Cathy Meehan: Hello and welcome back to the Meehan Mission podcast. We are in a special three part series on reflexes with Dr. Laura Hanson. So if you go back to part one, we discussed withdrawal reflexes. Part two was primitive reflexes. And on today’s part three episode, we’re going to discuss postural reflexes. Which you might consider this part of our anti-gravity system because that’s what keeps us upright and balanced and coordinated. We are going to talk about how posture actually connects to our neurological health. We have to remember movement isn’t just physical, it’s part of brain development. So sit back, take some notes, share the podcast and let’s learn more. with Dr. Laura Hanson.
Cathy Meehan: Hey everyone, and guess what? It is our final part three of our three-part series, talking about reflexes with Dr. Laura Hanson. And today we’re gonna talk about postural reflexes. And I am so glad you are back again today. So Dr. Laura Hanson, please take over.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Okay, here we go. We’re gonna now tie our bow around our reflexes. We started off with withdrawal reflexes. This is our earliest defense system. We have to know how to protect ourselves, how to get away from something. This actually builds that same kind of pattern up in the brain that says, I need to put the brakes on connections and things that are not really necessary for me to focus on right now. How do I get that runaway brain to stop? You have to know how to put the brakes on. Then we made a beautiful transition into the world of primitive reflexes. You have transitions throughout your entire life going from being a newborn to a toddler, to riding a bike, to going to college, to getting married, there’s just transitions all through our life. The reflexes, the primitive reflexes are part of that transitional process. But the day that you are born, that is when postural reflexes begin.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: So think of that little baby coming out of the birth canal. I love the story of birth and how that baby travels like a Tootsie Roll through the birth canal. And it literally gets all balled up. And then it’s going to open up and be birthed by extension. That is what happened to every one of us if we got to go through the birth canal.
Cathy Meehan: Mmm.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: So the first thing you do is you begin interacting with gravity. And what is that thing that everybody notices about the newborn? Look, they’re picking up their head. I love that part because we’re already doing it, but we have to bring the rest of the body with us. So at the end of our second episode,
Dr. Laura Hanson: We finished with the little baby holding them up and that the stepping reflex is automatically there. But you pull your hands away and the baby would come down because we are not wired in gravity yet. And it takes us a year to get there. And we practice, everything we do, we practice.
Dr. Laura Hanson: So we move along, we get into locomotion, we crawl along, then around 10 months you get into cruising. And that’s when you pull yourself up on something and you walk along the furniture, but then you bounce. You’re practicing those joints in gravity. And so there’s a little motion pattern in every single joint as you’re getting ready to start walking. You can compress, you can pull apart, you can rotate, and you can translate. And so when those babies are just sitting there bouncing, that’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re saying, I’m getting ready, because I’m going to take a step, and I’m going to be ready to do that. Now, what does the baby look like? When the baby stands up, because their head is so big,
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: In comparison to their bodies, their legs are bowed out initially, and that’s okay. And the arms go up, this is called high guard. And they’re literally like little teeter totters out there, practicing their balance in order to know that they will be able to walk one day. And they’ll start to practice that pattern. And then down the road, the hands will come down. we’ll start to have reciprocal arm swing around four years old, and our legs will actually turn in a little bit. And this is for the Q angle of the hip because the bones cannot or the muscles cannot keep up with the growth of the bone. So your hip joints literally accommodate this growth in gravity. Okay? Now, by around
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: seven and a half, eight and a half, legs should be straight. We do not want excessive bowing and we do not want excessive turning in. It’s not just about the legs. So all of your body is responding to this process. So there are eight anti-gravity muscles. Two of them, if they are weak, they will literally drive the other six to shorten up. And I don’t want you to think shortened is contracted. It’s not that. A contracted muscle is like me flexing my bicep, okay? A shortened muscle, you actually lose sarcomeres. And sarcomeres are that individual muscle motor unit.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Just like when a woman is pregnant, she gets more sarcomeres so that her belly can grow, okay? And all of these have neurological feedback that is going on in that body. But if I lose sarcomeres, then the back of my legs for the hamstring, they’re too short. And literally, I can’t straighten my leg. I have seen kids…
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: five, six, seven, eight, could not straighten their legs to save their lives. So they’re laying on their back and you try to bring that leg up to 90 degrees, they can’t do it. When we ask them to do that dead bug exercise that we talked about for cross crawl, they cannot straighten their legs because those muscles are already too short. And it’s a way of trying to lock the frame in because that individual is unstable. Now this is also true for us, okay? So if our abdominal muscles are weak, if our bottom muscles are weak, then we are going to shorten up the back of the leg called the hamstring, a muscle that’s on the side of the leg called the tensor fascia lata,
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Another muscle that’s across your bottom called the piriformis. A muscle up here called the SCM, which goes from the back of the head down to your clavicle. Your trap muscle from the top of your head to your shoulders down to a diamond in your back. And your QL, your quadratus lumborum. That muscle is at the bottom of your ribs. attached to the first four lumbar bones of your low back and then the top of your pelvis. And this can make different configurations. So this could create scoliosis. This creates an asymmetrical pattern on one side of the body. It’s not both sides because the body’s going to go here, here,
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: here in order to keep your eyes neutral. So this asymmetry is literally going to be a feedback mechanism up to your brain. And that is the hardest part for your brain to figure out when it is getting information different from one side over the other.
Cathy Meehan: Wow, a connect-the-dots amazing miracle when the body does it right.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Right?
Cathy Meehan: Exactly. mean, because you think about every single little individual muscle and how it works together and how complicated our body is. how, I mean, personally, I believe how God created our body to be so perfect. And if we can keep it in that world with, you know, no environmental toxins, and no stress and no anxiety and just nurture the body, nurture the pregnant mother, how the body really is designed to be a beautiful thing. But yes, absolutely. Like a symphony.
Dr. Laura Hanson: It’s like a choir or a symphony. This is why, when it comes to development, think of what that baby does. That baby is not reading, writing, and doing math. That baby is moving.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-mm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Movement is everything. This is why now they go, sitting is the new smoking. Because if we’re sitting, we’re not getting that symphony playing together like it should. And if children, if babies are not getting on the floor, sometimes I get a little serious, I’ll say that, when a mom says,
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Exactly.
Dr. Laura Hanson: My baby doesn’t like to be on its belly. Your newborn baby, your little baby doesn’t know what it likes and what it doesn’t like. It needs to be on the floor. It doesn’t need to be in big apparatuses all the time. It needs that freedom of motion. When we go back and tie that thought to the Moro reflex, when you
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. Yes.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: are a baby and you are in flexion, you have to start opening up and you do not open up until around four weeks, I’m sorry, 10 weeks of life. Okay? The Moro reflex should be inhibited by the fourth month of life. So that’s a timeline. to be watching. So if one, I didn’t express good flexion and I was floppy, that’s a kid that is low tone. And you can see this. If you put them down on their hands and knees, it looks like their elbows are bent inward. So the joint is literally impacted and they didn’t get into their forearms, which began
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: the education in that shoulder joint, which then goes to the elbow and then into the hands. And if I don’t ever get into my hands, so if I don’t crawl properly, I never develop the arch in my hand. And holding a writing instrument will be very difficult. Now, just that’s one extremity, right? How… We have to give that appropriate environment. If I had the opportunity to have a baby, I would do it so differently. I wouldn’t have any furniture. I would have really thick mats on my floor that would really inspire that child to move and to feel the bounce all the time, because that’s the vestibular system.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Your vestibular system is inside of your ear. So if I were to ask you, Ms. Kathy, do you like going on roller coasters?
Cathy Meehan: It would be at what age? Because I loved, I loved, I would, I would go on them and I would be hesitant at first, but I would go on it and then I’d be like, wow, that was so fun. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Right now. Right now. Okay, good.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Okay, good. That means that your vestibular system is working. Okay? Do you know how many adults might be sitting out there? And I’d love for us to take a poll, but we can’t do that right now, but they can certainly write us, write to us and tell us. If we said to you, would you get on a roller coaster right now? If you were to say, no, that would tell you your vestibular system isn’t working well. So.
Cathy Meehan: Hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: You also might have car sickness. You might get queasy just watching that kind of motion. Okay? So your vestibular system is three little canals inside of your ear. And it allows you to do all of these different motions. And there’s fluid inside of these canals and little hair follicles. So when you move, it brushes up against the little hair follicles. and it’s telling your brain where you’re going. Okay? So that part is one of the first systems that comes online and it is believed to be completely mature by the time you’re born. Wow. Yes. This is the most powerful little system. This, now I also like to connect the dot. It’s
Cathy Meehan: What?
Dr. Laura Hanson: It’s not just the motion of forward, backward, side to side, flexion, extension, this way. But what about all the motion inside of our body? We have a very distinct way that our blood travels. If it doesn’t go that way, it’s clotting. It’s a problem. We have a very particular way that we digest food. It goes in, it goes down, it goes out. If it doesn’t happen that way, we have some problems. When an egg and a sperm come together, they come together in a very unique way. If that doesn’t happen, we don’t get conception. Movement is not just about the movement out here, but it’s also the movement in here that provides that feedback to the brain. And you, as a human being, you have to live in gravity. You have to be able to adapt in gravity.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: And when people cannot adapt in gravity, that puts a stress on their system. If their eyes are not working right, that really alters their interpretation of gravity. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the Schumann frequency monitor, but the gravitational pull used to be considered around 7.8. That’s actually a theta brainwave. That is
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: comfortable. They believe today that it’s actually risen up to 15 with the amount of stress that has come into all of our worlds and the energy that we are putting off and how it is actually impacting the earth. And it’s not just us. Have you ever seen a picture of how many satellites actually are around the earth? That is a picture that to me would
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Cathy Meehan: on.
Dr. Laura Hanson: really be very alarming. I looked at it and at first I was going, are you kidding? I looked at that and I said, is that a virus molecule? And somebody goes, no, it’s planet earth and all the satellites out there. And I went, my gosh, please.
Cathy Meehan: Right. And how many more are possibly going up? Yeah, the number is… Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: and all the satellites. Can we slow down people? Can we just slow down? We need to slow down.
Dr. Laura Hanson: But we need as adults and older children, we need to be very comfortable on a bicycle. We need to be very comfortable riding in a car, even if we can’t see the dashboard, okay? Because that would influence how your brain is interpreting the horizon, okay? So we need to be comfortable. We need to be flexible. Can you touch your toes? If you can’t touch your toes,
Cathy Meehan: Okay, yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: You have tight hamstrings. You probably have shortened hamstrings. And that rigidity is coming back to your brain. Think of the people that, especially as a chiropractor, will go, OK, turn your head to the right. And the whole body turns. And then you come back. And they go to the left. And the whole body turns. They have no longer can distinguish.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: simply turning the head versus turning the whole body. That is going to be feedback to your brain. And if you are inflexible, if you are rigid, guess what happens to your personality? You become rigid. That’s right. Because what, well, what did we say? You as a baby, we’re moving.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Mm, rigid and inflexible. I agree. I agree. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: That is the feedback mechanism to wiring up the brain. So if you’re no longer moving, that is the feedback going to your brain. And it literally will impact your health. And most of those people are gonna be in chronic pain. And every year that you are in chronic pain, you lose 2.3 cubic centimeters of gray matter. And gray matter is where you process.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: You have two matters. You have gray matter, you have white matter. Gray is where you process. White is how you get it from one part of your brain to another part of your brain. You literally lose processing fibers. That to me is quite alarming. Now, one other one that it’s not a postural muscle per se. So we have postural muscles, but
Cathy Meehan: It is.
Dr. Laura Hanson: all of your muscles can have various roles other than just the action. So have you ever heard of the psoas muscle?
Cathy Meehan: You’ve heard of it, yes.
Dr. Laura Hanson: So that muscle is on the front of the spine and it’s really thick and it splits and it goes down into your pelvis. It allows you to pick up your leg into hip flexion. Okay, that’s its motor action. But it has another role. So if you, if your brain perceives from its defense system, the withdrawal reflexes, that you are about to be in a threat, that psoas muscle tightens you up just a little because it’s not sure if you’re about to be stabbed, punched, or shot. So it’s going to protect your vital organs. That action of a muscle is innately designed to protect you. Okay, now remember what we talked about in the beginning. You could have had a great childhood, but you are now going through all kinds of things and you could be regressing backwards. Okay? If that muscle stays short chronically, and what is chronic? Let’s do it by definition. Chronic is considered anything that continues to go on for about six months. Okay? So when you are in a chronic situation, your brain goes, okay, you want to keep this going. So I’m going to surrender some of those beautiful neurons that you made when you were a tennis player or you played a flute or you drew, because you’re not doing that anymore. And I’m going to re-navigate and redirect and get those to pursue your chronic stress pattern. So you lose real estate in your brain and you literally go into, especially as an adult, early degenerative changes in your brain. Now that psoas muscle, that threat persisting for six months, that little, ugh, of the contraction, contraction, not shortened, literally a little contraction.
Dr. Laura Hanson: is constantly telling your brain over and over and over again that you are in a threat, even if the threat was gone. So if that goes on chronically, now we can see this as an adult. Wonder if you’re a kid and this is the way your brain is getting wired up.
Cathy Meehan: Mm.
Cathy Meehan: And that’s normal for you as you don’t know. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Health, it’s your norm. And it’s changing. It’s changing how your brain is actually getting formed. Because the brain develops based on the experience that you have. And if that’s your experience, that’s what you’re getting. And that to me is why I’m so passionate about these reflexes.
Cathy Meehan: Mm.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: It’s not the only thing people have going on, but it is a lost art. I think more people know about it today than even 10 years ago, but it is how the central nervous system actually gets primed. And it is the rudimentary place of all learning. Let’s talk about a stroke, for example, which especially during COVID,
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: there were a lot of strokes that went on, right? So typically it’s one side of your brain affecting the other side of your body. And most people think about only the hand and the leg. They don’t think about the torso. So now the postural reflexes, the abdominal muscles, the glute muscles, it’s all about your torso, okay? Having a stroke,
Cathy Meehan: Hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Okay.
Dr. Laura Hanson: It’s not just the most distal end or the most far apart end. It’s the whole side. So it is the eye, the brain, the neck, the throat, the lungs, the bronchi, that side if it’s a left body, that’s your stomach, the head of your stomach. It is also your descending colon. So…
Cathy Meehan: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: All of that function can be impacted, not just the hand and the foot. So when we have an asymmetrical insult to the body, this is how devastating it can be. So that’s a severe, right? But these little asymmetries, they’re just like a little gnat that’s constantly flying around and you can’t get it.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Dr. Laura Hanson: it is changing how your brain is going to function and over time it can have a very big impact.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, well, mean, just the reflexes in general really are an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to your developmental system. It’s just like, it’s like one of those things that you don’t even think about, you don’t even talk about, you just assume health, I think. I mean, that’s been me just assuming health and then meeting people like you who bring these things to our attention where it really is important to pay attention to developmental milestones or the milestones and you know, Not everybody needs to know the actual, you know, grammar and the words and everything, but they do, they really do need to connect with a professional, someone that can understand and look at it and help walk them through if there is some sort of corrective behaviors that can be done or, you know, therapies. I know we’ve talked about that before. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yeah. And understand so somebody can look at it. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Well, there’s so many things that can be done, but the key is to go back far enough. And that’s why we started with the withdrawal reflexes and then went into the primitive and the postural. Because if you don’t go back far enough, you’ll get changes just based on what you’re working on. But the other one, because it’s still there, it’s further back, it’s always going to creep into the picture.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Laura Hanson: One other example that I was thinking of that might be really good for the audience is another example for that psoas muscle. So my first birth of my son was horrific because I was not educated 38 years ago. I’ve been practicing for 30 years, but I ended up because I didn’t know better. I didn’t know how to advocate for myself.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: I ended up having a C-section. And back then, felt like it was a terrible experience of how when they put me back together, they just stapled it across. And it’s low, but it feels like a shelf goes through me. And for years, I had chronic piriformis pain. OK? So.
Cathy Meehan: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Chronic is over six months, how it can impact my brain, piriformis is a postural muscle, so that’s telling me how my body was having to adapt. But because all the tissue in the front is so pulled together, my psoas is absolutely shortened. So even from having a C-section, I can also impact how my psoas works.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: you know, trying to bring my foot up behind my body and lengthen my psoas is very difficult. I have to lay on the floor and do it, but working on my psoas is part of my stretch and exercise program, right? But I want people to know that it’s not just about like something terrible has to happen to your child for something to go amiss.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah. Okay.
Cathy Meehan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: It’s why we’ve got to look at all the things and how somebody could have their own physiology fire back at them. So it could be something from a traumatic event. It could be the outcome of like having to have a C-section. It could be just mental stress. I always look at everything from a three-tier approach: mechanical, chemical, and brain, because all three of them play a part of how our human body works.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, again, and you want all three of those parts to work together so that the orchestra is in tune. Yeah, is in tune and makes beautiful music.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes, is in tune, is in tune.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes, exactly right. Makes beautiful music.
Cathy Meehan: Yeah, well, and that just goes back to confessions here. My first baby was vaginal delivery with forceps. So I’m thinking about all the problems that we had. Know better, do better. Yeah. That we had at the time, absolutely. Which is…
Dr. Laura Hanson: Mmm.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Well, we’ve all done the best we could with the information that we have had at the time.
Cathy Meehan: Which is why we do these podcasts, right, Dr. Laura Hanson? Absolutely. That’s why we do it. Yes. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I appreciate you so much for that because it really is educating. It’s like, know better, do better and educate and provide resources. And for people to get a hold of you, we go to
Dr. Laura Hanson: That’s right. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing so that we can educate a new generation with greater information. Absolutely.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Yes.
Cathy Meehan: ConnectMyBrain.com. I love that ConnectMyBrain.com because you are a wealth of information. I appreciate you so much for sharing with our audience. just for everybody, that was part three of reflexes. I hope you enjoyed it. Please share these episodes with other people that might have the same interest that you have and stay tuned because I’m sure
Dr. Laura Hanson: ConnectMyBrain.com.
Dr. Laura Hanson: absolutely.
Cathy Meehan: Dr. Laura Hanson will be back again. Thank you so much. Thanks.
Dr. Laura Hanson: Thank you. Have a great day.
