Permission to Heal Episode #33 - A Conversation with Tania Clarke - The Healing Power of Somatics.

Clinical somatics is a unique restorative movement practice that retrains the brain to better control muscles. It acts as a reset button for the body. 

Move Deeply Wellness is committed to creating restorative movement education accessible online, with accountability tools and regular inspiration to help students stick with their practice and make it a life-long habit.

Tania Clarke's personal journey through years of chronic shoulder pain brought her to restorative movement education. She is dedicated to helping her clients tune into their bodies and unravel their persistent tension and pain, through gentle, methodical movement. Tania is a Level 2 Certified Somatic Exercise Instructor.  She believes a diverse movement practice is one of the best routes to a long, happy life, and is here to help others find their own passion for movement.

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Transcript

Welcome Tonya Clark. So I was so thrilled to have you here with us today. Thanks so much, Marcy. I'm really glad to be here. How how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks. How are you doing good. It's we're winding down the end of the school year. So things are gone and grades are finished and, you know, Closing out this year before we start prepping for next year.

And I am exhausted. Yeah, it must've been crazy here. Nazi here. Oh my God. So you are in Vancouver. I've never been to Vancouver. Yeah. Yeah. Vancouver, BC. I've grown up here. So yeah, no, I'm pretty lucky to be with nature all the time. That's awesome. I did almost plan a trip to that part of Canada, like 30 years ago, but I couldn't afford the airfare.

Oh yeah. It's a New York. It was a bit expensive. So I had to put it off and never wound up getting back, but we'll hopefully make it sometime, hopefully absolutely assets it's on the list. Places to visit. It's an extensive list. You want me to New York, so might as well only we could teleport. Yeah, that would be totally fine.

You know, where we had a tardus or something, you know? Totally. I would love that. Or a star Trek transporter, you know, breakfast in Rome and dinner in Paris are amazing. And you'd never have to pack cause you could always just go home and change and then go back out again. Yeah. Anyway, let's fantasy. Let's start with our six quick questions and see where we go from there.

You ready? All right. What six words would you use to describe yourself?  Well I would say, spontaneous, Laughter. I like to love a lot. Fun, adventurous. I mean, he's at four I think. And, optimistic and excited. Excellent. I think you're the first person to choose experimental counting, but like that that's awesome.

Number two. What's your favorite way to spend a day?  Mostly just, , if I can get out in nature, that's great. So some kind of hike or, just being outside and with my husband and, just having a nice sort of chill day going out, having maybe having some lunch or dinner and a drink and nice experiencing some time together.

That's awesome. That's awesome. I love. Live music outside. Yes. Yeah, me too. I've kind of forgotten what that's like now I know seen anything even remotely like that. Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. I can't wait for that to come back. I've almost sort of forgotten so much about that. That, like, what I just told you about my ideal day is like what we've been doing during lunch.

So yeah. Well just because it's safe during a tamp pandemic. Verboten during the regular part of it, for sure. You know, I mean, there was so little that we were able to hold onto during the pandemic, during that, the big part of it, you know, the intense part of it that, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's freaky being able to go out without a mask every now and then now, you know, I almost feel naked, you know, a little too vulnerable, like it's going to take some getting used to, for sure.

Yeah. We had such a heightened sense. Fear and alarm and anxiety. And it's taking a long, I think, going to take a long time to sort of settle back down again. I don't know, like what things we, we won't be doing anymore. Or what about social customs will have changed? Well, like right now we're not handshake.

And that was like the tried and true thing. You know, you had the measure of a person by their handshake kind of thing, you know, and now people are doing the little elbow tap, which is not the same. No, but I don't really want to be touching other people's hands. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how that settles back out.

Let's go to number three. What's your favorite childhood memory? It's probably going to a place called savory island. That's, a few hours away from us here and it's a beautiful, Sandy island. So the beaches look almost tropical and we used to go there in the summers. I think yeah, savory is.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was, we'd go with my cousins and aunts and uncles, and we always loved riding the boat. My uncle had a boat, so we would boat around the area there and yeah, I think that's one of my fondest memories, probably. Awesome. I want to go to a place called savory. That's great. Let's try. Number four.

What is your favorite meal?  See, usually it's a summertime, you know, so probably , salmon is a big thing here. So I love having a grilled salmon with some fresh local corn and some kind of salad with like the greens from our garden and that kind of funding. How do you prepare your salmon? Usually just do 'em like, Kind of a Mayo lemon, herb sauce, and, kind of marinate that on top and then throw it on the barbecue for a few minutes.

Sounds heavenly. Heavenly. I'm in love with dill. I put dill on it. Perfect. Ah, let's try number five. What one piece of advice would you like to give your younger self?

Stop worrying about, what is, Hmm, that's tough because there's so many things I would probably say, but probably just stop worrying about what, what's to come and worrying about the future and just stay in the, in the present moment. And, Just don't let, what other, external forces around you bring you down if, if, times get a little harder.

That's good advice. That's good advice. And I think that's sort of a hard, difficult thing to learn how to balance, you know, mindfulness with preparing for the future. Yeah, you don't want to project too much and make yourself crazy and anxious about things that you have no control over yet, but at the same time, you don't want to just live for today and plan for the future, you know, retirement or, you know, eat well.

So you're healthy or finished school. So you get a degree, you know, like there have to be some balance, some planning, I think. Yeah. Something we learn how to balance over time, for sure. Yeah. I definitely used to sort of flip flop between living in the moment and not worrying about it, but then I would realize that I hadn't thought about anything.

And then I w it was the sort of hard balance for sure, but I, yeah, it's, I think, uh, something we definitely get better at after a while, if we try to, you know, work on it and be mindful about that as well. All right. Number six, we're almost done. What is one thing you would most like to change about? Hm, it's hard to narrow it down.

Yeah. I mean the idealist in me always sort of wished for a world where we could focus less on constant growth and profit and Mora. Just being and, and enjoying what life has, has to offer and not trying to push the limits all the time. Absolutely. I think that's a great, a great thing to change. I think there's so much about our lives.

For hundreds of years that has been motivated by other people's quest for profits. Yeah. Just turned into a cultural norm because we're used to it. But the whole thing was ingrained in us years, years, centuries ago, because somebody else wants to make it a buck. Yeah, exactly. Or a peso or a pound, whatever.

Yeah, it's been, it's hard, but you know, we try to do what you can in your own life, I guess, and yeah, you can do about anything. Okay. So let's take a step into your past. And since you said you grew up in Vancouver or, you know, in Canada, tell us about your childhood. Tell us about who Tonya was and how she became to be who she is now.

 Yeah. I was always is very sort of, I guess, artistic and into creative things. And, I did a lot of different things like photography and drawing and painting, and I also did dancing and just like experiencing life from that sort of. Visual tactile level. So I always thought I was going to be either an artist or, , so he was really into anthropology too.

So I wanted to be an archeologist for awhile. But male, Indiana Jones. It was pretty obsessed with that kind of stuff , and doing that. Yeah. Well, and same with an artist, right? Both sides can be hard. So yeah, I ended up by the time I got to university, I, I did try studying sociology, anthropology for awhile and realized it wasn't what I wanted to do as my job or my work.

So I, I focused on art and, for many years, since then, I've been, I was a graphic designer and visual artist. And, and I also worked, a lot of side jobs. Cause I was always just trying to create some kind of business, from a creative side and, and, you know, make a living doing my art.

And so I was, you know, often had the side job or, or a job to support me while I, you know, tried to do that. And so I worked for a botanical garden for many years, in education there. So I had that sort of, other side of me that really, as, you know, nature and also just. Creating, programs and education and nice.

So, kind of a diverse background, I guess, but awesome.  Yeah, so it wasn't until in the last,  I guess six or seven years that I started paying more attention to my passion for wellness and an exercise and movement. Into fitness and, and, working out and being active. But I was always pretty fascinated with the body as well.

And, eventually I decided to take my yoga teacher training for 200 hour training back in 2015, and then that sort of pivoted started pivoting my life. So I still was doing my art and, and, um, working in education, but there was a shift starting to happen. So,  over the years I've been. Learning and training more.

 But, I was dealing with a pretty bad, shoulder injury and problem for years. , I had bursitis in my shoulders and, yeah, it makes it really hard to, function when your body feels like that it was chronic pain over and over, like setting me back all the time. Was there an inch or something that caused it?

 I mean, years ago I almost tore my rotator cuff. So I think that influenced my favoring of my shoulder on one side. And, but also just years of desk work,  between graphic design and the education job, I was, I had not. I didn't have bad posture. No one ever said like, if anything, most people said, they ha you, you looks like you have great posture, but I had just enough rounding in my shoulders that when I did all my activities like yoga and, upper body exercise , I started compressing, I guess, too much into the versa and that, caused the inflammation, but it took me years to figure that out.

So, it wasn't until I came to some medic exercise. I started noticing that my symptoms were going away. And, I haven't had a, since I first started learning somatics, a few years ago, about four years ago now, , I haven't had any. per Situs flare ups again. So, and that started pretty quickly after I started doing it.

So within about a year of just practicing as a student, I realized I just really wanted to teach that. So, I trained to become a clinical somatics instructor. So now that's been my passion and my focus is to help people. Yeah. Somatics is something that's not commonly known. It's I feel like it has like a route to sleep like, so like Somnia or like a little bit, well, Soma means body in Greek.

And so, I had it wrong. So, so yeah, so MMA is som a and then Tix somatics. So it's, basically a practice of observing,  the motion of the body and, tuning into the function on a, on a deep sort of, Personal sense? Like how was your body moving for you? But it's also based in there there's various types of somatic movement. Some are a bit more intuitive and to do with,  Emotional trauma and that kind of thing, and expressing yourself physically to help get that out.  And others are more clinical and anatomy focused and science based. So I'm in, I'm in, I'm trained in that side. Yeah. Just cause I'm more, I'm a fair, I was always interested in anatomy and biomechanics and that kind of thing.

So, , that made sense for me. And, so it basically retrains your nervous system to, better control your muscles through really slow. Methodical movements. So, and they only take a few minutes and it's a pretty fascinating practice. It's somatic exercise in general has been around for about 200 years. But,  this method I've been trained in is rooted in Hennis, medics by a ton of Thomas Hannah. And he, was, developing it in the seventies and eighties. So it's a bit more modern, but he's.  Trained by Feldon Christ, who is a known a name that's quite known in the fields. , so a lot of, kind of movement nerds are aware of what's that name.

So, yeah, it's, it's just a really fantastic way to get back in tune with your body, especially if you've been dealing with injury or just,  Generally don't like exercise or don't know how to get started.  What does it really, how does it compare with the yoga? Yeah, so you're mostly, you can do it in a diff a few ways, but lying down is usually how you first learn it.

Just to take gravity out of the, you like exercise where I can lie down. Kind of just feels like you're having a nap, but you're moving a little slowly. It almost feels like you're not doing anything at first, but, the process of like, once you learn the process of , clinical sematics practice, you go from assessing your body to experiencing the exercises and, reflecting on it.

How the exercises are influencing you during and after. So you do an, a standing assessment for, of your body before and after. So you can actually start to feel the differences in your body and the SIM improves your, your ability to sense your body. So, , your proprioceptive abilities.  So yeah, aligned down is the best way to.

That, effect just because you're kind of lying down and what should be a better posture for your body and the muscles can relax more effectively, but you can also do it seated and standing in different versions. And so that makes it more accessible to maybe people who can't lie down. So it, so it has the potential to heal injuries.

Obviously, you said you had bursitis in your shoulder and that went away. Yeah. Yeah. It helps you realign your body and, just , get rid of that chronic tension that we all develop over time. So , by the time we hit our forties, even our mid thirties , things start to feel tight or not working as well.

And that's just a matter of, Maintenance. And it's not something that's generally taught to us. It's more about, you know, go to your run, do it a stretching, and you know, do all these healthy things, but there's, until more recently, there hasn't really been a culture around restoring in the true sense, because even something like yoga, unless it's restorative yoga, which I also teach, it's , It's still using your muscles and it's not allowing them to completely release.

So, by contracting. Yeah. So by contracting what the somatics does is contract your muscles and then slowly release them. And so by doing the slow, very slow release, your nervous system, , is able to kind of repattern the mood. Of that muscle and go, oh, I don't have to grip this anymore. This is how it is. I, this is how it should feel. This is how I should move this muscle. I don't need to hang onto this anymore. It's a pretty interesting concept of your brain is always wanting to keep you moving as efficiently as possible. But by doing that, we end up in these types of positions of, you know, if we're always,  you know, sitting rounded forward our front body, the abdominals are always a bit contractive.

So , the nervous system starts to think, oh, well you want to be able to just do that easily. So we'll just keep it there. So then when you stand up and go for a walk, you're slightly rounded forward without even really realizing it, or your hip flexors might be tight, from sitting at a right angle.

Yeah. So, that kind of thing, just, if you imagine, you know, elastic bands, so you know how you have the thing. The elastic bands that don't stretch as easily. And then there's like the skinnier ones that stretch a lot more easily.  So you're kind of going from the thick Taiwan to the, from where it usually stretched on.

 But it's not involving stretching because when you stretch, most of the time you're. With conventional stretching your religious temporarily elongating it, and then it kind of snaps back into place. Because you're not , the nervous system doesn't know that it doesn't have to be tight. So, yeah, our brains are kind of really a computer, right.

So when you're programming, like you're, you're programming your body constantly by all the activities you're doing. So this is like, Refresh hitting refresh and , deprogramming a lot of that. So you can do all of, all of those things better in the long run. Interesting, interesting. I I've been spending an inordinately large amount of time on my computer, my laptop this year as a teacher and the podcast and everything else.

And I've developed what, I'm the English teachers diagnosing as tendonitis in my elbow. So can something like that. Be somatically fixed or, yeah. Tendonitis is definitely something that can be, any kind of physiological, biomechanical and physiological muscle musculoskeletal based problem, can be repaired through somatics.

It can take time. But, Once you have that sort of foundation of a practice down and doing it, you know, even just a couple of days a week is enough, but when you're first working through stuff, it's usually best to do it a few minutes a day. And then after a few weeks, you know, you start feeling like, oh, okay.

Yeah. I can feel that things are getting. Better or I'm moving more easily or so once you sort of, begin to feel those changes, you can start to gauge sort of how often you need to practice. And if things start feeling kind of not so good again, then you might want to do it more for a few days. And repair things, but ideally if you're really good about doing it regularly, you almost never encounter the problems as often as if you don't, you're always in that state of refreshing or yeah.

It's like the tune-up for your body instead. Like if you, you wouldn't not tune up your car, you would. Usually, if you want the car to run, you can tune it up periodically. Yeah. So same thing goes for us change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a super important part of movement and health, but, I think most people are missing.

I know, I know that just from talking to people over the years and my students and everything, it's something that the light bulb kind of finally goes off when they try it. It's like, oh yeah. I can feel how this is different. I can feel that I can walk more easily. I can stand more easily. So it's pretty cool.

Yeah. Like years ago, I remember my dad saying. When I had trouble sleeping, that his little technique was, you know, you're laying down, you're getting to a comfortable position and then you start at your toes and you like tighten your toes and hold it and then release. And then you like mentally go through each body part or muscle system all the way up your legs, all the way up your body and you're tensing and releasing.

It was all like a, like an isometric kind of thing. How does that do. Are you instead of doing it once you're, you're kind of repeating I'm, I'm trying to make sense out of it without you, you know, giving a class right now because I see you. No, I, I love that, that, that I've done. I've done that exercise before where you, you tense and release and there are some similarities there.

So, Basically what somatics is. , the type of every exercise is appendix chelation, which is a word for, yeah. When is a word for when we, contract and release the muscles. So when you take your morning stretch and you, you know, reach your arms up veteran, Tense all your muscles and then let go.

That's appendix violation. So what, what your dad was saying? There was, yeah, it was it was the as basically a type of pending isolation, and you know, cats and dogs do it all the time. You see them stretching like quite often, birds stretch their wings. And so it's a natural part of being a living animal.

And, we had. Gotten it's not in our modern life anymore. It's, it's actually been deprogrammed from our instincts to do it. The more we sit and the more we don't do as much , why we say we want to sit. Yeah. And, and yeah, the less we move, we lost, we actually want to move. And so, and then vice versa, the more you move, the more you live.

So, so what this does is try to bring that pending isolation back into your life. And so you have to be more conscious about it initially. But as you practice more somatics, you will start to crave some kind of movement. So you're, you're going to start naturally doing more of that stretching and moving.

And, so it's, it's kind of bringing back that, that natural instinct, into your, your body. So, so yeah, that's actually basically what you were doing with the squeezing and releasing, but these are, these exercises are designed around targeting all the time. Areas of the body, and going through a bit more of a slow version where like, sometimes you might tend to and quickly release and that's still effective, but, the slow release is where your, the magic really happens, especially in the last, like 10% of the motion.

So yeah. Yeah. So it's like, imagine, for example, something you can do is, just, sit up straight or stand up. Yeah. Yeah. So sit up straight in your chair. Okay. And then usually it's easiest if you're just on the edge of your seat. So you can plant your feet and then slowly shrug your shoulders all the way up to your ears.

Try to keep your chin, parallel with the floor and release as slow as possible. Like as a viewer, it's like slow as molasses.

Yep. And just keep going. You might get a little bit of shaking that's normal and yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you should code you better at least a count of 10. So especially in that last little bit, it's sort of tempting to just let go, but, Just sort of start to experiment with like how much room is left and that, that should help release time.

Yeah. So what you're doing in that particular exercises is releasing, the upper trapezius muscles. So that's the top part of the large triangular grip and muscles on your back. And those get really tight a lot of the time just from sitting at your desk. So, so just doing that and releasing as slow as possible.

 Is it's going to help to start reset, resetting those muscles.  So I like to do that one as a, as an option, just to sort of see how it feels, but it can take, yeah, it can take a couple. Usually I say about three repetitions of, of most exercises is the best, sort of. I mean already feels better. I did it for 10.

There you go. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Right now, fix my elbow elbows a bit more related to what muscle we're talking about here. Yeah. With the arms. They're a little harder to sort of target specifically, but just by doing,  Other exercises like that target, you know, your shoulders and your, your chest and your upper back.

And that'll start to help, you know, realigning that upper body. And it can just reduce tension all the way down. So, but basically any kind of movement can be appendix culation. You can, let's say if it's your bicep, you can just create resistance. Holding your forearm up until like, like as if you're doing a bicep curl and then yourself resisting yourself as you slowly push your arm back down and then, and then you have to completely relax at the bottom.

So that's the other key point about all these exercises is that is completely relaxing before you move on to the next repetition, because that's kind of the that's the final reset button is. The relaxation of the muscle, so that the bicep one's a little hard to explain. Yeah, but the muscle too. So that's engaging it.

Yeah. You got to kind of find a happy medium about 60% of your full strength.  So I'm resisting, but I'm not like trying to force myself. No, no. Right. Okay. Yeah. And another one. So some of the exercises are just you like with the shrug shoulder one. You're slowly letting that just go.

Whereas other pending violations can be creating that resistance. So you can do it on your own, where you put your, you can put your fingers between your kind of halfway down your jawline, and then resist your fingers as they push into your jaw and start slowly looking to one side as you resist in again, like not super powerful, just, just.

 Mild pushing and you'll start to feel your neck muscles activate, and then you can switch sides and go the other way. And what am I doing to release though? So

you're activating your neck muscles, on either side, you should feel the ones that connect down into your collarbone. Yeah. Yeah. So by activating those by pressing, And releasing, and then the release of my releasing my fingers or my turning my neck back to new. You're releasing your fingers and then switching sides and going the other way.

And usually I go back and forth about three times. And then after a few reps of that, then you should feel some release through your neck muscles. So that's using the resistance factor. And then there's the other ways where you actually just slowly move your, your limbs. Interesting. Yeah. So, but the main principle behind it is, is the contraction and the.

And so all of this is really for soft tissue, muscles, tendons, ligaments, things like that. It's not, it's not going to help me fix the broken ankle I'm walking around with now. No, but it, it can take the stress off of it. Potentially if you have an injury, there's usually a lot of, contraction and compression of muscles to compensate, right.

Or even if you, even if that injury has gone, there's a history of having to compensate. So yeah, biological trauma residual in there, we ended up asymmetrical and, you know, our hip. Because of an injury on one side , or where we were favoring, you know, like if we had a sprained ankle or whatever. So somatics is a pretty ideal way to balance that out as well.

And so by reducing Contra reducing tension of the muscles, you're reducing compression of the giants. So it can help with arthritis as well and help ease the pain. It's not, it can't really reverse arthritis, but it can definitely, use any kind of, pain that comes with the joint compression and that kind of thing.

And it seems to me that it's pretty gentle and that anybody could do it. It doesn't, you don't have to have any specific fitness levels. So it's perfect for us couch potatoes who have been doing next to nothing throughout the pandemic and want to slowly get back into figuring out what our bodies. Yeah.

Would be a good entry point as well as maintenance point. Yeah. Really is. It's, it's, it's great for just helping you sort of enjoy the feel and the feeling of movement again, and, and also just for, because it, it increases your muscle control and your body sense. It just makes everything else. You do easier.

So when you start getting into other fitness, if you know, you say you want to do. Get into weightlifting or, or just start hiking more or whatever , it's just going to make that all easier because your muscles are in their full, optimal setting and, you have more mobility and, and it's just sort of, you start to really notice it if you compare before and after, but, and so you might, you know, take it for granted if you're doing this.

And then it feels like You know, everything feels good. Then if you stop doing somatics, you'll start to, you'll notice that things are getting a bit tight again. So, yeah, like in, are we way back in the olden times? Like, you know, let's say like prehistoric. Primal times, you know, we were moving in different ways all the time and, and stretching and like just doing it all of just came naturally, but we just don't have this where you're sitting in a desk, right?

Yeah. So there wasn't a need for this kind of thing, but now there, there really is. And this is like that missing link that, I call it the missing link and the, in the fitness regime basically where, you know, it's the thing that's going to make everything even better and all that. Yeah. So I'd imagine that the children are probably moving their bodies a lot more intuitively than grownups.

Yeah. Imagine something we sort of talk ourselves into or out of, depending on your perspective as we age. So would this be something that might be a good thing to teach? Kids to do so that they grow up doing this and maybe can circumvent some of the tightness or injuries or, body misalignment or whatever that, that we are dealing with now, would it makes sense to teach kids are not adolescents to do this?

Yeah, I I've thought a lot about this. I feel that the. Physical education programs. And most schools is pretty old school teach you how to do sports. Yeah. It's not very practical for most people. And, and yeah, a lot of the truth is most kids by the time they're teenagers are having to park their butts and desks all the times and that's when it starts.

 So, yeah, absolutely. I think, there's huge value in kids learning, this type of movement. What, by the time, they're, you know, a teenager, because, you know, I watch my nieces and nephews and I can see the younger ones. They're still just playing and running around and whatever. And then, you know, my oldest two, nephew is a hockey player and I can already see his body is taking this form.

Of the hockey player and it's, I know it's going to hurt them later. So part of me wants to be like, so can I teach you some stuff to keep you, you know, it's, I'm probably going to, you know, I'm not gonna try to teach him the next time I, I see him. Cause I think he'll value it as if he understands the absolute. Yeah. So I think also from the sports side, yeah. Teaching these kids who are into sports, that this is how they're going to keep doing it without, with less injury, with more better performance and that kind of thing. So, yeah, it's, it's something I hope in the future, I'll be able to maybe, you know, talk to my local.

School board and try to propose these types of things and create a school program. A bit of a change. Yeah. Yeah. I and ear a new thing, you know, that's awesome. I wish my daughter knew stuff about this. She ran track for, Middle school straight through the high school. So for five years she was running track.

She was a sprinter and, and her knees suck. She's 20 years old and she has knee pain, chronically, and she's very fit and goes to the gym. Her legs are very strong and she can't like squat lift anymore. Right. You know, she can't like she bends down and wants to pick something up, you know, you're supposed to bend with your knees.

She can't get back up. No, no. And she's 20, you know, so yeah. That's hard on your body, but yeah, this could absolutely help her start just feeling a little more like freedom in that area of her body over time. I think it's the kind of thing where, you know, if there's joint damage.  It's pretty hard to recover that, but it's definitely something that, you know, by doing these exercises before you work.

 It can really help to unlock, you know, some of the things that are going to restrict motion with, with exercises that, you know, we might find challenging or, and just start to rebuild more. Yeah. I tend to do a bit of somatics before and after my workouts now, and it it's a total game changer.

That's awesome. So how do people work with you? I mean, you're in Canada, so I mean, I hope that. You have , virtual. Yeah. It's a, and so on, you know, I don't live in Vancouver, so yeah. So how do we, how do we work with. , yeah, I mean, online is my focus because I feel like the world needs to know this and the best way to share it as through the internet.

So, I have, I've created a few different tiers of programs, just help people kind of go through a path, a journey. So I have,  my newest offering is called the three essential. And it's , a three day or three-part program that can be done within three days, but you can do as long as you need to, but that's sort of the recommended amount of time that walks you through three essential somatic exercises that target the most commonly tight areas of the body, which is the neck, shoulders and back.

 Most people have problems in that area first. And also when you start with schematics, you want to start from releasing the. So, the, this course walks you through releasing those key muscles in your core , so that you can then start to work on other areas of your body.  So that's the first sort of entry level, course, and, And then I've got a discover some medics in 30 days, which guides you through a sort of drip, , curriculum where you get a few video.

Everything is like prerecorded video classes where you can do it and do it in your own time. And there's written material to learn more about the exercises and, And a bit of an accountability kind of helping you out with scheduling and just staying on task with, email reminders. And I've got like a little journal that you can use to track your progress and yeah, like a big part of it.

Gaining the best benefits from this practice is to get an understanding of what's changing in your body. So I've created a system, both in the three essentials, just there's like an intro to that concept. And then in the 30 day program, you really get in there and, start to. Attract and, become more aware of what's happening in your body with all the exercises and, the exercises you learn in that 30 day program.

We'll pretty much target all sides of your body and, and, started to get you to a point where you're feeling much more, balanced. So, and that one again is, designed to be done within four weeks. But , they're all available for as long as you want. So you can just keep redoing it and focus on the ones that you like or that feel good or whatever.

Yeah. So it's, it's designed to be done in a certain order. And then after that you can go back and, you know, review what you want. And , and then my, larger program is, a 90 day program because it takes, statistically I'm about 90 days to really. Get a habit in your life. So that's why I chose the 90 days and I walked my students through, learning somatics, through prerecorded content.

So similar to the discover 30 days program, but then expanding upon it and also bringing in restorative yoga as a compliment to the practice. Which actually in the three essentials, I introduced that a little bit as well. So it kind of, the three essentials program gives you a taste of sort of a bit of what you'd get in the big program with the restorative yoga and the somatics and, and then what you do with this Maddix.

 But then there's also weekly group classes. Through zoom and , a month, one private class per month with me, for three months and, and then access to an online platform where you can, do all the prerecorded stuff. And so, yeah, it's a more of a kind of group coaching one-on-one, experience with the 90 days.

So that's for, you know, if you're really feeling. You want to. You just kind of get there and make it part of your life. Cause, cause that's, I mean essentially where the real change happens is by doing it for a few months and it can be hard to do that on your own. So yeah, usually I'm good for a couple of weeks and then I life gets in the way and I crap out and I stopped doing it.

Yeah. So this is related to my elbow. Yeah. I mean that's, that's normal. Like we all, yeah. So, I mean, that's why I created. This format is, cause I know that, uh, you know, people, I talked to really had trouble with, accountability and also having enough time. So, um, everything is designed to be able to be done in 30 minutes or less.

And and also just teaching you how to understand the exercises as a level where you can lie down for 15, 20 minutes and be like, okay, Today. I feel like my shoulders and lower back are tight. So you do, Arch and flattened back lift and a few exercises. You need to do those yet. You're done in 20 minutes and you're feeling way better.

And that's fabulous. Tanya move deeply.com. We can find out all of this. Yeah. Yeah. My company has moved deeply wellness. So moved deeply.com is yeah. Your portal to finding those programs. So right now I'm featuring the three essentials. So you'll find a link right on the front page. Nice. Yeah.

So we'll use the coupon code heal@movedeeply.com for 15% off now through July 7th. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So the yeah, the coupon will expire on July 7th. Yep. Okay. Hear that listeners, you can save 15% off. That's very exciting.

That's very exciting. I think there's something in this for everybody. Yeah. And there's, it's a range of budgets to use. So my, my entry level course is only $29 Canadian. So, so I tried to make it, I tried to make it a no brainer to start cause cause yeah, people gotta try it. It's definitely gonna change your life.

I think that's fabulous. We'll heal our bodies and, and relax our minds and make ourselves feel better about being in the skin that we're in. Hey, there's a poem in there. That's wonderful. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. This is fabulous. So Tonya Clark moved deeply.com. Everything's going to be linked in the show notes.

So if you are watching on YouTube or your watch list, wherever you're listening, just scroll down and you'll have everything there. And we'll, I'll be. Easy to get at links and including links to all her socials and so on. So you'll always be able to find Tonya Clark. Yeah, thanks. I've also got a quiz, on my site.

If anyone's interested in doing that of quizzes, quizzing it's, called, discover your posture personality. So somatic, So Maddix has this principle behind it, of our posture is affected by different reflexes. So our personality can actually affect that. So if you're more of a type a person, you can have a certain type of posture which creates a certain lines of tension in your body.

Or if you're more introverted, you can also have a different type of posture that can affect pain in other ways. So this quiz takes you through. A few quick questions, just sort of get a sense of where you might be there and, and some suggestions on on what might be influencing your body, so, and how to, and, and knowing that can help you fine tune your somatic practice to help maintain a pain-free body.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The more you learn about your own habits and and your, your movement and your movement habits. Postural imbalances. The better you can work with the practice. That's fabulous. Yeah. Yay. Well, thank you so much for being here, Tanya. This was wonderful. Thank you for having me. It's definitely helped me.

I already feel better just doing that shoulder thing. Fabulous. Thanks so much, Tanya. Yes. Thank you so much, Marcy.