Defying gravity with the Booby Physio, Siobhan O’Donovan

Feel Better Every Day

This week’s guest, the Booby Physio (aka former Ireland rugby player Siobhan O’Donovan) shares some life changing advice (well, it has been for me!) on all kinds of ways in which we can better support our whole selves. You can find her at posturefittingphysio.com and on social media at posture.fitting

Watch here or listen wherever you get your podcasts

Let me know how you’re going to start better supporting yourself today (and while a lot of the conversation is about boobs, much of it is beneficial for all genders).

Le grá (with love),

Evei

Full transcript

It wasn't as much of an impact for me because I wasn't in a space where I was aware of it, but psychologically, huge, absolutely huge. So then I kind of went, this is mad. If this is having this effect on me, what can I do to bring this to my patients? And then after several years, I then set up my own physiotherapy service offering to patients the option for me to help them to be to internally support their breast weight through their posture or alignment and externally through optimal bra fitting.

Hi, you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and I'm here to help you create a life you don't need to retreat from by taking better care of yourself and your Self with an uppercase S, that highest, wisest, truest, most joyful, brilliant, and miraculous part of yourself.

I love sharing these trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD friendly self-care ideas, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I've enjoyed making them.

Welcome, Siobhan O'Donovan! Thank you so, so much for joining me.

You're very welcome. I'm very, very delighted to be here.

I am so excited. I went to the Dive Ireland show a few weeks ago and Siobhan, known as the Booby Physio, was giving a talk on boobs and buoyancy and it was the only talk I went to.

Thank you.

It was basically about, like, I'm a member of Roscommon Sub Aqua Club, but when I come to the diving it's something I was aware of, like buoyancy, all the rest of it, different bodies. And what you were talking, it wasn't just about the diving, it's about daily life. And I just think what you're doing is phenomenal and I want as many people to hear about it as possible. I got home, I got rid of most of my bras because they were stabbing me and all the rest of it.

And I'm on the way to replacing, I've replaced two of them so far, I'll be, like, gradually, but it's incredible work you do. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And what would you like to say about what you're working on at the moment, what you do?

So I suppose if I give you a little bit of background as to how I've kind of ended up being surrounded by breasts.

I started my life as a PE teacher because I wanted to work within an active profession, and this was a long time ago when I was doing my first degree. And there weren't many options, there weren't many options in the activity field and there were fewer options again for women. So lots of things that I now look back on and I can see gender gap situations and things like that now that I'm a little bit more aware of that situation.

But from the point of view of a profession, I really never gave any thought to anything other than possibly becoming a sports journalist and then realise, no, that's not, that's not a thing. There is no, you know, because it was journalism and you then maybe reported on sports as opposed to now where it's a bit more specific. But it was either that or and then I was like, well, that's going to be sitting, you know, on a typewriter.

And I wanted a more active thing. So PE teaching was the basically the only option, but also something that I was really happy to be doing. I was, I was happy to go on to be a PE teacher for the rest of my life, or so I thought, until I did my actual four-year degree.

Within that four-year degree, we had a couple of modules on exercise physiology. So getting a little bit deeper into how the body works, deeper than we would have done in, you know, Leaving Cert biology. And then also there was a module on sports injuries.

And I kind of sat there through that and I thought, we really as PE teachers need to know this stuff because we are encouraging kids to be active. And if we give them, for example, an exercise or a movement that is potentially inappropriate, then we're effectively possibly teaching them something that could ultimately be damaging for them.

Now, having been in the field that I'm in for a lot of years, what we now know is that movement is absolutely a non-negotiable and it is far more important for somebody to be moving than for us to be focusing too much on, you need to be moving with your neck in this position or whatever.

But I've also come a little bit full circle on that in that we need to be mindful of the way that we hold ourselves because that does affect how we function. Yeah. That's a bit that I'll come back to when we talk a little bit more about posture.

I realised that there was the potential for me as a PE teacher to not be informed enough to be providing good quality movement advice. And so after I had finished my degree, I was teaching, I taught in London. And while I was there, I looked into how do I do more about this sports injuries bit? That's where I was focusing on.

Basically, cut a long story short, physio degree, three years plus a two year postgrad in sports, which would have involved me doing a lot of stuff that I didn't have an interest in. And also five years on top of four years financially, that was never going to happen. And then I heard about a Masters in the States. And basically, that's what I did. I went over to the States, did a year of prerequisite courses to get on to the Masters, then did the Masters.

And this was back in the early ‘90s when, you know, flying over to the States meant, ‘I'm gone for the year. You're not going to see me for a year.’ And I'd be lucky if I get back in the year. Very different to what it is now.

So that was that was quite a big move. And I suppose I like one of the things that I'm very proud of the fact that I did, because if I hadn't done, I probably would have been a very happy PE teacher for the rest of my life. But I kind of feel like what I'm doing now is impacting people in ways that are different to what would have happened if I'd stayed in PE.

While I was over there, the focus very much on what I was doing was on prevention of injuries. So it wasn't just wait for the fire to happen and try and put the fire out.

It was let's not have the fire start in the first place. Let's look at people's bodies. Let's look at how they move. Let's look at their lives and how they function. And let's prevent problems.

Then when I came back on this side of the water, I was pretty unique in that most people who would have gone on and done a physio degree, it would have been here are the problems. This is how we treat them.

And originally now it has changed. But originally, the focus would have been more on treatment. And I think what has happened over the years is people have come to realise that in order to do effective treatment, we also need to prevent the problem from coming back.

Therefore, that whole preventive aspect has come into play over here. It was more strong in the States because the degree that I did was based in schools and colleges. It was based on students having exposure to athletic injury every day because they were training every day like this.

The school sports system over there is incredibly intense. Yeah, I'll do it voluntarily, but they're training literally every day and possibly two games a week. So if you've that much exposure to potential for injury, then there is more injury happening.

The degree that I did was for a specific qualification that's school based. But when I then came back, I had quite a unique set. Well, I had a pretty completely unique set of qualifications and skills.

One of the things that I did was I got on board with developing those degrees in the UK and we now have them in Ireland as well. Looking at that more specific athletic sports. And when I say athletic, I don't mean you have to be an athlete.

I mean, being physically active and how that can, you know, the ramifications of that. So whether the person is going out for a walk or whether they are chasing an Olympic medal, that kind of a field. And so I was involved with that and with setting up the first professional body for that side of things.

And that was very much where my focus was. I was dealing with the active population. And then life changed for me in London when I had a bra fitting and I had it done purely by chance, purely because I had an hour to kill before I went to The Proms.

And with I was with my mother-in-law. I had read about this shop in London and that, you know, that I knew did bra fitting. And I was like, well, here I am, 45 years of age.

Sure, I may as well go and have my first one. And it was you know, it literally changed my view on everything. I walked out that door an inch taller.

Yeah. I don't know if I said this at the at the Scuba…

…I'm just I think I know the shop you mean. Yes. But also. Oh, no, no, there's several of them dotted across. And I can't remember which one we went to. But I was going to The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. And honestly, if I'd walked in the door and they had said on the stage, we're short somebody to play piano. Can somebody come up? I'd have been like, I'm there. I was ready to take on the world.

Whatever you threw at me, I was going to be able to cope with it because I had this absolute psychological change.

Yeah. For me, like at the time, I was training reasonably well because of playing for Ireland because I played rugby for Ireland. And I would have been at that kind of stage still where I was still training quite hard.

I wasn't playing at the time. But I didn't have physical and issues in terms of either thinking my breast weight was I never knew anything about breast weight, so I didn't know it could have affected my performance at all. And I didn't have physical kind of neck pain or back pain, which I now know people have as a result of unsupported breast weight.

Physically, it wasn't as much of an impact for me because I wasn't in a space. I was aware of it. But psychologically, you absolutely huge. Then I kind of went, this is mad if this is having this effect on me.

Yeah.

What can I do to bring this to my patients? And then after several years, I then set up my own physiotherapy service offering to patients the option for me to help them to be able to internally support their breast weight through their posture or alignment and externally through optimal bra fitting.

And I realised this is a longer answer to the question that you expected. But I ended up I'm from Cork. Remember the Blarney Stone? We just talk.

Oh, you're brilliant.

Sorry. But I realised very quickly that the vast majority of women are in the wrong bra, which is why the heading on my flyer and my banner behind, which might be back to front now, but the heading is, Are you wearing someone else's bra? Because the chances are that people are because they are generally not in the right fit.

And so far in all the work that I've done with the people that I've seen and the physios are therapists that I've trained who have also seen people we have yet to see anybody wearing the right bra. So everybody is. 100%.

Now, the research will tell you 70 to 80%. Bra fitters in shops that sell bras will tell you it's 90 to 95%. And we'll tell you it's 100% because those that we've seen now, obviously, if somebody goes into a shop to buy a bra, they're going in with a vested interest, presumably, but they may be more aware of the need. Yeah.

Early with us, people may be more aware of the need. But equally, what I want people to understand is that you don't have to have a need. To be more optimally supported, because it has the benefits, it has physical benefits and it has benefits that people don't know.

Yeah. Benefit from. And it's kind of like one of those things until you experience it.

Yeah. Don't underestimate the difference it can make.

With my yoga therapy element of my work, it involves a lot of neuroscience and you're talking about working with the pons part of the brain, like through the physiology of you said that it's taller, like you're sending signals of safety to the brain, which then cascade down to the whole system.

And it's like, yeah, imagine if everyone had that every day, walking into whatever situation and that feeling of safety to be ourselves and supported. And I love all the puns you use in your marketing.

I was going to ask about your ideal and actual daily self-care. You were talking a little bit about the posture. Do you do physio for yourself? Do you do any exercises yourself that help you? Yeah, well, I mean, for me, strength training is a really, really important part of everyone's life. Should be for everyone, but more so for women, because we have hormonal changes and men have hormonal changes, but the hormonal changes that occur for us over time. And I'm not talking about just at menopause, because again, there's a great increase in the narrative on menopause and it's fabulous that's happening. But there are hormonal changes with pregnancy. There are hormonal changes through the menstrual cycle. You know, we are constantly fluctuating in hormones.

And so one of the things that really helps us, benefits us over life is to be stronger, is to be in a situation where we can physically do things. And then that has psychological benefits. So I mean, I needed to move.

There was actually, it was my husband's dive kit. So they got lost coming back on a flight and he was away and they delivered it in a taxi the next day. And I just picked it up out of the back of the car and took it in.

Because I'm used to carrying twenty five kilograms, that wasn't an issue. It was a lady taxi driver, it was a female taxi driver. She came to the door and she said to me, Is there somebody here that will be able to help us with the case? And I was like, You know, I'll be fine, you know.

And she was jaw to the floor at the fact that could just carry it in.

And for me, that's something that we all should be able to do. I'm not saying we should be able to lift 80kg, but we should do functional things, because that also gave me a really strong sense of, Well done me!

Yeah, to do it. You know, I wanted to help her to do it because she clearly needed help to get it into the taxi in the first place and then had decided, as she was driving down, going to need a man to carry it. And, you know, so that for me was a real kind of and it happens all the time when I get courier delivery.

So I get it for you. And I'll be like, No, that's fine. I've got it. And it's a good feeling to be able to do it from that perspective. So for me, strength training is really a non-negotiable. And I think also it ties into what I'm doing as well with the postural side, because and that comes back to what you were talking about.

I don't know if you ever read, there was a study that was done quite a few years ago, and then there was a lot of controversy about it, which I mentioned. So it was about what's called the Power Pose.

So basically, you're going into a bathroom before an interview, standing in the mirror, looking at yourself, bringing yourself up into this position. And that gives you all that neural input that you just mentioned. Increased testosterone, lower cortisol after just two minutes and the results last for hours.

Yeah. So where it was controversial was that they did saliva testing, looking at the hormonal responses. And what has been acknowledged by the author since then is that that saliva testing was not accurate or not potentially reliable.

And she got she got absolutely slammed by people saying that's not the case, that it doesn't happen like that. It isn't accurate. But the point of what she was doing, let's take away the saliva testing.

The point of what she was doing was I would challenge anybody to go into this what she called the Power Pose and not feel confident. And we have research showing that posture and mood are inherently correct. Absolutely.

If somebody sits in a slouch position, they find it easier to recall negative memories and they find it harder to recall positive thoughts, whereas if they're in a more upright position, the positive thoughts are easier and the negative thoughts are harder. So we know that what they called in that study, the Power Pose is a positive situation. And aside from the psychological side of it, there's a social side of it as well, which is, you know, a lot of the women that I speak to don't want to go out because they don't want people looking at their breasts.

They don't want to be active because they don't want their breasts moving and therefore they don't want to be cat called if they're running down the road. They will avoid exercise because and very often in high school, in teenage kids can be very cruel. And this is not that I'm not pointing the finger at boys here because girls equally unkind to each other.

But a lot of girls will drop out of sports in teenage years because of breast movement. And this is now something that we know. Again, we have research showing this.

But until we acknowledge that that's a thing, then there's nothing being done to try and change that. But the other social side of it is things not related to activity at all, not going to the party because you don't want somebody to be looking at you, not going because you don't have clothes that you think hide your breasts, wearing a scarf that hangs down, that literally hangs down because people think that detracts from their breasts when in fact, actually, what it does is it draws attention and being better supported actually is their visibility in a way, you know. So this is what's also been really interesting is that where we have had larger breasted women who've come in.

And one of the things that I would say to them that one of our goals is to bring your breasts more front and centre because when breast tissue is poorly supported, it sits underneath your arms. And if it's your arms, then your clothes hang down in a block. Yeah.

Our breasts are supposed to sit on the front of our body. So when we bring them to the front, a lot of large women be like, no, no, I don't want that. It's going to be too obvious.

But actually, when they're in front and narrower, they're less obvious. Yeah. Out at the...