The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unhunched: Discover Wellness Through Posture by Aesha Tahir

Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Thechrissvossshow.com. Thechrissvossshow.comcom as the opera lady sings it. You can't beat that, Daze. Welcome to the show, my family and friends. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, you guys are the Chris Voss Show family. And what we do is we bring you three to four times a weekday,

Starting point is 00:01:00 15 to 20 times a week. There is a test on Saturday. And if you flunk it, you have to retake it on Sunday. And if you don't pass that test, well, then I don't know. You'll be forced to, you'll be forced. I'll force my relatives that I don't like to talk to over Thanksgiving dinner to call you. And then you can hear what I have to deal with. No, I'm just kidding.

Starting point is 00:01:20 That's an awful thing to say. Don't be like that, Chris. Anyway, guys, the Chris Voss Show Glow is brought to you, of course, by the great podcast. And we ask you that you share that glow. You share that, that, that, that immersion that you get from the Chris version that you get from the Chris Voss show and with your family, relatives, people you love, people care about hell share with people you hate. Damn it. Just give people say listen to chris voss show leave me alone i don't i don't want you to bother me anymore you know it's a great way to get people you know that one guy at work who's always bugging you it's a great way to get him to quit talking to you so tell him to go to goodreads.com

Starting point is 00:01:58 youtube.com for chest chris voss linkedin.com for chest chris, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss, and Chris Voss1. On the tickety-tockety, we're going to be talking about your health today. Because you know what? I've seen your health, and it needs improvement. Because it's probably a lot like mine. And all that good stuff. So we're going to be talking to a wonderful young lady about her newest book that came out. May 16th, 2023 called Unhunched Discover Wellness Through Posture. Boy, is there anybody who needed this book more than me? Aisha Tahir is on the show

Starting point is 00:02:36 with us today and we'll be talking to her about her amazing book, her insights, what she learned and how to prove your posture, prove your health, probably live a longer life. She is voted the most inspiring entrepreneur and wellness executives to watch by San Diego Voyager. She is award-winning author, keynote speaker, corporate trainer, and columnist. As a movement specialist, she has helped over 500 clients find pain-free living because that's the way to live, people. You don't want to live in pain. Damn it, stop it already. Her best-selling book, Unhunched, Discover Wellness Through Posture, entails all the

Starting point is 00:03:13 secrets, the secrets are in it, to an upright posture and pain-free movement. Welcome to the show, Aisha. How are you? I'm so good. I'm glad to be here, and I'm already feeling the Chris Walsh Show glow. You got the glow going on. Yeah. All right. so good. I'm glad to be here. And I'm already feeling the Chris Walsh show glow. You got the glow going on. All right. Sounds good. So give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Yeah. So my dot com is AyeshaTahir.com. And on this website, you'll find all about me and my wellness offerings, like my corporate posture workshops that I customize

Starting point is 00:03:46 for organizations' unique needs, which empowers the employees to have the skills that they need to improve their posture, increase productivity, team collaboration, overall well-being. And also on this website, people can find a bunch of valuable resources like posture guides a list of ergonomic resources blog posts and posture exercise video library that can help them understand the significance of posture and its impact on our physical and mental health and that's what i do i provide one-on-one coaching to clients and also team coaching and workshops to corporations. So I want to emphasize the videos for a second here because that video library has all the exercise videos that are included in my book, Unhunched. And also I upload weekly videos, which are like small posture snacks that people can do while they are at work to improve their posture.

Starting point is 00:04:48 Okay. And I'm looking at your website here. I've got a section for the book. You've got my story, articles, media, and speaking engagements and stuff like that. So people can go through all that on your website. So give us a 30,000 overview of the book, what's inside and why you wrote it. Yeah. So the book is all about posture and how it is related to our physical and mental health. So it starts with the history of posture, like how our ancestors actually became unhunged,

Starting point is 00:05:21 adopted this upright posture because it was advantageous to their survival. And then it goes through the history of the human civilization, how we changed into agricultural civilizations and we preserved our posture, which was very important for our health. Then we go into the Greek civilization where, you know, exercise became even more important, where it was highlighted that strengthening the muscles and body is so important for health and then it goes into the impact that different physiologic systems and the way we are living our life today for example the way we breathe the way we process stress the the way our activity level, that's a huge one. And the muscle imbalances that we create, because all of this is affecting our posture, that is leading to either poor posture or good posture, which then leads to good health or poor health. And then it also has

Starting point is 00:06:20 the exercises that people can adopt. 15 minutes a day day it has a exercise program at the end 15 minutes a day that you can just you know incorporate during your work day when you come back home and you can improve your posture and as a result of it your health the reason i wrote this book is very personal for me because getting active and improving my posture was a way to overcome lower back pain and sciatica for me when I was working as a computer programmer. And the way it started was very interesting because one day I woke up to a burning pain going down my left leg accompanied by an unsettling numbness in my left foot. And all of a sudden, I'm going through all the possibilities like a computer program's code, like what could be happening, right? So the first thing

Starting point is 00:07:12 that came to my mind was maybe I'm having a stroke. So I drove to the ER where the doctors performed detailed testing. And afterwards, they came to me and they're like, oh, you have sciatica and you have had lower back pain and your lower back vertebrae is pressing on your sciatic nerve in your lower back. And that is what's leading this pain. So they blamed it on my poor posture and my sedentary lifestyle. So that started a three year journey for me to look for solutions for pain-free living, improving my work habits. And during those three years, I tried to find a system that would help me relieve my pain for good. Because I was trying to incorporate all the traditional medicine systems like taking painkillers, going through physical therapy, and it would mend me for like six weeks. I would be pain-free. And

Starting point is 00:08:13 then guess what? I was just back to where I started after those six weeks. And I was like, this is not how I want to live my life. I need to change this. So the system that I created was very holistic and it addressed the root cause of the problem. And it incorporated all the major physiologic systems. And I turned it into a framework, which is called BRACE. And it stands for breath, relaxationation, Activity, and Corrective Exercise. So it incorporates, as you can see, all of our major physiologic systems like breathing, stress through mental health, your mental capacity, and then activity, right, movement. And so, you know, as soon as I started feeling better, and of course, people started

Starting point is 00:09:08 noticing the transformation, my friends and family started asking, like, Oh, so what have you been up to? Like, what's going on? We want in on it. So working as an exercise physiologist became my second act, because I just started helping my friends and family. And I had already been on that road where I was living with pain. I couldn't move. I couldn't sit for long periods of time. And I didn't want other people to go through that pain like I did. And I wanted to help other people like me who were test bound and are experiencing pain and stiffness or injuries because of their work

Starting point is 00:09:45 posture. That is one of the reasons why I wrote the book. Second is because during COVID, this problem just highlighted because during COVID, the number of cases I was seeing just exploded. People were now away from their offices and at their home. They were working on couches. They were working hunched over kitchen counters. And all of a sudden, after six months, what happened? They had neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, lower back pain. It was so common. And I was like, huh, there's a pattern out here.

Starting point is 00:10:21 I need to address this. And what I figured was that our increased reliance on technologies such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, is significantly influencing our posture, our movement habits, and our overall well-being. So we're in a silent battle with these devices and they're slowly like draining us. So the modern hunched over posture with the spinal alignment that we have when we're using these technological devices, which is commonly you know seen as the forward head, rounded shoulders, an excessive arch in your lower back, is because we have moved so far away from the manual labor to sedentary jobs. And the way we are holding our bodies while using these technological devices, right?

Starting point is 00:11:15 Our body is designed to move and change positions frequently. But long-term, high-volume use of cell phones and computers is having a knock-on effect on many of our body systems, especially our musculoskeletal system. So by writing this book, I wanted to share what I had learned, that by being conscious of our posture and implementing small habits, small strategies to improve it, we can mitigate the adverse effects of technology and we can embrace technology while preserving our health. Yeah. I mean, health is wealth, people. I mean, it really does make all the difference. The challenge that I have is like when I've been sitting and hunching for so long

Starting point is 00:12:04 that I kind of have that, what you call i've been sitting and hunching for so long that i kind of have that what you call the rounded shoulders the hunching thing i've been going to the gym trying to correct it trying to you know get things going my way uh but it's really hard to correct once you've kind of created a whole lifetime of this stuff right yeah you bring up a great point here because yeah as people are mostly like oh it doesn't matter that the way we stand you know our alignment doesn't matter uh but what's happening is throughout life our body adapts to the type of work we do the hobbies you enjoy maybe the way we use electronic devices as one and then the injuries we have suffered over our lifetime, of course, they have a knock-on effect.

Starting point is 00:12:48 And even the kind of shoes you wear, right? Because if you're wearing like cushioned shoes or with a higher offset at your heel, that's going to offset your posture. And we always think, a lot of times my clients would say, oh, these small habits don't hurt me. But no, small changes in how we hold ourselves and how we move can add up over a lifetime. Same way, small exercises, small changes that you can incorporate to correct your posture

Starting point is 00:13:20 are going to add up over time too. But it's not hitting the gym just one hour a day. You have to sprinkle them throughout the day. That's the key. There you go. Recently, I invested in a bunch of stuff from a company. I'm trying to pull it up right now. And they make some products that are supposed to be, you know, ergonomic stuff basically.

Starting point is 00:13:45 And they have like pillows, but they have like a special chair pad. And then they have a back pad for your office chair. And I've been kind of, I noticed, you know, I was slumping and having all sorts of issues. And, you know, I just, I'd be tired and I'd be just humped over like a hunchback over the thing. And my back really started hurting me. And I started working out again. And for some reason, I would just get tired of sitting. My back would just be like, hey, we don't want to do this with you anymore, man.

Starting point is 00:14:15 We're sick of your stuff. And so I ordered a few of these things to try and focus in on it. And it's really improved me being able to sit and do my work and taking the pain away and everything else. I've been really impressed with it. Okay. Yeah. So I'm imagining that the cushion, the back cushion that you have,

Starting point is 00:14:36 it preserves your lumbar arch, which you need, right? So what happens is like if you don't have a supportive back rest on your chair, what's going to happen is you're going to either slouch and round your back, or some people have this tendency to overly exaggerate their arch, and that both of them result in muscle imbalances. And we call it as an anterior pelvic tilt in scientific terms, or a posterior pelvic tilt where either you have an excessive arch or you have a excessive rounding of your lower back and lumbar spine. And that leads to now,

Starting point is 00:15:21 this is all of this is happening in your core region, right? The area of our body that we call core and core is your foundation it holds your body up it it is holding your upper body structures like your head neck shoulders um right and chest and then it's also holding your lower body structures like your um thighs legs knees ankles all of that stuff now if there is a dysfunction there what's going to happen now your whole body is out of alignment it's almost like having a house right where the foundation isn't strong enough if this foundation isn't strong

Starting point is 00:15:59 your core is not in a good muscle balance, it's not strong enough. Well, the whole shack is going to fall. So it's important to have, you know, it's like the pig, you know, the whole thing falls down. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, having a chair with a backrest, or if you don't have a chair with a back support, what you can do is you can find like a small cushion or a pillow or even a towel. You can roll it and place it in the small of your back.

Starting point is 00:16:33 And that's going to make sure that you have that optimal spinal alignment, that lumbar curve that you need. So I have, it was Cushion Lab. I just found it here on my amazon uh stuff cushion lab and i don't i don't know if they're the best company in the world for this but they had something that was a extra dense lumbar pillow that sits behind my thing it's a patent ergonomic uh firm back support for lower back pain relief and then i also got a mat for the chair that I sit on that, uh, it's kind of interesting. It actually forces me to, um, not like I I'm six foot two. So I tend to slouch my legs, like I'll fold them over and, and sometimes I'll just crawl them under and I just kinda,

Starting point is 00:17:17 it ends up making me sit funny. And I even got one of those, um, little things that go into the chair that you put your feet up on from them. I bought like all their products. I kind of went a little out of control. And actually their pills really helped me in sleep too and sleeping in the bed. But I got one of the footrests for ergonomic under the desk and I got the chair pad and it was interesting. I had a chair pad before, but it was just kind of like a, I don't know, just a fluff pad, I guess. And so their chair pad actually kind of forces my legs to go forward like this. It's got some grooves in it and then it lets my spine sit down in the thing. And it's really made a difference in my life and me being able to work and, you know, being able

Starting point is 00:18:02 to sit up straight to the mic and really kind of think about my posture more. What are some ways that, how do we know or define proper posture? And how do we know if we're not posturing right? Like if you're sitting, you know, people are sitting listening right now going, I wonder if my posture sucks. How do we, how do we know? Yeah. So posture, you know, in general terms, it signifies how we position our bodies, like while we're sitting, standing, lying down, and even moving, because you're going to take that static posture with you when you're walking, running, walk, lie down in a way that our body alignment places the least amount of strain on our muscles and ligaments.

Starting point is 00:18:49 And it fights the gravity effectively. So gravity is working on our body structures as much as it works on the apples that are hanging on the tree. And we know that when the apple is ripe, it falls down from Newton's law, right? So the same way our musculoskeletal structures are facing gravity every moment, right? That you're standing up. So if, and we have an optimal postural alignment, we say that our body is facing the least amount of wear and tear due to the gravitational pull. So what does it look like? In scientific terms, we define posture as the ideal alignment of five landmarks of our body. And those are earlobe, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles aligned on a vertical

Starting point is 00:19:41 line when we look at the body in a sideways position. So if you were to ask one of your friends to take a picture of you in a lateral position or sideways, what we are going to try to notice is that your earlobes are in line with your shoulders. Shoulders are falling above your hips, hips over knees, and then ankles are under your knees. Right? So what happens when you're working on the computer or maybe you're reaching for the microphone? What happens? Here we are, now I'm exaggerating it on the screen and for the listeners, they can just listen to my cues,

Starting point is 00:20:18 is that our head goes forward because we are either trying to get a better look at the screen or reach for some kind of technological device right um and now our ear is going to be in front of our shoulder and when our ear is in front of our shoulder now these muscles in the back of our neck are tense and they're going to pull on our shoulder and our shoulder is going to round now your shoulders are in front of your hips and when once your hips go forward, then we know for sure that your knees and ankles are not going to be aligned. But you know what is important, and I want to emphasize over here, is that what we are looking for is not a perfect posture.

Starting point is 00:20:57 Because there is no ideal perfect posture out there. What we want for every human being, every person is to have their natural posture, which is unique to their body and minimize the effect of gravity on their body. And it really depends on many factors like your height, weight, the structure of your skeleton. Well, I'm very short. I'm like five, five. And I feel like you're tall. You just said you were, you're tall, right? Yeah. So the way my natural posture would look is very different than yours. So the landmarks we talked about are just general guidelines to find a comfortable and supportive posture. We are all just built differently. And what we need to find is a natural posture, which is comfortable

Starting point is 00:21:45 for us in which we can defy the gravitational pull effectively and optimally move without pain. And you mentioned the ergonomic setup that comes in very handy. You can go with any company that you want to use. I'm sure the one you're using sounds great. One of the things you can do for your chair height is to have a height adjustable chair, whichever company you're going with. As long as the chair height is adjustable, now you can really maneuver that chair and, you know, change the height and make sure that your feet are attached to the floor they're resting on the floor um and your hips are in line with your knees or knees are just slightly lower than your hips when you are in a seated position but there are several other ways we can improve our

Starting point is 00:22:38 posture too uh which are like taking movement breaks, you know, varying your position often. So what we have found in the scientific literature and through research is that sitting for more than 30 minutes on a stretch starts bringing those degenerative changes in our joints and our spine and our body. I'm going to have to get up during the middle of the show now. bringing those degenerative changes in our joints and our spine and our body. Yeah. I'm going to have to get up during the middle of the show now. I know. Because sometimes we do a whole hour.

Starting point is 00:23:11 Yeah. So hang on, people. I've got to stand up. You could be fidgeting. You could be fidgeting with your legs or arms. Oh, okay. So if you fidget, that helps? Yeah, that helps.

Starting point is 00:23:22 As long as you're not in that particular, you know, stiff posture, not moving at all. So, yeah, fidgeting helps too. I'll get one of those bicycle things under the desk. I've seen these things that you can have under the desk where you can be doing these little pedal things. Maybe that would be a good idea. Yeah, and I saw them last week at the airport. Oh, did you really? Yeah, I did.

Starting point is 00:23:44 And I was like, I was pleasantly surprised. And they help, by the way. If you want to invest in those, go for it. Really? Wow. Okay. You know, I might just do that. I sit so much at work, and we do all our things.

Starting point is 00:24:01 I do try and get up fairly often, um, and, and get breaks. But yeah, I recently invested in the, in the, in some of these ergonomic things. I might be buying me a new chair. Um, and,

Starting point is 00:24:14 uh, I, I really have been trying to pay attention to that slouching thing. And now, now you've given me the earlobe thing. I'm going to be even more insecure about it. Maybe I need one of those,

Starting point is 00:24:23 you know, you ever seen that they have these laser things that they use in engineering when they're like laying foundations or constructions or something it tells you when you're in line maybe i should have like a laser beam that's off the side of me and then every time i slide out of it it beeps or something or shocks me maybe that would be better yeah you know what uh i'm now that you're describing this i'm thinking of mission impossible movie whenever the laser is crossed don't move or you will die yeah exactly but you know i i don't mean to be mean but some when i go out in in the world and i'm sure there's probably some sort of health or spinal issues

Starting point is 00:25:05 maybe they've had but you'll see older people that are senior citizens and they're really hunched over and i've seen people hunched over they can so bad they can barely walk so bad they um i don't know how they walk actually um and you look at it and go holy holy crap, am I going to end up that way if I don't quit being a hunchback of Notre Dame here with the slumping that I do? And you're right. Like, I've been bad with my eyesight where sometimes I'll move the thing too far away, and then I'm like, what is going on there? What is that? And it's like, hey, blow the screen up, you know, and I've gotten better at doing the screen. At 55, you got the 55 eyes where you're just like what the hell is that about you're holding a

Starting point is 00:25:50 magnifying glasses on everything um but yeah i i don't want to become those people um i'm sure they're fine people but um i don't want to become the hunchback of notre dame when i'm 60 or 70 because it looks like it's probably too much at that point to turn back the wheels of time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad you brought this up that, you know, because a lot of my clients always blame poor posture on old age. But let me tell you, Chris, my experience with posture and old age has been very different so my dad's family is from India and they migrated to Pakistan after partition and whenever I was I would visit my great-grandmother who refused to sit in chairs because she never grew up with them like that wasn't a thing for her right I'm not sitting in these evil chairs we didn't have these when we grew up well that sounds

Starting point is 00:26:45 like me with kids and social media we didn't have phones i know exactly right because we we want to um adapt to the things that we are very used to of as we grew up and as an adult too we want to have that um so she used to sit in a deep squat or like kneeling position or even cross-legged position down on the floor when she was resting, doing household chores, washing dishes, cooking, laundry. I remember like eating dinner on the floor with my uncle's great uncle's aunts and my great grandmother and sitting in a deep squat while we are doing it. So, and if you see, you know, it's still a primary mode of sitting in many cultures around the world. If you travel to the streets of China or Indonesia, you'll notice that people are selling food on the street, waiting for buses in a low squat position. And what does that position look like?

Starting point is 00:27:44 Where your hips are dropped below your knees and your hips are nearly touching the ground while keeping the spine extended to get into this resting position, right? So my grandmother could squat down till she was 98. No worries there. Like she had no issues. She had no musculoskeletal issues at all. She, yeah. And she would, you know, and the thing about this resting position, the squat or kneeling position on the floor is every time you get down, you have to get off, right? So you're coming off of the ground and now you're activating all of these muscles in

Starting point is 00:28:21 your body, which you wouldn't do when you're in a chair, right? So I always share this story with my clients, and it's in my book too, because I'm like, no, it's not the old age. Honestly, it's the way we are living our lives today. And one of the reasons is that in much of the industrialized world, chairs have replaced this deep squat as the primary resting mode. And we sit in the office chairs, dining chairs, commute in car seats, get entertained on couches, right? So our bodies have totally forgotten how to get into a deep squat. Our functional ability to sit and stand off the floor is directly related to the flexibility of our muscles, the mobility of our body. And the more flexible you are, the less muscle imbalances you have, the easier it is to

Starting point is 00:29:17 keep your natural posture. And finding your natural posture can help you live a longer and fully functional life. So, you know, longevity is actually related to posture. Yeah, it is. Yeah. So there is a test that can predict our lifespan based on our mobility. Yes, there is. Want to hear it? I don't know, man. It might come out that I'm going to die in five years.

Starting point is 00:29:47 Go ahead and tell us. Yes. A Brazilian physician, Claudio Aroujo, and his colleagues developed a sit-to-rise test. And all this test requires is to go from a standing position to a cross-legged seated position on the ground. So here's how you do it. Hang on the ground so here's how you do it hang on let me tell you how you do it so to perform this test you start in a standing position and your starting score is 10 points and you cross your feet um you know you could cross right over left or left over right depending on whichever side is dominant for you and then you lower into a seated position on the floor without touching your body floor or wall so you can't

Starting point is 00:30:30 you can't have any kind of support that's that's the trick right there i'm gonna die next year i can see it now anytime you touch an object you lose a a point. And if you lose balance, like if you're very wobbly, you lose half a point. Then you try to stand back up the same way you sat down. Oh, now you want that too? I mean, the going down part's easier. Yeah, I think going down is easier

Starting point is 00:30:58 for sure. So when I'm coming back up, are my knees still crossed? So I've got to like do the whole. Yeah. Yeah. So your ankles are still crossed. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:10 Wow. And so that does it, if I do that, how long am I going to live to? Is there like a guarantee with this? So you can look up at the final score and how, you know, the range of the score determines your lifespan. But the score of 10 between 8 and 10 means that you have really good mobility and you know you're fine like you don't your lifespan would be long but each point decreases your lifespan and it might sound like a sketchy assessment of course but it's a good indicator of strength balance and flexibility which are

Starting point is 00:31:46 necessary for good posture and all the skills that we need for a more functional life so you know when we get old we don't fall and result and have like a hip fracture which which is pretty which is not good and old usually that usually is a death knell if you have that when you're old it's pretty much it can kill you it's just it's because you're bedridden yeah yeah and you can't move yeah yeah uh you know did you ever see the movie the the show the blue blue zones on on netflix i'm familiar with the blue zones um but i haven't seen the show tell me about it the show's pretty cool and it talks about this agility thing like it goes basically what they did is they went and found clusters of

Starting point is 00:32:39 centurions uh people who live to 100 and plus and then what they did is they found where they were clustered so they're like okay so what's going on in that culture what's going on in that area with those people where they have this cluster of centurions centurions um and all these people live in 100 what are they eating what are they doing and it's a great show you should watch it's on netflix and what they found what this guy found in studying this is sometimes it's what they eat sometimes it's their outlook on life uh but a lot of times it's what you've just described the ability to uh you know exercise and these people are kind of living like old world lives, you know, and there's like guys in there that are 100 years old

Starting point is 00:33:28 and they still have the agileness. You know, they're out farming. They're out riding horses. They're out doing stuff. And they have that ability, like you said, with sitting and going up and down. A lot of the Japanese folks have that where they sleep on mats. They don't sleep on thick mattresses like we do. They sleep on the ground.

Starting point is 00:33:52 They sit on the ground, like you mentioned, and then they get up. And part of it is that agility thing that they found is a key factor in them living to 100. So you're right on the pulse of it, Evanelli, according to that show. Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. And I'm really interested in looking it up now. But I want to say something. I have a client.

Starting point is 00:34:15 She's 95. And she can hold a plank for three minutes straight. I'm not kidding. 95? Yeah. And I asked her, what's the secret? And she's like, well, i have been active all my life you know i i haven't had well and after that i asked her she never had a desk job she was a nurse so she always moves on her feet yeah yeah and that's what they found. It's the always being moving. Like, these people don't have to go to the gym because they're always moving all day long.

Starting point is 00:34:50 Like, they burn. And then that's the other thing. They don't get over fat like we do because they're burning calories just going about their day. You know, gardening and going to the local shop or whatever and just doing their stuff about their day. And they're constantly sitting on the floor, getting up. They're not sitting on lazy boy recliners like we are all day long. Exactly. You nailed it.

Starting point is 00:35:16 You nailed it right there. So there are many agricultural cultures still in the world, just like you're talking about the blue zones, who don't report having any musculoskeletal pain. According to researchers, some of the indigenous tribes that we have studied, they report having up to like 70% lower rate of back pain. And even one of the tribes in Central India reports never experiencing it. You know, the researchers went down there and they're like, okay, so, you know, do you feel pain in your lower back, in your hip region?

Starting point is 00:35:49 And they're like, what are you talking about? What is that? We're fine. Right? We're fine. So what they found was that the spinal discs and the spines of these people, they show no sign of degeneration. Now compare it to the modern death-bound cultures

Starting point is 00:36:05 like the one we live in. We see that the back pain affects 653 million people globally, annually, like every year. And then it costs us, the US economy, it costs us $60 billion annually in health care. And this is just the health care cost we're not talking about the lost wages or cost of absenteeism or presenteeism at work this is just the health care cost that we are trying to um cover the back pain with so there's such a vast gap in back pain rates between technological and agricultural cultures because we are glued to our chairs. Sitting in one position, you know, like office chair, is one of the most critical postural problems, I think, that is affecting our society at this time.

Starting point is 00:36:54 I'm just going to put a picture of your book on my desktop Windows background just to remind me. Hey, sit up, stupid. Oh, I'm glad you said that. Well, maybe it would be a good prompt for you to just adjust your posture every now and then. That laser shock system. And then move. Move too.

Starting point is 00:37:13 You know, every 30 minutes, fidget or move. Because really, if we are holding our body in one position for a very long time, it's going to lead to those tight muscles in our back, which leads to lower back pain, and it creates a perfect storm of muscle tension. It also decreases our muscle activity, which is not good. That means that your muscles are going to get weaker over time. So, you know, I give this example to my clients, and guess what they say? They are always like, oh, I can't walk like those tribal people. Maybe they walk like a marathon distance every day. And of course, I can go back to that lifestyle. But guess what?

Starting point is 00:37:56 Researchers went out there and they have studied many of these tribes. And what they found was very alarming because actually they are active, of course, more than us, but not as active as we think. They're not walking marathon distance, not all of these tribes. So in particular, I want to talk about this research that was conducted by University of Southern California scientists. And this studied the Hadza tribe, which is a group of Tanzanian hunter-gatherers. It's one of the last hunter-gatherers tribes on this planet. And what they found was that Hadza people had the similar periods of inactivity as us, you know, desk mount professionals.

Starting point is 00:38:44 But what they did different was that they varied their positions often and their resting position their resting posture required their muscles to maintain light levels of activity what are those positions we talked about it before but let me just share again those are like floor squat or kneeling on the floor because your muscles are active in those positions. Also, when you get down and get up off the ground, you're taking your joints from that full range of motion. When you're seated in a chair, your hip and knee joint, for example, is bent at 90 degrees, which is an incomplete range of motion for your hip and knee joint, which leads to these tight muscles on the front of our body and weak muscles

Starting point is 00:39:31 in the back of our body, which is called a muscular imbalance or asymmetry. So in that way, all sitting positions aren't equal in terms of their effect on our bodies and our health. So it's important to change your sitting position every 30 to 40 minutes, you know, whatever you can do as much as you can do, of course, as much as you can move. And also you can set up a floor desk instantly on carpet or rug in your home office. Again, up to you how how much how often you want to go there but pick any floor desk higher than 16 inches and about 36 inches in length it would give you enough space i gotta get a floor desk now yeah yeah you know i i what do you think about this you know what's really funny is i have two very expensive uh standing desks where it's got the motors on them that will take it up and down.

Starting point is 00:40:26 And I'm supposed to be using them. And I've gotten, I just forget they're here. In fact, I've forgotten for the longest time. And you just reminded me that I have a, you know, I can sit here and crank up the motor. Do you recommend floor desks or these standing desks where you can go up and down? Yes and no. So standing desks are good because, of course, it allows you to change your position often. And you can have the same setup, right?

Starting point is 00:40:54 And you can drop it down and go into a seated position for 30 to 40 minutes and then switch the position and come into a standing position. But I wouldn't recommend using the standing desk all day long. So a lot of people come to me with plantar fasciitis or varicose veins after using the standing desk for a while, because now they're standing for eight to 10 hours, again, not changing their positions often enough. So, you know, standing desk does give you the ability to change your body position, but you have to remember to, you know, switch your body position, go into a seated position and then come back into a standing position. Also, you need to have a cushioned mat underneath your feet when you're standing

Starting point is 00:41:42 because if you stand barefoot on a hardwood floor or tiled floor that's going to put a lot of stress on your feet and plantar fasciitis is a result of that yeah i've really found you know if you stand for something having a pattern there can make like all the difference in the world. Well, this has been super insightful. I mean, there's one last piece I want to get in here. You talk about how it can impact our breathing and improve breathing patterns. Why is that important for us? I imagine breath is, I've heard, you know, sometimes you can, you know, you learn, you can lose better weight, you know, your breathing of course affects so many things.

Starting point is 00:42:23 Why is posture important in breathing? Yeah, so your breathing mechanics change when you're hunched over. When you're hunched over, you are taking mostly shallow breaths that stop right here in the chest cavity. And when we take shallow breaths, we use our upper body muscles, which are mostly like our muscles here and shoulders and chest muscles. The overactivity of these muscles is one of the reasons for the distorted desk bound posture. And so for better posture, we want to aim for slow diaphragmatic breathing. But with this hunched over posture, what's happening is we are compressing all the organs in our abdominal region. And one of the organs, which is our breathing organ, breathing muscle, which is diaphragm, lies right in there. So if you're up rich,

Starting point is 00:43:22 a little exercise here for your listeners who are driving or operating machinery, they can do this later. If you place your fingertips under your ribs, your last rib and cough out, you'll feel the diaphragm pressing into your fingers. So that muscle needs to expand in a three-dimensional way. However, when you are sitting with this hunched over posture, it can't expand fully. And when it can't expand fully, well, it restricts your breathing. Yep, yep. Your lung capacity goes down by up to 30%. So you are now breathing 30% less oxygen with each breath

Starting point is 00:44:04 because of your posture. Also, when we allow it to expand in a three-dimensional way, which could be in a standing position or if you are lying down on a mat with your back on the mat, it really massages your lower back vertebrae. It elongates the spine with each breath and increases the space between the joints, reinforces the spine's natural curves. And that's what we want our breathing to do for us. Every single breath we take, we take 22,000 breaths a day. We have 22,000 chances to really elongate our spine. But unfortunately, with this chair sitting and hunched over sitting that we are practicing it's just not happening wow you give me a whole new workout and a reminder of that

Starting point is 00:44:51 sting song every breath you take um there you go uh wow i mean i'm gonna create uh i'm gonna basically create like a laser system and it's gonna have have like a box that creates a box around my head that anytime i leave that area it'll shock me or i don't know uh give me screaming alarms you know with the red lights just like uh just like the mission impossible thing there and then uh and then i'm gonna have i don't know probably some coming down to make sure i didn't do the thing and then uh i don't know i I'll just get one of those military marine instructors who are like, breathe, bitch, breathe!

Starting point is 00:45:29 Something like that, maybe. You know what you can do? One more thing you can do? You can foam roll. Foam roll? Yeah! Foam rolling is like a fantastic exercise, which is commonly used for self-muscle release. And it is like a deep

Starting point is 00:45:46 tissue massage for your muscles. And it's great for working, you know, your tight muscles that may be causing that problem, joint problem and mobility issues. So it is used to break down the scar tissue that we develop because of, yeah, because of the way we hold our bodies. So you can, and it also gets into the fascia, which is like a soft tissue. And it's supposed to connect your muscles together. And it's supposed to be very elastic. But what happens is when we hold our bodies in this one position, which is a seated hunched over position, it loses its elasticity. So yeah, so when you foam roll, either with a foam

Starting point is 00:46:28 roller, or you can use like a tennis ball or lacrosse ball to do it, depending on how much pressure you want, it can be a little painful the first time you do it. But then your body, you know, as you start breaking those adhesions, it starts getting easier. You know, the fascia becomes less tight and less stiff, and then you don't have that restricted movement patterns, and you can get rid of the pain. I need better fascia. So are there any products that you recommend for ergonomic stuff or these foam rollers? I just Googled on Amazon and it looks like there's 500 versions of this. Yeah. So you can find the ergonomic resources at the end of my book, or there is an ergonomic resource guide on my website too, that you can download. But honestly,

Starting point is 00:47:18 any company works. It's not about which company you go with with it's about if you are using it for the right functionality if you're using it properly or not there you go well this has been super insightful now now you've even taken me next level because i've been like i said i've been buying these ergonomic it's all this foamy crap and stuff like this and it actually has been helping me i've actually been feeling really better my back pain went away away. But, you know, I need to do more because I, you know, I find myself always slouching throughout the day and, you know, my breathing is low and sometimes I just don't feel good, I'm sure. So a lot of this, you know, it really impacts your long-term health overall. Yeah. So it really, as we talked about, it boosts your breathing. It also increases your metabolic rate because, again, when we are compressing our organs, we are also compressing our gastrointestinal tract, which really slows down our metabolic rate.

Starting point is 00:48:16 So 30 minutes of consecutive sitting, it leads to 90% slower metabolic rate just after 30 minutes. Yeah, yeah. Why do you get my metabolism up? I need that. 90% slower metabolic rate just after 30 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. I need to get my metabolism up. I need that. Holy crap. I'm always fighting my stupid metabolism. It's the most annoying thing ever, man.

Starting point is 00:48:36 Yeah. So change positions. And also our mental health is connected to this because when we are hunched over, what we see is that the physiologic changes that are happening in your body, your breathing rate increases because of that shallow breathing. Your heart rate goes up. You have a higher blood pressure and your resting system shuts down and your sympathetic system, which is your fight or flight mode, you go into that continuously while you're working in a hunched over posture. So it's important to make sure that, you know, you take those breathing breaks, you take those movement breaks so that you can go and activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest system. And this way, you will have lower stress levels. You will have higher confidence, which is such an important thing and related to our leadership skills, right? So if you want to step into a better leader, the great leader that you're meant to be, all you need to do is to improve your posture.

Starting point is 00:49:47 Wow. Yeah. It was that easy. You're right. You know, I mean, people do notice how your posture is when you walk into a room, when you command, when you speak, when you do stuff, posture is everything. You know, if you're just slumped over and you look like the hunchback of Donard Dame, it's probably not going to work.

Starting point is 00:50:03 So this has been deeply insightful, Aisha. Give us your final thoughts as we go out pitch out and dot coms where people can find you on the interwebs yeah so people can find me on isha tahir.com um all my programs are based on strengthening the proper postural muscles and addressing the muscle imbalances that we see in the desk-bound professionals. The foundation of a good posture is having a body that can support it. So my book, Unhunched, Discover Wellness Through Posture, it offers a complete 15-minute-a-day program with videos to address muscle imbalances and postural issues. And honestly, many people are just suffering needlessly. And our younger generation is getting to answer any kind of queries that people have. So, you know, your listeners can send the questions to me.

Starting point is 00:51:11 And you have the power to improve your posture. You can just build it with just 15 minutes a day. Change your just small habits, like micro habits that you can insert during your day, which can improve your posture, enhance your physical and emotional health, and lead you to have a balanced body for life. There you go. And it makes all the difference. You don't want to be that person with the hunchback sort of thing when you're old. I mean, some of those are really painful and maybe some people had some real spinal stenosis or meningitis or something that contributed to it, but it just doesn't look fun at all.

Starting point is 00:51:52 And so I feel for those people, and I don't want to be like that when I'm old. I have enough hard enough time walking around now without being hunched over. So there you go. Well, thank you very much for sharing all your wonderful knowledge on the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It was so fun chatting with you. It was.

Starting point is 00:52:11 A lot of fun there. So order up the book wherever fine books are sold, folks. Remember, stay out of these alleyway bookstores because, you know, you could get mugged in there. The book is called Unhunched, Discover Wellness Through Posture, May 16, 2023 uh and thanks for tuning in without you we couldn't do it because otherwise we'd just be talking to ourselves which is what i do when i'm not on the show talking to me and my six other personalities

Starting point is 00:52:35 uh and the one that says kill kill kill all the time the judge says i can't listen to anymore so there's that uh guys go to goodreads.com for it says Christmas. LinkedIn.com for it says Christmas. YouTube.com for it says Christmas. And Christmas, one of the tickety-tockety. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time while I go talk to myself. Thanks for tuning in, everyone.

The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Unhunched: Discover Wellness Through Posture by Aesha Tahir

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