Shannon Watson: The body communicates to the brain. And if you're storing tension, if we can stretch, compress and release it when your body relaxes, it tells your mind, I'm safe. We can chill out. Paula Sabbagha: Hi and welcome to the chat TCG podcast. I am Paula Sabbagha financial advisor on the TCG and associates team at UBS Financial Services. We are located in Columbia, South Carolina and can be reached at (803) 873-9850. Our guest on the podcast today is Shannon Watson. Shannon is a registered nurse with over 14 years experience specializing in enhancing human performance through stretch therapy, restorative yoga, and mindfulness. Paula Sabbagha: Shannon is not affiliated with UBS Financial Services Inc. and her views are her own. Hey Shannon, thank you for being on the podcast today. Just talking a little bit about athletes that you work with. What have you learned from working with high performing athletes that you've been able to apply to your own life? Shannon Watson: I think the most impact that this has all had on me is just how inspiring they are, how hard they really, truly, at the highest levels, work. I think they constantly inspire me to not quit. I mean, they have to show up every single day, work hard every single day. I think the lessons that come out of the daily grind of competing at a D1 or professional level, what that actually takes. Shannon Watson: Just being around that energy day after day after day, just seeing that is so inspiring. I think for all of our lives, no matter what we're trying to do, whether it's in business or even just in school, it's just that nonstop show up every single day for a dream. I mean, these people have a dream to play and to compete and to perform at a certain level where they're going to make an income from it.
Shannon Watson: And it's it translates so great into everything else. So I'm just so motivated by their energy, the fact that even when we talk about injury and pushing through injury, pushing through exhaustion and burnout, all of the things I think a lot of people experience, they are just sort of a magnified version of those lessons that translate to me. Shannon Watson: It's like show up every single day, come into work early anyway. They're always grinding towards a goal. I mean, it's just inspiring to be around and to watch them come in day after day, and it just always reminds me to do the exact same thing, right? Paula Sabbagha: And even though they're competing on the field and for their team, I feel like a lot of that is internal, really like trying to be there and be better than they were the day before. Shannon Watson: They truly have to have an intrinsic internal motivation and keep learning how to cultivate that and how to refresh that and how to restore that. And I think that's where the mental mindfulness and breathwork and recovery piece fits so well into athletics. But yeah, they're they're definitely disciplined. And they have to find the discipline and find the motivation when it's not there, which I have to do too. Shannon Watson: I'm not always motivated to get up and stretch a bunch of people, or go in and teach a bunch of classes or do the back end of work, the administrative tasks, the meetings, the marketing, all of that stuff. It's like, can you take the same mindset that these athletes use every day and then let it spill into my work? Shannon Watson: How can it spill into my day, my daily work? So yeah, they're really inspiring. I think that's. Paula Sabbagha: Awesome. Have you noticed the differences between college athletes and pros and how they approach recovery and wellness?
Shannon Watson: I love that question because recovery and wellness in sports is all over the place, and I think it's been an emerging field for a while. I've worked in the recovery and the wellness, kind of like the mental mind body field in athletics for about eight years, and it is emerging and changing and each team is different. Each level is different. Shannon Watson: But even when you get when you get to a pro level, their recovery programs and culture is different from team to team to team, from coach to coach to coach and from athlete to athlete to athlete. Their individual approaches, how they recover, what they're doing to recover is different all across the board. And the same thing with college sports, it's different within universities, it's different within each sport. Shannon Watson: It's different depending on the coaches. They have the training staff, they have the resources, they have the culture. A lot of it comes down to to the culture of it. Who is in charge of recovery for a college athlete? Right. So it's just all over the place. Paula Sabbagha: So that leads to this question. What's the biggest misconception people have about athletes and their flexibility or recovery routines?
Shannon Watson: I think the public doesn't see enough of what it's like every single day for an athlete. I don't think they truly get an inside, behind the scenes peek at what their minds and bodies go through and what it takes to stay playing right, to stay functioning like what actually do they have to do? And that's what I find interesting. Paula Sabbagha: Yeah, what comes to my mind is when you hear of maybe a football player who's so masculine and strong, and then you hear that he does ballet right, takes a Pilates class. Shannon Watson: Yeah. And I think that that is starting to happen more and more. They're starting to challenge themselves. So like going to a bar class or a football player or a Pilates class, or a football player or restorative yoga class or any of these other areas, is making them stronger in non-conventional ways and giving them edges. That translates into their performance on the field in a in a non-conventional way. Shannon Watson: And it is interesting to see and I love listening to what their experiences are like. Paula Sabbagha: Right. Yeah. Well that's great. Nursing is such a wide field. What inspired you, Shannon, to transition into working with athletes through assisted stretch? Shannon Watson: So when I was practicing as a nurse, I also was coaching fitness classes, cycling classes, and I was tasked with developing a recovery class and athletic recovery class with these emerging products, these consumer products that were emerging into the field of of recovery. The company's name is High Price, and they were launching vibrating foam rollers, the percussion guns, they were just starting to come out with these consumer products.
Shannon Watson: The Viper Sphere Ball for releases. And the facility that I worked with wanted to me to develop a program for that. And so I started to do the research on what is athletic recovery like, what are the components of athletic recovery and what are these products. And then I already was practicing, had a yoga practice and had been practicing for almost 20 years. Shannon Watson: And so I went to take the evidence that existed in the traditions of yoga that works for the body and the mind, and started blending them all together to try to create something that would care for the mind and the body and the health of an athlete or somebody who is just working out a lot. Because we were doing this in a regular gym. Shannon Watson: This wasn't at first. It wasn't for athletes. Right. And so that is I think it's very similar to nursing. Paula Sabbagha: Right? Shannon Watson: Yeah. I think it's just not in the hospital. Paula Sabbagha: Right. Creating that recovery plan. And I feel like that's probably when I first met you, I thought it was a bar class. Shannon Watson: Yeah. Paula Sabbagha: You did a recovery class for us at bar. Shannon Watson: Yeah. Yeah, I loved it. Yep. I was going into the the workout scenes were really, really focused on working out five, six days a week really hard. And nobody had any kind of like a downshifting class, right? Like, you know, everybody's working out a lot and getting hurt still and right. No one had this like, take care of our body downshift class. Shannon Watson: That was going to help support people working out five and six days a week. Right. People that wanted to do bar six days a week or wanted to come to cycling classes all the time they were doing it, but they didn't have any of the other protocols or practices in place to keep their bodies functioning for a long time. Shannon Watson: Right. So that's kind of how it all started.
Paula Sabbagha: That's interesting, I love it. Can you share the story of your first athletic client and what that experience was like? Shannon Watson: So I was teaching the recovery classes in a regular gym, but I was starting to work out with a trainer at an athletic performance facility. So I had developed a relationship with this trainer. He was lifting me, I was showing up and working out with him, and we were, you know, he knew what I was doing. And one day I showed up for a workout. Shannon Watson: And I honestly, I think he forgot I was supposed to be there and he just forgot I was coming to train. And he was training a group of football players. And he looks at me like, oh yeah, okay, Shannon, come on in. Just jump in this workout. Okay, so I was like, I just knew it was one of those moments when I had to do the thing and I was going to be extremely embarrassed. Shannon Watson: Right. Paula Sabbagha: Let me get my shoulder pads on. Shannon Watson: Yes, I knew I was going to get pressed in. It was going to be embarrassing and but I just I knew I had to do it and I just had to show up. So I ended up in a workout. Me and like six huge linemen, football players from USC, the University of South Carolina, and then like a guy who had played pro for like ten years and I did the whole workout, they ran drills and he I ran one way and he told me, run the other way.
Shannon Watson: And we just, you know, through that experience, we started to develop a relationship. And then he kind of segue to it and said, these, these guys are going to a yoga class every week. One of them, one of the pros, was already doing it right. And he said, hey, Shannon, you know, you got you need to connect. And just naturally started from that experience together. Shannon Watson: And then I said, well, I'm already teaching these classes twice a week. Why don't you guys come? Why don't we do a private class? And so it started as just a small class twice a week for that football group. And then the football group started adding some baseball guys in and then some basketball guys in. And then it just started growing from there. Shannon Watson: So from my very embarrassing workout came this wonderful first group of athletes. Paula Sabbagha: That's great. That's a great story for sure. How does your medical background as an RNN shape the way you approach stretching differently than just a traditional trainer or coach? Shannon Watson: So I've kind of reflected on my approach, and I think in nursing school you're taught a nursing care plan. Everything you do is a systematic care plan. It's assessment, evaluation, make a plan for for your client or your patient, implement it and then evaluate it and go back and start again. And in nursing school it is hammered into that's all we're doing. Shannon Watson: Every single patient we do a full body assessment. We talk to them, we get their history. We find out how they feel. We look at their whole body, and then we formulate a care plan, a nursing care plan for that specific client. And then we implement it. We do it and then we evaluate what we've just done. Was it effective?
Shannon Watson: Did it work? Do I need to change my interventions. Right. And then we modify that care plan. And you're doing that in nursing school. And you're doing that nursing on every patient every single day. And so I think even almost subconsciously, that's how I brought that work into the work with my clients. I mean, it is the approach. Shannon Watson: They come in, we do an assessment, I talk to them about their body. I think about the whole body. We I come up with an intervention. How are we going to stretch? Like what are we doing specifically for this client? And then we do it and then I evaluate to ask them, you know, how they feel. And week by week or class by class, we're making evaluations. Shannon Watson: And each time a client comes to me or each time a group comes in, I make adjustments right based on the outcome. So I really think the nursing nursing school, the nursing philosophy, the nursing care plan was so embedded in me that it's just how I do my work. Yeah. And then taking an evidence based approach, taking an approach based in science in the hospital, there's very little margin for error. Shannon Watson: Right. So if we make an error as a nurse or a physician, somebody gets hurt, you know, and we're really aware of that. And that's really part of the culture is if I make a mistake in this medication or this treatment, it could cost somebody their life in the most extreme case. But also there could be harm done to them.
Shannon Watson: So I think I have like kind of a perfectionist approach, not really perfectionist, but like what I want to do and what I am bringing to people has to be effective, right? You know, do no harm. And so I took that approach when trying to develop the classes in the work that I do is like, it's got to be effective with little mistakes based in science and evidence of what is going to really, truly work. Paula Sabbagha: Right. And then when people feel like it's working, it's easier to stick to. Shannon Watson: Yeah, yeah. And you make adjustments if it's not working. Paula Sabbagha: Right, right. So going over back over to the athlete role. So you've worked with we talked about both college and pro athletes. Is there a memorable story that captures the intensity or dedication of these clients? Shannon Watson: I don't know if I have like one specific memorable story, but every day they're dedicated. I mean, and if they are not, they don't get the opportunity to play. Paula Sabbagha: That's true. Shannon Watson: I mean, every single day is their their expression of their dedication. I mean, they're up early, they grind all day, especially, I think, at a college level. Right? I don't think we I don't think the general public understands quite as much about what the college experience is really like for a student athlete. I mean, they are managing both school college.
Paula Sabbagha: Right, which is a full time duty. Shannon Watson: Yeah, which is really hard for for many student. Right. And they are trying to compete and perform at a high level for the sport. So it's almost like they're doing two full time jobs right at the exact same time. Right. That takes an immense amount of dedication from all of them every single day. Paula Sabbagha: Right. And I can't imagine to what they're eating or not eating, you know, to try to stay fit and, you know, as strong as they can. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of stress. Have you ever had an athlete that could barely move or what, you know, with an injury and then left completely different after a session or several sessions? Shannon Watson: One of the most remarkable stories I have is from a former college golfer, so played competitive college golf, and he continued to golf recreationally, like just because as a joy and 2 or 3 times a week and his back pain and hip, back and hip combined, back and hip pain was starting to affect his golf, he could no longer get in and out of the golf cart. Shannon Watson: When he first came to me, he was like, you know, he was already seeing a physician. It was getting his back pain treated, and he was coming to me to add stretch and releases and into that entire treatment plan with his physician and through, you know, time and consistency with the program. He went from, you know, he would say, Shane and I would get to, you know, halfway through my golf game and I can't get in and out of the golf cart without a ton of pain.
Shannon Watson: Like, this is really impacting me doing the things I love to do. Yeah. And through the consistency of him showing up and doing the work and doing the stretching, the releases and some time his back pain is completely gone. I mean, he has got it to a level where it is totally managed. I mean, he can golf, he feels great. Shannon Watson: He can, you know, he has no complaints. I mean, it is it is like night and day. And so those are the stories that are so inspiring to me of like my why why are you doing this? Like like why show up? Why do this this work? And it's that stuff that's so important. Paula Sabbagha: Wow. Thank you. I'm sure athletes can be tough clients, though. How do you get through to the ones who are skeptical? Skeptical about stretch. Shannon Watson: So I work in so many different areas. I work with the professional athletes, and then I have, college level athletes. And I think it takes understanding the difference of the work. So like, if I'm teaching a public class, if I'm teaching a group class in the gym, or I'm just stretching somebody one on one, they want to be there. Shannon Watson: They chose to come to that class, they paid for it, and they showed up because they wanted to or they may or may not come back after the class. You know, if they decide, you know, I didn't like that I'm not going to come back. And and that's just the way it is when someone is freely coming to do the work. Paula Sabbagha: Right. Shannon Watson: But and the professional athletes, they're paying on their own to work with me. So they want to work with me right? They're not being it's not mandatory. Paula Sabbagha: They're seeing the value.
Shannon Watson: Yeah. They they are choosing to be there. So it's not it's usually not difficult. But when you go into a college athletics, which I think a lot of people don't know this, the NCAA regulates the amount of work hours that a team can give each athlete. So they can only work them out, which means like strength and conditioning, workouts, practice schedule, things like that. Shannon Watson: They are mandated only 20 hours a week. That's the highest level. So my work is considered part of that if they're going to make it mandatory. Okay. So in order to get compliance and people to show up all the time and really get the benefit from the work, it should be mandatory, right? So when something is mandatory for a group of 35 young people, maybe not everybody loves it or maybe not everybody wants to do it in that moment, especially when they're working really hard and they're tired and they just don't feel like it. Shannon Watson: But it's mandatory because the team has made it part of the mandatory workouts. So in those experiences, you do have some people that may not want to be there and or they're not taking it as serious because it's not something they are bought in on 100% yet, like if it's a new practice for the team. So I'll have like I've had in the past, you know, athletes will start to get really, really distracted during class, which can be disruptive to me and disruptive to the rest of the people practicing.
Shannon Watson: But it's just the reality of it and other things. I've had athletes, you know, may just not want to be there that day, whatever, whatever. And they'll just lay there. Paula Sabbagha: So like, I don't need a downward dog. Yeah. Shannon Watson: I feel like, oh, we're not doing that today. I am not here for this. So those moments are moments that I understand. And it's an opportunity to practice the true mindfulness practice of me noticing how it's making me feel because I have a job to do. Yeah, I have consistency to maintain. I have to perform at a high level. Shannon Watson: And so when there's one person in this group that it obviously doesn't feel like being there today, that I could let that affect how I do the job. So I just practice the mindfulness practice. I'm noticing my thoughts in that moment. I'm noticing am I getting frustrated because this is disruptive to the whole group, and then I just have to make the choice to continue to coach, to continue to show up, to just, you know, get. Paula Sabbagha: Back to your breath. Yes. Shannon Watson: My breath come back to my practice. So, you know, when it's mandatory, when it's with the young young kids, when it's the college level, you know, then it gets more challenging and you just get through it. You just show up and you do the work and you know, you get through it. Phones can be a distraction, right? You know, to that age group a lot of times. Shannon Watson: So but you just power through. And the ones who want to be there get what they're supposed to. And the other ones may or may not that day. Paula Sabbagha: That's true. Can you share a moment when your work directly impacted an athlete's ability to perform, maybe even, you know, saving their season? Shannon Watson: I think most of the athletes I've worked with directly through this season, they haven't had like catastrophic injuries. Right? A lot of them deal with, you know, they're going to have strains and sprains and things that pop up throughout the season. And my work really is about mental performance slowing down, regulating the nervous system. So we are when they have a practice or a game, their central nervous system has a high load on it, and in the stress side.
Shannon Watson: And so my work is there to help them reset their nervous system, recover faster, accelerate recovery in their body by coming down by doing the deep breath work. So I haven't had this like huge, you know, turnaround with athletes. It's more of the maintenance with them. It's more of the impact that it has for them daily and the long term. Shannon Watson: I have had some you know, I've had some baseball players with scoliosis who are really trying to manage back pain. They're really showing up to these classes to get the breath work, to stretch their tissues. Part of the stretching and the breath work that's so beneficial for an athlete because of the load on their bodies is that stretch can break spasm. Shannon Watson: That's important for anybody who's having muscle spasms is to learn to stretch those tissues. If you can break the spasm cycle so it goes spasm, contraction, tightness, pain. If we can use stretch protocols to continually take care of the body and breath work does the same thing. By relaxing the muscles right, we can prevent further pain. Paula Sabbagha: Wow. And that really seems like it's something that would benefit almost everybody. So I guess how often do you say that stretches overlooked by just the average person? And then why do you think it's so important for everyone, not just these athletes? Shannon Watson: I think people are trying to do a lot and I think people are really busy. I think our lives are really busy right now. And so I think people may know that they're they're trying to prioritize physical exercise. They're trying to lose weight, right? They're trying to show up for work. They're trying to manage kids. And those things become the disciplines they're really working hard to do every day. Shannon Watson: And so the small things like they may not understand the true benefit of the breathwork, the true benefit of having a good stretch protocol as a tool or as a practice. And so I think they're just really trying to do these other things. And the stretch protocols, the breathwork gets kind of sidelined, right, as just because it's just sometimes I think for people it can feel like one more thing I have to do.
Paula Sabbagha: Yeah. When you're already overloaded. Shannon Watson: Yeah. And I think a lot of people are like, I can't add anything else, right? But when what I think the shift that needs to happen is that when people start to understand how beneficial stretch and breath work is for not just your immediate health, but your long term health, the true benefits of what it does everybody just I think link stretch with, oh, it's just injury prevention or it's just something I'm supposed to. Paula Sabbagha: Do after. Shannon Watson: I work out. It's like water. I always tell people like, everybody's like, I know I need to drink more water. I know I need to stretch more. So people really need to look at their schedule, understand how important this stuff is, and carve out tiny moments for it. Intentional moments. Paula Sabbagha: Right. So to that point, what would you recommend for someone you know like me, that I'm at a desk a lot of the day? So what are some things people can do to kind of fit it in to where they are in their career, in their day? Shannon Watson: So most of us are spending so much time sitting. I think if you're sitting in an office on a desk and you have access to a phone or a computer, my first advice would be sign up for my virtual program. And then if you're going to use it in the workplace in the I have a virtual program online.
Shannon Watson: They're on demand classes. The classes were birthed from my work with the University of South Carolina men's basketball team, who gave me eight weeks only to work with the team preseason. So I thought I got to get as much as I possibly can in an eight weeks. We got to do a whole body getting all the breath work. Shannon Watson: We got to really make this thing good. So I took it and made it into eight weeks, recorded it, high quality. I've got it online. It's a resource for international athletes, for traveling athletes, for teams and for coaches and for people to do anywhere. So the person that's in the office, the person that's traveling a lot for work, or if if you're most of your time is sitting at a desk and you have access to a computer or to a phone, get the virtual program and start with the seeded segments, some of the classes towards the week. Shannon Watson: I think there's descriptions on every class, but I believe it's weeks seven and eight, six, seven and eight where there's all these seeded sequences. I'm sitting on a mat, but those seeded sequences can be done from a desk, from a desk. Right. So my advice to people is like, set an intention to pause once or twice a day and start taking care of these. Shannon Watson: These muscles, these do these seated stretch sequences right from your desk. Maybe set a timer. Maybe you make a sticky note, hold the program up on a computer and just follow it from watching your monitor that you're staring at. Anyway, write it off on your phone, right? You're there anyway.
Paula Sabbagha: Just schedule that ten minutes you know, into your day. Shannon Watson: Yes, and like people. And it's not just people at desks, dentists, chefs, surgeons. All of us are forward folding. We're we're we're bringing our knees up, which is shortening the muscles on the front of the thighs. We're shortening our hip flexors, which pulls on the back, which can give you back pain. So everything on the front is shortening when you're spending time at a desk. Shannon Watson: Yeah. So absolute most important thing is to start opening the anterior chain. The muscles that run along the front of your body keeping those open. Right. So so really doing chest openers twists, if it's okay with your body of your body can handle twists. You can do those seated in a chair. But really it's time under tension. So holding those is stretches for 30s or a minute doing the breath work with them, reducing the stress of the job, releasing the tension, noticing during the work day. Shannon Watson: If you're getting worked up and saying, you know what, I am stressed out. I'm going to pause. I'm going to do a little bit of breath work. I'm do a little bit of stretching, not, you know, and then consistently doing that over time will prevent the pain. It's going to refresh you. The breath is going to make you feel better. Shannon Watson: It's going to relax your muscles. It's going to release the tension. It's it's going to do what it's designed to do.
Paula Sabbagha: Right. And hopefully put a little pause between if you're getting frustrated. Shannon Watson: Yeah, yeah. People can do, you know, once you start getting into the breathwork practice from a professional standpoint, it makes mindfulness practice the the the formal practice, the the discipline of it can make you more creative at work, come up with better ideas. I mean, we have to be cultivating create creativity in the professional workplace, right? Decreasing stress I mean, there's such an edge, reducing pain, improving our sleep. Shannon Watson: There's a performance aspect for professionals in this. That's huge. Paula Sabbagha: Right. Shannon Watson: And it can be done from the desk. Paula Sabbagha: Yeah. Very true. Have you noticed a mental shift in your clients? Not just physical, but after consistent stretching sessions? Shannon Watson: Yes. I mean, the body communicates to the brain and the brain down to the body. And if you're storing tension in your body, if we can stretch, compress and release it, and you're. And you can do that through stretch and through the breathwork down regulating breathwork, when your body relaxes, it tells your mind, I'm safe, relaxed, we can chill out, and then all of a sudden everything feels better.
Shannon Watson: You know it's true. Yeah. It's like a little hack. It's like release the body tension, relax the body. The body's going to tell the mind you're relaxed. And then the nervous system all of a sudden feels great. Paula Sabbagha: Right? You know, as soon as I do that, though, my body is like, it's time for a nap. Yeah, yeah. No, the stuff is really good. So helpful. What of your clients taught you about resilience, healing, or even slowing down in your own life? Shannon Watson: I think being observing high performing individuals and seeing behind the scenes how much they need some stillness, some some moments of nervous system reset, regeneration. Just small moments. I need it in my life. The mindfulness, pursuing a mindfulness practice has shown me that I need that anyway. And then observing, you know, these highly successful individuals and seeing what that the demands of that can do to the mind and the body, knowing they need this practice and that I need this practice too.
Shannon Watson: And then seeing the benefit translate from both lives. You know. Yeah. It's just I know it's necessary. Yeah I know people need to down regulate more. I've seen what it's done in my own life and my own body. And then I've seen what it can do in my clients lives, in their bodies. And so it's just pushes me to share and educate more. Paula Sabbagha: Right. And I know the stretching, you know, over these last few years, it's helped me incredibly just there's so much stress, you know, with being a mom, you know, having a career, everything's demanding. You know, you're always busy and it's nice to just take that little pause. So yeah. Shannon Watson: Even if you have to force yourself by paying for the right pay for the appointment. Yeah. Sometimes it's that's why I think people come to the classes with me is because sometimes you just need to show up somewhere and have someone just lead you through it. Yes, you have to make yourself start to do it, and then you start to feel the effects, and then that reinforces it and makes you want to do more of it. Shannon Watson: But it's almost like you have this little mountain, this little edge you have to get over. Yeah. And once you start to show up and you start to feel it, it it motivates you to do it more.
Paula Sabbagha: Right? And I know I, I tend to be the one that makes all the decisions. And I'm in charge a lot. So it's nice to have that time where I'm just here as a student. Yeah. I'm being told, yeah, let's do it. Shannon Watson: Yeah. You can finally shut the brain down right? You know, you can finally not be the one that's doing the thinking and doing the deciding. And it's that it's that when you're in that mode, you have that, you know that just you're on. Yeah, you're just on. And it is so important for people to be able to step into a space where they can just shut it off for a little bit. Shannon Watson: Right. It's good for your brain, it's good for your body is good for your soul. And sometimes it takes, you know, joining a program or showing up for a coach, right? You know, someone to lead you through it, you know? Yeah. Paula Sabbagha: Definitely. Well looking ahead, where do you see assisted stretch fitting into the future of sports and performance and just individuals.
Shannon Watson: There's a lot of assisted stretch in the sports world already. So physical therapists add a little bit of ad assisted stretch. Athletic trainers add assisted stretch some of the strength coaches ad stretch. So it exists. It's translating more now into the general population are understanding how good it truly is for the body and how great it feels to to stretch and be stretched and how important it is. Shannon Watson: I think the biggest piece is the mental mindfulness and breath work, and combining them together for a whole body, you know, mind approach, right? I think we're at the forefront with athletics, where the athletes and people in general are starting to understand they really would benefit from this stuff and are going I think coaches are more open to it. Shannon Watson: I think a rehab programs are more open to it. I think physicians and medical staff is more open to it. And so I just see it growing and I just I am curious to see where it goes.
Paula Sabbagha: Yeah. So what's next for you and your stretching and nursing kind of in your field. What's what's on the horizon. Shannon Watson: So right now I am doing more professional breathwork and mindfulness coaching where I am developing pros breathwork routines, the pre-game routine, the post-practice routine, the post lift, the nightly like sleep optimization, the deep relaxation. I'm really working one on one with these athletes to cultivate their their breathwork and their mindfulness and their mental practice. How when do they do it? Shannon Watson: How do they do it? I'm, you know, developing their schedules and going with them through a season or off season. And we're doing they're using combination of my virtual program, which has audio guided relaxations, which are they're non-REM deep rest sessions. They're about 6 to 10 minutes. They're a progressive guided relaxation and breath breathwork. And they're using a combination of those at strategic times in the day.
Shannon Watson: And then they're doing virtual work with me where we show up and we dig in a little deeper, and we're doing the sitting practice in the breath work, the mindfulness week by week by week. And so I am loving that. That is that is part of the work that I love. And I'm doing more of and getting to do more of right now and just kind of doing the nervous system work, the the reset when people have these high stress loads or high stress days, getting that breath work in there, getting the deep relaxation in there and and just going day by day and and watching it grow and change and help them. Shannon Watson: I am developing new class programs, which I will do in person here in Columbia. I want to serve the, people struggling with back and hip pain where they do not have specific classes they can go to every week to get a gentle program that's safe for them and effective. Right. So I'm hoping in the spring to launch, maybe like a 4 or 6 week group session where we're really working through the spine. Paula Sabbagha: Well, that's. Shannon Watson: Great. And the spine runs, you know, through your neck, mid-back and low back and hips. And so trying to really develop an evidence based, effective program for those people who are either done with physical therapy or maybe on a combination of injections and working out, or there's somewhere in their treatment where it's, you know, this is part of their maintenance for their back.
Shannon Watson: So I hope to do that in the spring. We are getting into we're going to get a couple places in Columbia that have sauna and cold tubs. Oh, and so yes, so, so those spaces are coming into the city where individuals can go and experience contrast therapy. Paula Sabbagha: Right. Shannon Watson: So I'm going to go up to New York and do some studying and experience some work from other professionals. And then hopefully I'll bring it back here and do some pop ups where we're doing breathwork and cold immersion and guided downregulation in heat. So bringing it into the sauna and that's part of athletic recovery. But but the general population is starting to experience these places too. Shannon Watson: So I hope to do some of that coming. That's exciting. Yeah. Towards the summer. Will you come. Yes. Paula Sabbagha: Yes. That sounds great. Yeah. We've been talking about the cold tubs here. Shannon Watson: So and there's a limit to space in some of the sauna. So it would be a great thing for like a work group to do. Paula Sabbagha: A smaller. Shannon Watson: Group. There's a whole networking scene professional networking scene that is starting to emerge in these communal wellness. Right. Clubs in bigger cities, they're starting to have these wellness clubs and they're becoming social spaces. They're becoming net professional networking spaces. What is normally on the golf course down here is starting in some of these other.
Paula Sabbagha: Cities in the country. Yeah. Shannon Watson: A cold tub sessions. And so there's a lot of really interesting teambuilding that's going on with breathwork and like how can you improve the dynamics between maybe a quarterback and a receiver or the team dynamics or human to human dynamics in between synchronizing breath. Yeah. Like what does when we really get together and do breathwork together and synchronize our breath because it's shut, we're seeing that our nervous systems kind of bounce off of each other. Shannon Watson: So if one person is really stressed in the room, your nervous system picks up on that and then you start to feel the stress, right? So what would happen if we got a team together and we're doing this down, regulating breath and movement as a group, how do we shift dynamics? How do we get stronger as a team together? Shannon Watson: How do we synchronize this stuff together in a way that's really gonna like benefit the team? So that's where I'm headed.
Paula Sabbagha: That's exciting. Yeah. I can't wait to hear more about it. Shannon Watson: So have you both. Paula Sabbagha: Yes. Called so that you'd be asked. Yeah. Well, thank you, Shannon, for sharing some of your practice and your stories. And where can people find more about you if they want to learn more? Shannon Watson: So the first place to go would be my website. It's WW s Watson solutions.com. On the website. You can join any of my programs. You can just do the eight week program. You can do the monthly option. You can get annual unlimited Pro Breathwork. Development is up there. It's all under the total body reset. You can follow my Instagram. Shannon Watson: I post stretches and you know, tips and a lot of just kind of random small bits on there. It's at Shannon Watson 8 to 5. You can sign up for my email newsletter. I don't send a lot of emails out. I really just if I'm doing an in-person event or have something important. Yeah, happening, I'll send out an email. Shannon Watson: I try not to overwhelm. I just write, you know, I'm like, I get enough emails, we're getting enough emails. When I sign up for the emails, it's going to be maybe for a year or something like that. When I launch the back pain class, it'll come out. So those are the best places to find me. Shoot me a message. Shannon Watson: If you have questions, send me an email. I look forward to doing more groups here in town. Yes. Yep. That's it. Paula Sabbagha: Well thank you. We appreciate you sharing. Thank you.
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