The Fascinating Science of Posture (& Full-Body Health Effects!) With LIFE Network Expert Annette Verpillot

**Ben Greenfield** (0:00)
This LIFE Network Expert Replay features Annette Verpillot, the founder of Posturepro. We discuss how eye movement, foot stimulation, and jaw therapy can radically upgrade your posture, your performance, your entire brain-body connection. It's simple, but powerful stuff. All the resources are at bengreenfieldlife.com/l-n-annette, as in LIFE Network Annette, A-N-N-E-T-T-E. Enjoy the show, and for more on all of our fantastic LIFE Network experts and to become a member of our community today, visit joinlifenetwork.com.
Let me ask you a question, if you're listening right now. How often do you run into performance issues, or injury issues, or recovery issues, or even things like sleep issues, and think, oh gosh, I know what's going on here. It's my feet, my eyes, and my jaw. My feet, my eyes, and my jaw. Most people don't think about that. I certainly didn't until I discovered the teachings and the work of today's guest, who has some pretty mind-blowing science and techniques when it comes to posture, and posture's overall implication to your health. I think I first discovered today's guest when I heard her interviewed by my friend Ben Pacolsky, and my ears perked up because I was like, gosh, this gal's talking about things that really aren't addressed that much in terms of the brain-body connection and tools and techniques that can help to recalibrate faulty motor patterns and posture alignment. And it turns out when I began to dig into her that she works with a range of professional and college teams like the New Jersey Devils and the 49ers, the Gators, the Xavier University men's basketball team, the UNC Charlotte men's basketball team. She's worked with a lot of top athletes, and her work has been presented at Harvard Medical School, and a variety of universities, and yet I think it flies on the radar. So I wanted to get her on the show today to talk all things posture particularly with her unique flavor. Her name is Annette, and Annette's last name I'm going to guess because she's up in Canada and there's a lot of French folks up there. It's spelled V-E-R-P-I-L-L-O-T. Annette Verpillot, I'm guessing. Am I close in it?

**Annette Verpillot** (2:34)
That's perfect.

**Ben Greenfield** (2:35)
Oh, wow. Okay, cool. I don't even speak French. I spent a lot of time on Duolingo with my Italian during my toilet time, but not a whole lot of French. Although you'd probably frown upon from a postural standpoint playing Duolingo while you're on the toilet. Yes? No?

**Annette Verpillot** (2:51)
While you're doing some foot and eye drills.

**Ben Greenfield** (2:55)
That's right. That's right. You got to stack habits. So if you're listening in right now, I'm going to link to Annette's fantastic website, the Posturepro website and her Posturepro method. If you go to bengreenfieldlife.com/posturepropodcast, along with some of the tools that she uses to retrain postures. Matter of fact, one is sitting right here in front of me. This might be good opening fodder for our discussion that, I've got this blue jaw thing.
I can't talk within my mouth, obviously, but you've got this jaw thing, you got some insoles, and then, I don't recall if there was something that you sent me for the eyes, but tell me about this jaw device that I have sitting right in front of me right now.

**Annette Verpillot** (3:38)
Yes. That's a functional activator. It's basically a mouth guard that serves the purpose to do one thing, and one thing only is to help you position your tongue on your palate.
And by doing so, it's going to promote physiological nasal breathing. I've long looked in my practice at the functions of the jaw in relation to posture and some of the ailments I was seeing clinically with some of my clients, and the jaw is a huge component of posture. So I was never able to, I always struggled finding a way to, if I may say, neutralize the jaw, so the sensory input going into the brain from the trigeminal nerve. If there's a dysfunction with the jaw of someone, for example, as a mouth breather or has a underbite or an overbite, that's actually going to modify their jaw posture, which will have an effect on their head posture, shoulder posture, and their global posture. So the functional activator came about in an attempt to find a solution to address that sensory system being the jaw, so that I would be able to work by process of elimination and find which sensory receptor was really causing or is at the root cause, or was at the root cause of the imbalances that I would see clinically. So the way that it's shaped, it's like a double gutter mouth guard that allows you to put right your lower jaw and your upper jaw together. There's a little shape for your tongue, so when your tongue feels the pressure right under it, it automatically should go on top of your palate, and that's going to create one of two things. Well, it will create physiological nasal breathing, but it's also going to create these micro movements that are going to reset your temporal mandibular joint in place. So the idea is to wear it when you're working on the computer, wear it a couple of minutes throughout the day, but ideally to be able to sleep with it.