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Welcome to Mom Sprain is a Coffee Stain, the only podcast clinically proven to raise your blood pressure and your dopamine. I'm Kayla, Millennial Mom, current chaos coordinator of two spoiled giants who think budget is a TikTok sound.

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And I'm Crystal, current taxi cab driver to one teen and chaos coordinator to the other.

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In this episode, Crystal and I had the opportunity to talk with Kenneth Minch. Ken is the founder of the Minch Method Body Work, a central Texas practice serving athletes, adults, children, and infants. And yes, even dogs. He is also the author of Every Baby Hurts, a book that challenges one of parenting's most common assumptions that babies cry because they are simply colicky or fussy. We will let Ken explain why that assumption could be wrong. We would like to issue a warning to the audience.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

Please do not attempt any exercises, movements, or stretches discussed in this episode at home. Ken is certified, and we suggest you speak with your doctor or a certified official if you would like to try anything discussed in this episode. Well, let's jump on in. Alright, mom's brain is a coffee stain. Listeners, we have Ken Minch on today's episode. We're going to talk about some really exciting things. Ken is the founder of Minch Method Body Work, a central Texas practice serving athletes, adults, children, infants, and even dogs. His approach combines deep tissue work, myrofacial release, trigger point therapy, and guided range of motion to locate and release the fascial and muscular restrictions that keep pain returning. The average client visit count in 2023 was 2.5 because the goal is to solve the problem, not create dependence. He is also the author of Every Baby Hurts, a book that challenges one of parenting's most common assumptions that babies cry because they are simply colicky or fussy. Ken argues that many infants are signaling physical tension and restriction that began before birth. And he introduces the concept of pre-birth postural deficits as a framework for understanding how fetal positioning may contribute to later discomfort and movement limitations. Welcome to the show, Ken. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I'm doing great. I'm very glad to be here.

SPEAKER_04 2:40

Awesome. We are super glad to have you. We're really excited. Um, we think that uh the topics that we're gonna discuss with you is something that a lot of parents um don't really think about, right? Because it's not really something that we're taught, at least not our generation. So I think it's something that could be really informational and exciting to talk about. Um, let's start with your book. Your book opens with a pretty provocative idea, right? Babies cry for a reason and we've been calling it normal. So after more than 30 years of working with patients, what led you to believe we may be misunderstanding some infant crying?

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Well, the the primary thing, and just good morning to everybody who's listening. I I I didn't know this either. Like, I have four children, and I was sleep deprived with for two years with each one of them, where I would get two to three hours of sleep a night. That was it. I actually fell asleep standing up talking to my supervisor on a construction job when I was an industrial electrician, and my knees buckled, my eyes rolled back in the back of my head, and I and he said, What just happened? I said, I just fell asleep. He said, What's going on? I said, I have a two-month-old at home. He said, Be careful around the heavy machinery, get back to work. Anyway, that's that was my reality. I I had I had babies that we couldn't put down. Uh, they they were they were fussy, they were all of it, and it's like we were just not getting any sleep. And so I didn't know. And and so I I I you know there's there's no reason to believe that you should have known this information because look, every generation since Adam and Eve, b people have swaddled babies. Now, why would they swaddle a baby if you could just lie them down on their back and they'd be comfortable and fall asleep? Well, you couldn't because of the position that they were in the womb. And so why did you every culture in the world, in the history of the world, has swaddled babies at night so that they could sleep uh better, so the parents could sleep better. So nobody knows this. And uh so here's how this this revelation uh came about. Uh I was my my oldest daughter, Lauren, had her first child, uh his name's uh Austin, and from the time he left the womb, he was screaming. And then like constantly this baby was crying, especially when they tried to change his diaper. It was like they were ripping his face off when that was happening. And so the baby was always screaming. In the hospital, Lauren asked, Is he okay? And they said, Oh yeah, this is normal. Right? So remember that when we go to the story of my her second job. Anyway, he was born, he was having all these problems. I lived in Austin, she lived in Baton Rouge. It was about three weeks until I got there so that I could meet my grandson. And um, I mean, they changed the diaper and it sounded like it was painful. And I was like, what's going on? And so we we went through this whole thing about how, you know, what could be the problem. We couldn't figure anything out. So the very next morning, 5:30 in the morning, I was awakened by these very familiar screams, and it occurred to me that they were pulling his legs out, and so his hip flexors, which are the iliacus and psoas muscles that attach to the front of the hips and the spine uh and to the upper part of the femur, they, you know, for an adult, what they do is they pick their legs up. Well, for a baby, they do too. But if they're always bunched up, and I thought, well, they've been crunched up in the fetal position, so they're probably shorter than the rest of the stuff. I think I can help him. So I walked in and told her, and she said, When do you want to get started? I said, uh, later this morning. So at 11:30 in the morning or thereabouts, I I put Austin in my lap um with his legs facing me. And I'll I'll describe how this works as I'm going on. So any muscle that's the proper length, you can push through it to the bone with no pain. That's how your body works. It's really meant for pleasure, not for pain. Any muscle that's tight when you push into it will hurt. Any muscle that you push into that's really tight will really hurt. So it's not the amount of pressure that you're really dealing with, is if you get on the right spot on a muscle that's really tight, it's gonna really hurt. Now, the goal of doing that isn't to hurt someone, especially a baby, especially an adult, doesn't matter. But the goal is to block blood supply to that muscle temporarily so it can't get oxygen, so it can't breathe, so it can't contract. It's like you're cutting off its oxygen supply, so it basically passes out for a little bit. That's your body's defense mechanism against being hurt if it moves too quickly through a range of motion, which, by the way, is the reason why people have pain. All of your listeners, if you understand this, you're the reason you have pain is because your body's trying to slow you down so that you don't tear or break something if you move too quickly. And that's because if the muscle's tight and contracted, you need to move through a range of motion. You might tear the tendon, you might tear, you break the bone that is attached to, you might do some real damage. So your body's giving you the signals to slow you down so that you don't tear and break stuff. That's it. That's what your body's doing. It's really just protecting you. So I'm I'm I'm putting my left hand in uh Austin's left hip flexor and just gently found the spot and the the baby starts wailing. And I'm like, okay, here we go. This is probably the issue. And so then what you do is you shorten the muscles so you can get into it deeper, shorten, shorten, shorten, and you feel the muscle soften. And then once it softens, then you can start slowly moving the the limb, so his left leg in this case, through ranges of motion that it would normally be going through. And before long, what happens is you've lengthened the muscle and the fascial sheath that were restricted before until it's the proper length. It's kind of like taking bunched up cellophane that's all watted up, and you pull it back into its original shape. When that happens, the pain is not temporarily gone, it's gone. And the reason is there's no longer the thing that's causing the pain. It's it's literally gone. So the the tight, your body is intelligent enough to know that that muscle or a muscle or or the fascial sheath that covers that muscle is too short and tight and contracted. If they move too quickly, it's going to tear a break. So because that that tissue is now the proper length and the way it was intended to be, there's no pain whatsoever. And then we went to the the opposite hip and did the same thing, and there was zero reaction. And I said, that's weird. And my daughter said, No, no, no, her name is Lauren. She said, Dad, every single sonogram that came back when we were when when throughout the pregnancy, his left foot was by his left ear. So his leg was pulled all the way up there, the entire pregnancy, and the right leg was down a lot further. So it was putting, it was shortening the left side way more than the right side. And so the right side had no pain whatsoever. And I went, huh, interesting. Okay. So then we got on his lumbar spine, his low back, the quadratus lumborum muscles in the back, and he squalled like we were just kind of ripping his face off. And so we we we moved very lightly, honestly. This is not a lot of pressure. And you're moving him side to side and rotating his hips forward and backwards. And after a while, that completely let go. And then we moved, we did some lower extremity stuff that wasn't nearly as bad as everything else. And then we got on his neck and it and he squalled like it was a you know a real issue. But his head was cocked backwards and to the side when he was in the womb, almost laying at a 90-degree angle. So you can understand why his neck would be really tight. This was in the saunogram. And so we got that completely opened up, and then when we did, he fell asleep with his arms and legs completely stretched out, and he was snoring. So he's just comfortable now for the first time in his three-week, you know, out-of-room uh uh existence. And and so that was look, it was interesting because it was a small baby, it was the first infant that I'd worked on. Um and so that was interesting, but it wasn't like he had a problem and I fixed it, and so that was that was interesting, but it it wasn't to me ground shaking.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Twenty months later, my granddaughter was born, same daughter. Um, by the way, neither of these, neither of these babies had issues with um uh like long protracted um uh labors or anything like that. My daughter basically had been getting this work done forever. And so her time of delivery from transition to birth was less than an hour with each baby.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

And there was no forceps, there were no suction, there was no turning, there was this baby the Cala, my granddaughter, literally fell out of uh Lauren when she was when she was standing up and kind of bent forward, and the sh she said, I feel something. Uh and the nurse looked across the room, grabbed one of those sterile pads, ran, slid across the floor, and caught Cala before she hit the ground.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

That was how easy the delivery was. And this was like I said, this was probably about 45 minutes after transition started. And so there's there's no birth comp, you know, nothing going on. Anyway, she comes out and she never cries. She, you know, and and and so I was there either that day or the next day, and and anyway, we're we're noticing just how perfect this baby is. She's not crying, she's not flussing, she's like smiling, she's cooing, she's doing everything you'd want a baby to do. And you can hold her, it's no big deal, no crying, nothing. And my daughter asked the question, Is she okay? And they said, What do you mean? Well, she's not crying. And they said, Well, that's normal. Okay, so go back to Austin. He's crying all the time. They said, Yeah, he's fine, that's normal. And then the baby's not crying at all. And they said, It's fine, that's normal. Well, in the history of babies being born, this is like billions and millions of babies that have been born, correct? So every condition that they would come out with is considered normal. As I guess you'd expect it should be. Now, the question I have for the audience is, do you want normal for your baby or do you want optimal?

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

And and what we've been given is, nope, it's normal, it's fine. And so my anyway, so she's born, and I'm we're discussing just how calm and everything she is. And and my daughter looks at me, Lauren, looks at me, and she goes, uh, Dad, when are you gonna work on her? And I looked at her cock eye, I was like, what are you talking about? There's nothing wrong with this baby. I work on broken things, I work on crying things, on pain syndromes and stuff. And and she said, Yeah, I I get all of that. She goes, but but when are you gonna work on her? And I realized I'd asked the wrong question. I said, I said, okay, Lauren, I said, when would you like me to work on her? That was the right question. She said, tomorrow. And I went, All right, held my hands up. It's like, you know, I don't think we're gonna find anything. This is gonna be a big nothing burger, but you know, I'll I'll pacify you and we'll do it. The reason that she I asked her later, why did you ask me to work on her that soon? And she said, I couldn't go through what I'd been through with Austin, who is now 20 months old, a toddler running around, and have the same thing happen with Cala because I can't handle it. And she said I was being overly cautious. I wanted to make sure and everything else. I said, okay. So anyway, I said, she she said she wanted me to work on her the next day. And I said, fine. So the next morning, uh, put her in my lap, feet facing me, put my left hand in her left hip flexor, and pushed into it, and she lost her freaking mind. It was the first time we either one of us saw her cry. And I was floored, and I and I was like, okay, so we did the same treatment on that hip, and then it opened up and she was a happy baby again. Then I got my hand and her right hand into her right hip flexor, and she again lost her mind. And I now really floored because it was twice as much issues, twice as many issues as as Austin had at this point. So I got that hip all lengthened and moved, and now the leg is extending and contracting through the full range motion. And then uh got on her low back. Her low back was worse than both hip flexors. So she's just wailing. Now it turns out that Callao was folded up like a clamshell inside the womb most of the most of the pregnancy, and her head was cocked one way and backwards. And so then when I got on her neck, and again, this is very light pressure. You guys, I don't want you to think that we're in there and just hammering these these babies or adults for that matter. We're holding the amount of pressure that it takes to, you know, when you're sitting in a chair with an armrest on it, like two armrests, and you just lay your hands on the armrest or your arm on the armrest, and then eventually your hands start to go numb. Well, that's how much pressure that you actually need to just block blood supply. So we realize that we only use the pressure that we need to block the blood supply so that it will turn off the body's defense mechanism, and then we can lengthen a tissue. Anyway, so we get on the neck and we and we get that completely opened up. And then what happened was the same thing that Austin did. Her arms and legs are completely stretched out, and and in a way that would indicate there's no issues whatsoever. And then her she and she was snoring. And I looked at, I looked at Kala, I looked at Lauren, and I looked it back at Kella and I said, you know what, Lauren? If this baby hurts, every baby hurts. And now, background story. Several years earlier, I was reading a book by Leo Tolstoy. It was called A Confession and Other Religious Writings. This guy, I don't know if you know anything about Leo, one of the most brilliant minds in history. He he wrote things about the human condition, about politics, about uh religion, about about the the uh many things medical, and and just thought, man, this guy writes so eloquently, and he's so articulate, and he's so smart. I said, and but he's just one of many uh uh authors that have thought of and written about everything. And I thought, you know what, there's probably not even an original thought left. There's probably no original thoughts left, everything is is has been thought of, and then it occurred to me, and this is when I get little downloads, it occurred to me that maybe they everything hadn't been thought of. And at the moment I said no, and then I then when I realized that, then I prayed that I I could have at least one original thought before they throw dirt in my face so that I can somehow help humanity with with something. Yeah, and so the the the the real anyway, I said every baby if that baby hurts, every baby hurts. My mind was flooded. It was almost like if you've seen a movie and somebody has this huge download of information all at once. That's what's going on in my brain. And the very first thought that came to me was that a very clear thought was babies that are shaken because parents are so frustrated and so they're they just the baby cried again, it was asleep, and they're trying to put it down, and they lay it down just so gingerly, and as soon as they get it on its back, it it just immediately starts crying again. Some of these parents are working two to three shifts a day, and they they had time for just an hour nap, and then they now they realize they weren't even gonna get that before they had to go back to their next shift, and and then they pick the baby up and they start shaking it. Like, what is wrong with you? Because the list that we're given as parents is feed them, burp them, change the diaper. Feed them, change them, burp the diaper. I mean, look, this is the list that I got, and so we were doing all of that and none of it worked. And I understand the frustration. I understand, like, if a baby is is tactile defensive and the mom feels like the baby doesn't love them because it doesn't want to be held, it doesn't want to be comfortable. Well, every time that they pick it up, it hurts when they're trying to hold the baby against them. All of the anterior muscles on the body are tight and contracted. So their their shoulders and their and their hips and their legs and their neck and everything, and they're trying to hold them, and the baby pushes back. And parents start believing that that baby doesn't love them and they don't care about them, and they're just not connecting. And so that many times fractures the the bond between the parent and the baby. That that is a very substantial uh negative response to everything that they thought would be uh a part of their their daily life, this this bond and and this this loving. And so then when they don't get that, they start to separate or pull back from the baby because they don't want like. Like, if you've ever been in a relationship and you love this person so much, and then they start pulling back and they don't return that affection, you start pulling back your affection as well. It's just a normal human response, even if it's a baby. And so I want parents out there to understand this is not the problem. The problem is that whatever you're doing is uncomfortable to the baby because of how tight and contracted their muscles are in the womb. So I that was the first clear thought was the number of babies that are shaken. I mean, there's the shaking baby foundation, which is put in place to try to keep people from harming their child. And so one of the things they say is, well, the baby's not really in, it's not in pain. It's just it is a normal phase the babies go through, they'll get through it. Here's one of the best things you can do instead of shaking them or handling them too roughly, you put them gently in the bed, you you turn the light off, you close the door, and just let them cry.

SPEAKER_02 23:03

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

So now, if the baby's in pain, and then you put them in a room by themselves and turn the light off, they in my opinion, feel abandoned and then they're left alone in pain to suffer through this until they finally fall asleep. Now, there are some very, there's some very negative consequences to that, to that behavior, like sleep training and all of that. And uh the the many of the studies are cited in the book about how how that could cause serious issues with um bonding and all that type of thing. So anyway, I realized when I said, if that baby hurts, every baby hurts, that that was the answer to that prayer. It was an original thought. And the proof of that that I've talked about before was that humans have swaddled babies. And the the common reason that we do this today, the the explanation is it makes them feel more secure, it makes them more comfortable and all. But what are they doing? They're shortening the muscles back to the position they were in the womb, so they're not pulling at the attachments. If every listener would do this, if they with their hands just grabbed like a little bit of hair on either side of their by their temples, and they start pulling on it until it's uncomfortable or slightly uncomfortable, and then try to turn your head up or down or anything else. Now the the hands and the arms that are the muscles that are pulling on the tendons that are pulling on a bone. That is what happens when muscles are tight and contracted and you try to move. All right, that's uncomfortable. That's pain. If you move really quickly, your hair will tear out. Right? So that's the analogy, the best analogy, and that's every joint in your body is operates under the same uh uh principles as that. So if you just let go of your hair now and move your head, now you can move it through a much bigger range of motion with no pain. So that's the principle that we work with with our treatment techniques. It's to lengthen the muscle and the fascial sheath that holds every muscle in a certain position. And you can't lengthen the muscle and you can't lengthen the fascial sheath by just rubbing on it a little bit. That's not going to do anything to lengthen those tissues, but this does because once you get them through the range motion that they're supposed to be and there's no pain, you've now just opened that joint up to have more blood supply getting to and from those areas so they can start feeding it with the nutrients it needs to actually develop it and to heal things. It also increases range motion. So now, if you apply this to the whole body, the the baby or the person has the ability to move through full ranges of motion and start gaining strength and stamina through those ranges of motion. Now, this is particularly important for babies, and here's the reason why. Babies form more neuropathways in the first two years of life than they'll ever form, and it's the foundation for their intellect. And wherever that lands, their intellect will grow up from there. Now, those neuropathways are being formed while the baby is in constant pain. All right. Think about the last time you had the flu. You had body aches and pains from your head to your feet, and you just couldn't function, and then you had all this other stuff, the fever and all the other things. And and the the problem is that if a baby, like you have a job, you have a schedule, we had a schedule to meet at nine o'clock this morning, and so you had to prepare for that, and you had all these things that you had to do. Babies don't have a schedule, they don't have any of that. What they have is just how they feel in the moment, and if they're in pain, that's what their focus is. It's not the what mom's saying, it's not birds singing, it's not the the music playing in the background, it's not, you know, the the any of all of that input is secondary to the pain that they're feeling. Human brains, they say, have developed to about 20 to 30 percent of the brain's capacity. Okay. 70% to 75 or 80% of the time the baby is in is focused on the pain, they can't focus on everything else around them. What happens when you take the pain away from them completely? Now they can focus on mom, on dad, on their grandma, grandpa, whoever's taking care of them, what they're saying, what they're doing. They babies start tracking uh conversations, they start tracking faces, they start seeing the ceiling fan move, they start, if you take them outside, they see the branches uh blowing in the wind. They they start taking in far more information at a much earlier age than they would otherwise. And and so instead of their foundation, I'm holding my hands about a foot apart, it instead of their foundation being this big and their intellect rolling up from that, and I'm going up like diagonally up into this space, then what if, what if they're completely pain-free from in the first days or weeks of life, what happens to that foundation? It actually broadens. Now my arms are about three feet apart, and then their intellect grows up from there. And so, what does that look like in a fully grown human? We don't know the answer to that because nobody's ever seen this before. And so, but what we have seen, and I'll just give you a couple of examples. Tell me if I'm talking too much because I have so much information.

SPEAKER_04 29:17

Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

Okay, so what we have seen is I had a client of mine that I'd been working with since college. He was a college baseball player, kept him going and getting over injuries for the longest time. He became an EMT in Houston, and his his two sons were both born um during that time. And so he drove from Houston to Austin to get this work done on his sons. After 13 months, his first son started eating exclusively with a fork and a spoon.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

He never ate with his fingers again at 13 months old. Now, you just said, oh my gosh, and had a very uh just oh my gosh, moment uh when I told you that. But here's here's what happened. He had the manual dexterity to pull this off. He actually had the intellect to be able to not, he wasn't taught this, he was observing his parents eat. There was a spoon that was close enough. He reached over, picked it up, put that into his bowl, and managed to get that to his mouth, and he ate exclusively with a fork or a spoon from that point on. I would say, and if if any mom out there or any dad out there or grandparent has a similar story, please let me know. Because I think it may be the first time that this happened in human history, because he had the manual dexterity to actually pull this off. He taught himself to do this because he was paying attention to what his parents were doing all this time, and that's the way he ate from then on. I have a client that is is uh uh five years old. He just he started getting worked on when he was a month old. He just started, he was eligible to start kindergarten this year. Five just turned five. And this this little boy just tested out of the fourth grade. Instead of one plus one, he's doing algebra, he speaks Spanish and English fluently, he reads and writes Spanish and English really well. He actually uh uh and and for for non for native speakers of Spanish, they see this little blonde-haired kid with curls and blue eyes, and he just spoke in Spanish, and his inflection, his tone, his intonation, all of those things in Spanish is perfect. And they whip their head around and look, where did that sound come from? And it's a little five-year-old kid, right? Now, that's not the only thing. His mom started entering him into um golf tournaments this summer and a bunch of them, right? But only five, the tournaments were six to nine-year-olds, or ten-year-olds, or eleven-year-olds. And the mom had to send a video of his golf swing to them so that they would approve him. And so they sent a uh a video of him swinging a golf club, and they said, Yeah, absolutely he can play. He's got a better swing than everybody else that that is entering into this tournament. And so he got into these tournaments. He not only competed, but he's won several of them against sometimes kids that are twice his age. And if anybody knows anything about golf, this is not an easy sport, it's just not. And he is winning these tournaments. In addition to that, he's a he's a competitive tennis player. He's not sure if he likes golf or tennis better. And and when he was only two years old, literally two, he had seven, eight, and nine-year-olds knocking on the door for Calvert to come out and play because he could keep up with them in every single activity that they were doing. And they thought it was amazing that this kid could do this. And so he's doing all of these things, and everybody's like, what's going on? What's going on? These are just two examples of kids that we've worked on since they were born that have accelerated development, not only intellectually, but physically and emotionally. Because if the baby isn't crying all the time, guess what? They can they're they're learning, they're focusing on everything around them. And so I believe that unlocking babies when they're when they're firstborn is the very first thing that that needs to be done so that they can actually develop, not normally, but optimally. And we'll have more that I have so many stories I could tell you, and there's just not enough time. But these are things that we've seen on a consistent basis with every infant that we have worked with. Parents come back with stories, and the doctors are amazed that they're this age, even though they delivered them, and and they're like, How old is this baby? Because they're doing things that they'd never seen a baby at that age do. And and so it's it's across the board that way. Now, how does this impact your moms? Because that's that's one of the important aspects here, too. Because if moms are sleep deprived and the baby's screaming all the time, and they feel like a failure, many of these parents are proficient in everything else that they do, in their jobs and their vocations and things that they they've learned to do, and then they have a baby that they have no idea how to comfort. And they're they're so frustrated, there's so and there's so much tension in the household because nobody's gotten any sleep. The baby hasn't. So if the baby's not getting enough sleep, can they develop like they're supposed to? Do they have the recovery time that they're supposed to have? No, they don't. And so, and and here's here's an example. Babies that are are waking up every two to three hours, and everybody knows what that feels like because that's most babies. What doctors will say, well, they need to feed every two to three hours. That they're waking up because they're hungry. That's the only explanation that doctors will give. Well, they're hungry, so you need to feed them. So mom sticks a boob in their face, or they stick uh a bottle in their mouth, and so they feed when they're uncomfortable. All right. So what happens as a as a result of that? What happens as a result is now people are learning from their very first days or months of life that they get food when they're uncomfortable. So what does that what does that mean? That means that they're comfort feeding, whether it's emotional for emotional comfort or physical comfort, they're eating when they get uncomfortable. Okay, that is not optimal because that just re-infases this habit. Every time you have emotional stress or physical stress, you're just gonna eat to comfort you. And and that's that's a huge red flag. And one of the things that we've observed is that many of these babies from the very first treatment on start sleeping for longer and longer and longer periods of time. Like instead of every two to three hours, they'll wake up every four to five hours, or then they'll get to six hours, and then they get to seven hours where they're not waking up. And so, and so uh they're they're feeding less, they're sleeping more, which is what babies' bodies need for recovery time and everything else, to the point where many of these clients, I have several of them that had baby monitors on them where they monitor their heart rate and their their movement patterns and their respiration and all of these things. And these babies, some of the times, are they putting them in bed at seven o'clock at night. Listen, parents, this is important. Tell me if you'd want this. They're they're they're putting them in bed at seven o'clock at night, and then they wake the the baby will get up at 7 a.m. That's 12 hours of undisturbed parent time where the parents could actually sleep through the night. I would have given my left testicle if I could have. I'm not kidding you, because I you only need one, and so it I to get, I was eight hours sleep deprived for with four children. I would have loved to have known this when my kids were infants, but they're getting this extra rest. So, what does that mean? Did they really need a bottle every two to three hours? No, but that was the only explanation that they were given because doctors do not take into consideration the fact that these babies are are actually in physical discomfort, which is why they're crying. Okay. So, and it's very consistent across all the babies that we worked on for the past. This has now been my oldest uh the Austin is now 13 years old, Cala is 12 years old. And so for the past 13 years, when we started working on infants, this is the same story that we see throughout. They're way more comfortable, they sleep way longer than they would otherwise, they're only having to be fed when they're actually hungry instead of in physical discomfort. And so their bodies develop, their brain develops, their emotional wellness develops at a rate that most babies have never even considered or parents considered as normal. The normal is they're uncomfortable, they only sleep a few hours at a time because they're exhausted, because they're not getting enough sleep. And so that's those reasons are the the primary reasons why it's so important to get these kids opened up at a at an early age. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 39:55

I yeah, I I think this is definitely groundbreaking. I'm not gonna lie to you. I have older kids now. Um, I have a niece that she cried so much, and it really seemed like no matter what we do or did, I'm sorry, you know, it was it was a problem. She just cried so much.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 40:14

And honestly, I think she really could have benefited from this, and I think that all babies could. And it it makes my mind wonder when you was telling the story of um your daughter's second um birth. I I really wonder what the long-term even physical or muscular implications is for babies having this tension in their muscles from birth. Well, I wonder what the long term is.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Let me let me give you an example, okay, that might clarify this. One of the studies that we we talk about in the book is uh the researchers started studying X NFL players, and there were two groups that they were studying. One group, we'll say it's group A, had a an ACL uh restructure because they tore their ACL and they had to have surgery to get that taken care of. And then the other group, group B, didn't have an ACL tear. So they didn't have to deal with this. Okay, this may seem completely unrelated, but this is the the story. The the players, and after decades, they looked at the numbers to see if there was any disparity between these two groups. Okay, group A that had had the ACL surgery had a 50% higher rate of heart attack and death than the group that didn't have an ACL injury. And so this is, and people that they didn't understand that this was like a Harvard study or something. They they that that this was the data, they didn't understand how to interpret the data. But let's walk back to when the ACL tore. They usually had impact, and then the ACL and several other structures probably tore. And so then they they they so my question is what happened to all of the musculature in that lower extremity once the ACL tore? And the answer is very simple. All of the muscles surrounding the knee contracted to support that joint, to restrict movement and to keep it from tearing more. All right. So then they put them in a brace and they waited for the swelling to go down, which could be several days, and then they did an MRI and they saw, okay, the ACL's torn and this is torn and this is torn. So then they scheduled what? A surgery where they harvest tissue from their body someplace else. It's either a patella tendon or a hamstring tendon, usually a couple different ones, uh, from the anyway, it doesn't matter. And and so now there's a surgical site in addition to the tear in the ACL. And then they they do the surgery, they they attach that tendon across the area where the ACL used to be, the ligament used to be. Uh, and and so they then they put it all together, and then it recovers from there. While it's recovering, they also have it in a brace and they're moving it through ranges of motion, they're doing all these different things. While there's restricted blood supply to and from that knee, because the muscles are still contracted, that's blocking blood supply and lymphatic drainage to and from the knee, which is why it swells, which is why it hurts, all that type of thing. The muscles that are tight and contracted are pulling on tendons that attach across the joint, the knee. And so those muscles make it painful to move through certain ranges of motion. And so then they send them to physical therapy, which is trying to strengthen those muscles that are tight and contracted, which is impossible, by the way. You can't strengthen a contracted muscle, but that's what physical therapists do across the planet. That's what they've been trained to do muscle strength testing. And then they set them up on a program to strengthen contracted muscles. And anybody, all of your audience, I want you to just take your right arm and flex your bicep and ask yourself, with your arm in that position, can you strengthen the bicep? You can't, because you have to completely straighten the arm and then bend it in order to get it to be stronger, right? So what's happening? They're literally aggravating where the muscles attach, in their elbow and their shoulder. And it's aggravating them. And many times people will have this common thing. They've been to physical therapists, and what happens is they leave feeling almost more painful than they did when they went into the office. And there's a reason for that because they're trying to do the impossible. Some muscles get uh moderately stronger, and and so when they're not making any more progress, they dismiss them and say, we'll come back for another round of physical therapy later. They never address the issue that the muscles are tight and contracted around that joint. Now, what does that do to blood supply and circulation to that lower extremity for the rest of their life? It limits it, it limits the range of motion, it has more stress on it. So now the heart is actually having to work way harder to get blood supply to and from that whole lower extremity, which is a huge percentage of that athlete's um uh blood supply. And so the heart is actually having to work extremely hard, way harder, than if the knee had never been damaged that way. And this progresses throughout the rest of their life, eventually causing a higher occurrence. This is my opinion, a higher occurrence of heart attack and death because of the amount of strain that's put on the heart trying to push blood through a leg that has contracted and tight since the ACL injury. Now, let's bring this back to babies. Pre-birth postural deficits are things that every person that's listening to this podcast can can associate with. All right. The last time that you guys had the flu, anybody that's listening, including the two people I'm looking at right now, if when you had the flu, did you have body aches and pains all over your body?

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Absolutely. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Okay, now did you ever ask yourself the question, why do those muscles hurt? I'm just sick. Why would these muscles hurt? I'm a massage therapist. So I actually asked myself that question. I said, I'm just sick. Why in the world I am I do I have so much pain throughout my body? And so what I did was I got a pad of paper out and a pen, and I wrote down every single muscle group that was tight and not just tight, but painful. And and then I waited until the flu was completely over. Several months later, I felt no pain where I had when I had the flu. I pulled my list back out and I pushed into every one of those muscles, and they were all extremely painful, but I wasn't aware of them because what happens is your body shuts that part of the information getting from the muscles to the brain down to the point so that you can actually function throughout the day. Because if everyone was completely aware of every single part of their body that was tight and contracted all the time, you could not function. You couldn't work, you couldn't like you, you know how you felt when you had the flu. How, how, how productive were you that day? You weren't at all. And so then throughout your life, you have these areas that are being hidden from you so that you can survive and actually go to work and get things done and take care of your kids and all these things, but that pain is hidden because your body is your brain is trying to just keep that from you so you can continue working. Now, if pre-birth postural deficits are what I say that they are, they're just tight contracted muscles from your pre-birth posture. If they maintain that way throughout your life, how much more strain on the heart is there? Even if you haven't had an injury like an ACL tear, those muscles are still contracted and blocking blood supply to and from those areas and restricting your body's ability to function optimally. They're functioning because that's the way our bodies are built to allow us to function. But you're still getting restricted blood supply and nutrients to these areas. So, my question is: what happens if you open all of those up and a person can move through full range of motion without any discomfort? Then way less stress, not only on your heart, but every other organ system in your body, including your brain, that requires proper blood, spine, and circulation. If you have neck pain, that's because your neck muscles and your shoulder muscles are so tight, they're restrict literally restricting blood supply to and from your brain. What does that do for cognition? What does that do for memory? What does that do for all of the things you need your brain for? And so this isn't just for infants, but if you've ever been a baby, okay, that's everybody that that is listening now, raise your hand. If you were a baby one, okay, if you were once a baby, you still have these issues. And so if you lengthen those things, what does it do? It takes the hidden pain away from you. It takes the thing that is sucking energy from your body every single day. Because every time you move through a range of motion that restricts your movement, you are limited in how you can move, in how you can think, and how you can sleep, all of these things. Now, the two ladies that I'm looking at right now, what position do you guys normally sleep in?

SPEAKER_04 50:55

Oh, on my side.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

Uh-huh. With your arms, your shoulders tucked up, your arms bent, your knees pulled up, one leg usually more than the other one because that was pulled higher in your mother's womb.

SPEAKER_03 51:10

I'm like this.

SPEAKER_00 51:12

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that you're probably mimicking your pre-birth posture. So what does that do? People say, but that's comfortable for me. Well, it's comfortable because you're shortening muscles and they're not pulling at the attachments like hair pulling on your scalp. And so that feels more comfortable. But then what do you wake up what one or two hours later, and then you turn to your other shoulder in your sleep so that you can get comfortable again. So you're you're going from an inherently uncomfortable position to another inherently uncomfortable position, and you're tossing and turning all night long. Every time you wake up, you're coming out of REM sleep, which is your restorative period of time that you sleep in, that restores your body and resets the clock and does all of those things. So you're missing that part of your sleep, and you wake up what? Exhausted and in pain.

SPEAKER_02 52:06

Right?

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Okay, so what does that do to your ability to function that day and the next day and the next day and the next day? It inhibits you're not you're functioning, but it's not optimally for sure. And everybody listening, if you're if you're honest, you can come up with two to three things in your body that are always uncomfortable that you just just you just work through. You just work through it. And and you get through the day, and then you're exhausted, and then eventually you just crash and burn at night, and you and you you get through another day. And that uh obviously isn't optimal. That's just that's just survival. And okay, I'll give you another story. We had uh a gentleman that came in a couple of decades ago. He was a very distinguished businessman, very tall, and and he he had fallen and hit his shoulder, and his shoulder wasn't healing, and a buddy said, Hey, you need to get over here, I think you need to take care of you. So when uh he came in, I saw on his form that he was sleeping about uh, well, it was 50% on one side, 50% on the other side. So he's sleeping in those positions all night long. And I knew that unless we could get him sleeping on his back, he was gonna continue to smash that shoulder that had been bothering him so it couldn't heal properly. And so I said, okay, listen, here's what we're gonna do. First thing we're gonna do is I'm gonna work on your hip flexors so that I can get you comfortably sleeping on your back so you stop smashing this shoulder. And what that should do is help you to stand up straight and to and to sleep on your back comfortably so that we can get your shoulder better. And he said, hold on there, Skippy. Okay, I'm 67 years old. So I was young enough at the point that he was about 68 years old, and he and so I was young enough that he could he would call me Skippy. Anyway, he he I I said, I said, he said, you're you're telling me you're gonna get me to stand up straighter today so that I can sleep better and and actually stand up straight. And I said, I said, yes, sir. And he and he said, and you're gonna do that today. And I said, yes, sir. And he said, how much time is that gonna take? And I thought it was a money issue, like he didn't have the time or the money to pay for this. That wasn't the case at all. He was just flabbergasted that that I was gonna get him standing up straight. He says, he says, Ken, he says, you don't understand. And and and before he told me you don't understand, he started sobbing on the table, literally sobbing. This is a 68-year-old, very distinguished businessman. And and he he said, You don't know my history, you have no idea what I've been through in my life. He said, My mother berated me, berated me from the time I was a small child until her dying breath. Why can't you just stand up straight? Why can't you just your brother stands up straight? Why don't you just stand up straight? This guy, and I didn't notice it before, but he was stooped at the waist when he was walking. He'd lived his entire existence like this. And he said, And you're going to fix this today. And I said, Yes, sir. I said, It's still about, he said, How much time will that take? I said, It's about 10, maybe 15 minutes. And he goes, Okay, let's go. So I worked on his hip flexors, got them completely opened up. He stood up straight for the first time in his life without pain or discomfort. And I said, There's a full-length mirror over here. Go take a look at yourself. And he walked over to the mirror and he started sobbing again because he'd never seen himself stand up straight in his lifetime. And so he got back on the table. I fixed his shoulder. I never had to see him again. But that's so if you're an adult, don't think, okay, I missed the boat. There's nothing I can do. We work on adults, and we've been working with adults since I got started with this over 33 years ago. I started practicing in 1993. And what we're able to see now through the lens of every baby hurts is that what happens is every adult hurts too. So the next book in the series, this is a series, will be everybody hurts, and it will be explanations about what can you can do for yourself if you were a baby that didn't get worked on. And what happens is people start sleeping better, they start getting more restful sleep, they start being able to move through ranges of motion that they hadn't been able to move through before. And so it's it's not just that. The next book after that will be every puppy hurts because they all hurt. The next one after that will be every athlete hurts because every athlete has specific movements that they have to get through in order to compete like they're supposed to. And if they don't, they're very restricted and they're very that their performance is way less than it should be. And so, and we work with professional athletes all the way to little leaguers, and I I I was working inside of a baseball stadium for the first part of the spring, uh, up until the all-star break. And the catcher um that year hit 32 home runs in the first half of the season. Now, that's remarkable, especially for a catcher whose hip flexors are typically tight and they're not very good hitters because of that. He went to 32 home runs in the first half of the season. That's half of the American League record for hitting home runs in the American League. And and then I was asked to leave the stadium by a trainer, the head trainer who was who was, I think, my opinion, was was having problems with uh ego and job security because we had more people lining up in the x-ray room where there were no windows and and two doors that were closed most of the time. And people were lining up to get worked on by me. And so he he said, Ken, I think it's time to pack your bags. Anyway, the second half of the season, how many home runs do you think that this this catcher hit? Just take a wild guess.

SPEAKER_04 58:35

Oh, geez. Um, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 58:38

He hit zero, he hit zero home runs in the second half of the season. He went 32 in the first half and zero in the second half. Okay. The the center, the center fielder for this team was the oldest position player on the team. He tripled his home run production that season. He normally would hit seven, eight, or nine home runs. In that season, he hit 28 home runs and got a two-year extension worth, I think, $22 million. And the next year, when I wasn't working with him, he hit seven, eight, or nine. And the next year he hit seven, eight, or nine, and then he was out of baseball. But these are two elite athletes that dramatically improve their performance by doing what? Opening up things that had been restricted since before they were born. And so the performance level, not only physically, but cognitively and emotionally, can be released even in midlife or advanced parts of your life. The technique works on everyone. And again, it's a combination. I don't know that I went through this, but everybody wants to know what do you do? It's called the Mensch method because it's something that I that I have developed, but I developed it only after, when I first got started in physical therapy, I was on the path to be a physical therapist. Halfway when I got started, I prayed for wisdom, knowledge, and discernment on how to fix people and and and take away their pain faster than people have been able to before. And so it's a combination of fit of uh deep tissue massage, mild fascial release, and uh trigger point therapy. And I described that when I was talking about how we work on babies. If you if you apply these principles, and so I I really want to I want to emphasize this was an answer to a prayer as well to give me wisdom, knowledge, and discernment about how to help people. And God doesn't leave those requests unmet because uh He He knew that my motives were pure. This wasn't about getting famous, it wasn't about it wasn't about money. We actually have half our initial session is only $200. That's 90 minutes of hands-on time with a client. And that's half the rates of a fluffy massage that you get at one of the fancy places in town that is $400 for the same 90 minutes. So we have kept our prices really low because I never wanted to price people out of the ability to actually get work done. Because if I have a $400 price tag on the initial session, then people start calculating, okay, this is what my physical therapist has done, this is what my chiropractor has done. That they're they want me to come in, or that they want me to get worked every two to three days for the next six or eight weeks. And so they go 400 times this, times this, times this. Even if you can't do math, you can do money. And then people decide very quickly, I can't afford this. And so our average number of client visits per client per year is 2.4 visits over the past three years. And the only the reason I give that stat is because it's the first time I actually thought to ask my daughter what the the numbers, Lauren, who runs the back of my business, what is the average number? And it was 2.3 and then it went to 2.5. Last year it was 2.4. So on average, 2.4 visits per client per year. Now, one of those clients may have come in with one condition. We fixed them in one, they come in six or eight months later with another thing that they did themselves, and then that's another visit. So that counts as two, even though we fixed two areas over the past year. And so the numbers are insane. If anybody in the audience or you guys can can think about the number of visits that you spent going to other therapies, you become almost good friends with the people that you're dealing with because you've been with them for such a long period of time. And I'm telling you, if you're having dinner with your physical therapist or your chiropractor or anybody else, because you've got to be good friends, then you probably spend too much time with them because they're not correcting the problem. And the problem is that you're tight and contracted, those those muscles are too tight and contracted, they're pulling on tendons, which is pulling on the bone, which is the cause of your pain, and restrictin, and restricted blood supply. And so in each case, if the muscle is too tight, it's pulling on a tendon, pulling on a bone. The doctor will say, Well, that's tendinitis, or that's arthritis, or or whatever. And I will give everyone listening their own diagnosis. Now I'm not a doctor, so I'm not able to give people a diagnosis, but I feel very comfortable with this one. This is what you have. If you have any condition where you're restricted, is what you have is in fact my muscles too tight, that's all it is. Your muscles are too tight. And every single night that you fall asleep in a fetal position, you're reinforcing and those tightness, tight areas, and those restrictions every single night, which is why you see old people bent, stooped at the waist, and they're shuffling because their hip flexors are so tight they can't take a long stride anymore without pain. They certainly can't many times run like they did when they were a kid because everything keeps getting shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. And so these are signs of, and I'll do error quotes, old age. Right? And it's normal, is it optimal? No, it's normal for this to happen. And so what happens over time is the muscles keep getting tightened, stay tight and contracted, they're pulling at the tendon, they're pulling at the bone. And so what that does is cause every joint that you're dealing with to become compromised and restrict blood supply to and from that area, and it causes the joint to track improperly. So let's just say it's your knee, and the inside of your leg is really tight and it's causing the knee to pull to the inside. What does that do? That causes pain not only in that side, but the opposite side. And if the knee is tracking improperly, what happens to the cartilage in that knee? It starts to wear down because it's not tracking properly. And then they give you painkillers and they give you muscle relaxers and they give you anti-inflammatories, which are symptom fixers. They're not problem solvers, but it's masking the pain that is trying to protect your body from moving through a four inch motion. Okay, what that does over a long period of time, it actually just allows you to move in ways that you wouldn't if you actually felt the pain in your body. And I want everybody listening to understand. Understand, pain in your body is not the enemy. It is not. It's not, it is the message that your body is giving you. And trust me, your body is your friend. It's trying to protect you. It's trying to protect you from yourself. And through moving through these ranges of motion. If you know anybody that's ever trained for a marathon, they're taking their popping Advil before every run, which gets it lessens the pain so that they can get through the run. What are they doing? They're causing themselves damage over the long haul. And so what happens is their knees going to wear out quicker, their ankles are going to wear out quicker, their hips are going to wear out quicker, their low back is going to get pulled out of place, and then they're going to have back surgery, hip surgery, knee surgery. How many people do you think that are my age, that are 67 years old, haven't had a knee replacement, a hip replacement, uh a back surgery, or anything else? It's a very small percentage of the population now. They just throw those things in there at any moment. We have stopped so many injuries and surgeries from happening that that doctors are they're amazed because they're like, how you were set for surgery and now you're not getting it because you're not pain in pain anymore. How did that happen? And what happened was we actually lengthened the tissue that was causing their inflammation and pain. Now, minus pain, most people are never going to a surgeon to fix a problem. They're just not. And so this has ramifications across every injury, across every person, across every surgery, all across the world. And most people have zero idea how to how to attack this problem because they don't know one, what the problem is, and they don't know how to resolve it. And so we've had people go into the parking lot of our office and call their surgeon and cancel the surgery because they no longer have any pain or discomfort. And the doctor's like, what happens? Like, well, I went to this place, they opened up this thing, and now I have no pain. And they're like, wait, what? How does that happen? And I can tell you in the Austin area, we have four locations in the Austin area, and and we have surgeons that refer clients to us. We have uh pain management clinics that send us their clients if they can't fix them. We have other physical therapy and massage therapy clinics that will refer people to us to resolve the problem because they know that they can't. And these are people that have had this work themselves. They see how effective it is. And some people, some practitioners will refer them to us because their very best interest is the interest of their client. It's not their bottom line, their wallet. Look, they make way more money when they do surgery, they make way more money when they do consecutive treatments over years sometimes without effect. The ones that are still following the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm are sending their clients to us because they realize that what we do is different and it actually works. And so there's still hope, but the problem is, and the reason I'm on this podcast and the reason I do these podcasts on a regular basis is to get the information out there so people actually understand what's going on. It's just not the medical, well, this is why and this why and this why. And if you've ever been to a doctor and you ask, well, why is this hurting? They're gonna say, Well, it usually starts that way. Well, and then and then they're basically making up stuff because they don't know the answer to that question. The very best answer that they could give you is we really don't know. But doctors hate and physical therapists hate, and and practitioners hate to say they don't know something because they went to college, they got a degree, they got good grades, and and they thought that they were taught everything there is to know about how to alleviate pain and maximize performance. And they don't because if they did, okay, let me ask you guys a question. You guys aren't in your 20s anymore. How many, how many people do you know that have no pain or discomfort in their bodies? And I want you to just try to think of one person in your circle that has zero pain and has full range of motion. Okay, can you think of even one person that you know?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:50

No. And I'll be honest with you, on Wednesday myself, I'm going to get trigger point injections.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:56

Okay. So no. But what they're what they'll be doing is working on a symptom rather than a problem. And then if that when that if that doesn't work exactly like they say it will, then they'll later on they'll say, okay, come back in, we'll do more injections, or we'll do cortisone, or we'll do PRP, or we'll do stem cells, or we'll do all of this. This is like, look, what they're doing is like trying to change a fan belt in your motor while the motor's running.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

You know that that's gonna hurt and and it's not gonna be effective, and it's gonna cause more damage to the engine. What you have to do is turn the motor off to replace that thing. Well, the motor running are the muscles that are tight and contracted and pulling every joint that hurts out of position. And they don't know that that's the problem, and they don't know how to treat it. And so what I'm asking for is for people that that and practitioners and everything to start looking at the the root cause. And I think anybody that picks up every baby's hurt, every baby hurts, the subtitle, by the way, it says a new look at the restrictions and pain that begin before birth and rethinking what we call normal in early development. The information in this book is so incredibly different than what everyone's been taught in medical school and physical therapy school, uh, trainers for athletes. It's so different than what they've been taught that that what I'm looking for isn't for people to say, you're right, Ken. This is so great. And and it what I what I want them to do instead is to think that at least this is worth looking into enough to start doing clinical trials to see how that this works and why it works, and start getting data, real data on on all of these issues. Because until you get the data, nobody's paying any attention to you. Okay. So I'm inviting all researchers, all doctors, all white coats, all people that are in doing research on on pain, chronic pain, on the cause of injuries and that type of thing to to let's do clinical trials. Let's let's get together and and see if what I'm saying holds up under scrutiny. Because I'm just a guy that prayed for wisdom, knowledge, and discernment and for an original thought. And and the reason that I did it is I realize there are trillions of things I don't know. Trillions of things. That's a big number. And and then when you get there, then you realize, okay, I think I know something, but probably most of the things I think I know are probably wrong too. And and and then from that perspective, and I view myself as a goldfish in a very small bowl with some gravel at the bottom of the bowl, and maybe one of those little castles in there. And not only that's my perspective on life, because I've only been around this very small group of of uh occurrences and and and all of these things. And so not only am I in this very small bowl, but I'm in a closet on the top shelf with the light turned off and the door closed. So I'm I'm in the dark trying to figure my way around. And because I realize I'm 67 years old, that seems very old to a lot of people, but I only have a limited perspective based on what I've seen. And so I realize even the things that I thought, like I didn't know what that gravel is, but I have no idea. It's just there's this bumpy thing down at the bottom, and uh and then I keep bumping into this castle, and then I keep bumping into the walls, and and so I realize that most of the things I think I know, I don't know at all. And so that's the place that people have to come through and the realization they need to have so that they they're open to gathering more information. Because if if you guys can't think of a single person that you know that is that is not in chronic pain and and has dysfunction and has all of these issues, if you guys living life as long as you have, how in the world can the medical community believe that they have answers to all of these questions? That I mean, a thinking person would go, I don't know anything because these people are all still hurt. It's like, let's figure out what's going on. And so I'm inviting all of those groups, the the people that deal with pediatrics, the people that deal with athletes, the deal the be the people that deal with aging populations that are all in pain, to come to the at least the conclusion that it's possible that what you were taught in medical school or physical therapy school or chiropractor school is not necessarily the end all, and that there's something else going on. Otherwise, these people would get better like they told us we were gonna do in school. We're gonna fix people, we're gonna take care of them, we're gonna get them out of pain, we're gonna do all these things, and it does not work. So I'm inviting everyone to take a much closer look at this. The Shaken Baby Foundation. I put in the book uh their conclusions. I I agree with their their their um their motive to stop babies from being shaken to death or babies handled too. Oh my gosh. Sorry. Okay, they're trying to to take care of these issues and they never see a resolution. I'm inviting them to look at this and the treat treatment techniques that that uh I believe God inspired me to be able to uh overcome. And let's let's apply the scientific method, let's let's test these these things and see what conclusions we come up with. Because the Shaken Baby Foundation is attempting to have babies not mishandled or handled roughly or abused, right? And I agree with that completely, but I think that their assessment that babies aren't in pain and that this is just a phase, and that this is something they'll just get over, it's normal, but is is inaccurate, it's not the end all. And and perhaps there's another way to look at this. And absolutely all I'm asking is for them to open their mind up enough to be honest that maybe, just maybe, that they don't have the answers. Because if they did, they'd be healing everybody, nobody would be in pain, everyone would be able to to get their treatment, and then they'd be done. And and then they can get on with their life. Now, we don't just deal with people with their um with their pain at that session. We look at root causes beyond that. It's it's hydration, it's nutrition, because you can eat food that you think is really good for you, but it's still causing inflammation, it's still causing background problems, and and and and so we talk to them about all of these things and and sleep posture, standing posture, work posture, uh, proper warm-up and cool down and stretching and appropriate exercises and things like that, so that people get up very comfortable with understanding how their body works and how they can get optimal use from it with the least amount of discomfort possible.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:26

And I think that's what we're all looking for, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:30

Correct. Because people go into older age, very insecure. They see what's happening to their bodies the same thing happened to their mom and dad, and their grandma and grandpa, and their great-grandma and grandpa. And so our our experience is what happened to those people over the course of their lifetime. And then when these symptoms start happening to us, we're like, oh, here we go, downhill from here on out. And it's like, no, we see people in advanced ages that literally start moving like they like even better than they did when they were much younger.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:03

I mean, my great-grandma, she passed away unfortunately a couple of years ago, but she taught water aerobics until she retired. Well, she retired, but volunteered taught it um until she was 94. So Yeah. I mean, yeah, and traditionally the women in our family do live a longer time.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:24

Right. Right. But but even with that, did they have pain? Did they have discomfort? Right. And and did they have restrictions that they and and your your grandmother that that did that until she was advanced age, water exercise is one of the very best things you can do because it literally gives your body more buoyancy. It takes the stress off of all of your joints, and you have hydrostatic pressure of your of of the water on the body, which forces more blood supply and circulation throughout the body than it would otherwise. And and uh the exercise, and and it gives you 13 times resistance of air. So that's water exercise is one of the best things that anybody can do as they get older. Um, but there we we talk to people about all of these conditions and ways to get around these things and to and to how to have work with their body instead of forcing it through range of motion that it shouldn't have. Um and so we empower people. That's the reason why our average number of client visits per client per year is 2.4. We're literally trying to educate people and eliminate the the pain and dysfunction in their body enough that they can move like a much younger version of themselves without restriction, without pain. And what that does is not only extend their life, but it extends it in a way that allows them to actually start achieving their their goals that they have and the purpose. Look, I saw a stat not that long ago, and it said that the the odds of us being here on this planet at this moment is like 400 trillion to one.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:14

That's the odds of us actually being here. And so I believe that every person that is on this planet is here on purpose, and I believe that each of us has a purpose to fulfill during our lifetime. And so what we're trying to do is allow people to find their purpose and then find joy in in actually reaching those their potential, their purpose in this life. And and I have a very good friend of mine now. She was a client initially, she's in marketing. Her name uh is anyway, she is is one of the the kindest people, but when she left our office the first time, she was an inch and a half taller than she'd been her whole adult life. An inch and a half taller. We took stress off of her system. She was able to stand up at an inch and a half taller. She'd been five feet four inches tall her entire adult life. And then when she left the office, she had a doctor's appointment that that week. So she was able, they measured her and they said, Oh my God, what happened? You're you're now five feet five and a half inches tall. And so she was she was blown away. She was like, What in the world happened? And she said, Well, I went to this place and they did this stuff, and I feel amazing. This is ridiculous. And and uh she had me on her podcast. She just started a podcast, and we were talking about having people's purpose fulfilled, having their their their uh ability to actually find out what their purpose was and everything else. And and during the podcast, she almost broke down into tears because she realized at that moment that us opening her body up and taking her pain away and taking her restrictions away actually allowed her to start fulfilling. She'd always had a dream to start a podcast, but by the time she got home at the end of the day, she was so exhausted and so much pain. She ate some food, she sat down on the couch, passed out, and then got up and went to bed and did the same thing every single day. Once she got out of pain, she was able to actually focus on her goal, her purpose to have podcasts to help people. And so she was able to actually do it. And she only realized it during the podcast that she'd started because we got her out of pain and restriction. And it just moved her to tears. And so this is this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to give people the potential to actually reach their their goals and their purpose in life so that they can they can go into old age with confidence, not with fear trepidation that they're going to decline, just like their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents. And so that's the reason why we do this. It's it's it really is just that. We're we're trying to ease suffering like Christ did. Uh, when he went into a new place, he he fed people, he took care of their physical needs immediately, and then he healed people, and then he taught them the good news. And so they were receptive to the good news. Why? Because he'd done something for them. He took their pain away, he took their their physical need away, and then he taught them what they needed to hear. And so this is our goal is to get people out from underneath the cloud of pain and dysfunction and restriction so that they can focus on their purpose and they can focus on on not just their pain, but their relationships with their families, with their children, with their parents, with their community, and with their relationship with God. Because until you get your physical needs met, all of that is secondary to taking care of your physical needs. And so that's why we do the work that we do. Um we also follow the golden rule. Look, if if I'm if I am uh uh in pain, if I'm hurt, I want to get better that day, not 10 weeks from now, not 10 years from now. I want to get better today. And so my my goal for my clients, our clients, is exactly the same thing. I figure they want to get better just like I do. And so do unto others as others would as you would have them do unto you. I am applying that rule to our practice. It is not the most profitable way to run a business, trust me, if it was any other corporation, they'd be saying, get those numbers up. And our goal is to get them down and down and down and down so that people can actually get back to their life in a much better condition than they've ever been before. But it starts with infants and like, for example, if your hips and spine are pulled forward, you're way more likely to develop scoliosis. This is my opinion, because if your hips and spine are pulled forward and you go through a big growth spurt, it's gonna pull your hips out of place, then it pulls your spine out of place as you start growing really rapidly, and then your posture is going to be affected by all of those things, and then your upper back has to curve with the other one so your head can stay up straight. And so that happens on a regular basis. Um, if the hips are pulled forward or the spine's pulled forward, it affects. affects the baby's ability to digest food properly. It will affect a woman's reproductive organs to not function like there's that they should. And for example, we've had several women that have come in that have 20-day menstrual cycles and they're painful. Right?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:21

And so what we do, we open up their their iliacus muscles and their psoas muscles, that's their hip flexor muscles, and it allows their hips and spine to sit back where they're supposed to be and it takes the stress off the spine that feeds all of those organ systems, whether it's digestion or reproduction. And what happens then in every single case, after usually one visit, the women's menstrual cycles drop or they increase to 28 days from 20 days. And tell me anybody in the audience that that would like a 28 day cycle instead of a 20 day cycle that you know it it's it's it's life changing. And it allows them to do what? Focus on their life not their menstrual cycle so often. And and if you have migraine headaches, it's because your shoulders you're jammed up all night long. It's shortening all the muscles in your shoulders that are attached to your neck then your neck tightens and and it cause that causes the back pressure in your brain because you're not getting proper blood supply or lymphatic drainage to and from your brain. So all of that pressure in your brain causes all of the symptoms for migraines. And so if you if you open up the neck and the shoulders and the hips what happens it increases blood supply it it takes the stress and tension off of your neck and your shoulders and your brain and usually within a session or two all of the all of the migraine symptoms go away. And that's including my wife who had chronic migraines and she hasn't had a migraine since I worked on her the very first time and that was over 14 years ago. And this is not this is not just for my wife it's virtually every person that we work with. So it's like even like carpal tunnel syndrome if you're in a fetal position your wrists are curled in that shortens the the flexor muscles on the that part of your wrist and then you go to the office and you type all day long with your wrists in an extended position which then puts a huge amount of stress on the wrist. So if you eliminate the the the stress on the wrists and the the the the the forearm muscles it relieves that and all the symptoms go away. So these are all again pre-birth cholesterol deficits that manifest themselves as people get older. And if you do this one thing over and over and over again and it keeps aggravating things then what's going to happen? Then the doctor says well here put this brace on and here we're going to do the surgery and we're going to and most of the time none of that stuff is necessary. Plantar fasciitis same issue uh Achilles tendonitis all of these things are are things that can be corrected if you just lengthen the tissue talk to people about the habits that are causing these things we correct those habits and then get their body open for the first time in their life many times comfortably to be able to get rid of these areas of tightness and restriction. So it's it's it's fascinating it's it's it's it's still fascinating to me because it's such a simple elegant way to correct these things and it's so rapid that people are just blown away and they're they just can't wrap their brain around it.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:38

Yeah it's truly amazing um and you know we would love to have you back just to talk about how in relationship with how you work with traditional pediatrics and medicine like um and just you know what what you would like to see for the future of everything. But as we wrap up today um what's one thing that if you you know if you had a young mom or young dad with like a newborn baby, what's one thing that you would want them to know whether the baby's fussy or not fussy?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:07

The the biggest thing is this uh people have asked me this question why did you write this book? And if you if you look at it and read through it the overwhelming thing is what I want people's young parents to recognize is this and and and I want this shift to happen. Instead of being frustrated or angry with your baby I want people to have empathy and compassion for them recognizing that the reason they're crying the reason they're fussy the reason they have projectile vitamin the reason they have all of these issues is because the baby is extremely tight and uncomfortable. And so if if there's a shift from anger and frustration to empathy that will change your relationship with that baby immediately even before they get treatment. And then the answer isn't letting them scream in the other room with the door shut it's really holding them more and putting them in positions that are comfortable and then seeking out help from practitioners who are willing to uh learn something new to be able to help them. On the back end we're working very diligently to put together training programs that will be online to teach practitioners around the world how to work on infants to get rid of the vast majority of these things. And so that's the goal I have parents in India that are begging me to go to India to help their baby. Currently I can't do that. But and or in Chicago I had a lady say my baby is doing all this I can't get to Austin what what can I do? And so for those parents that I can't go help their child individually understand that your baby is uncomfortable they're in a lot of pain and to have empathy for that child rather than anger and frustration and that will shift the dynamic in the household completely and then people start looking for a solution instead of just focusing on the problem. And their entire household will be so much calmer and so much more understanding of what's going on and then once we get these and look a a Southwest airlines flight to Austin is not that expensive and it's worth the trip. Even one trip with your baby and you'll see a massive massive difference in the way that they that they function so um until we can get these training protocols out there just understanding that your baby is actually in pain they're actually extremely uncomfortable is is a is a change that need that's a C change that has to happen immediately. And so that's the reason for these podcasts it's the reason for for the treatments that we do it's the reason why we're developing this training protocol that that people will be able to do all over the world. So that's that's the number one takeaway and if we can at least get there then we can start making progress towards getting all of these things in place so that we can help babies everywhere and adults everywhere. Because my my opinion is that there should be a METS method bodies in every city in the world so that people have access to this no matter where they are and and that's that's the goal it's it's why we do this stuff. And again it's not about the money it really is it's about helping people because look I'm 67 years old I realize I have an expiration date and it's closer now than it was when I was born and it's closer now than last month. And it it's like I understand I have a limited time on this earth and my goal my my duty on this earth is to alleviate suffering and help other people as much as I can in the the time that I have left on this earth. And so um that's that's the reason why we that we do what we do and that's pretty unique in in in all of medicine. One because this actually works and two because that's my goal it's not about the money. We weren't put on this earth to make money we were put on this earth to use our our gifts to help other people and that's where joy comes from it it comes from having an attitude of gratitude instead of anxiety. And and so once we start becoming more grateful for the gifts that we have and the and the blessings that we have um we can start to experience the life that we're supposed to under any circumstances. So and I and I I'd recommend a book for everybody listening honestly besides every baby hurts there's a book uh by a a woman named Anne Voskamp that Anne is no e it's just A N N Voskamp she's from Canada and her book is called 1,000 Gifts and it's and it it is one of the most beautifully written almost poetic books that talks about how to find joy in whatever situation that you're in and I would strongly recommend that people read that it's it's life changing it really is um anyway I have to run I've got an appointment uh uh what time is uh 123 you're you're so welcome I am so glad to have met you guys and and to be able to share this with your you and your audience and uh I look forward I look I would love to do more more of these episodes and we can focus in on an area per podcast to get dive deeper and if you get comments from your listeners about this position or that this question or this physical ailment then we can got dive deeper into the things that your audience has questions about um because there's so much yes you're so welcome I will see you the next time and I hope you guys have a blessed day bye well that's it for today you beautiful caffeinated disasters if any of this resonated with you hit that follow button and if you would like to give us a review it really helps other tired moms and dads find the show.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:09

And if you want to become a supporter of the show or just keep us caffeinated so we can keep bringing the chaos every Tuesday head over to our Buzzsprout page at momsbrain is a coffee stain dot buzzprout dot com. Even a couple bucks means the world and helps us keep the coffee and the show flowing. Now you can become a subscriber of the show and get access to new episodes two days early.

SPEAKER_04 1:39:32

And don't forget to check us out on social media. You can find us everywhere at mom's brain is a coffee stain or slide into our DMs and email or email your best known guilt hacks, cringiest mom moments and episode requests to mom's brain is a coffee stain at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:51

And head on over and check out Ken's website at the Minch Methodbodywork.com to get more information. And if you're in the central Texas area you can go ahead and book an appointment right there on the website. Also don't forget to grab your copy of Ken's book Everybody Hurts available on Amazon now. We will put the links in the show notes.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:11

Again we would like to issue a warning to the audience please do not attempt any exercises movements or stretches discussed in this episode at home. Ken is certified and we do suggest that you speak with your doctor or a certified official if you would like to try anything discussed in this episode.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:31

Well if you'll excuse me I'm off to get my Halloween decorations up finally.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:36

And I'm off too love y'all mean it go sip one for us and we'll see you next Tuesday