you can actually refrigerate a lacrosse ball if you want to to make it cold and sort of tuck it under there and put you can also rock your head onto the ball because what that will do, it will activate those muscles and help those muscles contract and release and contract and release.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44)
You want that release. So adding a little muscle contraction into those moves will also not hurt.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52)
I'm going to throw the necessary Disclaimer in here and say, because we didn't start with this. If you have any pain, like talk to somebody about it. Talk to special about it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06)
Has that Disclaimer in my presentation that if you're in pain, if you are immobilized by pain, go to a doctor first.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15)
No amount of self help will help that people that have hyper mobility issues and stuff before they do any of this stuff, they need to talk to people who are going to be able to let them know if this stuff is going to help them or hurt them and go easy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30)
You don't need again. We're talking to people who've probably caused injuries by grinding.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37)
Yeah, that's what we do. We think we're supposed to.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40)
Yeah, go easy about it. Don't just, like, flop onto the ball. Slowly roll onto it. If you're on your back and massaging the edges of your trapezius this way, stay away from your back.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53)
I can't wait to try this one thing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56)
If it hurts too much, don't do it. But yeah, those are some self massage ways that you can deal with that discomfort. I'm trying to think of other things. I have a foam roller, but it's kind of awkward when you're trying to do stuff on your back. There is a product called The Chirpwheel, which I love. They heavily advertised on social media. I think I've seen it and you might look at it and be like, okay, it's worth the money. It's worth the money because it allows you to massage specifically those muscles along your spine and by extension, the attachment points of your trapezius in that area.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45)
So I highly recommend it. If I cannot get a massage from a coworker or just I need relief real quick. The terpel is always something I go to and it adjusts my back as I do it. I love it. Any other questions before I get into, like, mid back to low back hip pain.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08)
Mid back is where my husband has all his problems, so I'm ready to take notes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14)
Mid back is entire. My mind just cut up for a second, so I got them back. But yeah, they were saying that people have pain on their entire back, so anywhere in the back would be really great to know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29)
Yeah. So the trapezius work like that work you'll do with if you decide to do it with the tennis ball that'll help with some mid back upper back pain. Anything you help with your neck will also help with upper back pain most of the time. In terms of low back and hips, they're actually connected pain wise because of a muscle called the ilioscoas so I'm going to backtrack just a little bit. What could be causing your back pain is that you're drawing in a hunched over position.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05)
You're doing any kind of sitting for an extended period of time. Our bodies are not designed to fit, even if you're sitting in the perfect ergonomic position. Any kind of sitting is not great for your body over the period of time. It's not the new smoking, but it's not that great. I've heard that said, and I'm like, that is ridiculous dramatic. Another thing a little dramatic. I think sometimes the news needs the sensational.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35)
Well, that'll be the headline for this article.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43)
But it's also not great not sitting on your sit bones. So like if you stand up right now and you put your hands down to your butt, you go underneath your butt cheeks, like at the bottom of those butt cheeks, right at that bend that you get and you stick your fingers in there, you will feel these bony lands. Good luck. Well, I'm sure you can. You can feel them as you're sitting as well. And one of the things that happens is people sit with, like, their pelvis is tilted too far back or too far forward, and they're not lining up on their sit bones in terms of when they sit down.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28)
Another problem is that you have a chair with not enough back support, like low back support in general. And again, not taking a break from that position for many hours. So what's happening when you're sitting for too long is that you're shortening muscles because your body thinks this is our life now. So we must accommodate this posture. And what happens is you can start to have hyperlordosis in your lower back. And that's when you get sort of a duck butt, you get more of a belly and your low back starts a hyper curve.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10)
And then by extension, your upper back can actually curve more forward. So you actually get sort of more of a Hunchback because again, your body is trying to compensate with everything and everything will Echo up and down from your sacrum in terms of your body and your hip flexors get short. So your hip flexors are the muscles that allow you to kick your knee up, and those muscles get short. And then what happens when you stand is those muscles are still tight and they're tilting your pelvis forward, and that can give you more low Dosis, lower Dosis and more of, like a belly.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48)
Got I to jump in here because this is like a personal thing. I've noticed that when I go to pull my foot back right behind me. Right. So we're talking audio here so I can't show you, but my knee is down on the floor. Okay. I'm grabbing my foot behind me and I'm stretching like the front of my leg, right?

Speaker 1 (01:09:07)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08)
I've noticed that at the top. Like if I really lean my upper body back and pull that foot back. That top right where my hip is. Is that your hip flexor? Because that is tight as heck all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:21)
So you're a hip flexor. So if you stand and you put your hands on your waist and then you slip them forward, you will feel your pelvic crest, and then you move your arm more towards that, and you feel the part of your leg between that pelvic crest, your body divots in a little bit and then divers out at the start of your leg muscles. So your hip flexors are right in there. And if you dig in there, you'll feel tight bands.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00)
Really tight in there. And I've noticed sometimes if I lean over to grab something, like off to the side, it'll pop.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08)
Yeah. Well, let me tell you why.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11)
Tell me when it goes up.

Speaker 1 (01:10:12)
You have two muscles. So you have two muscles that are usually talked about in unison just because they work over each other. So you have the iliacus, and then you have the so as major. But usually they're combined. And they're called the Ilios. And your soez starts along the base of your spine. It snakes towards forward of your body, hugs the inner curve of your pelvis, joins up with the iliacus that starts at the curve of your pelvis and then connects to the back of your femur.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54)
And it's a really powerful extensor muscle because it's using your pelvis as, like a fulcrum point to really raise your leg up. So it's a great muscle. But what happens is it gets tight along with your quads and your other hip flexor muscles. And while those can sort of be rolled out and they connect to the front of your pelvis and then to the front of your or over the front of your femur, to your pelvis and can easily be relaxed. Your ileosaurus is so expansive and so deep it's really hard to relax or massage out.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33)
So one of the best ways you can stretch it and relax it is by doing lunges, and it sounds like you were already doing what was that yoga position? It's called, like, the bow or something. What was the stretch you were doing that makes your.

Speaker 3 (01:11:53)
One that we learned in high school track to stretch the front of our legs.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57)
Yeah. It's the one for your quad.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04)
The best way you can relax the iliacus is through lunges. And I think most people know how to do a lunge, but they don't understand why it's not stretching their iliosaus. And the reason they're not stretching it is because they're not stabilizing their pelvis with their ABS as they do it. And so what happens is they think they're stretching.

Speaker 3 (01:12:33)
When you said that, of course I went and just did a lunge and tightened my core and, like, such a difference.

Speaker 1 (01:12:42)
Yeah. So what you need to do is as you lunge, you need to tuck your pelvis in take a deep breath and as you exhale, tighten your ABS and then stretch. Another thing that happens with Ilios is if you have weak ads, it'll create more tension in your Ilios OS, and you'll get more low back pain because you're not using your ABS. Your ABS is a counter force. All of our muscles are counter forces. We're made of this beautiful, graceful scaffolding of muscles. And if one side is weak, the other side is going to become more stressed out or other muscles that were not designed to do the job they were doing were supposed to do are recruited to make up for that loss.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36)
So another thing that's great for low back pain is to do crunches, to do AB exercises, just flexing as well. Just like sitting there taking a big breath and really trying to suck in your belly button into your spine will do so much for your low back pain, but it's usually the low back pain. I like to tell people about the iliacus because it takes a lot of set up, but yeah, and that's usually why you have a lot of low back pain as an artist is because you're sitting too much, which is shortening.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17)
That the hip flexors, and by extension, your Ilios. And then when you try to stretch it to you're not like pinpointing it and really stretching it. Another thing you can do is instead of concentrating on flexing your back as you do a lunge, you actually lean forward and try to be straighter and then slowly as much as possible with a straight torso. Lean back because you're trying to reduce the flexion that curve in your lower back. Any questions on that stuff, man? This is great.

Speaker 3 (01:15:03)
Yeah, this is really the problem is now is going to be me retaining this stuff. And that's why I have got a personal trainer on my 2022 goals list.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20)
That's a great idea.

Speaker 3 (01:15:21)
I need somebody that can regularly correct this crap.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27)
There's a great meme my friend sent me, which is a clip from the Spider Man movie, and it's like I'll find it for you and send it to you guys later. But it's basically Mary Jane and Peter Parker talking to each other, and I guess it was taken out of context, but Mary Jane goes, Just tell me the truth. And Peter Parker goes, It doesn't matter how expensive your chair is. You will still need to exercise to reduce your back pain. And she's like, no, I feel that's so keenly and that's the problem is that a lot of Americans don't exercise their cores that much, and I think it's too bad because you don't need six pack ABS in order to have a good core or to reduce your back pain.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23)
It's just postural awareness, but I wonder if there's some body shaming with it as well, which is just unfortunate.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32)
We've got a whole talk about that coming up soon.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35)
Yeah, we do you know what I'm thinking? It might be worth it to do. At some point, we can record, like, a quick like, you've been at your computer. You're going to get up from your computer, take one step behind your chair and do this routine to get you going. And that's something that we can put together and like, you do it in your office and no one would see you. So hopefully there wouldn't be too much self consciousness. I know your head always is going to be with you, but that might help.

Speaker 2 (01:17:05)
And I will say, from my own personal experience, echoing what you said, none of my RSI got better with any of the gadgets I bought. I had to do strength and stretching, and I had the special mouse, and I had the braces and I had the chair, and I had absolutely everything because everyone tells you, oh, your wrist hurts. Get a brace for it, or your elbow hurts. Get a brace for it or whatever. Nothing worked until I got super focused on the physical routine.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34)
I think that there's, like, a bigger culture thing going on with medicine as well is that we want to slap panacea on everything. Like, if you have pain, use a painkiller and that sort of thinking is not holistic or self sufficient. Our knee jerk reaction is you have pain, take a painkiller and keep going, right? But what you really need to do the painkiller is really there to improve your quality of life and enable function. But at the start of the pain, you need to think about what's causing it and changing the cause.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15)
This doesn't apply to.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16)
Like, chronic people, chronic issues.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20)
This doesn't apply to people who have Lyme disease, and they just have to live with a different normal than they did before. This really applies to people who are just not being self aware and grinding themselves to dust you're in pain. Sure. If you need to take a painkiller and get through the deadline, do it. But you have to make time afterwards to figure out what was causing the pain, see if you have any weakness or strain anywhere and then strengthen and stretch those areas. That's the only way you're going to get through it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57)
When I was having the thumb problems, I went to my PCP, and I was like, hey, it hurts here. And I was halfway expecting her to be like, okay, it hurts when you draw. Don't draw.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11)
That's another unfortunate reality.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14)
Thankfully, that's not what happened. And she wasn't even like.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17)
Oh, surgery or a pill.

Speaker 3 (01:19:19)
She was like, okay, tell me what you've done, and I'm like, Well, I've done heat nice, and I've done stretching, and I'm doing these things, and she was like, okay, it sounds like you're doing all the right things. I can give you more documentation about stretching. Maybe you can get a brace and, like, here's some other stuff that you can do. If it gets worse or you can't fix it on your own. Then we can look into other things. Oh, you're my favorite.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43)
Thank you. That's fabulous. That's fabulous. Keep in mind that for some people, though, they do just have to stop drawing for a little bit. Unfortunately, some injuries are like that is that you have to stop doing something for, like, a week, maybe a month. It's hard to tell someone for two years.

Speaker 2 (01:20:07)
Yes. I couldn't hold a pencil for two years with my injury. It was pretty bad, but it's one thing I'd like to mention, though, is none of the things that we're talking about today are going to work in half an hour. Like, you're going to have to repeat that. You're going to have to do stretching. It's going to have to become part of your life.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27)
It's a lifestyle thing.

Speaker 3 (01:20:29)
Yeah. Remember when I told you I think it was like mid pandemic, I realized that I couldn't put my hands flat on the ground and put weight on them.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37)
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38)
Couldn't do it, couldn't do it. And I was like, people were like, Why are you doing push ups on your fist? And I'm like, Well, I can't put my hands flat. And they were like, That's a problem. And I was like, you know what? You're absolutely. That is a problem. So I did. I started stretching. I started a routine and it wanes. It comes back, you pick up, you leave off, you get back on it. And significant improvement in all the problems that I was having, not just being able to put weight on my wrist, but I'm having way less pain.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14)
I'm having way easier time. I'm seeing more strength in my ability to do the art I want to do. It's just crazy that I didn't realize it was a problem.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31)
It's a problem.

Speaker 3 (01:21:32)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33)
You pay so much money to go to art school, and they don't teach you how to be an artist. Really? They don't teach you the lifestyle of it. They don't teach you the self care. They don't teach you the maintenance. They don't teach you how to run a business. All they do is make you make artwork over and over and over again. And repetition and practice does make perfect. But being an illustrator, an artist, a painter or sculptor, it's a lifestyle, and it takes maintenance.

Speaker 3 (01:22:02)
That's why we're here.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04)
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05)
Filling in those gaps.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07)
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:22:08)
I mean, they should be taught in high school, too. There are some things I wish I was taught in high school. The basic human stuff that was just not done.

Speaker 3 (01:22:18)
Money management.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19)
What is the point of gym class? Yeah. Like, I'm going through healthcare right now. Why don't we have a health care class? Insurance class? What the heck? The key is postural awareness and not ignoring the signs of pain or weakness or numbness and giving them the space and time they need when it happens is there something because there's someone like me who literally didn't realize that this not great thing was going on with my body.

Speaker 3 (01:22:55)
Have you ever come across or have you seen anything that's, like, here's a checklist of movements that shouldn't hurt. And if you have problems with these things, maybe you need to look into that more.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08)
Well, that's funny, because that's sort of going into the scope of physical therapist a little bit. There is a method of massage therapy called orthopedic massage, and it does a lot of testing like that where it's like, bend your leg like this. Bend your leg like that. Does that hurt? Do you have weakness? Basically, it shouldn't hurt to do most things in life if you don't have some sort of chronic illness or injury or something else. I would say as soon as trying to think most things shouldn't hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:23:52)
Are you looking for a specific test or something?

Speaker 3 (01:23:55)
No. Just like, in general, if people are listening to this and they're saying, I think I'm good, I think I'm good. Nothing hurts on me. But they're 22. No offense to the 22 year olds. But you might not know that things that you're feeling aren't normal because there's a lot of people who just think I got to work. I got to pay rent. Like, I got to do this. And if I'm a little uncomfortable, that's just how it is. And they're not thinking like, no, actually, this could be dangerous for me.

Speaker 3 (01:24:28)
Long term.

Speaker 1 (01:24:32)
Any posture that restricts your ability to move freely is the biggest thing. So if you feel like you're crunched up for hours, don't do that posture just in general. Don't work long hours. Don't work long hours. Set up those timers, figure out what time of day you work the best in and just work during that time of day and cap that work day with movement of some kind. Trying to think of other ways.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11)
I think this falls into the category looks odd and feels odd.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15)
Just don't do it. I think it's another thing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19)
It also falls into the category of simple, but not easy. So saying, Well, don't work long hours. I know a bunch of people will scoff at that and be like, Well, I got bills to pay. And, yeah, you do.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33)
No, don't work. I mean, break up those long hours.

(01:25:39)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39)
But I was also saying, you have to sometimes step back and think with some innovation and be like, okay, is there a way I can make my pipeline more streamlined so I can work fewer hours? Or is there a way, like you were talking earlier? Can I just maybe lighten the grip on my pencil? So I know that when many artists hear advice like this, they scoff at it. They're like, Well, I can't do that. And it's like, if you just take a breath and maybe at first I think you have to kind of accept, okay, something is wrong with my body, and it hurts.

Speaker 2 (01:26:17)
And I need to make a change to make this not hurt, or it can spiral down and get a lot worse, so bad that you cannot work, which I know from personal experience that can happen.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:26)
And so I think it's really important to be like, okay, I need to take a step back. I need to look at my pipelines. I need to look at am I wasting time somewhere?

Speaker 1 (01:26:35)
Are you not charging enough?

(01:26:37)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:37)
Are you not charging enough? I think now is a really good time. Rather than just being like, that's impossible. I'm just going to live with my wrist until it Burns off like a fiery little demon. Just have a stump to my fingers will just light on fire. If something is wrong with you, it's not convenient to have to fix it, but sometimes you have to fix it in order to continue with your career.

Speaker 1 (01:27:04)
So it's important to take that step back and give yourself some forgiveness, too. Do you get angry with your tools when they stop working because you haven't taken time? Yeah, exactly. And then you're like, okay, I haven't done this for my computer. I haven't done this for that. Do the same with your body. Forgive yourself that you live in a world where we become in this time where we have to undercharge and work harder than any other career because of unfortunate societal factors. But forgive yourself if you hurt yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51)
That's not your fault, necessarily. But you deserve the compassion to treat yourself well in that situation. And, yeah, in the long run, taking the time to take care of yourself now while you're in a little pain is going to do is going to cost so much less time and money everything than to completely burn yourself out and never make artwork again. That's the choice. You either take care of yourself now or you never make artwork again down the line.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20)
Yeah, it's really true. One of the reasons I started this podcast is because I was like, don't be like me.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28)
Don't do what I did.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29)
Yeah. Not being able to make art for two years at all and then not being able to work a full day for two years after those first two years. You don't want that in your career, like, take the time, fix your wrist or shoulder or elbow or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43)
And not only that, like everyone else in other careers is encouraged to do this more so than artists. Maybe not all careers, but people don't expect maybe. Actually, maybe I'm speaking at a turn. But most other careers are given that sort of self care, and that compassion to themselves of, like, oh, you need a vacation. Oh, you need this or that. And artists don't feel like they can do that. They don't feel like they've got those resources. But that's not the artist's fault. They have to work with what they have and what they can do and what they can do.

Speaker 3 (01:29:22)
I liked your analogy about athletes because Sarah and I have both had a history in athletics. And even if you haven't had a history in athletics, you can understand the concept of the athlete was injured, so they need physical therapy and they need to do the things to make their bodies.

Speaker 1 (01:29:39)
You're using your body like an athlete every day to make art or like a very physical actor as well. They're given the same treatment, like companies lose money if they get hurt. So they prioritize that time. You got to be the star of your own show in that way. And working as a massage therapist really brought this to my mind because I am working as an athlete. I have to go and exercise. I have to maintain my body and have proper body mechanics if I want to keep doing my work as a massage therapist, and I can't do that if I'm not taking the time to take care of myself and putting boundaries and being like, I can only do so many massages a day.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20)
I can only work so many days a week before I start to feel burnt out or tired or strained. And that applies to freelance work as an artist. To the benefit of this is that as artists, we have complete freedom to make our own schedules. And if you work best at night, you can make a night schedule and then do the self maintenance and care you need to do that with. So we went on like a depressing tangent, but that is the light at the end of the tunnel that's the silver lining is that we have the ability to create the perfect work schedule for ourselves.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04)
We can sometimes maybe I'm being too optimistic, but it is within our control, and there are resources out there to figure it out for ourselves. Unfortunately, we have to figure it out for ourselves sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:31:26)
And it it can can take some trial and error, too, for sure with me when I started my business and getting the physical aspect of it down, I don't even know what iteration I'm on for my work, like fitness balance, but I can say that I'll do something and then be like, this isn't working. I need to change it. I've completely changed the days of the week that I work out on now. It's just things you just got to kind of keep rolling with it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:58)
Yeah, and correcting it when it doesn't feel right. I mean, maybe that's a better thing to say is if it doesn't feel right to you, what you're doing or how you're doing it, reflect on it and see if you need to change anything is maybe the best advice for anyone in terms of working on our work and working those hours. Does that answer your question a little bit?

Speaker 2 (01:32:29)
I think that was great. That was super informative. I kind of lost a little bit of track. Where are we at now?

Speaker 1 (01:32:41)
So we're at the end of sort of why do you hurt and what could be happening at section of my presentation? And then the next part of my presentation would be me showing you how to do stretches and whatnot?

Speaker 2 (01:32:55)
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:32:57)
And started talking through that. We talked a little bit about it while we were talking about the neck and the low back. We sort of hit the highlight, like what you can do in terms of self care. On that point. Is there any specific questions you had or your listeners had about posture and self care?

Speaker 2 (01:33:19)
I think we covered a lot of good stuff. The thing that I think I don't know if we've covered entirely is stretching around the shoulders.

Speaker 1 (01:33:32)
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:35)
So the main culprit for tension, and I find for most people who do artwork or work at the office is that their pectoralis major is too tight and their PEC minor is too tight. And there are a couple of ways to stretch those out, and it goes along with the whole. You have the Contra forces of your body and the muscles. And when your pecs are tight, your upper back muscles get overstretched and that can cause discomfort. So this also, like stretching out your PEC muscle will also help relieve some upper back tension as well, because you're resetting those muscles to sort of go back into the original position that they're designed to be in in terms of evolution.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29)
So one of the ways you can stretch out your pack is you can take that tennis ball and you can sink it in to that fleshy part of your pack, not too much on the shoulder, not too much on the ribs. You want to get into that fleshy bit. You stand in front of a doorway and you lean into that tennis ball and you rotate. You have your arm up at a 90 degree angle. You rotate your arm down and you rotate your arm up. So if you don't have a tennis ball, you can still use that door frame at a 90 degree angle.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08)
I'm going to mine this in my own home while I'm doing it. So you have the door frame and you're standing in the door frame, you have your arm out to a 90 degree angle. You put your elbow on that door frame, step out from the door frame a little bit, and then lean in to that shoulder joint. You're sort of leaning into the side, you're sort of going diagonally and that stretches out your PEC muscle to a large degree. You want to make sure that your neck is straight, your back is tucked in, like your upper back.

Speaker 1 (01:35:45)
Your shoulder blades are tucked in, and then you lean in with your weight into that door frame.

Speaker 2 (01:35:51)
I've done that one. That one is really good.

Speaker 1 (01:35:53)
I definitely recommend it feels amazing. Let me double check what else I have here? Oh, another great one. I call this the praying chair stretch. And this is really great for stretching not only your pecs, but also your serratus a little bit. And your latissimus dorsi, which are also muscles that can get overstretched and tightened as you're hunched over in a position. And so what you do is you have a chair in front of you. The back is facing us away, so you're facing the seat of the chair, you get on your knees, you put your elbows on the chair and then you lean down into it with your hands sort of pressed together.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58)
Oh, maybe that sounds hard.

Speaker 1 (01:37:02)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:37:02)
And it feels really good.

Speaker 1 (01:37:04)
And you want to step your knees away a little bit so that your back can be pretty flat and straight and your core can be straight as you're doing it. You don't want to cause more curvature lower back as you're doing it. Yeah. That's great for your pecs and your shoulders, and it really stretches everything out. Pec minor is hard to stretch on your own if you want to. You can try to put that tennis ball a little bit more on your rib cage and breathe out and breathe in a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:37:46)
So your PEC minor is an accessory breathing muscle. That's one of its functions because it brings your ribs up, and then we'll let your ribs go. But that can help it a little bit. But PEC minor is hard to stretch on your own, and you might need to go to a massage therapist to get it really ironed out.

Speaker 2 (01:38:09)
Minor is on the edge of your armpit, right. Is that kind of so?

Speaker 1 (01:38:13)
Pec minor is underneath your PEC major, and it attaches to, I think, ribs three, four, five. But it's on the bottom, and its top attachment point is to the coracoid process on your scapula. And that's a little piece of bone that sort of slips a little bit underneath your clavicle. And what happens is your PEC minor will tighten and bring your scapula forward and also make it a little harder for you to breathe. So it's a good muscle to try to massage on your own if you can.

Speaker 1 (01:38:58)
Sometimes you can take your two index fingers. You can go towards that kind of thing. So you put your hand on your shoulder and about few fingers down, there'll be a little meaty part at the front of your pet, and you can sort of just wiggle your fingers over it.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20)
Oh, yeah, on me. It's really tight.

Speaker 1 (01:39:24)
Yeah. It's really tight on most people.

Speaker 3 (01:39:28)
And we just don't realize it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29)
And you can sort of wiggle your fingers over it, or you can press into it and take a few breaths. Really breathe in and breathe out. And what you're doing is like an active release technique on it is what we would call it a massage therapy because you're putting pressure on the muscle and then asking the muscle to do a little work. And the thing that's great about getting the PEC minor or at least knowing it's there is that when it's really tight, it will constrict the nerve that runs from your armpit into your arm and the blood vessels.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03)
So it'll constrict those. Yeah. And that can cause your hand to be feeling cold. It can also cause numbness and weakness to the rest of your arms, to the rest of that arm. So that's a good one to know.

Speaker 2 (01:40:18)
Yeah. For sure. I knew the PEC minor was like this little kind of helper muscle to the PEC major, but I had no idea that it could get so tight and that you could do a self massage. So that's a great info.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34)
And that again, that'll help your back a little bit. And it will also help your shoulder and your arm as well. Yeah. Any other questions I could go on forever? You can cut me off at any time.

Speaker 2 (01:40:51)
I think we've covered all of the trouble spots that our listeners mentioned. And also the other thing that people can do, too, is they can always ask in the comments, too if they've got questions.

Speaker 1 (01:41:07)
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:41:08)
But the other thing that you said that you mentioned a few times is you're going to be putting together this course and a PDF that people can get on your website.

Speaker 1 (01:41:17)
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:41:17)
What I'd like to do is set up a PDF that talks about these issues a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:41:22)
But mostly it's illustrations of what stretches you can do. And like, step by step illustrated instructions either illustrated or they're going to be pictures of me. But this is what I want to end up doing. And then I would sell it through my website.

Speaker 2 (01:41:41)
Awesome. I think that's what we'll make sure we do is we'll link to that so people can have access to all of it because it's like, hard to describe stretches. I need visuals personally most of the time.

Speaker 1 (01:41:58)
And I really appreciate step by step, like beginning, middle ending position sort of images.

Speaker 2 (01:42:04)
Exactly. Yeah. So make sure you're doing it right the whole way through.

Speaker 1 (01:42:10)
Yes. Which is especially important for these stretches. And it's just easier. Like when I first did the presentation, I just did everything in person because then I could repeat things if people wanted them repeated.

Speaker 2 (01:42:24)
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:42:25)
And that's how I plan to continue doing these presentations. If I keep on getting invited, I'll keep doing them at Luxcon or whatever convention I'm doing as well, because why not?

Speaker 2 (01:42:40)
Right. We do.

Speaker 1 (01:42:40)
We definitely do. Yeah. And so I'll do the presentation and go through the things and then offer the PDF for sale for people if they want to afterwards, because repetition is key. But also it can be really hard to first you're in pain and you don't know anything about it, right. So you go to someone and if they're like me, they vomit information all over you and you forget about 50% of it, and then you're given a written guide and you have to learn all these new stretches and you're like, okay, I'm already in pain.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16)
I've already forgotten half of what she says, and now she's going to be stretches. It's nice to have things written out. So like, if you're doing that lunch and you're like, oh, why is this not working? And in the written PDF, it says, make sure to tuck in and contract your ads. You're like, oh, God, Yes, I forgot that.

Speaker 2 (01:43:35)
Yeah, exactly. That's a lot super important. The thing that you were just talking about with the ABS. Someone told me that very recently. I want to say it was in the last three months, and it was mind blowing. I've been doing the stretch since I was 13 years old and no one ever told me to contract the ABS. So I pretty much haven't been doing the stretch correctly since I was 13 years old. And knowing those little points is critical.

Speaker 3 (01:44:06)
I think, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:11)
It'S my job now to tell people these things because it's important. And you don't want to have a situation where someone wants to take care of themselves, but they just don't know everything there is to know. And then they get frustrated and then stop taking care of themselves in that way.

Speaker 2 (01:44:33)
Yes, that was my big frustration in the beginning of my injury because they told me what stretches to do. But I kind of needed more extreme stretches. I guess they gave me like, oh, here's the training wheel level stretches. And that wasn't really extreme enough for me. So then I got frustrated. Then I didn't know what to do. It was a long path. I think the reason it took me so long to get better was because I just didn't have the information to get better. In the beginning, I had to Hunt that information down and then implement it and let me add another layer of complexity.

Speaker 1 (01:45:13)
Is that like, there is a whole thing about how your joints line up. Some people tend to have their joints turn their limbs out more to the side, more inwardly. Do you have knock knees? Do you not have knock knees when you're doing a squat? So many people get very possessive of squats. Sometimes I've found people like, no, you're not doing it the right way.

Speaker 2 (01:45:38)
Oh, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:45:38)
Squat officials of some kind. And squats are so hard. Like, if you have any hip pain, low back pain, doing squats, just crunching your butt cheeks is enough to help, because while a lot of people's ads are weak, their butts are also weak. And again, about that contrast aspect of how our muscles work on the scaffolding that are our bones. If you have a weak, but you can't walk with that much strength, you can't stand with that much strength. Our butts are part of the reason why we are bipedal in evolutionary aspects.

Speaker 1 (01:46:20)
Our gluteuses got more juicy, and we were able to stand and run, and it's a big part of human posture is our bots, and you can actually gain gluteal amnesia. So your nervous system basically goes, well, we're not using these anymore. Why keep these nerve pathways active? And so you'll have less, like nerve activity in those areas unless you consciously try to go in there and activate your butt muscles. So that's something that you're clenching is enough.

Speaker 2 (01:46:55)
So crazy, because I bet people who sit down all the time, like people who sit down all the time, like artists, are probably experiencing that you're not walking around. So you're probably getting that atrophy. And then your back starts hurting and then your knees start hurting.

Speaker 1 (01:47:15)
Listeners. Everyone, if your low back hurts and you're sitting down, just clench your butt cheeks enough to sort of lift yourself off of your chair a couple of times and feel the difference. You will feel the difference. And going back to squats, like, people will tell you, no, you need to line your knees up. No, they need to be at an angle, basically angle your feet. For, however, it is comfortable for your knees to bend. If you've never done a squat before in your life, I know for me the way my knees are angled and my femurs are angled, I have to tilt my feet a little bit in order to have a steady, consistent, smooth movement down and up again.

Speaker 2 (01:48:00)
I do, too. I have to tilt them up a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:48:04)
Yeah. And that's perfectly fine. You're not doing it wrong. You're working to the best of how your joints are lined up, and it's a constant changing process. Right. So maybe as you release tension on some things, you'll be able to have your knees be a little straighter. Or maybe you'll see that they're going a little wider and you're like, oh, maybe I need to work on these muscles a little bit. As you said before, it's a constant changing process. But the key to it is to be aware of what you need to change and making room for the change, right?

Speaker 2 (01:48:38)
Yeah. I think the acceptance part is really important, too. At least for me, it was really important where I was like, I don't stretch. I work a ton of hours. I'm just, like, absolute pedal to the metal the whole time. And then I got super hurt. And it was like this big period where I needed to mentally accept that action was what got me in the predicament that I was in. And in order to not be back in that predicament, I would have to change my life and actually pay attention to my body and make sure I stretched it, make sure I did strengthening.

Speaker 2 (01:49:20)
And for a long time I was super resistant to it. I was like, this sucks. I hate this. This is so inconvenient what the hell? I want it to be that I can just work for 16 hours and be fine. And it's like at some point you can't. It's like you can only do that for so many years and then you actually have a ton of damage and you got to fix it. So I think a big part of it is a mental game too.

Speaker 1 (01:49:47)
It's a mental game. And also what do you get? What is the reward for working that many hours straight? Do you get a medal? Is there a stamina artistic Olympics I'm not aware of?

Speaker 2 (01:50:00)
Right. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:50:01)
Will you get sponsored by someone if it doesn't benefit you in the long run? What is the point? And also you're not a failure. You're not a failure. If you can't work these hours, your body is literally not designed by nature to work that many hours. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that we've adopted from our society. If it doesn't benefit you in the long run, don't own it. It's not give it away. It's not yours. And you don't have to feel shame or like you're a bad artist.

Speaker 1 (01:50:38)
I spent so much money on school and I have to do this. And if I'm not, what's the point of my existence?

Speaker 2 (01:50:47)
Stop, right.

Speaker 1 (01:50:49)
You being alive is enough. You can just exist. The fact that you're alive and you have cultivated this talent and you bring joy into this world no matter how many hours you grind. That's enough. You are worthy of the self care, for sure always will be. And it's hard to learn. I've had to teach that to myself as well, because they don't instill it anywhere in our culture in terms of artists.

Speaker 2 (01:51:25)
Yeah, I think that is an awesome place to leave it, though, because that's such a good message. It really is. It's like everyone is worthy of the self care. Just do right by yourself so you can be around to keep making art that benefits everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:51:43)
Yes. It's one of the only things that absolutely benefits everyone, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:51:51)
So true. Thank you so much for coming on the show and this is super detailed. I'll definitely be posting it up. I think we're aiming for sometime in March, but we'll see, I just really appreciate your time, so thank you so much again.

Speaker 1 (01:52:10)
Thank you for inviting me. I'm very happy to do this. And yeah, if you need to do a part two or something. Also, people have more questions. Let me know for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:52:22)
That'd be great. All right. Well, thank you for listening, everyone. And we'll be back with a new episode on the first and 15th of every month. Have fun making art.

Speaker 1 (01:52:32)
Alright. Bye.

❤️
Sarah, Sarah, Megzie, and Diana


Discussed by Sarah Dahlinger, Sarah Forde, Lois van Baarle aka Loish