Transcript Interview Episode with Karese Laguerre
Karese: [00:00:00] When there's body dysfunction, there's typically some sort of emotional dysfunction or emotional chaos that's going on too. And so I love energy work especially in those situations where, cause I don't use it as my primary thing, right? It really supports a lot of what I do. It helps to clear out and to enable the body to heal in a more, I like dynamic as a word.
I think that's just the best word that's ever been created, but heal in a more dynamic way. We have to clear out a lot of the energy that's sitting there preventing healing and restoration.
Laurin: Hello friends and welcome to Curiously Wise. I'm your host, Laurin Wittig. And I have a wonderful guest here today. Karese Laguerre is joining us and she is a myofunctional therapist. And, I didn't know what that means when I first started talking to her. It's a really fascinating thing. And it's such a lovely example of why [00:01:00] I love the topic or the title of my podcast, Curiously Wise, cuz I get to get curious about all kinds of things.
And so this is an area that I'm really excited to bring to you. And I hope that you learn as much from Karese as I have and continue to learn from her. So Karese welcome. How are you today?
Karese: I am well, I'm super happy to be here and I just love your energy. So I'm excited about today.
Laurin: Great. Thanks. Okay. So we're gonna dive in, first of all, can you tell us what myofunctional therapy is?
Karese: Absolutely. You know, I get that question more than any other question. It's not something that's super well known, but it is a phenomenal modality of alternative health. So what it is is, I like to liken it to personal training really. It's kind of like personal training for all the muscles below your eyes, but above your shoulder.
So we're working with the oral facial and some of the oral Pharyngeal muscles to really help strengthen and coordinate them. That's gonna help facilitate [00:02:00] better sleep, better breathing. Just better digestion. I mean, there's so many wonderful health benefits for it.
Laurin: Interesting. Okay. So, everything below the eyes and above the shoulders, that's a very specific area. So, I know that you work a lot with breath.
Karese: Yes.
Laurin: Why is breath so important?
Karese: Oh, my gosh, breath is the most important thing that we have out of everything. I mean, we can go for a few days without water. We can go for a few weeks without food, but not many of us would last any more than a few minutes without oxygen. I mean, we need to breathe. Right? And not many people know that.
There's a way to breathe that it's not just because you're respirating that you are breathing properly. You have to breathe and breathe one through your nose because our nose is primed and prepped and physiologically the optimal way for us to intake oxygen. But it's definitely something that it's the powerhouse of our bodies, that breath.
We need that oxygen in order [00:03:00] to have great cognitive function, to be able to sleep well, to be able to digest and to process and to have all of our organs run and our blood flow, we need oxygen. So breath is a passion of mine because we have to breathe in order to really survive and forget thriving.
You need it to just survive.
Laurin: Just to survive. Yeah. And I know, I've spent a lot of my life, the first 50 years of my life having terrible allergy issues. So I always had a stuffed up nose and I know that I don't breathe well, and I still occasionally have that, especially when I'm trying to sleep. I don't always remember to think about that.
We really can't live long if we don't breathe.
Karese: Yeah. I mean, minutes, minutes.
Laurin: Yeah. Yeah. I, I really, I don't know why I don't think about that. So, it seems to me like breathing is something that we should just naturally know how to do. And yet I know I hold my breath a lot without realizing it and I'll just go, all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I [00:04:00] gotta breathe.
So why is it that we have to train it?
Karese: We have to train it because sometimes that foundation from when we're young, so babies are obligate nasal breathers, or they're supposed to be. But there are sometimes physiological barriers to that. There are tongue ties. There are babies who are born with you know, cranial facial deficits that are going to impair the nose from being able to breathe.
They might have a deviated step. Then you might have things that kind of compound as you get older. So, it's important to really get to the root of what's the issue with why you can't physiologically breathe the appropriate way. But then to also understand that we have so much going on in that area of my specialty when we talk about below the eyes. so that that's a whole upper respiratory system.