The Gut Brain Connection with Irene Lyon and Elinor Silverstein

Transcription

1 The Gut Brain Connection with Irene Lyon and Elinor Silverstein Welcome, those that are watching right now. I'm on the line with my colleague, Elinor Silverstein? Silverstein? Either/or. Either/or, it works? Yes. She is in lovely, where California? Where exactly? In Southern California, in Orange County. Got it. We're talking today, I asked Elinor to come on the line to talk about an area that I know she's really in love with: the connection between the gut and the brain. We know each other because we're Feldenkrais colleagues. Respect and admire and adore each other greatly. Exactly, so this is cool. I think this has been a long time coming to this point where we're sharing our work, you see what I do, I'm seeing what you do, and there's a good interlap, a good linking. I think you'd agree with that. Completely and dying to talk with you more. I would love to know because I know how you got into this work, kind of, but to tell those watching today, how did you get into this work? How did you get into the Feldenkrais madness and then fall into the next pieces that you're doing right now? That's funny. I think I was born into the madness. Moshé Feldenkrais is my mother's cousin and my mother was raised by his parents. As the World War II was breaking out, she got separated from her mother. Her mother and Moshé's mother were cousins Irene Lyon 1

2 Got it. Our whole family is very matriarchally oriented so it was about the women really were very intellectually oriented. All the women were schooled and educated. All of them were. No male would've allowed it in the genealogy to not have a female be anything less than the best that she could be and it was [one 00:02:25]... Amazing. Yeah, back then, so my mother's mother, who was Moshé's mother's cousin was not just a doctor and a dentist and a surgeon but she was also a very famous opera singer. Moshém Baruch, Moshé's brother, would tell me lots of stories about who would come to visit her just so that she would sing to them. In her voice and singing, she kept her children safe when the armies would march through because, untouched. My mom was raised by his parents. I grew up with this and both my parents made their way to Israel in which they were connected with Moshé and taking [foreign language 00:03:14] Feldenkrais, meaning the exercises of the Feldenkrais method, with Moshé as he was creating it and talking about it and many conversations about yoga, and how he came about it. I know some practitioners got it through, some of his students got it through the martial arts. My mother always was very much in love with yoga and so her connection with him through it was through that and through very strong Judaic studies and background in history and Talmudic stories about how we are as a human being, and so both my parents raised me in that. My mother has her master's degree in Judaic studies so it really comes from there. Got it. Was there ever a question that you would study with him because you did study with him? Yes, I did but it never even came up. It never came up. I was 2017 Irene Lyon 2

3 more connected with Doda Sheindel, his mother, when I was in Israel when I was 16. Moshé was never there. When Moshé taught in San Francisco [crosstalk 00:04:29] In what year was this just to let people know? When he was teaching in San Francisco? Yeah. In the 70s. I didn't graduate high school till '77. I think they graduated in '76. I remember when I was about 16 when my mom said, "San Francisco just graduated." I remember when they were in San Francisco, how she wanted me to be able to go then, but she says, "I won't put you in with all those men. No, no, no." "No, no, no." You got into the next training in Amherst? By accident. By accident? Yeah. I was in college. I had a double major and double minor. I was a biology major with a pre-med minor and a zoology major with a pre-vet minor and so that was a lot of stress. I had a counselor on campus that I went to for biofeedback. We would talk and we would do biofeedback and relaxation exercises. One day, he says to me, "You know, I just need to tell you that there's a man coming to Los Angeles to give a workshop. You probably have never heard of his name but you really might be interested." He did never come up, by the way, Irene. He says, "It's Moshé Feldenkrais. "I sat there I went, "Hmm, I've heard of that name [before 00:05:56]. I have that, that flier." I ran back to my dorms and I called my parents. "You'll never believe who's coming to LA." My mom and I went to the workshop and it was history ever since. Got it Irene Lyon 3

4 Ever since, I was in love with the method, in love with what the movement did in opening up my mind and allowing me to take final exams with no stress and to be able to be able to continue and blast back into this double major and double minor in sciences and have straight As because I was out of my way, just from lying on the floor doing the Awareness Through Movement lessons. I think you bring up a really good point because I'm talking a lot about stress these days. The people watching this are currently in a course that I'm teaching called: Stress Less Sense More. We use all these techniques and management strategies to try to not be stressed and yet here's this work that really encourages us to tap into this mind-body-environment connection in a really different way. The people that do it, they get it; and yet it's so simple, that it seems like, "Why, why would that work?" Yes? Question? No. I think the more I think about why it's working and how it's working. I would say for me, it's been a long road of 30- something years of thinking or not thinking about it but experiencing it. Now, in my Gut-Brain course that I teach, I've really, really brought in via you, the vagal nerve connection and the toning that happens through gut bacteria. The thing Is, is aside from that, it's how certain Awareness Through Movement lessons actually helps tone our vagal nerve and how it does it. You don't know how much I wish I could have these conversations with Moshé because I know he didn't know about the vagal nerve back then. He just knew. He knew that there's something there. He knew it from so many different levels. Yes, he had a couple of very dear friends who were neurologists and they had an understanding, but nobody had the knowledge of vagal nerves back then. [Not yet? 00:08:43] 2017 Irene Lyon 4

5 I mean, not really, right? No. We look at how we [could 00:08:48], some of the Alexander Yanai lessons that I've taken pieces of those and created whole lessons that have to do with vibrating and toning the vagal nerve. What do we do with that and how that makes us better as human beings and it helps our digestion and it works with serotonin and it helps what goes on in our belly and therefore our mind. We can talk about neuroreceptors and we can talk about GABA, and we could talk about beta-endorphins and we could talk about all of the science of now that we're starting to understand what it puts together and how these movement lessons are helping and how we can take our hands-on part of functional integration to understand when we're moving through the nerves, moving through the gut, moving through the organs to get the organs to be able to work to make this connection from what happens below, to connect to the top, to come back and have a highway of connection back and forth. Got it. That's beautiful. I want to clarify because some people watching this might not know what functional integration is and Awareness Through Movement. Basically, Awareness Through Movement is the group form or the verbally directed form of the Feldenkrais work. Whereas, functional integration is the one-on-one hands-on piece. For me, it's all the same. It's just people need to have names to things. What I love is that you're allowing yourself to bring in all these different elements from neuroscience, from nutrition, from Feldenkrais. As you said, Moshé didn't understand what was going on. He had just this intellectual intuitive knowing that there was this deep connection. He understood humanity. When you look at The Potent Self, the book, even parts in his work, his book in Awareness Through Movement, and now when you listen to him, his talks, you hear 2017 Irene Lyon 5

6 where he's coming from in talking about the humanity and saying, "I don't care about mental illness. I'm not talking to that. I'm saying that everybody can be helped with this." People didn't understand it but the more we now understand where this ties in with it, it is nothing less than amazing and unbelievably brilliant in the simplicity that we can create it. We can step back. I love science. Science rocks my life. Biochemistry, I eat it up in my kitchen every day, and yet we can step back from all of that and simply just experience the movement or the hands-on expression of this work and have the same healing that takes places. It's that interaction with the environment. Have no doubt, it's a drive for me to be able to bring the science to people so that they can understand it because a piece of Moshé always said, "If you know what you're doing, you can do what you want." When I teach my cooking and nutrition classes, it's like if you know what you're cooking, you can cook what you want. Exactly. If you know what you're eating, you can eat what you want. It's like how it is that's part of our environment, that's part of our experience in life, and so it's like, "Yeah, I'll take it into the tiniest piece of the science and the largeness of the science. And then I'll take it back and now I want you lie down on the floor and experience this." Exactly. I have a question around that because I'm a big science girl as you know. I know. Exercise science and biomedical science, research and all that crazy stuff, and was brought up by two veterinarians so I get it. I believe that we need to understand this level of detail in the current world because if we don't, a lot of things don't make sense. I'm curious. How did you start to meld in the gut science 2017 Irene Lyon 6

7 with the movement? Was there an epiphany that you had one day lying down? How did it happen? In 1982, the story goes something like this. It was before I graduated. I was living in Israel. I was living with Moshé. I became very close with Gaby Yaron because she lived in Tel Aviv. She taught. She [let me 00:14:24] teach. She was one of his... Students. And teachers at that [point 00:14:29] already, teachers of the Feldenkrais method, was a student and one of this teachers. He was a trainer. She let me teach her classes whenever she traveled to Germany and to Holland. I remembered interviewing Moshé. I always interview people in my conversations, and asking Moshé and then asking Gaby. My question to Gaby was, "I'm going to graduate. So what else do I need to know? What else do I need to know?" She says to me, "If you ever learn anything else, you must learn to work with the organs." I thought, "What?" She said, "People come in for a lesson and they may come in like this, you know? And we work with them from the outside. But if we don't think of them from the inside, how do we know that what held up the organs wasn't pulled and turned also from a lifetime of being like this? So if you just teach and correct the outside to be back here and they, in 2 days from now, are back here like this, how do we know that they didn't go back here like this because the organs never got involved in the lesson?" Exactly. I thought, "Well, that's interesting. How do you do that?" She showed me and she went in like Ida Rolf and she really went in deep to the organs. Irene, I have to tell you, that wasn't my 2017 Irene Lyon 7

8 style. No, for sure. Because I thought we can injure people. I love my favorite thing in school was anatomy and physiology. It wasn't the anatomy of the bones, it was the anatomy of internal. Internal organs. My experience was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The way I did anatomy and physiology so well is I went into a submarine and went in through the body. I could see from the inside to the out and from the outside to the in and from the outside of the organs in the body, and see what tied in and how they connected together in the best way that we were taught back then. It took close to 30 years for that to resonate with me. There's other courses out there where they teach cause and effect and hands-on stuff, and that made me crazy because they stay on an organ forever. It's not my style, it's not Feldenkrais style to stay and only listen to one [thing 00:17:37]. We listen to the movement. We listen to the movement through the movement of the body and the movement through the organs. We do listen to the motility of the organs. If you ever had an opportunity to see an open surgery on a living being, see the [crosstalk 00:17:57] It's pulsing. It does. It's alive. There is aliveness. As Moshé said, "How do we know life? It's through movement." It has to move. There is this movement, even in the brain as the cerebrospinal fluid goes and I've seen that in open brain surgeries. Actually, 2017 Irene Lyon 8

9 brain surgery is open. The thing is, is there's not just motility, but there's the mobility that where there's the ligaments and that connective tissue that holds the organ, but the organ can move like this, which is great, because it allows for me to squish my belly down or have a baby in my belly and move my organs around in my belly. Let's say I eat too much and I get really fat. It allows my organs to get moved around to a certain degree so that they can function in there. Have no doubt, they still have a general neighborhood in which they live. They're supposed to be in a certain area. There's reasons for that. Yes, of course. That's a very strong piece but my way of working is pure Feldenkrais in the way of the listening of the quietness and taking it in to the movement and taking it into the hands-on work, and then teaching people the part of working with it with themselves. [inaudible 00:19:22] Bringing a self-awareness to knowing what is internally within them, would you say? Internally, also with putting hands-on. That piece came from actually many, many years of having studied with Ruthy Alon and her working with the sphincter works, sphincter lessons. It's like, "Wait a minute, understanding what happens with the sphincters and what happens with, you know, up until a few years ago, before diapers became really cool for adults. Now they have cute pantie diapers." Up until then, the number one reason that a person went into a senior care facility was incontinence. Incontinence. We have to look at where does that come from starting from 2017 Irene Lyon 9

10 the sphincters around the buccinator muscles and down through the esophagus, how does it tie in with the trachea, all the way down to the rectum or to the anus or all the way to the ureter, everything through as we keep ourselves toned and tuned up or how does the vagal nerve tie into that? Of course. There's so many places we could [crosstalk 00:20:37]. [Hold on 00:20:36]. We could be here for 5 hours. I want to address this idea of motility and flow and the sphincters because when there's accumulated stress and the nervous system is, for lack of a better word, chaotic and disorganized and there's not this flow. People end up with digestive troubles, urinary [bladder 00:21:10], cystitis where there's frequent urination, painful, but there's nothing wrong. Reflux of all sorts. GERDs, all that, [the 00:21:19] heartburn. They know there's reflux to the bladder. Exactly. Things are just not moving in the direction that they should be or they're stopping and then they're starting too fast. All these little things. If we were to tell people who might be struggling with this stuff, and I am teaching it from my perspective in learning how to re-regulate the nervous system and attention and these various things that I won't dive into, what do you teach people? If you could give... It depends on the day of the week. Exactly. What would be like some of the top five things that you always want to check with people? Is there a common list of asking questions around the gut-brain connection being off? What goes wrong that you see? Easy, easy, easy to say. The first thing people will say to me is that they suffer bowel movement issues. They'll say that they 2017 Irene Lyon 10

11 have constipation. Of course, first thing I'm going to look at is, is it a mineral deficiency? Is there a gut absorption issue with magnesium that's not relaxing the muscle fibers so that they can poop? Got it. Poop is a huge thing and Moshé talked about it too because back then before big pharma was involved in our lives in the early 80s, he said the number one drug that sold in the United States, not in Europe, in the United States was basically drugs to make you poop, which was Ex-Lax, things like that. Laxatives. Laxatives, and so of course, now we have a whole other list of things that are very common that I look at. I would say people that come to me have many issues. They have not been able to poop. Depression, anxiety, and maybe idiopathic meaning they don't know why. Why it's just there. High blood pressure and then there's sleep issues. It's like if you've looked at my blog, one that I did on, What Does Heavy Metal Have To Do With It, talking about the heavy metals and how that ties in. I don't even know if I put in that one about what it does to blood vessels and blood pressure. It's huge and that's not spoken to but see, so then I'm looking at what is going on in the gut. Is it because they're not eating foods that are natural and rich in these minerals that relax our digestion tract that allow it to function and have motility so it can have peristalsis and eliminate? Is it because there's heavy metals going on in there and it's binding to the nerves that go into the blood vessels that don't allow the blood vessels to open. Exactly. It's like I'll do an instant read with someone from multiple different places as I ask them. A lot of people come, like I said, that come with the poop, the depression, and there's a reflux, an 2017 Irene Lyon 11

12 acid reflux of some sort. This is really important because I actually, a few hours ago, just did a webinar on depression and anxiety [finally 00:24:58] enough. It's not funny actually because it's a big problem. It is. I have something I want to say about that with teenagers and college students but go ahead. There's this thought and it's becoming less [taught 00:25:14]. People are opening up that depression, anxiety, that these things are genetic. There is, of course, some small, little, small, small, but it's environmental. It's what we interact with. It's what we put in our bellies. It's how we were raised, how our vagal tone is as we know. It's just so refreshing to have someone like yourself understanding this as well. What are the minerals? You say mineral deficiency. I don't want to start telling people to go and get all these things and start taking them because obviously there needs to be some interaction with healthcare providers but what are the commons ones that you see people lacking, even a diet that's seemingly healthy? Sure. Absolutely. What would they be? I would say the most common in the United States or in North America is magnesium. Now, why? Is it because we're eating more processed foods? Here's my answer. That might be part of it but you have to look at minerals come from the Earth. They don't come from the green of the plant. They come from the root of the plant that comes from the Earth. We know that the Earth has been milled so much on the farm land that things that become deficient in the ground is magnesium and selenium that just go with those two. It's huge. Selenium supports the prostate for men. It supports so many parts of our system. Magnesium is utterly crucial because it's part of tryptophan. It's part of what creates tryptophan which is 2017 Irene Lyon 12

13 involved in serotonin. Which we need, so tell our people what is that? I know why it's important. To be happy. Yes, to give you that mood elevation. I don't want to say mood elevation. To be normal as you deserve to be. Exactly. I don't mean to be elated like I'm on ecstasy. I mean that it is to put us in that state of balance and the place that we're supposed to be that we were designed to be. Now, we have to look at is the environment causing us to, that we're not getting enough of it out of the soil? Is it because I have so much inflammation in the lining of my gut that my villi are shriveled, that they can't take in the tiny nutrients that they're designed to take in. If they're shriveled then what is exposed is the lining of my intestines which then can't do the job that the villi, the finger like projections did. Now, big particles get through the lining of the intestines, they go into the bloodstream, and the bloodstream goes... Wait a minute. I don't recognize that Big Mac. I don't know that Big Mac at all. You know what? I better mount a huge immune response. Reaction. Now, what do I do? I attack that and I'm over exaggerating. I'm going to attack everything including myself. Now, what is myself? Every autoimmune issue you can think of including thyroid. Think of how many people are hypothyroid. Hypothyroid, having thyroid troubles. Then you think of the thyroid involved in the adrenal glands or 2017 Irene Lyon 13

14 the adrenal glands being involved with the thyroid gland. There's so much. So many connections. So many connections with that so it's like looking at the whole process so people are very deficient, tend to be deficient in magnesium. People are rarely deficient in calcium. I have issues with taking calcium for bone density because I really worry about calcification in muscle tissue, calcification in arteries cut I think taking a magnesium supplement in terms of a magnesium citrate, maybe a malate, but I tend to like citrate. It's inexpensive and it's good when you find a good product that has nothing else added to it. Is there any risk for toxicity if someone was watching this and thought... Of magnesium? Mm-hmm (affirmative). You'd get the diarrhea before you would get the toxicity because it's so relaxing that it'll not only help lower your blood pressure but it also relax your bowels. You'll end up with bowels that are way too loose before it can become toxic. That's good to know. That's really good to know. The other thing we really tend to be deficient in is the essential fatty acids and they are, have no doubt, Irene, essential. Actually, that was what I originally was supposed to do. My master's research on was Omega-3 fatty acids and cellular biochemistry and the pro-inflammatory [agent 00:30:33]. I'm going say I'm glad you didn't. I'm glad I didn't too because I ended up working with humans instead of rats but in terms of Omega-3s, if we list them. It's your time to shine. What are the key ones that people need to 2017 Irene Lyon 14

15 be eating? Listen. This is the important part is it's the balance between Omega-3 and Omega-6 and 9. What happened was, if we look back and please I'm not talking Paleo diet. I'm talking Paleolithic era, I'm talking Loren Cordain on the Paleolithic era before people came up with the Paleo diet. In the Paleolithic era, we ate a diet that was so high, rich in Omega-3s, so low in Omega- 6. Now, Omega-6 is in beef except in wild bison that's eating the algae in the water then [they're very 00:31:46]... The green stuff? Yes, so they're very high in Omega-3. Then of course there's salmon, unless you have farm salmon, and now it's very low in Omega-3 and super high in Omega-6. Please don't think that because salmon is salmon, it's not. What happened was, then we became very westernized and we eat a tremendous amount of grain and we eat a tremendous amount of fried foods and we eat a tremendous amount of simple, simple, broken down, manmade carbohydrates and now a tremendous amount of beef, that's feed lot beef, et cetera, and just a lot of beef, so then we're having a very high ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 which is now suddenly why we have to take 5,000 mg of cold fish oils to try and get it up here. To balance it. Right, and the balance is here. This is not the balance. That's the balance. It should be very high in Omega-3, very low in Omega- 6, because the moment the Omega-6 comes up, Omega-6 becomes what's called arachidonic acid and then it's inflammatory. It's not inflammatory when it's down here. Right? Yes, we need it. Rain is great in Southern California unless we hit the torrential floods and then Malibu slides. Everything starts to slide down. Even too much rain Irene Lyon 15

16 It's not good. It's the same thing. We don't want too much of it. The balance needs to be here. We don't want to live in drought. You see no hands on the screen. We don't want to live in drought. This is where the balance is. It's like what do you look at in your foods? That's tricky one. It's a tricky one for people because some people can't do long chain fatty acids. The fish oils are longer chain fatty acids. It's medium chain. There's short chain fatty acids. Depending on the person's DNA as to what they can handle. The average person can handle those chain fatty acids. Now, if you ask me, I say not to bring it up but I'm very concerned about salmon, wild caught salmon, because the radiation from Fukushima has made it's way all the way to the West coast of the United States. It's already coming through Hawaii [and 00:34:19] so the fish has the effect from it. We know it, we see it. It's a big, big, big thing. It's big. I'm glad you touched on the Omega-3s and the balance of the essential fatty acids because it is about the balance. It is. It's about the balance. It's about balance of that. It's about balance of minerals and it's about balance of amino acids. The 10 essential amino acids that turn into these proteins that, or the proteins that break down, how it is the amino acids are utilized because they help my brain and your brain... Repair and build. [crosstalk 00:35:06] and do their job, so that we can function and be vibrant and alive. I look at people and go, "You know, there's some things that you can look at." I'll look at people and see if they're very inflamed, then I do very specific things for them. Those things are important, not just for us, but our favorite little 2017 Irene Lyon 16

17 mammals that are kitties and our doggies. We need to look at it in terms of that for them too. It's a mammal thing. It's a total mammalian thing, which is where the vagal nerve comes in as we know. Yeah. Minerals, essential fatty acids, amino acids, movement, getting connected, keeping the flow, what would be one other little thing? If you could tell everyone in the world one thing, what would be another thing? What happens in the belly, doesn't stay in the belly. Explain that. Because of all the ways we digest our food, the way our digestive tract creates fermentation and creates by-product and expels it, if those things are not happening and utilization of nutrients to turn into the essential things that makes us these vital living beings that we are, if that's not happening, it will affect our mind. It will affect our brain function. For old people, it affect the periphery. Every time I open up the newspaper here, there is another article on: "Come to my free thing in which you will pay a lot of money once I get you in, about peripheral neuropathy. I have your answer." I'm like, "You know what? No, you don't." Because it's not about their specialized machine that goes [zzt, zzt, zzt 00:37:11]. Explain what peripheral neuropathy is for people that don't know. Peripheral neuropathy is the pain in the legs, the creeping in the legs and the feet. What happens with older people is they have the pain in their legs so they don't walk so well. Then if they have the pain in the legs, they also don't feel their feet. They can't move this beautiful way of moving. Then balance becomes an issue. Then the walker is the next thing and the 2017 Irene Lyon 17

18 kids plunk them into an old-age home because they fall, they break a nose, they break their teeth, they break their head. The neuropathy, the peripheral neuropathy that the numbing of what happens comes from environmental things. It comes from the gut not being able to breakdown and expel the toxins through the liver, through the fermentation in the gut to expel it out through poop, which is so important. Poop is a great thing. It is. You want to poop a couple times a day. Have a good poop if you do anything and drink your water to pee it out too. We've got to be able to comfortably say poop and pee. We do, we need to poo. Because our lives depend on it. If you ask me, "What is that crucial thing?" What happens in the belly affects us up here, in the not good and in the good, in the good. It is, good connections. Can I say one piece? Of course you can. If there's any college student listening to this, I want to say that going to the rave concerts and taking drugs like ecstasy and other drugs that work with serotonin uptake, rob the belly of the important serotonin that makes the gut to be motile and pulls it up to the brain to make you feel so high and so connected. It's probably involved with GABA, the neuroreceptor that makes us feel connected, and the oxytocin that makes us feel in love, and all of that. The problem is, is the next day, and the next week, you feel awful. Why? Because now there is no place for that to go and I'm telling the young generation, I'm still young... You are. The young generation is that it is virtually rewiring the brain Irene Lyon 18

19 There will be not enough old-age homes for this culture to go to because their brains will be so severely impacted as it's not just rewired but damaged. I'm not even going to talk at this point about addiction because that's another piece but that ties in with that. Please get your highs on listening to drumming music, on listening to any music you want, and let that [vibration move 00:40:14], vibrate through your vagal nerve, tone your brain to produce GABA so that you feel so good to love and hug and kiss your friends all around you but not because a drug robbed it out of your body which wreaks havoc on your digestive tract and damages the brain. I've said my piece. It's crucial. Thank you. It's good. We're gonna say goodbye and we're going to follow up with this if you can still hear this video and if the Skype connection is still working. Thank you so much, Elinor. My people will be hearing from you more I think. I'll put some links to Elinor's blog and how you can find her and ask her questions. Have a lovely day. You too. Hugs. Hugs. Hugs, hugs. Bye-bye. Bye Irene Lyon 19