Jill Miller: Increase Flexibility & Relieve Pain with Breathwork & Myofascial Release

**Andy Galpin** (0:00)
The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today I'm speaking with Jill Miller. Jill is an expert in everything from mobility to breath work to body work and especially in what's called self-myofascial release.
Now, in this episode, you're going to learn more about what these things actually are and how to use them best. There are many broad applications of these techniques that extend beyond just pain relief and range of motion and mobility. Jill will talk about things like the role of the fascia and some of the science that's emerging and how that's regulating everything from your digestive system to your pain to your physical performance, strength and power output. And so I know that whether you are dealing with pain yourself or you like yoga, you're into body work, breath work, or anywhere in between, you're going to find something in this episode that you may have not heard before, or at least you find tremendous value in. So with that said, please enjoy today's conversation with Jill Miller. Jill Miller, thank you so much for coming and chatting today.

**Jill Miller** (1:16)
Andy, so good to see you.

**Andy Galpin** (1:18)
My introduction to your work was, I think from Kelly Starrett.

**Jill Miller** (1:22)
Probably.

**Andy Galpin** (1:23)
15 years ago or more, Brian Mackenzie. But what really grabbed my attention was, I had dabbled a lot and paid attention to the world of, we'll call it yoga. Okay. And for the most part, I threw it all away. I just thought like, there's just nothing here for what I'm doing. I had gone through several experiences and didn't really appreciate it. And then I saw what you were doing, and I thought, this is the extraction. This is the stuff we should have, I wanted to get out of yoga. Just me personally. And I thought, this girl has nailed it. You're all over it. So my thoughts of you still to this day are that. It is the best parts of yoga that, again, for me personally, what I was looking for in myself and clients and the scientific experience, as well as there's so many other ways we can go about self-care, the physical body, recovery.
There's so many ways you can get to. And I've yet to see anybody put it together better than you. So, as an introduction, there's no question there, but it was just letting you know framing. When I think about the reasons why I was dying to get you in here for this conversation, it is all that stuff. And I have literally three pages of notes in front of me, as you can see, and I'm super excited to go into that stuff. So if it's okay with you, I would love to talk a ton about all those things in a bunch of different areas as well.

**Jill Miller** (2:41)
I'm down for all of it. That's great. I'm so glad that you connected with what I was offering, because I think what I did and do in the yoga space was very radical and frankly, heretical back when I started teaching it, and not a lot of people got it. And it's really nice to see that it did finally find those people that it was meant for, and act as a bridge back and forth between training, pain management, yoga, self-care, and all those things.

**Andy Galpin** (3:14)
Great. I have both of your books. I have many of your products. I've been to your courses. I'm such a Jill Miller fan, it's ridiculous. All that to say, I thought we maybe could just start directly with this first idea. When I traditionally had always thought of foam rolling, it was just compression. It was if your hamstring is tight, you smash it and it gets untight. And I don't know if the science works, or I don't care how it works, the physiology. I just know if I smashed it on there, like I felt a little bit better in those moments. What is the difference between that compression, is what I'll just keep calling it. And maybe that's the wrong term, but let me know. Style of foam rolling versus other options. And maybe actually we'll just start right there. Like what is the compression stuff doing? What do we know about it? How's it working? Is it working? And then from there, let's explore some of the other ideas and ways and strategies we can actually maybe do things better.

**Jill Miller** (4:07)
Okay. So foam rolling has become the de facto term that is now used, I think, in most places that refers to self-myofascia release. So self-myofascia release as a category in the self-treatment space or recovery space is where you use an implement, which technically is called a stress transfer medium. So we're talking about rolling sticks. We're talking about foam rollers. We're talking about different balls, even pokey tools, like just single things that have knobs on them. So anything like that is an implement that is trying to influence tissue in a variety of different ways. These implements are trying to mimic somebody's hands, right? So this is something that you can do on your own. You don't have to hire somebody. You don't have to go out of pocket. You can do it any time of day you want. And wherever and whenever you need it. So what are they doing? What are these implements doing? They are sometimes compressing tissue. Like you said, they're inducing local stretch. So if I just lay on a ball or lay on a foam roller, I'm really just putting pressure into that local region. But what happens if I stroke that implement with my body weight, either in a reclining position or up against a wall or in myriad other arrangements? What happens if I take that implement and I move it along the line of pull of a muscle or across the line of pull of a muscle? Or what happens if I do a different type of compressive rolling? What happens if I pivot the implement or pivot my body so that it creates traction and creates like a pinching sensation? What are all those things doing? They're affecting different stretch receptors in different ways, and they're affecting different layers of your body in different ways, from skin to deep. And one of my deep interests is in the fascial tissues that it annoys. What is it doing to those tissues? It's doing a lot of different things. So I recently wrote a narrative review of the scientific research on self-myofascia release and there are a lot of things that these implements are doing to your body.