When Good Habits Go Bad #169

Our nervous system is remarkably good at helping us adapt. If you hurt your foot, you limp. If another part of your body hurts, you find ways to protect it. Those adaptations can be exactly what you need at the time.

But what happens when the injury heals and the adaptation stays?

In this episode of Easier Movement, Happier Life, Mary Debono explores how once-useful movement habits can become unconscious patterns that contribute to stiffness, discomfort, unequal weight bearing, and unnecessary wear and tear.

Drawing from her book Grow Young with Your Dog, Mary explains why we may continue to carry remnants of old injuries without realizing it. She also shares the story of a horse with chronic suspensory damage whose current movement pattern appeared to be connected to an injury from years earlier.

And these habits aren't limited to movement. We can become equally practiced at habitual ways of thinking, worrying, anticipating, and responding to stress.

The good news is that habitual doesn't mean permanent.

Through Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement® lessons and Debono Moves, we can become aware of possibilities that our nervous system may have stopped recognizing. Instead of forcing ourselves out of an old pattern, we can discover other ways of moving, feeling, and responding.

Because sometimes change begins simply by recognizing: Oh. I could do this differently.

Key takeaways

• A protective movement pattern can be useful when an injury occurs, yet remnants of that pattern may remain after healing.
• Once a movement becomes habitual, we may stop noticing that we're doing it at all.
• Humans, horses, and dogs can all develop compensatory movement habits.
• Everyday stress and repetitive activities can create habits too. An injury isn't required.
• Habits aren't only physical. Familiar patterns of thinking and responding can become automatic as well.
• Awareness creates choice. Experiencing another possibility can help the nervous system recognize that the habitual response isn't the only option.

Resources:

FGNA Fall Feldenkrais Week - Free event! 

Experience a gentle Awareness Through Movement® lesson and discover why enhancing your movement and awareness is often the first step toward helping your horse move better.

You'll learn how to sit with greater comfort, balance, and ease. These benefits extend both on and off your horse.

You'll also be introduced to Equine Rocking, a simple hands-on practice that can help improve your horse's comfort, awareness, and balance.

Date: September 29  Time: 10:00 am - 11:30 am PDT

Can't attend live? Register to get the recording!  💫

Registration Link

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/WQT7BzimT4yrWDRzehE7WA

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais MethodⓇ can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider video masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

Grab your FREE video training to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and does not constitute medical, veterinary, or training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or dog are unwell or injured.  Always use caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of animals and their humans.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for horse and dog enthusiasts.  Her methods have helped animals and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the human-animal bond

Mary's flagship online programs, "Move with Your Horse" and "Easier Movement, Happier Dogs," provide animal enthusiasts with an innovative approach that combines the concepts of Feldenkrais® with her signature hands-on work for horses and dogs (Debono Moves). Through this transformative approach, both people and their animal companions discover greater harmony, ease, and connection.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. Let's talk about habits. Now, I'm not talking about habits of, you know, watching too much Netflix or scrolling through social media too much. Not those kinds of habits, although they're important to look at too. But I'm talking about movement habits as well as habits of thinking. Both of those can get in our way. They can interfere with our ability to move comfortably and freely. We can develop a lot of chronic conditions because of them.

You know, create wear and tear in our body because of maladaptive movement habits. And we know that a lot of our habits of thinking can cause unnecessary stress and tension in our lives. So what I'd like to do today is read a little excerpt from my book, Grow Young with youh Dog that discusses this. Now for you equestrians out there, please continue to listen. This work applies to humans across the board, whether you're a dog lover or not.

So here I go. And again, this is from my book, Grow young with your dog. So this is called when good Habits go Bad. Have you ever stubbed your toe really hard? If you did, you probably limped to protect your aching foot. The throbbing from a stubbed toe usually resolves fairly quickly, and it's likely that you went back to walking without a limp in little time. But if you suffered an injury that took longer to heal, things may not be that simple.

You probably adopted long term ways of holding and moving your body to compensate for your injury. Now time passes and your injury heals. So you resume your usual activities. You take your dog on long hikes, you go running, you work out. Everything seems fine. But some months or even years later, trouble starts. You notice an annoying crick in your neck, or your back feels sore and stiff, or maybe your knee or hip starts to bother you because you didn't suffer a recent injury.

You chalk up these aches and pains to aging. Well. That's what happens when we get old, right? Well, not necessarily. Remember those compensations that helped you deal with your injury? You most likely kept a remnant of them long after your injury is healed. And not only have they outlived their usefulness, they are now causing problems of their own. But since they've become habitual, you don't even notice that you're doing them.

Now, I paused there very intentionally so that you can take that in. I'm going to say that again. Because they've become habitual, you don't even notice that you're doing them. Well, how does that even happen? Put simply, the nervous system is responsible for maintaining the body's safety. When an injury occurs, the nervous system registers pain to keep us from using the injured part. We limp to reduce the discomfort, allowing the injured part to rest.

It's an effective strategy. Gradually, the pain subsides, and in many cases, the limp disappears. Well, almost disappears. In actuality, the nervous system may not entirely let go of the limp. It doesn't want re injury to occur, so it may retain a trace of the limp. We unconsciously tense the back muscles more on one side than the other when walking, or habitually bear more weight on the unaffected leg.

There are so many ways to limp, as there are individuals, and it often becomes an habitual and unconscious act. Such a habit may go unnoticed for years until problems start developing. Just like we saw with Sonny and Jackson. Dogs do this too. These are dogs I talked about in the book. And that's one reason why so many dogs end up tearing the opposite cranial cruciate ligament, the ccl, months after they tore the first one.

After one side has been injured, the dog may never fully use that leg, even after the ligament has healed. This causes chronic strain in the opposite hind leg, which can eventually lead to a tear in that ccl. So while some dogs have a genetic predisposition to weak CCLs, for others it's the unequal weight bearing contributes to the ligament damage. Now, you don't have to develop an injury to develop these kinds of habits.

They also develop as a way to deal with everyday stresses and strains. Maybe you've spent years slinging a heavy purse over one shoulder and your body has adjusted to deal with that unbalanced load. Or you spent too much time sitting and developed unhealthy postural habits. Or maybe as a child, you hunched up your shoulders every time your parents bickered and that became your habitual response to stress. Eventually, these compensations cause you discomfort, so you tense and limit other body parts to cope with the new aches and pains.

These vicious cycles tend to age you fast. Fortunately, you can stop the cycle, just like we did with the dogs Sunny and Jackson. You can learn to move freely again. And I talk about how the awareness lessons in the book help you let go of those habits. And for you horse people, let me talk about a quick story about a horse with chronic ligament damage that developed a habit.

She had been, I think it was 10 months where her left front suspensory injury was not healing. She had three different vets give advice. They all said the same thing, that there's no way this horse will ever be sound. She had a lot of calcification in the ligament and she just wasn't healing. And the woman heard about me. She called me out to work with the horse and I noticed that even though she limped on the affected leg, you know, taking her weight off of it when trotting, most of the time she actually bore more weight on the injured leg.

And I got very curious about that. Well, it turns out that the horse had injured her right front five years prior. And it happened during a very emotional type of event, like a scary event, a fearful. She was very fearful when the injury occurred. And I have a feeling as a hunch that that may have contributed to the formation of such a strong habit of shifting her weight to the opposite leg, to the left front.

So even after she eventually injured the left front, and it probably was an overworking type of injury because she was bearing more weight on it, she still held on to that habit. And we do the same thing. So humans, horses, dogs, we all have these habits and we also have habits of thought. We may go down the catastrophicizing, you know, making everything a catastrophe. That's the word I was looking for, or something like that.

You know, we may stress unnecessarily, we may create stories about some horrible thing that might happen or what some person is thinking or you name it. And these become really kind of just, you know, habits that we just go back to again and again. They're just familiar. They're not serving us, but they are familiar. So, you know, in the work that I teach, you know, as you know, I'm a Feldenkrais method practitioner for people.

I also teach people how to do de Bono moves with their horses and their dogs, which is a gentle hands on work that was informed by the Feldenkrais method. I help people and their animals let go of those habits. Again, whether it's an emotional response and, or a physical, physical movement habit, we can change that. And starting yourself with some Feldenkrais awareness through movement lessons is an excellent way to start because when you feel differently in your body, your nervous system recognizes that, ah, there are other options out there.

There's new possibilities. So I have, I have free resources. There's a short video series that, it says it's for riders, but non riders benefit from it too. So it's the description of wherever you're listening to this and I hope you check it out. That's just a little taste longer Feldenkrais lessons which I have available in my store or you can see a practitioner in person. But they're an excellent way of really helping you free yourself from these maladaptive habits, these habits that are no longer serving you, and learn to move more, more freely through life.

And that's why the podcast is called Easier Movement, Happier Life. So hope you check it out. Thank you so much for being here. And maybe for you, think about, you know, as you go about your day, are there things that you could do differently? Are there responses that you could do differently? And play with that, get curious about it and see what comes up. It'll help you and it'll help the animals that you share your life with.

Thank you again for being here. I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.

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