From the Green Velvet Couch | A Conversation with Dr. Tanner Evans
What if one of the most powerful tools for regulating your body, calming your mind, and preventing injury is already built into you? What if the power of breathwork for mind and body really is as simple as lying on your back and learning to breathe the way you were designed to?
On her podcast, From the Green Velvet Couch, Shelly sat down with Dr. Tanner Evans of West Kentucky Chiropractic in Benton, Kentucky. He brought along his teaching companion, Benny the Skeleton, to make the conversation as visual as it was informative. Tanner graduated from Logan University in St. Louis and works with patients every day on everything from injury recovery to nervous system regulation. His passion for helping people understand how their bodies actually work comes through in every answer.
Here are the moments worth holding onto.
Why Everything Starts With the Breath
Tanner opened with a statement that reframes how most people think about physical and mental health. Nearly every form of treatment, whether physical, mental, or neurological, starts with breathing. Before he works with a patient on mobility, strength, or pain, he wants to know how they breathe. Can they engage their diaphragm? Can they stabilize their trunk? Can their thoracic spine move the way it was designed to?
Breathing is the baseline. It is the first thing he assesses, because everything else in the body depends on it. And the best news of all is that it does not require any equipment, any training, or any expense. Anybody can do this work, and it can change how you feel in a matter of minutes.
Your Ribs Are Supposed to Move
One of the most surprising moments in the episode came when Tanner pointed to Benny and explained that our ribs are supposed to move. Most people picture the rib cage as a stable, fixed structure. In reality, it is designed to expand and contract with every breath, creating space for the lungs and allowing the diaphragm to do its job.
When we sit hunched over a screen, cram ourselves into small spaces, or hold tension in our shoulders, we cut that movement short. Less rib motion means less oxygen exchange, less proprioceptive information to the brain, and less physical stability overall. Something as simple as getting a good adjustment can sometimes unlock that mobility in a way patients immediately feel. Tanner described patients getting up off his table, taking a deep breath, and saying “Wow, I can breathe” for what felt like the first time in years.
Proprioception and Why You Should Try Standing on One Leg
Tanner walked Shelly through a quick experiment anyone can try at home. He asked her to balance on one leg for 10 seconds, then switch to the other. The wobble on one side versus the other revealed something important about her proprioception.
Proprioception is the body’s sense of where it is in space. It works alongside your vision and your inner ear to help you move, balance, and react. The diaphragm is one of the biggest proprioceptive muscles in the entire body, which means that how you breathe directly affects how well your brain can track your body and keep you stable.
When athletes keep twisting the same ankle, or when older adults begin to fall more often, the issue is often reduced proprioception in that area. Rehab for those patients almost always includes balance work, mobility training, and yes, breathing. This kind of whole-body awareness fits beautifully into the work Shelly does with her performance mentoring clients, where high performers learn that the smallest physical habits often shape the biggest outcomes.
A Breathing Exercise You Can Try Today
Tanner walked Shelly through a diaphragmatic breathing exercise in real time, and it is one of the simplest practices you will ever learn. Lie flat on your back. Place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly. Close your lips, press your tongue gently to the roof of your mouth, and breathe in through your nose.
The goal is for the hand on your belly to rise before the hand on your chest. Most people do the opposite. They breathe shallowly, recruiting their chest and accessory muscles while the diaphragm goes largely unused. Real diaphragmatic breathing fills the belly first in a 360-degree expansion, and the chest only rises at the very end.
Tanner suggested practicing for five to ten minutes a few times a week. You can do it on your back, on your right side, on your left side, and then again on your back. That small rotation helps you engage your diaphragm from different angles and teaches your body what proper breathing actually feels like. Most people have never experienced it.
Anxiety, Depression, and the Body’s Protective Posture
Shelly added an observation from her work as a therapist. When clients are anxious, depressed, or overwhelmed, their bodies curl inward. Shoulders round forward. Hands turn in. Feet point toward each other. The whole posture becomes protective, almost like a shield. And in that protective posture, good breathing is almost impossible.
Tanner nodded in immediate recognition. When the body is cramped, the rib cage cannot move. When the rib cage cannot move, the diaphragm cannot engage. When the diaphragm cannot engage, the nervous system stays stuck in fight or flight. It is a loop that feeds itself, and it affects everything from sleep to mood to physical pain.
This is why so many of the clients Shelly sees through her wellness specialist practice for founders, executives, and high-profile clients benefit from learning how to regulate their breath. A leader who can consciously shift out of fight or flight in the middle of a stressful day has an advantage most people never realize is available to them.
Adjustments, Cracks, and What They Actually Do
Shelly admitted she had never been to a chiropractor, and the idea of hearing her bones crack sounded unsettling. Tanner gently corrected a common misconception. The popping sound during an adjustment is not bone on bone. It is gas escaping from the fluid between the synovial joints, and it is completely normal.
An adjustment does not mean a bone has “popped out” of place. It means a joint that had stopped moving well has been given room to move again. Over time, poor joint motion leads to uneven spinal loading, faster degeneration, and chronic pain. Regular chiropractic maintenance is a lot like keeping a car aligned. You do it so the wheels do not wear out prematurely and so you can keep driving smoothly down the road.
Tanner added that adjustments also affect the brain. Beyond the physical release patients feel, there is a real neurological impact. The movement of the spine feeds information to the cerebral cortex, which influences mood, focus, and overall nervous system regulation.
The Biopsychosocial Picture
Tanner uses a biopsychosocial approach with his patients, which means he considers the biological, psychological, and social factors that shape a person’s pain or dysfunction. How a person thinks about their pain affects their behavior. Fear and activity avoidance can make physical symptoms worse. Social stress can amplify both.
Rather than telling a new patient “I think you have a biopsychosocial issue,” which would likely send them straight to Google, Tanner starts with breathing. It is the gentlest entry point into a much larger conversation about how the body and mind are working together. From there, he can begin to address the nervous system, mobility, stress response, and lifestyle factors that all contribute to how a person is feeling.
Tanner cited a 2020 study by Ho and Masaki showing that people with breathing issues also tended to have trunk instability, higher levels of stress, and higher rates of depression. The less regulated the nervous system, the less muscle spindle recruitment the brain can send, which means the body moves less efficiently and the whole system suffers. It is a reminder that nothing in the body happens in isolation.
Movement, Longevity, and Getting Away From the Screen
Toward the end of the conversation, Tanner and Shelly landed on something both of them talk about often. Longevity is directly linked to movement. Studies show that people tend to decrease their movement significantly every 10 years, which accelerates aging, reduces mobility, and increases the risk of chronic disease.
Modern life does not help. Screens keep us seated. Social media keeps us scrolling. Tanner encouraged listeners to get outside, go for a hike, climb something, lift something, and generally remember that our bodies were designed to move. Pair that with proper nutrition and good breathing, and you have the foundation for a life that feels good to live in.
Shelly brought the conversation full circle. Every episode of this podcast touches on some aspect of wellness, whether emotional, spiritual, financial, or physical. Tanner’s message fits perfectly into that larger picture. You cannot have high quality of life if you cannot breathe well, move well, or think clearly. All of it is connected, and all of it can begin with something as simple as five minutes of mindful breathing a few times a week.
This integrated, whole-person approach to health is exactly what Shelly brings to her wellness consulting work with organizations and leadership teams, where small practices often unlock the biggest transformations in both people and cultures.
🎧 Join the Conversation
If this post sparked something in you, the full episode is waiting with even more warmth and thoughtful insight.
✨ Listen to the full conversation on the From the Green Velvet Couch podcast. Visit the Podcast page to discover more episodes focused on resilience, leadership wellbeing, and holistic wellness.
Let this be your invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, and step into a well-grounded life full of growth and intention.
