Did spending more time doing the things you enjoy during lockdown reignite past passions, or reveal new ones? Or has uncertainty about your job made you question what you want to do next? Either way, the pandemic has prompted many of us to revaluate what we want, how we work and spend our time.

‘The human capacity to rise up from life’s shittier moments is incredible,’ says Grace Marshall, a coach and author of Struggle: The Surprising Truth, Beauty And Opportunity Hidden In Life’s Sh*ttier Moments. ‘As we’ve seen, life can be really hard at times, but out of struggle often comes opportunity.’

From brushing up on your digital skills to growing vegetables or learning a language, a new breed of adult learners emerged from lockdown full of energy and enthusiasm after exploring their interests and using their brain in a different way. A 300 per cent rise in searches for online courses in the spring of 2020 was made up of a combination of people upskilling to meet the demands of a challenging and changing work environment and those looking to use their spare time in a more constructive way, instead of binge-watching yet another series on Netflix.

A recent study by Allbright, a professional women’s network, showed that 61 per cent of women are planning a complete career change while another survey of 1,000 women showed half had taken up a new hobby in the past year.*

Joanne Mallon, a coach and author, finds that people are getting braver in life and asking bigger questions. ‘There is a feeling that life is too short to be unhappy. People want their work to have meaning and are prepared to make big changes to make that happen,’ she says. She describes a feeling of drifting along in limbo in her book Find Your Why, and explains that this is a mindset in which people can get stuck when they lack purpose, don’t know what their purpose is or how to find it. Purpose is the ‘why’ that drives us.

Mallon suggests looking for clues in the way you feel when you do certain things, asking yourself questions and looking for repeat themes in the answers (see ‘Learning for pleasure’, below). Asking people close to you where they think your strengths lie can also give clues about what you might be suited to doing.

‘It can be excruciating, but having people you trust tell you how they see you is eye-opening,’ adds coach Helen McMillan, who specialises in purpose.

After a bit of soul-searching, you might come to the conclusion that it’s not a big leap that you need, but small changes that help you feel more fulfilled in the present and positive about the future. ‘You don’t have to give up your job and join the circus!’ says Mallon. ‘It could be taking an evening class or registering for a training course at work. Or, if it’s a passion you already make time for that brings you joy, you could look at the next steps to getting better at it and expanding your involvement.’ Becoming more expert in something you enjoy doing can be a catalyst for greater change further down the line, or it might just mean you get more out of your hobby without any performance pressure. When your confidence needs restoring, Mallon recommends retreating to something you feel naturally good at, whether that’s riding a bike or baking a cake.

Embarking on any kind of learning as an adult requires getting into the mindset of being a beginner again, something you might find exciting, liberating – and pretty scary. ‘Let yourself be curious and open to learning, without judgment,’ says Marshall, who warns about the part of a learning journey where it stops being new and can start to feel trickier. ‘It’s OK to feel uncomfortable and find something hard,’ she says. ‘If you expect that sticky middle bit, it will take you less by surprise.’ However, if you do ultimately decide something isn’t for you, that’s OK – not everything will be a resounding success. ‘Learning skills for a purpose is great but learning for play is equally beneficial,’ she says.

If you like the idea of trying something new but are still pondering what that might be, there’s one question Marshall asks her clients to help them see the light: ‘If you suddenly had an extra hour in the day, what would you do with it? Now ask, what would be the cost benefit of doing more of that?’ ‘Just having it on your radar will make it something you go to more often when you’ve got free time,’ she says.

Looking back over the past 18 months, Mallon agrees that there is insight to be gained from the things you chose to do when you had extra time to do whatever you wanted. ‘Think about what you did during lockdown and what these things tell you about your values – the clearer you are on what your values are, the easier it becomes to stay true to them.’

Open your mind to so much more

A report by the Department for Education reveals that adult learning is associated with greater wellbeing, fewer visits to the GP and improved mental health, and repeated studies show that people live longer and in better health if they have a sense of purpose. As our working life extends, we’re naturally more likely to want to change career path and will inevitably need to update our skills along the way. ‘Most of us aren’t going to retire at 60,’ says coach Helen McMillan, ‘so we need to adapt to the mindset of longer working lives. We can’t expect that a job we perhaps chose to train for in our late teens will necessarily sustain us for 50 or 60 years.’

A thirst for learning also makes you a more attractive employee. In the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of jobs’ survey, active learning was the second most desirable skill listed by the world’s biggest employers.

Learn for pleasure

Ask yourself the following questions to help you discover where your passions lie:

* When have you felt both powerful and at peace?

* What would you be doing if you knew you couldn’t fail?

* If you didn’t have to do a job for money, what would you do?

* Was there a work or college project that particularly absorbed you?

* What was it about the project that captivated you?

* What did you want to be when you grew up?

* What do you think other people come to you for?

* Write down five things you are good at in your life today

It worked for me

After having her third child, the prospect of going back to teaching left Helen McMillan feeling flat and uninspired. ‘In theory, I had the perfect job for family life, but when I looked to the future, I felt flat and trapped by the rigid structure of my job. I didn’t want to be a teacher for the rest of my life, but I didn’t have a clue what to do or how to make a change,’ she says.

Eventually, Helen consulted a career coach. ‘I was terrified at first and surprised at how hard I found admitting that I didn’t know what I wanted to do,’ she says. With her coach, Helen went through a career transition process exploring options that aligned with her interests, until she decided that she wanted to train as a coach herself. ‘It combines the skills I had from teaching with a therapeutic basis that I really like. It wasn’t always easy and I had moments of wondering whether I’d done the right thing, but I loved learning again and meeting people from different walks of life.’

A few years later, Helen runs her own business coaching companies and individuals and feels in control and fulfilled.

Next steps

CREATE a mood board with words, pictures and ideas that inspire you and look for themes that emerge and clues about what you might wish to do next (or learn more about). This will help you uncover your passions and purpose.

LEARN: For a range of online courses – from creative arts and history to personal development and upgraded business skills, check out linkedin.com, skillshare.com, futurelearn.com and uklearns.pearson.com.

READ The 100-Year Life: Living And Working In an Age Of Longevity by Lynda Gratton and Andrew J Scott (Bloomsbury, £10.99).

Photographs: Getty Images

This article was originally published by psychologies.co.uk Read the original article here.

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Katie: Hello and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com, that’s Wellnesse with an E on the end. This episode is all about the gut-hormone connection and what you can learn from your poop. I’m here with Sarah Greenfield, who is a functional dietitian and founder of the “Fearless Fig”. She helps high-achieving women cut through the noise and find what works for their body specifically using labs, functional testing, biohacking, and much more. This episode was a lot of fun because we got to go deep on the gut-hormone connection and why it’s so important, the gut markers that give insight into hormones, how cortisol comes into play, the blood-sugar connection, how undereating can cause hormone issues for many women, the importance of magnesium for your hormones, and how do you add it up a bit it in your diet, what to do about the supplements, how to handle if your estrogen is high, the benefits of removing certain foods, and how to optimize sleep. We also talk about how willpower is often overestimated as a tool especially when it comes to hormones and better ways to solve their problem using good habits versus willpower and depleted decision-making resources. She’s a wealth of knowledge. This was a fun, fun conversation. And I know you’ll learn a lot, so let’s jump in. Sarah, welcome, and thanks for being here.

Sarah: Yeah. Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Katie: I’m excited to chat with you. This will be such a fun conversation, but before we jump into so many directions I wanna go, I have a note in my show notes that you recently started playing the drums. And I’m so curious. I have to know what led to that.

Sarah: Good question. I have been in this nutrition world. It’s been my career and my passion. It’s so interconnected into who I am and I really wanted to step outside of that and do something that wasn’t physically related or nutrition-related, and just, like, break out of that world. And I always wanted to play the drums. Like, it’s been on my heart for so long. I remember even when I was a little kid, they were like, girls play the flute and boys play the drums. And I was like, okay, I guess I’ll play the stinky flute. And the drums have been on my heart and I was just like, “I’m ready. I’m stepping into this, it’s time, let’s do it.” So, that’s kind of how it happened.

Katie: I love that. I love hearing about adults taking on a new project or especially like a creative or, like, something out of your comfort zone. That’s something that I saw the value in a long time ago and started having yearly, like, every year I have to do something that scares me or that’s new or hard because I think it helps us grow so much as people. And so, for me, it was voice lessons and this year standup comedy, but it’s just been so fun to get a challenge. I love that you’re doing that. And also I know in your work world, you talk a whole lot about the gut and hormone connection. And I think this is a topic that seems to be increasingly important right now because we are seeing a rise in so many issues. And I hear from so many women who have various types of hormone struggles. And I don’t feel like this is being talked about enough in the mainstream medical model and even, I feel like it’s just starting to be understood even in integrative models. So, to start broad, kind of give us an overview of what you mean by the gut and hormone connection and kind of the pieces that come into play.

Sarah: Yeah. So, I spent a lot of time thinking about the gut, doing stool testing, really getting into the microbiome. So, the bacterial balance that we have in our gut, which is our mouth to our butt is essentially our gut. And really just trying to understand what is going on there and how is it impacting the rest of the body. Because when we look at hormones, that’s typically downstream of a gut imbalance. And I find that everything that we start to play around with, or every symptom is really correlated back to the health of the microbiome. And when I start digging into that and asking different questions and, you know, having people look at their poop or having them poop in a French fry container, which is, you know, this is how we do the stool test and ship it off to a lab and we start to look at the types of bacteria, it really starts to open up and allow us to see what’s going on in the body. And there’s different markers, something like beta-glucuronidase is one that I look at that is a big kind of insight factor into how the body is re-circulating estrogen. So, when that is out of whack, typically I’ll see people with more, like, estrogen dominance type symptoms. So, it’s really crazy when you start to put the pieces together and just start honing into the gut what you can find about the rest of the body and how it’s functioning.

Katie: Absolutely. And I think estrogen dominance seems to be very much on the rise right now. I’m hearing from a lot of people and we know there’s a connection there with things like, I believe PCOS and endometriosis, we see some estrogen issues. I’m sure many others as well and I know from the statistics I’ve read, even infertility seems to be on the rise and there’s an obvious hormone connection there. So, you mentioned that one lab, are there other labs you look at as well? Or how can someone get a picture of what’s going on in their gut that might be affecting their hormones?

Sarah: Yeah, so I started with the gut. I also look at, cortisol levels. That’s another really big one that can show us just how stress is being managed. I often talk to my clients a lot about, well, how do you feel from a stress perspective? And they’re like, “Oh, I’m pretty good.” But I think we’ve learned as a society to really kind of exist with a high level of stress and normalize that. So, when I look physiologically at how the body is actually responding to stress, oftentimes I’ll see a different picture. So, we’re looking at adrenal function, we’re looking at that cortisol output. Are you making enough? Are you not making enough or is it deactivating to cortisone? So, there’s a lot of little clues that our body leaves us into that stress world, and getting a better picture of that. So, yeah, that’s another way.

I also look at blood sugar regulation. That’s a huge one. I think oftentimes we forget that insulin is a hormone and so our blood sugar fluctuations are going to be impacted by our hormone status as well. When we are stressed out, if cortisol is high, that up-regulates our blood sugar. So, we just get this whole imbalanced picture and you mentioned PCOS and that can have insulin dysregulation component to it as well. But really kind of digging back into that, my whole question is where is this coming from? What is the root cause? What is going on here? And a lot of times it’s in the gut and it’s inflammation and figuring out, all right, how do we really start to pull these apart and understand where these imbalances are starting from.

Katie: And I love that you brought up stress because I think this is another topic it’s no secret, especially in the past couple of years, that stress is on the rise. But I think often stress gets put in this box of feeling mentally stressed or overwhelmed. And in my experience, that’s just one tiny piece of the pie when it comes to stress. And often, we don’t realize that other things like the food that we’re eating, if it’s causing inflammation is a stress in the body’s mind. And it doesn’t differentiate. Like, we may not feel stressed, but if our body is dealing with that, we are operating in a state of stress. Same thing with, for me, unresolved trauma was a big part of it. I was constantly in fight or flight, so it didn’t matter how perfect my diet was or how many supplements I took. Until I was able to feel safe in my body, I was always operating in a state of stress and fight or flight versus rest and digest. I feel like this could be a series of books all on its own, but just starting with the stress component, what are some tips for starting to dismantle and unpack where the stress from the body’s perspective is coming from?

Sarah: Yeah. So, I always think about it in a couple of ways. Like you mentioned, there’s our perception of stress. There’s what we are kind of seeing in our day-to-day that elicits stress like an email, a confrontation, our emotional status, like, that is stress. But also you mentioned the food we’re eating can create inflammation that can create burden on the body. That is stressful. If we’re not eating enough, that’s another form of stress. So, oftentimes I’ll work with women and they’re like, “Oh, I’m doing all the right things to lose weight. I’ve cut my calories. I started exercising more and I feel awful and I’m just holding onto weight.” Well, our bodies are stressed out from the jobs that we do, the parenting that we do, showing up as mothers. There’s so many things that stress us out baseline, and then we’re gonna cut our calories and up our exercise. Those are two more forms of stress and then along with toxic burden. So, that’s another one that kind of ties back into that hormone conversation as well. We really have to be aware of what we’re coming in contact with on a day-to-day basis, because all of these different chemicals can really change the way our body’s interacting, producing hormones. And that can also burden our bodies, especially if we have an imbalanced gut and then we’re not detoxifying and taking those things out, it just creates more metabolic chaos in the body.

Katie: I’m so glad you brought up the issue of, like the kind of the chronic dieting and women not eating enough because I don’t think this is talked about enough either. And even with a background in nutrition, this was a blind spot for me for a long time after having had Hashimoto’s, I have had six kids. There was a lot of weight gain that came with that. And so, I had been in this kind of chronic dieting mindset for a long time. And when I actually started tracking, I realized I was drastically undereating. So, my body thought it was starving all the time. I was not getting enough protein or enough micronutrients. And so, I had to break that mindset and even understanding the science of it. It was hard to get myself to start eating enough calories and protein and everything at first. And it was actually, like, I had to track to eat more, and I had to remind myself to eat more. Do you see that with a lot of women, especially with hormone imbalances?

Sarah: Oh yeah. That’s probably one of the core components is we’re afraid to eat because we’ve been told that food leads to weight gain, and then we’re afraid of fat and carbs, mainly carbs. I think fat we’ve kind of gotten over that one a little bit more, but there’s still this really intense carb fear. Maybe things like the keto diet have kind of sparked this idea of like, no, carbs are bad, but when you look at getting adequate calories, feeding your microbiome, this is a huge one that I always look at. It’s like, we need really complex carbohydrates, beans, and red rice, brown rice, quinoa like, all of these different carbs are really important. They have polyphenols that feed our microbiome and also these carbohydrates fuel our adrenals. And that’s a big conversation in the stress world and also sleep regulation. So, like, that’s so, so important. Because maybe you experienced this, when you cut your calories, when you’re in this chronic dieting, when you’re depleted your sleep is also impacted, which then makes it hard to recover from stress. And it’s just this whole domino effect. So, I think we really have to…I spend a lot of times kind of reminding my clients that food is okay. We have to really heal our relationship with that because as women we’ve been told that food is not our friend.

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. I know for me, that was, life-changing just the energy and the mental clarity and everything that came with actually surprisingly fueling my body the right way. But like you said, this is, I feel like a very tough mindset to break for a lot of women because we have been told for so long that food leads to weight gain. So, any tips for, I know we’re also individualized, but for each of us figuring out our own metrics of what we need to be consuming without gaining a lot of weight because that is so scary for a lot of women, are there ways to kind of experiment and dial that in?

Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I always like to kind of take it back to the body. So, one of the things that I work on really deeply with my clients is empowering them in their own bodies to feel like, okay, I got this, I don’t have to be reading the newest articles that are coming out and feeling like I’m not doing enough or I’m not taking the right supplements, but really getting back to what works for each individual person because it is very individualized. But the first thing, I mean, I always take it back to, like, let’s start with looking at your poop and really getting clear on how things are being processed in your body because you are what you eat, but you’re also more importantly what you absorb. So, if you start looking at your poop and noticing, wow, okay, like it’s really hard, it’s really loose. I see pieces of food in there, I’m not going enough, I’m going too much, like, really dialing into what that looks like can give you that internal report card and really show you what’s happening on the inside.

Because we don’t get a lot of data from our internal body, but we do poop quite often. And it’s so fascinating to really look into that and say, what is this telling me? What can I start to uncover and learn? And there’s so much, so much learning that can happen when you just look at your poop. And I’m not saying, like, you have to, like, shove your face in the toilet and dig around in there, but, like, glancing at it, connecting to your body that’s so, so, so important. I think that’s really where I usually guide most of my clients to start.

Katie: Yeah. So, let’s delve in there a little bit because you’re right. I feel like often we think, oh, I need to get labs, it’s hard to pinpoint what’s going on in the body, but we all go to the bathroom. So, that’s an area that we can get information from. And I also often am so grateful and think like as women, we also have hormone fluctuations and so our monthly cycle can be such a great teacher of what’s going on in the body. There’s also now things like continuous glucose monitors. So, you mentioned blood sugar and insulin, we actually have the ability get that data now. But when we’re talking about poop specifically, what are some things that you have people, like, pay attention to and look for and what can we learn from maybe if something’s off in those areas?

Sarah: Yeah. So, I think one of the more obvious ones is, like, looking and seeing if there’s undigested pieces of food in there. So, that can sometimes signify there’s an enzyme issue. Maybe you’re not making enough stomach acid, which can lead to bloating that can lead to not absorbing everything from your food properly. So, that’s a real big clue. Like, if you’re seeing a piece of lettuce or pieces of rice, then it’s like, okay, why is this not being broken down? Things like corn, quinoa, sesame seeds, those don’t always get broken down, that’s okay. But like carrots, those should be pretty much broken down. That’s kind of first clue. And then looking at the consistency, if it’s loose, then I always think about all right, are you eating things that are irritating the lining of your gut that are causing maybe some underlying inflammation that you’re not seeing externally, but it’s it’s happening internally? If you’re constipated, the other side of it, what is going on? Are you eating enough blend of complex carbohydrates, soluble fiber, insoluble fiber, drinking enough water, getting enough minerals. Like, those are things that you can start to kind of ask yourself as you’re looking at your poop.

So, those are kind of the places that I would start. Color can fluctuate. If you have beets, it’s gonna be red. If you eat a ton of spinach, it’s gonna be green. Like, that can fluctuate. But really getting clear on, like, texture, consistency, and then you can also do simple transit time tests to really see how long are things staying in your body, how quickly are they moving out? And you can do that with the things that I mentioned that are non-digestible like corn, eat some corn, document when you ate it and then just look at your poop and see, when does that come out again. And that can give you more clarity on transit time. If you have a slow transit time, then that’s things you have to look into. Like, is there a magnesium imbalance? What type of bacteria do you have in there? So, again, just so many different, really cool insights that you can learn from literally just looking in the toilet. It’s something that we all are like, so grossed out about it. We’re like, oh, flush. And it’s like, no, just glance at it. It’s gonna tell you so much.

Katie: What is a good transit time, if someone’s going to start paying attention to that?

Sarah: Yeah. So, a good transit time for a woman is about 12 to 48 hours in that time range. Sometimes people can be, you know, there’s variations to normal, but anything quicker than 12 hours, you really wanna be like, okay, did that actually stay in there enough time to be processed and digested and broken down? And then I always pair it with symptoms. Like, what are you experiencing? How are you feeling? Is there an actual imbalance that’s happening that you’re like, okay, something feels off and then transit time can give you a little bit more clarity.

Katie: And you also mentioned endocrine disruptors and I’ve seen a lot of data. I’ve talked about this a little bit before, but about how so many of the things we interact with on a daily basis have basically chemicals in them that mimic hormones that confuse our body. And we know from the data we are exposed to these in much, much higher amounts than previous generations were. I would guess there’s a connection here with why we’re seeing, you know, men have a third of the testosterone their grandfathers did, women are having so much more estrogen than our grandmothers did. But how big of a role does that play, the endocrine disruptors that we’re coming in contact with on a daily basis? Because often I feel like I run into that roadblock with people of will start to acknowledge, okay, when I eat certain things, I feel a certain way. We can get that connection, but it’s harder to understand that, like, when I put certain things on my skin, for instance, and women do this more than men, it’s affecting my hormones. Because it’s not as much of a, short-term feedback loop, but how much are these affecting our hormones?

Sarah: I always look at health and it’s so complex in nature that it’s layered and it’s often like a bucket. You can burden your body and our bodies are extremely resilient. I often look at our bodies and I’m like, “Wow, our bodies are incredible, they wanna stay in balance, they wanna keep us regulated, they wanna maintain the right pH.” Our bodies are really good at this. It’s just when things become too much and then the bucket overflows. So, if you’re eating the wrong foods, if you have high stress, if you’re not eating enough, if you’re also exposing yourself to a bunch of toxins, eventually that’s gonna fill up your bucket and you’re not gonna be able to engage with that anymore. So, I think it’s just as important as really dialing in what are the right foods for you? How is your microbiome working? Like, really getting those toxins out of your system is only gonna be beneficial. Even though you might not feel it right away, it’s just a critical part in thinking about long-term sustainable health.

Especially for women, like, I work a lot with women that want to get pregnant or, you know, a baby is on their five-year plan, but they’re in this space where they’re like, “I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t really trust my body.” And anything that we can do to reduce burden on the body to help balance out nutrients is going to be beneficial. So, I just look at it as like a big part of the overall puzzle when it comes to optimizing wellness.

Katie: And you also mentioned magnesium which it seems like a lot of us in the modern world are deficient in magnesium which we can trace back to our food supply being depleted of magnesium, us also just not consuming enough of the foods that are natural sources of magnesium. We know our vegetable consumption is down for instance. But how do you typically guide women on replenishing magnesium and getting that in balance?

Sarah: Yeah, so I mean, I am a dietician at my core and that was my main training. So, I always like to go back to food and seeing how are some easy ways that we can get dark leafy greens, magnesium-rich foods back into the diet, whether that’s a smoothie or eating more cooked greens or using an Instant Pot, which is like literally my favorite kitchen item ever. So, how can we start to integrate that back in? And then also I’m a big fan of supplements. I do blood work on a lot of my clients to look at RBC magnesium and really see what is the actual level in the cell. And then utilizing different types of magnesium, maybe some that are more absorbable, some that aren’t to get that level back up. Because like I mentioned, magnesium has a huge impact on our digestion, especially with motility. So, for people that are tending towards constipation, I always think about, all right, well, what is your magnesium status and how do we get some in there that can pull water into the intestines to make you poop, but also make motility more effective overall.

Katie: And let’s talk a little bit more about other supplements as well because, if there’s one lesson I’ve learned the last few years over and over, it’s just how individualized and personalized we each are. So, I’m hesitant to ever give a blueprint or I don’t answer the question directly ever of what supplements do you take because my thing is I don’t take anything every day. It rotates based on my body, based on blood test, based on my goals at the moment. But I’ve also seen firsthand how magnesium for instance is life-changing, especially if you’re deficient and how, for me, I have a whole bunch of choline-deficient genes and I was off eggs for a long time because of an intolerance. And so, I was super deficient in choline without realizing it. And when I started supplementing that it was like a light went on in my brain and I felt amazing, but that wouldn’t be necessarily a common one that someone would think to take. So, how do you help guide people in figuring out what supplements to take and kind of knowing how to work with their own bodies?

Sarah: Yeah. So, I often get people coming into my world that have a supplement graveyard is what I like to term it, where they have this cabinet full of things that they’ve tried, they don’t know what they do, somebody told them to get it. And that’s where I go back to individualized testing. I’m a huge proponent of let’s look at the data of your body to make better-informed decisions versus guessing and trying to say like, “All right, what is this gonna do? What is this gonna do?” But really getting clear on, like, but what is it that your body actually needs? Because there’s so many levels, there’s so many layers and you can do a simple blood test to assess magnesium status. We can look at the microbiome to see what types of probiotics are going to be most beneficial. So, I also am kind of in your world where I really like to understand who is this person in front of me? What do they need and how do we really see from a physiological perspective what’s going on in their body? Like, our bodies are so beautifully complex, and having just some tools to get some insight into internally what’s going on is the biggest game-changer.

Katie: Agreed. And you mentioned estrogen being high for a lot of women. And this seems to be a pretty common thing and it seems to be on the rise, at least from the studies that I’m seeing. When you have someone come to you who has all these kind of things of high estrogen, what are some of the ways that you start addressing that?

Sarah: Yeah. So, first I look and see, like, what’s actually going on. I look at it from a genetic perspective. So, how are their genes set up to actually metabolize and convert estrogen, that gives us one clue into what’s happening. Like I said, I do a toxin analysis looking at, like, all right, what are you being exposed to on a day-to-day basis from skincare to what you’re washing your clothes in, all of that. And then I also look at it in the, I like to use a test called the Dutch test, which allows me to also see how it’s metabolized. So, different phases of estrogen metabolism can give us insights into whether or not the estrogen that you have is in fact in high levels, and then what your body’s doing with it. Is it actually making more toxic forms of estrogen or is it shuttling it into our 2OH pathway, which is less toxic, more protective? So, I look at that, put that together. If I do find that there are elevated levels of estrogen, then I think about, okay, well, how do we support the body in clearing that out more effectively? I mentioned stool testing and that beta-glucuronidase marker. If that’s elevated, that’s just gonna recycle estrogen throughout the body. So, we got to get that down.

And then also just looking at different foods, things like broccoli that has indole-3-carbinol, which can help break down estrogen levels and trying to say, all right, from a food source, can we integrate some more of these or then, you know, sometimes doing supplements like dim, you can supplement with indole-3-carbinol and just really kind of bring that level down overall. But at the core, you know, going back to the foundations and just saying like, okay, gut status environment, how can we set your body up so it can actually handle this and process these things on its own.

Katie: From the hormone perspective, are there things women can notice about their cycles that can be kind of enlightening as far as what’s going on with hormones? Like, would women see like shorter or longer cycles based on certain hormones potentially being off or like heavier versus lighter? Is that a reliable clue?

Sarah: That’s a great question. And it’s hard to say, like, generally that there’s a one size fits all or this is what’s happening. because again, it’s all about the gut for me, the way I approach it. I’m like, well, if your gut is imbalanced, if you have dysbiosis, if you have more inflammatory pathogens, that’s going to impact your cycle in a way that it’s just gonna impact it in a bigger way. So, I always, like, thinking about how do we get into the microbiome and start there? So, yeah, that’s always where I start. And then once we start working on the microbiome, oftentimes I’ll see women actually start to have irregular cycles because as we’re clearing out bacteria, all of a sudden they’ll be like, “Oh, you know, like I haven’t gotten my period, I’m two weeks late or I’m spotting.” So that can really happen. And that just shows me again the power of the microbiome in regulating a period or a menstrual cycle.

Katie: Yeah. I feel like the more we learn, the more it goes back to the gut.

Sarah: Everything. It’s like, we try and get away from it. This is what I love about this space is like you try and do all this really extensive research. And you’re like, “Oh, but there’s got to be this one correlation.” And then it comes back to, like, what’s your stress level? Like, are you eating fruits and vegetables? How are you sleeping? And are you pooping? And you’re like, that’s so simple and beautiful. I wanted to get like really deep into this, but yeah, it does kind of go back to those foundations all the time.

Katie: Yeah. As much as we wish for a silver bullet or a perfect supplement, I think it’s realizing it’s those core things that we do every day, like, the more common I have it, the more of an impact it’s gonna have.

Sarah: Exactly. And even with, like, nutrient genetics, that’s a big, like, emerging field in the dietician space. So, looking at how our genes are actually impacting the way we’re processing carbohydrates, the way we’re metabolizing fat, the way we’re activating vitamin D, that has a lot of really interesting learning pieces within it. But still our environment is switching those genes on and off. So, if we have a chaotic environment, then it’s gonna turn on these genes. But if our environment is better managed, then we’re still gonna be able to interact in a way that’s totally balanced and healthy. So, it’s still like back to the foundations.

Katie: Yeah, exactly. And that’s why I also like I said, I don’t share the supplements I take as a list and I don’t even share the diet I follow as a list. Because I’m like, we’ll actually do a disservice. At the end of the day we’re all so individualized, we’re constantly also changing. And so it’s learning how to manage our own bodies as the most effective machine possible. When it comes to gut stuff, do you have any at least commonalities that are a good starting point either with trigger foods that you have people pull out for a little while or, obviously magnesium can help a whole lot with gut, same thing with probiotics. But are there kind of like common, negative and positive starting points that you look at with people?

Sarah: Yeah. If I’m gonna do, like, a very generalized approach, I do a lot of food sensitivity testing and I definitely see patterns in there with people and the most reactive things that come up time and time again are the ones we’re probably familiar with, but wheat, dairy, soy and corn are across the board the most reactive. I would say, at least all of my clients have at least one of those that comes up as reactive. So, even if you’re in a place, and I don’t love doing, like, broad eliminations, because I think if we eliminate certain things, we can really kind of throw off the diversity of our gut. Because I really believe in, like, eating lots of different foods, lots of different variety. But when I’m looking at corn, wheat, soy and dairy, I’m like, you know what? Those can come out and not cause a lot of potential for imbalances in the microbiome because they’re just everywhere and we just got to get those out. So, that can be a really good starting place, even though it can be kind of overwhelming for some people to say, oh my gosh, that’s, like, everything that I eat, but it can just be so helpful in starting to reduce that burden, reduce that immune system response, reduce inflammation. So, that would be if I’m, like, generalizing it saying, like, all right, I would start in that world.

Katie: Yeah. And I wonder if you’ve seen this in your practice as well, especially tying in the gut and the hormone connection. I realized for me with auto-immune disease, I did have to be careful about certain foods for a while. And thankfully that was not a long-term thing. So, I always mention that of, like, there’s very often hope, you very often will get to reincorporate at least some of these things once you address the gut. But another thing that came as a surprise to me, because I also come from the nutrition world is that I was chronically undereating for a long time. And this has a really drastic hormone implication. And I don’t think women are told this part enough. We’re, like, kind of it’s drilled in through societal messaging that eating too much leads to weight gain. And so, a lot of us get in this mindset of avoiding food and carbs and enough variety of food because we don’t wanna gain weight. But it turns out hormonally that undereating can be just as damaging and even more so long-term than eating in a surplus. So, I’m curious if you have noticed those kinds of patterns with women and some tips for addressing that. I had to, like, consciously learn to actually eat enough to fuel my body and that ironically helped me lose weight.

Sarah: Yeah. I know. It’s so counterintuitive to everything that we’ve been taught to think about. Oh, like sometimes I literally tell people move less and eat more and they’re like, “Wait, what?” Because it’s really, yeah, it’s kind of just like a mind-bender where we’re like, that’s not right. So, I think just getting into that empowerment in your body and trusting your body and kind of breaking some of those rules that we have and allowing yourself to see how you feel. That’s so important. Like, when I tell women to do this, they’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, my energy levels changed or I could make it through a workout or I felt that I slept better.” So, these are like little key things that you can tune into where it’s like, all right, let’s give yourself a week. You don’t have to make it this huge, massive change because it’s uncomfortable when we had these food rules or these food ideals and somebody is like, okay, do everything you’re doing, but the opposite. And it’s like, and I think just, you know, breaking it down into something that’s achievable saying like, all right, give yourself a week of eating complex carbs and just kind of diversifying your diet as much as you can.

I always like to look at the plate as, all right, is half your plate vegetables, a quarter of it a good source of protein, two tablespoons of fat, maybe like a half a cup of complex carbohydrates, a quarter cup if you’ve been restricting them for awhile. Start there, see how you feel. Just really start to listen, look at your poop, see if it changes. Like, there’s just ways where we kind of have to get back into our intuition and learning to trust our bodies when we’ve been told, like, don’t trust your body, override all of the things that it’s doing. But, like, getting back into that can be really helpful.

And I think another piece just with the gut hormone connection and also this undereating, a big one that we have to be aware of as well is cholesterol. So, cholesterol often gets demonized, but this is the backbone of how we make every single hormone in our body. So, if we are undereating, if we are cutting fat, if we’re like eggs are full of cholesterol, I won’t eat them, shrimp are high, like, whatever these, you know, rules that we have in our brain and now all of a sudden our cholesterol is low, that’s gonna be a huge problem for creating hormones. So, that’s another one that I think has been a misinterpretation in our educational landscape of nutrition is, like, cholesterol is bad. It’s like, no, it’s not. It’s the components of it we have to understand. But, like, getting that cholesterol to an adequate level is so important in the hormone conversation.

Katie: I’m so glad you brought that up because this is an area that has driven me crazy for a little while is just when you actually look at the data, like, we hear the mainstream narrative about cholesterol and they oversimplify that cholesterol is bad. And I always look at well, first of all, if you actually look at long-term data, super low cholesterol is correlated with early death. And ironically, especially in women, higher cholesterol, as long as you have a couple of other markers in range is actually correlated with longevity. So, we’ve been avoiding these vital things that our bodies need and our hormones need because we demonize this one part of it. And my thing is always, it would be actually much more beneficial to focus more on triglycerides, for instance, or some of these other easily available markers that we have, and not worry about the cholesterol, as long as we’re not seeing any abnormal patterns in kind of those ratios that we pay attention to.

Sarah: Exactly.

Katie: That’s a huge component for a lot of women and we’ve been taught wrong about that. And it’s definitely creating long-term problems now that we’ve seen several decades of people making these changes and we’re starting to see how that’s expressing.

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Any guidelines for their, from what I’ve seen in my own labs, I track pretty carefully. It’s like if I eat processed food will mess up your ratios very quickly. Vegetable oils also seem to have a negative effect because they’re fats that our body is still not very used to. They’re pretty new. Any other things that come into play with that cholesterol equation?

Sarah: Yeah, sugar. Sugar is probably the biggest one because, you know, oftentimes as women, we have a sweet tooth, we like our chocolate and if we’re eating higher levels of sugar, that is just gonna go right into the liver and convert into triglycerides. And yeah, our body’s just not gonna process that as effectively. So, that’s another one to really hone in on and understand, like, where are you getting added sugar? How much of this added sugar are you eating? Are you snacking on it? Like, and that also is, like, okay, well what’s going on blood sugar-wise, sleep-wise. You know, it all comes back to the same question if you’re having these intense cravings, what’s at the core of that? So, yeah, just getting clear on sugar intake is just a big tie-in in the cholesterol picture.

Katie: Yeah. And for women, especially, like you said, separating out and not demonizing carbs because we need those for hormones, but there’s a huge difference between natural forms of carbohydrates and processed sugar and processed refined flours, which is what makes up most of people’s carbohydrate consumption these days, sadly. People will find and I’m sure you see this as well as a dietician but, like, it’s very difficult to overeat natural sources like quinoa or sweet potatoes or fruit. Your body has a natural cut-off mechanism. You’re not gonna eat 12 apples most likely, but it’s very easy to drastically over-consume processed sugar because it’s a survival mechanism. Our body’s not betraying us. It’s that it was wired this way for survival for a long history. But now we have wide availability of these foods, and so it’s not that our body is betraying us. We have to understand the role of these foods. And at least I’ve seen when you fuel efficiently and you get enough protein and you get enough complex carbs, you don’t crave the processed stuff as much. Your body definitely adapts over time. Do you see that as well?

Sarah: Yeah. And I think it’s also too about, like, just kind of getting some key learning insights. So, if you do have sweets, if it’s something that you want, how can you do it in a way that is actually healthy for your body or at least maintaining your blood sugar balance. So, like, instead of having all your sweets at nighttime right before bed, which can totally impact your circadian rhythm, can you do it maybe earlier in the afternoon. Most people don’t often want it then, but you know, how do we start to kind of biohack our blood sugars so it’s more stabilized and our body can actually handle it better. And so, playing around with that, it’s really important. Or if you have a huge meal going for a walk afterwards can help just stabilize blood sugar.

Like, these simple things that if you look back in history when we didn’t necessarily have the scientific means like, oh yeah, my grandpa always went for a walk after dinner, like, that’s just like what he did. And there’s so much like benefit in that or like eating soups and stews. Those are really blood sugar-stabilizing. It’s just kind of going back to some of those things that maybe we don’t always understand, but were just, like, part of our culture or history. Like, I’m Jewish. I ate a lot of, like, stews and soups and that was such a big part of, like, our food. And there’s so much, like, chicken soup, there’s so much healing and nurturing within that, that maybe wasn’t understood from a scientific perspective that we’re seeing now that has such a huge implication on the health.

Katie: Yeah. It’s so funny, the more we learn the more we spend millions of dollars researching, we realize maybe our grandparents intuitively had a lot of these things figured out and we get back to the basics. You’ve also mentioned sleep a lot, and I know this is a really important key when we’re talking about gut health and also hormones. But I mean, really anything we’re talking about related to the body, sleep is gonna be a huge puzzle piece. I’ve seen data that just even one night of interrupted sleep can give you the blood sugar levels of a pre-diabetic. We know that over time it really affects hormones. I feel like this is often also a very tough piece to dial in, especially for moms because we have so many factors that can disrupt our sleep. So, any guidelines that you give women as starting points for improving that? Like, I know on a personal level, I do better if I don’t eat too close to bedtime, if my room is dark and cold, but just starting points for optimizing sleep?

Sarah: Yes. All of those, I think the sugar piece that we talked about, really making sure that you’re not eating a bunch of chocolate right before bed, really important. If you have a sensitivity to caffeine, dialing that in and not having any caffeine after noon or even 10:00 a.m. can really be helpful. And I think one of the things that I see most commonly in most of my clients, especially moms, is by the end of the day, we’re just exhausted, we wanna zone out. We spend a lot of time potentially on our phone. So, really dialing in blue light exposure that can really mess with circadian rhythm. And it might not seem like something like you’re like, oh yeah, I look at my phone, and then I’m totally energized. Like, we don’t necessarily feel it right away, but it does have an impact on circadian rhythm. So, I think that’s a big one that I spend a lot of time working on my clients with is like, can we put the phone somewhere else? Can we get back to reading a book before bedtime, doing a crossword puzzle, something where we’re not just exposed to blue light, but that’s still giving us that sense of, or source of dopamine.

Because you know, we’re going after a dopamine, a pleasure response, like, oh my day was just so insane, I just wanna feel good right in this moment. And we will, like, scrolling through Instagram is like dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. But you have to think long-term how has that been impacting circadian rhythm and it’s having a negative impact. So, how can we just, again, like, simplify, go back to the book reading or the talking with our partner or whatever it is to really just kind of disassociate from that technology and that dopamine hit over and over again.

Katie: Yeah. Again, those things our grandparents knew and it’s another area I feel like exactly, like you said, we often underestimate because we don’t see that immediate effect as we do with food. But this is another drastic change over the last 100 years. And certainly, in the last 30 years, we just haven’t had blue light exposure directly to our retina at night before. And the studies keep coming out more and more about how this really, really changes hormones. So, I think that’s a really important, valid starting point for people.

One tip I always give based on our previous podcast guests is that I have windows open and bright light during the day and even, like, daylight bulbs above, because the body’s used to getting blue light during the day from up high. But then after sunset, I turn on only lamps that have only orange hues and not blue light because the body is used to getting that thing of, like, red light coming from more like eye level, so fires or sunset or…And so, it’s not even just the light itself, but the direction and that one change, you can even put them all on timers so lamps go on at sunset. That alone, I’ve seen people have drastic sleep changes, even if they don’t change anything else. So, I love that you brought that up. I think this is an area I think we’re gonna see so much more research on, but we’re just really starting to see in the mainstream a little bit.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think something like, I love, like we’ve talked about, I love testing, I love data. I love biohacking and something like the Oura Ring is a really cool device as well to just kind of understand like, all right, what does your REM look like? Your REM cycle, what is sleep latency? How long has it taken you to fall asleep? If you meditate before bed, if you decrease blue light exposure, do you then see a better performance score the next day? That can also be really helpful because a lot of times when we start to get into wellness and health and sleep, it’s very gray. We don’t really have a lot of, like, markers. It’s, like, I slept well, I think, my energy is okay, I think. But when you start to put numbers to it and give it more data, it just helps us really understand it a little bit better. So, that’s something that I find to be helpful when we’re trying to get into a better sleep pattern to really see, oh yeah, when I do that, it has a pretty strong impact on how I feel the next day or how my numbers are saying I’m set up for the day. So, that’s just another, like, fun for the data nerds out there, a fun piece to incorporate.

Katie: Big fan of my Oura Ring as well, and especially paying attention to, I love deep sleep and heart rate variability. And also as women, it tracks body temperature, not in, like, an exact sense, but in a relative sense, which is another cool, just helpful tip is if you can watch that trend of lower body temperatures pre-ovulaton, higher body temperatures post-ovulation, that’s a good window into your hormones. It also tells you when you’re fertile, when you’re not.

And I also, like I said, I pay attention to deep sleep and I’ve noticed the trend seems to be kind of universal with humans is when we get enough deep sleep, especially over two to two and a half hours because that’s the time when our brain is flushing amyloid plaques and hormones are being created, that, that seems to have a really big impact on, how you feel the next day and on focus and also in time on hormones, that also you talked about cortisol earlier it comes into play there. So, this is a tool that we can get and use at home that gives us such a good window into those changes on a micro level daily, also heart rate variability I’ve talked about on here before. But trackers that track that they show you basically how your body’s responding to stress. So, back to our stress conversation, that’s an a window you can have without a ton of testing and watch over time. And unfortunately, I’ve learned some things like my body doesn’t really like alcohol, especially at night and it will mess with my HRV and it’ll go from 140 to 40. And so, maybe I just don’t drink alcohol very much. But it just is so helpful to have that personalized data. Is Oura your favorite for tracking?

Sarah: Yeah. I love that. I think that’s great. You mentioned heart rate variability. If you don’t want to go into the Oura Ring, something like HeartMath, that’s a really cool biohacking device to really assess, like, okay, how is my heart variability in relation to stress and how I feel and how do I start to regulate that? Because we can, we can regulate our emotions, we can regulate our feelings to an extent, and that can help us just kind of uncover and get deeper into stress management, which is such a…stress management is probably the most challenging area that I work on with all of my clients, because it’s like, well, I can’t stop being a mom, which is, you know, it brings up many levels of stress. I can’t stop going to my job, which is a level of, so it’s like, how do we start to really get into more self-regulation and, and understanding. And that’s what I think that the key is to going from overwhelm in your health which is so easy in this day and age. Like, there’s so much information even potentially somebody listening to this might be overwhelmed by all of the different nuances and things we’ve talked about with health. But really getting that data can help you go from overwhelmed into empowered.

Katie: Exactly. Yeah. That mindset piece of data is a good thing and positive steps and not the guilt or, like, feeling bad when you don’t get it right. Because we’re all in this journey and it’s all consistent habits over time.

Sarah: Having willpower, like, willpower is my least favorite word because it’s like, no, it’s not. The willpower conversation is so dated to me because there’s so many different things. And then what that does is it sets us up for, I failed. And it’s not an I failed thing, it’s an exposure. It’s the environment, like, there’s so many elements that go into the choices that we can make in our success that it’s like, oh, my willpower just wasn’t there. And it’s like, no, you just didn’t set yourself up in the right way. It’s not a personal loss or failure. It’s just, you didn’t have the right information.

Katie: I’m so glad you brought that up. You’re right. Because we have to acknowledge as humans decision-making and willpower are limited resources and we’re existing in a time that tests them on a much wider scale than we’ve ever seen. And so, it’s not at all, I think, especially people with health problems, it’s often painted with a brush of like you said, lack of willpower or being lazy. And it absolutely is not. It’s that we are fighting bigger battles than we fought before. And we haven’t always had the best tools to be able to fight those battles well. And so, I think all these things you’re talking about having data and having small habits that can build over time. And then certainly I’m sure you see this drastically in your work is as you change the gut, that changes your cravings, that changes your sleep, that makes willpower less important. But I think you’re right. It’s horrible that we’re kind of putting that burden on people and telling them it’s their fault when they’ve got so much working against them.

Sarah: Yes. Oh, it’s like my, ooh, it’s a little pet peeve, or it’s like you just didn’t have the willpower. I’m like, no, it’s not your problem. It’s yeah, there’s so much that we’re exposed to. Like, if you’re in an office setting, it’s so challenging when there’s all those snacks laid out in front of you or someone brings cupcakes and you’re like, “I just didn’t have the willpower.” It’s like, no, you just had crappy exposure over and over and over again. And eventually, you know, we only have that limited capacity of decision-making and then we get into decision fatigue and we’re like, “Well, screw it. I just wanna feel good and I wanna do the path of least resistance.

So, yeah, it’s, it’s a big mind journey and a mindset game to go on wellness. And that’s why like, the journey is not linear, it’s not like you get into this space and you’re like, “Cool, I’m gonna work with someone, I’m gonna get this information and I’m just gonna keep improving every single day.” It’s like, no, we’re humans, we deal with emotions, we deal with trauma, we deal with disappointment and that’s part of health and that’s okay. We deal with sickness. Like, sickness is also part of health and that’s okay. Like, so yeah, it’s never a linear journey. And I think the more we can be kind to ourselves in that process and give ourselves that space to explore and I don’t even wanna say make mistakes, but just, you know, find what works and what doesn’t, then it’s gonna be such a different journey than having the expectation must be perfect all the time.

Katie: Yeah, absolutely. And you’re absolutely not going to guilt and shame yourself healthy, it will directly work against you. And also when we’re talking about the gut and hormones, I guarantee you long-term in the battle of hormones versus willpower, hormones will win because they’re there literally for our survival. So, if we’re just trying to willpower our way through hormones, that’s a losing battle from the get-go.

Sarah: Yes. Yeah, exactly. I mean, yes, perfectly said.

Katie: And as we get closer to the end of our time, a couple of questions I love to ask, the first being are there any often misunderstood or misinterpreted areas when it comes to your area of expertise that we haven’t already touched on today?

Sarah: The one thing that pops into my mind for some reason is anxiety. And I think oftentimes people, that’s another one we’re just talking about willpower, we’re talking about, you know, so many things. And anxiety, I think sometimes can be, the gut connection to anxiety can also be overlooked. So, when we have an imbalanced gut, we have potentially a lot more gram-negative bacteria that have more, LPS or lipopolysaccharides, which are endotoxins. Those are, they’re natural, but they’re endotoxins.

So, in higher levels, when we have this big release of endotoxins, that makes us anxious. And so, I think the anxiety conversation is again, not just it’s your stress management isn’t good enough, your movement isn’t good enough. Like, no, we also have to think what’s the physiological response that’s happening. What’s going on in your gut too that’s keeping that perpetuated and that cycle upregulated. So, I think that’s often another area that I see kind of overlooked because maybe when you’re anxious, you’re not thinking about your poop or you’re not really, you know, I sometimes anxiety can create diarrhea, but you’re not maybe in this, like, I have digestive issue space, but it still is a big part of that cycle. So, that was just something that popped into my mind. I was like, “Oh, I got it. I got to at least say that.”

Katie: Yeah. And anxiety seems to be definitely a big thing for a lot of women. So, I’m glad you brought that up as well. Is there a book or a number of books that have had a profound impact on your life? And if so, what are they and why?

Sarah: The biggest one, honestly, this might be a little bit kind of not what you would expect, but “Omnivore’s Dilemma” is like one of my favorite books just because it’s such a, I love Michael Pollan. I love the way that he writes. I love just kind of the factual approach he takes and the experiential approach. And I just thought that was such a beautiful exploration of our food sources. And again, like, I think about how do we go back to foundations and simplify our eating? Because, I mean, food, we have to interact with that every single day and going back to, how do we kind of find the healthiest food in the best format. Like, I love that book. I think it’s just so well done. And there’s a chapter in there called Corn Sex. And I’m like, this is just a brilliant way to communicate this information, but really just understanding more of our food source and the importance that that has on our health. I just love that book.

Katie: Me too. I will put a link to that in the show notes for you guys listening at wellnesssmama.fm, along with some notes. I’ve been taking notes while we’ve been talking and some more posts on all of these topics. I know Sarah, you have a wealth of information available as well. Where can people find you if they want to work with you on hormones or learn more from you directly?

Sarah: Yeah, so I’m on Instagram @fearlessfig. That’s a great place I do tons of education. I also have, I know I mentioned a lot of times, like, looking at your poop. I have a whole guide on how to look at your poop, what it means, the different lab values that I had mentioned kind of throughout. So, that’s on my website, fearlessfig.com. And you can grab that poop guide just to get a little bit more of an insight into like, what is your body actually telling you.

Katie: Love it. I’ll make sure to link to that as well. And lastly, any parting advice you would leave with all the listeners today?

Sarah: I mean, I think it’s really like we mentioned, getting back to the foundations, trying not to beat yourself up in this journey, getting clarity to get over overwhelmed. Like, that’s such a big thing trying to not be like, oh my gosh, I have to do this all on my own, I have to figure all these things out, like, my body is broken. But really kind of just calming down the noise, calming down even what’s going on in your own mind about your health and knowing that there are answers, there are ways to connect back to your health and you don’t have to feel like you’re broken. You don’t have to feel like you’re crazy because you’ve gone to the doctor and they’re like, we don’t know, your labs are fine. It’s, like, if it doesn’t feel right, if something is out of alignment in your body and you have that knowing like, even though they’re saying I’m normal, I just feel like something’s off. Then keep exploring and reaching out and coming into this world of functional wellness. I think this is such a cool way to really optimize the body, not just look at disease. So, there are people in this space, don’t feel like you have to do this on your own. That’s the biggest thing that I would say.

Katie: Oh, and that resonates so deeply with me. I’ve heard that from doctors when I was trying to figure out my health struggles of, oh, your labs are fine, this is all in your head or that’s just normal. And I think many people have had that experience. I love that you brought that up. I think that’s a perfect reminder. And that there always are resources, just sometimes you have to think outside the conventional first approach. It took me eight tries to find practitioners who knew what was going on and it was life-changing. So, I love that we’re ending in a place of hope, especially for women. I think the gut and hormone connection can not be overstated. And I think we got some great starting points today and I’ll make sure there are links for people to find you and keep learning more. but thank you so much for your time. This was so much fun.

Sarah: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me and for guiding this conversation into so many different fun avenues and your wealth of information as well. Like, it’s such a, feels like a very nourishing space that you’ve created for people to learn more about their health and not feel defeated.

Katie: Oh, thank you. And thanks as always to all of you guys for listening and sharing your most valuable assets, your time, energy, and attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama Podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

This article was originally published by wellnessmama.com. Read the original article here.

If you’re looking to master a new skill and improve your employability, you’ll no doubt be weighing up the pros and cons of home learning. Although virtual learning has historically been considered a second-rate way to study, there’s been a seismic shift in how remote learning has been viewed in recent years. Virtual learning is not just more accessible, it’s also incredibly flexible and more affordable.

A Direct Line Of Communication With Tutors

One of the biggest drawbacks of learning in a traditional classroom or lecture hall is that students aren’t able to connect directly with their tutors. If you’re pursuing education in a conventional setting, tutors will be time-poor and unable to commit to any follow-up questions. The infrastructure of online learning has redefined how students can communicate with their tutors. If you’re pursuing one-on-one virtual learning, you have the benefit of immediate feedback that is completely tailored to you. Live chat functionality and email correspondence are also hallmarks of virtual learning.

Improved Concentration And Focus

Provided you’ve a quiet space to work in, learning online can be much more rewarding than conventional study in a classroom. With less distractions to contend with, you can fully commit to a syllabus and gain a far better understanding of what you’re aiming to study. Improved focus is particularly crucial if you’re looking to pursue online language study.

Learning online is no longer a compromise. If you’re looking to take charge of your further education with a flexible solution that fits around your schedule, it’s arguably a more worthwhile alternative than traditional learning models. What’s more, online learning establishments are no longer frowned upon in favour of qualifications obtained from bricks and mortar institutions.

An Affordable Alternative

Even if you’ve secured financial support in the form of student loans, grants and bursaries, the overall cost of pursuing further education in a traditional setting can be expensive. Online learning avenues have made pursuing advanced qualifications and advanced skills more affordable and accessible to all. It’s not just course costs where you make a saving either. Consider the multitude of other expenses involved in traditional study. With virtual learning, you won’t need to shell out for regular travel costs, while everyday expenses are also greatly diminished. Beyond course costs, the only real investment involved in home learning includes a computer and reliable internet access, along with any course-specific software that may be required to undertake your studies.

Flexibility

Although many of us would like to boost our career prospects by pursuing further study, busy schedules are often a barrier to doing so. If you’re currently in employment, you may find it impossible to free up enough time in your daily schedule to visit an evening class or training establishment. Online learning not only negates you having to venture to an establishment far from your home, it also tends to be fairly flexible when it comes to those looking to pursue studies outside of conventional working hours. Many online tutors specialising in one-on-one training will be highly flexible with their own schedules, meaning you’re not locked into an ironclad arrangement with fixed starting times.

*In collaboration with Nathalie Simon

This article was originally published by artofhealthyliving.com. Read the original article here.

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com. That’s Wellnesse with an E on the end. And this podcast is all about breathwork and how this can affect our health and lead to feelings of safety in our own body, parasympathetic nervous system activation, and so much more. I’m here with Josh Trent, who is the founder of Wellness Force Media and host of the podcast by the same name. He’s also the creator of a Breathe Wellness program. And he has spent the past 18 years as a trainer, researcher, and facilitator in this world. And he shares a lot of his expertise and insight, especially related to breathwork, which I think is an often underestimated tool for really dramatically improving health.

And he talks about how breath is the only lever we can manually pull that directly affects so many aspects of the nervous system and the sympathetic-parasympathetic nervous system connection. And since we are all breathing all day long, he talks about how small changes in this area can have a really profound effect in things like our sleep, our HRV, many other aspects of health and wellness. And he gives some tools on how to develop this habit in ourselves and in our children. Some really practical advice and I think you will really enjoy. Josh, welcome to the podcast.

Josh: Thank you so much for having me.

Katie: I’m so excited to chat with you, because you know a whole lot more than I do about a topic I’ve been delving into recently, and I think can be really helpful and impactful, especially for a lot of the parents listening, and I know you’re a new parent, so you’re getting to apply these strategies very directly in your own life right now. But to start broad and then kind of narrow down from there, walk us through, for people who aren’t, maybe are familiar with the term, but not really the specifics, walk us through what breathwork is.

Josh: So, breathwork is the controlled release and response of respiration. So, it’s the only lever we can pull, Katie. We have this autonomic nervous system, right? The sympathetic, the parasympathetic, which I’m sure you’ve gone deep into on your show. But for people that don’t know, just a super high level of breathwork, we have these two areas in our body that are controlled by the automatic nervous system, autonomic. Breath is the only lever we can pull in our entire physiology, where we can actually manually down-regulate stress.

Now, how incredible is that? Because there’s nothing else we can do. We can’t control our heart rate, we can’t digest our food faster or slower, we can’t pulse our blood through our heart faster or slower. I mean, unless you’re, like, a Shaolin monk. I’ve heard they can do some interesting things. But think about this. Breathwork is the only lever we can pull that’ll allow us to really modulate our stress. And so, on a high level, breathwork is controlling that lever.

Katie: It’s so fascinating to me. Can you walk us through kind of the science of what, like, how that actually works within the body? Because it makes sense. We can’t, like, you said, most of us can’t control our heart rate or control how much blood is pumping through our system. But indirectly, controlling our breath does affect those things as well. Kind of walk us through what’s happening in the body in different states of breath, and how that impacts us.

Josh: Sure. So, let’s use the example of me being a new dad. When I hear my baby cry, I go like this. I breathe in and I hold my breath. So, when we breathe in, that’s actually a constriction, a contraction. When we’re breathing in through our nose, we’re actually activating the sympathetic nervous system. When we exhale through our mouth, we’re activating the parasympathetic. So, how do we do this in a circle, so that we’re actually present in our body? And for those who are spiritual-minded, I’ll talk to you, and then for those who are scientific-minded, I’ll talk to you, too. Because breathwork is both, you know, science, and spiritual.

So, when we have the inhale, we have these spherical cores in our nose. And when we breathe in, we’re actually admitting ourselves to the stress that we’re experiencing. A lot of people, Katie, they’ll leave their body when they’re stressed out. And it could be a child crying, it could be you in traffic, it could be a fight with a spouse, it could be, like, load up any kind of stress in the bathtub. Most people don’t breathe through their nose. And so, when you bypass the nose, you actually miss out on your nervous system being friends with the stress that you’re experiencing.

So, on a scientific level, we have that air that’s going through the spherical cores in the nose. That goes into our lungs, and then when we exhale through our mouth, we’re turning on the parasympathetic system. Now, the even more depth of science on this is that we have what’s called the enteric nervous system, which science shows us as the second brain. The enteric nervous system dovetails into the back of the diaphragm. And then on the back of the diaphragm, we also have our vagus nerve, which runs all the way from the back of the cranium all the way down to that diaphragm.

So, think of the diaphragm as, like, the most important balloon you have in your entire body. And the enteric nervous system and the central nervous system, and your vagus nerve, they all connect to that diaphragm. So, Katie, here’s what happens when we take that deep breath in through our nose, and the diaphragm fills with air. We’re actually pushing physiologically on that vagus nerve. The vagus nerve has a direct impact on the parasympathetic nervous system as well.

So, why do we do this? Science shows us, also my anecdotal experience, and thousands of people who have taken the BREATHE: Breath & Wellness Program, we are all hearing and seeing the same thing. And that is, when you’re using what’s called circular conscious connected breathing, you’re actually turning on all these synergetic systems in the body, so you can be friends with your stress. And that’s really the science and the spirit of breathwork.

You know, thousands of years ago, breathwork came from India in the East. And I think in the West, we’ve been so inundated with stress, and we’re, like, the highest-stress people we’ve ever been. We need breath right now, more than ever. And so, the science is great, but really, it’s, like, how do you feel? The report card of how you feel and how you’re using this conscious respiration, that is the most important thing.

Katie: Yeah, and I think I’ve always kind of thought of it in sort of like a triage effect kind of way. And I mentioned like, I’m kind of on a journey with the breathwork side myself, but it’s actually not 100% scientifically accurate, but that saying that we can go three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food, kind of to me indicates the importance of, in order, optimizing those things, and I feel like a lot of people understand the importance of drinking clean water, for instance, and the importance of eating clean food, but the breath part, until recently, at least, hasn’t been talked about as much, which is interesting, because we are doing that all day, every day, and so much more.

So, it would seem like, on a base level, the quality of the air we’re breathing makes a big difference, and the quality of the way that, in which we’re breathing, makes a really big difference as well, just because it’s something that we’re doing literally all the time, even when we’re sleeping. And I know that it seems like there’s kind of a woo connotation with breathwork and changing breathing in certain ways.

Josh: Yes.

Katie: And so, I think, often, it gets discounted. But I think it’s also really important to remember this is something we’re doing all day every day. So, can we, by consciously working on our breathwork and our patterns, can we create changes that are actually, like, lasting, even when we’re kind of just breathing without thinking about it?

Josh: Oh, yes. And for the people who are science-minded, for your show notes, I can give you PubMed study after PubMed study about the benefits of what I call conscious controlled respiration, or circular breathing. But I wanna talk about two things, because you mentioned something really amazing. We’re all breathing all day long. So, for the people who are like, “Oh, breathwork is woo-woo,” or “Breathwork might be too much work,” you’re already doing it anyways. Like, that’s the big thing to point out here. Everyone is breathing all day long, but we are breathing from what’s called an upper-cross position, our scalenes, our sternocleidomastoid, our pec minor, our pec major. We’re all flexed forward in this life, Katie, like, we’re driving, we’re on the phone, everything we do is sagittal plane.

So, my background’s 10 years in fitness. I was a health professional, so, 10,000 hours with clients. And the number one thing that I saw, especially with moms, when I was helping moms that were either postpartum, or even moms that were just dealing with a lot of stress, and they have more than one child, they’re all forward flexed, they’re all kyphotic. On the back of their thoracic spine, they have this bubble.

What that’s doing is that’s pulling their shoulders in, and it’s actually turning off everything you and I talked about earlier, with the vagus nerve, the enteric nervous system in the diaphragm. And so, when that’s happening, women, specifically, are actually getting less oxygen than they were designed. And then they get what’s called carbon dioxide toxicity. So, over the course of time, their cells get less oxygen.

So, how do we fix this? We fix this by first doing the corrective movements, which I talk about in the BREATHE program, getting your chest to open, your posture. Your posture is so huge for getting respiration. And Katie, like, if we’re not in the right posture, if we’re slumped forward, you could read all the books, you could take all the programs to breathe right, but you have to address your posture first, so that’s something that, for the people who might say breathwork is woo, well, actually, breathwork is very scientific. It’s very physiologically connected to our posture, and the way that we sit.

Right now, I’m actually on this meditation cushion. I’m doing this interview, and I have a little backrest. I’m sitting upright. You’ll notice, too, when you ask me questions, or when I’m present with you, I close my mouth, because I’m breathing through my nose. And that’s something we can dive into a little bit later is the impact on posture and nasal breathing and breathing through the diaphragm.

So, it’s for everyone, and for the people that knock it, I get it, I understand, because there’s a lot of woo-woo stuff out there. You know, there’s a lot of things out there that people jump on the bandwagon for, and the next thing you know, people are on the top of a mountain saying, like, “Hey, we should all breathe wearing a crystal around our neck.” Well, breathwork is for those people, but it’s also for the average people like you and I, people that have a lot of stress, and people that really want to use it for the right reason.

Katie: Yeah, I love that you brought up the differences, especially for women, because that was the thing I noticed after 10 years of being pregnant and breastfeeding is just the amount of time you spend bent forward, holding a baby, or nursing a baby, in that posture change. And it was something I had to really consciously correct through my posture, through bodywork, even to kind of rearrange my fascia back to where it was supposed to be.

And like I mentioned, I’m learning the breathwork side now. But it also seems like there’s a little bit of societal conditioning that seems to happen somewhere in the teenage years, where, like, that diaphragm breathing, women tend to stop doing it as much because we wanna look, like, thinner, and our abs tucked in. And so, I feel like women especially tend to breathe more in their upper shoulders and not into their diaphragm. Do you notice that as well?

Josh: I 100% notice that, and I think it’s a great point. Because think of, like, the baby carrier. We just got, like, a, I forget the name of it, but it’s, like, this baby carrier that you put in the front. It’s all front-loaded. So everything that moms do is about this what’s called sagittal plane. You know, in our movement patterns, we have sagittal, we have transverse, we have frontal. We are designed to rotate, to pull back, but everything as far as a mom’s life, and especially in our society, where it’s tech-focused, it’s actually pulling them down to the ground. It’s pulling mothers down to the ground. So, moms have to work on their posterior chain, their intercostals, by the way, and the intercostals go all the way around to the back, almost to your kidneys.

So, when moms, specifically when moms have a little bit of trouble in our BREATHE program, I will actually direct them to breathe through their kidneys, which sounds a little weird, right? Why would a mom breathe through her kidneys? Well, because your intercostals are back there as well. And so, if you can create what’s called the mind-to-muscle connection, to the intercostals, and to all the breathing musculature in your body, you’re going to have this be a habit that sticks in 21 days.

That is what this is all about, is training your posture to have that mind-to-muscle connection. If you don’t have it, then you’re gonna go through the motions, Katie, and that’s just not fair to anyone. Like, I want people to get the best results. There’s a huge backstory as to why I even got into breath in the first place. It came from my own anxiety, it came from my own poor posture, it came from me, just like you, being a professional, and being in the field of wellness, yet working on my own wellness, right. Which is, I think, the story of the wounded healer becoming healed. So, we’re all in this in the same reason, and that is to breathe so that our breath can set us free. That’s really what this is all about.

Katie: And you also mentioned the vagus nerve. And I’d love to go a little bit deeper on this, because I think this is another thing that we’re just starting to understand, or at least starting to talk about more. And I think it’s super important. And from an anecdotal perspective, I noticed when I really started being more conscious of my breath, and making time to breathe more and breathe intentionally, I noticed big changes in my heart rate variability. And I wondered maybe this goes back to the vagus nerve connection, or, I’m curious if you see this in other people as well.

But for people who probably have heard me talk about this term before, but if they haven’t, HRV is the measure of variability between our heartbeats. And from the data I’ve seen, it’s actually a really good predictor of longevity and overall health. And also, it’s a good stress indicator. Athletes often use it as a measure for recovery, so they wouldn’t wanna train if their HRV was low, because it would be a higher risk of injury, for instance. But I’m curious what you see when it comes to HRV, and if you think that maybe is linked to the vagus nerve or something else?

Josh: Yeah, that’s a great question. There’s a multifaceted answer for that. And the HRV, for people that don’t know, it’s this micro time between when your heart beats, the greater variability, the greater health. So, the higher your HRV score is, and you can get it through a fingertip app on the phone… I have a bed called Eight Sleep, so I get it through the bed. You can also do it through Oura device. All these devices are great. The main thing is that you just wanna see your HRV either stay the same, or increase, based on your adaptability to stress.

So, how can breath impact this? And this is, like, the ultimate home run. Breath impacts HRV, because when you’re using your respiration to both clean out your cells, clean out the carbon dioxide in your cells, get in the fresh oxygen, well, then guess what? You’re gonna be more adaptable to stress.

The number one thing, and I mentioned earlier, when my son cries, I go like this. Well, any mom with us knows that when your baby cries, or when you’re in that fight-or-flight mode, what is the first thing that we do, Katie? We stop breathing. And so, if we can train ourselves to breathe effectively, and to breathe consciously, like, circular connected breathing, we are going to show up in a much more loving state and a much more open state, and guess what? The HRV will absolutely reflect that.

So, I love how you’ve been asking such scientific questions. And I also wanna speak to the heart in everyone. Lots of times, we can get caught up, and I wanna presence this, because I’ve fallen into this trap, too, Katie. I wanna see the data. I wanna see my HRV score, I wanna see my adaptability score, I wanna see all my science. And then I forget, “Oh, yeah, I’m a human being in a meat suit, walking around on a rock in the middle of outer space.” Okay, so there’s so much more than just data, when it comes to the breath.

And like I said before, if we can breathe, then we can actually choose. This is on my arm, and it’s “Se posso respirare, posso scegliere”. And what that means in Italian is, “If I can breathe, I can choose.” I mean, it’s on my arm for my own reminder for myself, because I struggle with anxiety for so long in my life, and the only thing that really allowed me to break through, I tried plant medicines, ayahuasca, and mushrooms, and all these insane things. They were beautiful in their own way. But what really brought me back home was learning about my breath and learning about how conscious respiration can center me back.

So, this goes for all parents, all people that are interested in how do I find my center without having to take a bunch of pills or supplements or another cup of coffee? You have all the tools right in you, it’s just learning how to use them effectively, as nature designed it.

Katie: That’s such a great point, too, is, you know, often in health, it’s easy to get distracted by the silver bullets and the shiny new biohacking things. And those certainly can be great and have their place.

Josh: They’re fun.

Katie: But we’re talking about something that’s free, that you’re doing anyway, and so, it’s like…and you’re doing all day long. So it makes sense, if you can optimize this, it helps kind of have that carryover effect. And it seems like it almost would be a self-improving cycle, in that when we learn to breathe better, and like you said, that’s reducing our stress, it’s creating these physiological changes, that also probably help us continue to breathe better. And so, it’s, like, just like you can get in a negative cycle if you maybe don’t optimize that part, it would seem like this one change could create this very positive cycle going forward, as you optimize it more and more.

And you mentioned that circular conscious breathing, and you explained it a little bit. Can you kind of give us a deeper explanation of what that specifically means, and how it maybe differs from just the unconscious breathing we do all the time?

Josh: Yes. And if it’s okay with you, I’ll just do a quick demo. Is that all right? All right. So, everyone, if you’re driving, don’t do this. But if you’re seated, put your right hand on your belly button and put your left hand on your heart, and just close your mouth, and just push your tongue to the roof of your mouth, but relax your jaw, take a big breath in through your nose, and then breathe out through your mouth.

You just performed a circular breath. So, when you do that, over the course of time, connected, with no pause at the bottom, no pause at the top, eventually, what’s going to occur is your body is gonna become fully oxygenated. The cool thing about this, both science and spiritual, is that when you do the circular breathing, you’re giving your body every possible thing it needs to be in your center.

Now, what does that mean? Being in your center means that you’re not pulled by that sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system. So, you could actually use that circular breathing I just showed you. In our BREATHE program, we have 5-minute, 7-minute, 21 minutes. Those are our meditations. Those are the practices. Every single person that does this over the course of three weeks, they report the same thing. Either, “You know, Josh, I realized I can’t relax,” or, “I realized I still need to go longer.” Or, “Hey, I really found my center when I was in traffic, when I was with my child, when I was with my relationship or spouse or work.”

A lot of people, Katie, that have public speaking, I know you’re perfect with public speaking, because at the Paleo Conference, you sat outside with a bunch of people, and it seemed like public speaking was natural for you. But for a lot of people, it is, like, considered to be almost the fear of death, to be on a stage and be a public speaker. In our program, and both, in my own life, I practice and I teach controlled respiration in this circular format, so that people can find their center.

Now, there’s also another style of breathing that’s called box breathing. Box breathing was developed, I believe, by Mark Divine and Special Ops, but I’m sure they learned it from somebody who created it a thousand years ago. Box breathing is where you inhale through your nose, you hold at the top, you exhale through your mouth, and you hold at the bottom.

So, there’s only two ways to breathe. It’s either circular or box. Circular, which we just described, is really about finding your center. Now, box breathing is when you’re going through extreme stress, and you wanna find your focus. So, those are two styles of breathing. There’s also the acute style breathing, which is, like, the pranayama, or the emergency breathing, which is like a quick inhale and exhale only through the nose. There’s cooling breath, there’s sleep breath. There’s relational breath, where you can actually tune in using that same tool of HRV, and heart coherence, by a company called HeartMath. One of the things that we go over in the program is how do we achieve heart coherence with our partner? And what kind of breathing will allow us to actually connect to our partner’s nervous system?

So, long answer to your short question, but this circular breathing is the breathing that can center us. And that is the most important breath, I believe, is that circular breathing. Not that the box isn’t important. But we all need to learn how to breathe like a circle. Because the Earth is round, Katie. We live in a round world. Our life is not this linear, boxed life. We need to learn how to use our breath so that we can adjust to the demands of this modern world that isn’t always so linear and isn’t always so predictable.

Katie: And you also used the term “the mind-to-muscle connection,” and I really love that phrase. And you’ve touched on a little bit, like, the enteric nervous system and autonomic nervous system. But can you go deeper on that mind-to-muscle connection and kind of what is happening over time as we learn that?

Josh: I love it. It’s time for us to put on our science hats right now, because we have this brainstem, and it goes through all of our arterials and our veins and our capillaries, these micro branches, almost like if you look at a tree. You know, a tree and our vascular system are so, so similar. Every single message coming to and from the brain is on an efferent and an afferent wavelength. We are electrical beings. And so, if we’re getting these messages back and forth from all these sensory neurons, the photoreceptors in our skin, we are the most beautiful creation, aren’t we? We are so incredible. We are such an amazing piece of machinery.

What happens is, is when we’re going to this mind-muscle connection, we are actually grooving in those afferent and efferent connections to the brainstem. Within the brain, we have literally hundreds of millions, if not trillions, I don’t know the exact data on it, we have an unthinkable amount of synaptic connections in our brain. Like if you’re in the forest, Katie, and you went on the same path day in and day out, eventually, you would carve a trail, right? Well, the brain is the same way.

And so, if we’re practicing over the course of time, and science shows it’s either 21 or 66 days to have any kind of habit, both physiologically or mentally. Within three weeks, I have seen people literally transform the way they adapt to stress, because guess what? They’re walking in the forest on a new path. The synapses in their brain are literally, and figuratively, both, being changed. They’re walking and grooving new neuroplasticity within their brain, by this circular conscious controlled respiration.

And then, guess what? The next time after those three weeks that they have the same fight, the same traffic jam, the same screaming child, the same fill-in-the-blank stress, they are able to meet that stress with a more open heart, with a more relaxed nervous system. That is a massive tool that anybody can use, at any time. And that is really what this mind-to-muscle connection is about. We are physical beings. We are also spiritual beings.

So, I’m not gonna get too woo-woo on your podcast right now, but, look, both of these branches deserve respect and deserve attention. When you hold your child, you don’t exactly know what love is with your words. You only know what love is because you know the feeling of love. Well, it’s the same way that you connect with your own self. If you can be in your body when you’re experiencing stress, you can learn to love yourself more. Yes, this might seem a little soft and a little mushy, but this is what life is about. I mean, I just had my heart crack completely wide open, having my son.

So, I think about science, just like you, but also, the other side of the coin deserves respect, too. And that’s what this breath and this mind-to-muscle connection can give us, the actual connection to what it’s like to be in our physical body, which is where a lot of us, through trauma and through different things that happen, we tend to leave our physical body when we’re stressed, because our physical body isn’t safe.

And a lot of people deal with this. I believe Seth and I talked about Mark Wolynn, and I introduced him to Mark Wolynn. And I think you’ve either interviewed him, or maybe not, but it’s such a powerful thing to talk about. There is so much more than meets the eye when it comes to how we actually deal with stress, deal with trauma, deal with compression in our lives, and breath, in my opinion, is the most powerful tool we have.

Katie: I’m really glad you brought up the self-love and trauma piece, because, Episode 309 of this podcast, I talked a lot about my own trauma in the past and the things I did. And it was very much a long journey and multifaceted to figure out what was finally gonna help unpack some of those things. But I’ve heard from literally thousands of people since then who shared their own stories. And I think we have an epidemic of sorts of people really struggling with that self-love component, and people with past trauma who are having trouble finding tangible ways to process that.

And so, that’s another reason I was so excited to chat with you today, is that, just like in other realms, there’s all these silver bullet, shiny, fancy things that people do to help process trauma, and I think they all can have their time and their place. I know we’ve got organizations like MAPS doing incredible clinical studies. They’re now in phase three on some substances that they’re finding can be really helpful for this. But I view this kind of like with, you know, people wanna take all these fancy supplements, but if you don’t have your diet and your sleep optimized, the supplements aren’t gonna be that effective. Same thing with, like, yeah, you might need these more intensive therapies, depending on what trauma you have, but if you don’t have the breath optimized, it’s not gonna be as effective as it could be.

And I think it can be hard to understand how something as simple as breathing can make such a profound difference, but I think when you frame it in that aspect of self-love and feeling safe in your own body, that’s a really key phrase, I think. It was for me, at least, and I think for a lot of other people. And that was one of my final keys that had to click into place was that I was doing all the dietary stuff, and I was doing all the supplements, and I had even optimized my sleep pretty well. But because of the trauma side, I didn’t feel safe in my own body. And when that shifted, all of the other stuff got so much easier and fell into place, and my health issues resolved. And until I experienced that, I would never have believed just how profoundly of an impact that can have.

And I think, yes, it can be a little bit more soft and spiritual and woo, but I think you also…it’s really important to talk about and delve into, and not discount how extremely important that is for the physical side as well. Because I think our world kind of naturally predisposes us to try to disconnect those things, and we live in a society that is somewhat disconnected, and tapping back into that can be an interesting process for a lot of people, but such an important one. Do you have any other tips, I know that you’ve worked with so many people on this, for helping to start to establish that self-love and that inner peace connection?

Josh: I love this. I love your question. I love it so much, because it really takes me to a place that I ignored personally for so long. And that is, I wasn’t inhabiting where I live. My body, right here, if you’re watching us on video, our bodies, it is the only home we will ever have. So just let that land for a moment. If you’re not happy where you live, right, Katie… You’ve moved a bunch in your life. We all move. If you don’t like your house, you move. Well, what happens is, is that we all are matched to our house at birth. This is where we live.

So, me, personally, I used to be 280 pounds. I’ve gained 100 pounds, I’ve lost 100 pounds. Like, I’ve run the gamut on weight gain and weight loss. So, I found a drug really early in life, and that drug was called food. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Like, we all, I think, have had our relationships, maybe our battles, with food.

And so, what we’re looking for with food is we’re looking for that deep breath. Most people, when they have eating disorders… I did a great talk that I can send to you, on “What We Crave,” from Errin Smith, the “What We Crave Summit.” And in my research, and in looking at all the speakers, guess what? We’re all looking for the same thing, and that is a deep breath. You don’t actually eat the food because you want the food. You eat the food because you want the peace. You want peace. That peace is something you don’t feel in your body. I didn’t feel it for a long time. And so, I got to this place where I really was, like, feeding an empty ghost. This is what Gabor Maté talks about, right? The hungry ghost inside of all of us. Everyone deals with this.

So, Katie, if we want more self-love, we have to be comfortable living in self. Like I said earlier, we’re this spiritual being. Nobody knows where consciousness comes from. We’re all figuring that out. Nobody knows why the SA node inside of the heart beats. Why can you take a heart out of one person and put it in the other? Where does that actually come from? Well, in my opinion, it’s God. Y’all can learn whatever you want about your higher power in your studies. I believe there is a omnipresent being that is loving awareness. And that’s it. Loving awareness of all things.

And so, when we get down to the nitty-gritty of what it really means to be a human, what it really means to love thyself, if you wanna love yourself, you have to know yourself. And if you don’t know yourself because your parents, society, school, and all these things, tried to distract you of who you actually are, then the very first thing you have to do is a pattern interrupt. Like, literally, just like this. You have to interrupt yourself, by, maybe, a lot of people, Katie, they’ll get a divorce. Or they’ll have a leg break, or they’ll have a tragedy. That is that pattern interrupt, that happens, that gets them back to loving themselves, because that’s what they needed.

Some people need to get their ass kicked a little bit, so they can get back to center and understand who they actually are, so then, they can turn to themselves, look in the mirror, and be like, “Wow, I actually really love you. I’m so sorry for abandoning you.” We all abandon ourselves at certain points in life. And this is both on a psychological level, and also on a physiological level. For me, personally, the reason that I use the food, and that I needed more padding, which is really what fat is, it’s padding, it’s protection, is because, Katie, I didn’t feel safe. And when I don’t feel safe, what do I need to protect myself? Well, I need some kind of fortification. For some people, it’s muscle. For some people, it’s fat.

And so, there’s lots and lots of programs and lots and lots of things out there, but they all deal with talk therapy, Katie. And in my opinion, the only way you can move energy out of the body that’s trying to make you not love yourself is by breath, and movement, and actually getting that stuck energy out of your tissues.

You and I both know, we have this Bruce Lipton, who’s famous for being…the quotation, I believe it’s “The issues are in the tissues.” Well, why is that? Why is that that we have actual issues, like trauma and constriction, in our tissues? It’s because that energy is asking to be moved. Emotion is energy in motion. So, what happens when we don’t move the motion? Well, then that energy gets stuck.

So, it’s actually quite simple. But just because it’s simple does not mean it’s easy. A lot of these concepts we’re talking about today, yeah, they might be simple, but they’re not always easy to execute. And so, that’s where getting coaching and having support, to take these tools for breathing, will take you to the next level, because you actually can get held, which is what you want, so that you can use the breath and use the tools to move the energy. That’s what this is all about.

Katie: And you also mentioned that breathing is something that can be done with a partner, to kind of sync up into feel like in the same relational space, and I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. And also, now that you’re a parent as well, and this is so top of mind for you, about how we can incorporate that with our kids. Because unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of data from the last couple of years about how the stressful situations we’ve all gone through the past couple of years have especially impacted the mental health of children.

And even without all of those factors, I know kids go through various phases of learning to process their emotions, to feel safe in their environment, and there’s a whole psychological journey throughout the phases of childhood related to that. So, I’d love to hear how we can start incorporating these more conscious breathwork practices with our kids from an early age, to help them maybe not ever have to process so much as adults as you and I have, and to have this framework for a better, you know, breathing foundation for their whole lives.

Josh: Well, first of all, kids don’t do what you say, they what do you do. And I’m sure you could tell me that a lot more, right? I’m just learning. I’m just starting. I’m three weeks in. But if I, myself, am “eating my own dog food,” if I’m doing the things that I tell my kids to do, and kids are watching me do it, well, guess what? They’re gonna mirror you. There are mirror neurons in the body. And so, we are all empathetically wired. Kids, Katie, kids want to please.

Most people don’t know this. I spent a year, year and a half, teaching youth martial arts. And this was in, like, year five or six of my fitness career. And what I found from my coach, and just from working with kids is, if I would use positive reinforcement with these young kids in martial arts, they would, 9 times out of 10, mirror back to me the behavior that I wanted them to do. When I would be upset with them, or when I would get frustrated, they would naturally resist me. So, what am I saying here? Kids want to please. There is that same empathetic wiring inside of them that actually lives inside of us.

So, if you want your kids to use this circular breathing, so that they can potentially have some of these traumas… And by the way, to be a human is to have trauma. We’re never gonna escape trauma, right? There’s capital T and lowercase t. But if you want your kids to have a greater toolset about how to deal with the two types of trauma, the best thing you can do is actually have what I call breath breaks. So, you take this breath break, you sit down, you know, wife, husband, family, you all get together. However you relate is fine. And you say, “Okay, we’re gonna take a breath break,” and you give a positive reward.

As you know, Katie, the limbic system, the reward circuitry in the brain, if we’re giving the limbic system novelty…we’re novel beings. This is why, like, these things, these phones, are so popular. If we are constantly checking Facebook and Instagram, guess what we’re looking for? Look at the work of Nir Eyal. He’s been on the podcast. He actually helped Facebook and Twitter make the products more addictive. And then he had, like, a come-to-Jesus moment, where he was like, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t addict people to these social media outlets.” What did he say? “They are all looking for the variable reward.”

So, how do we create this conscious respiration with our kids? We apply the variable reward to their young minds. We sit as a family, we take a breath break. There’s a reward when we breathe. Maybe it’s a healthy treat. Maybe it’s that we all get to go to the park. Incorporate breathing in these fun breath breaks with your kids, and you can actually have them draw the circle, draw the box. You know, do those things as a family, as a unit, so that you can behave together exactly how nature designed you to be, and that was relaxed and at peace and in love. Does that make sense? Like, did that answer your question?

Have the breath breaks with your family, get out a piece of paper, have your kids draw a circle, have your kids draw a square, and say, “Hey, practice with mom and dad. Practice this breathing.” And then afterwards, there’s a variable reward, a treat of some kind, doesn’t always have to be food, so that you’re actually moving your kids in the right direction from that positive reinforcement. And I saw this time and time again when I worked in martial arts. I know this will work. Obviously, I can’t communicate with my three-week-old son. He doesn’t use words yet. I’m sure when he can use words, like, he will love doing this with us. It’ll be a part of our life for sure as a family.

Katie: And in the meantime, I know there’s some cool data that I’ve seen, you probably have encountered it as well, about just the breathing interactions between parents and their children. And I had one child who was in the NICU for a couple of weeks, and they would really encourage skin-to-skin…
Josh: Couple of weeks?

Katie: Yeah. He was early, and thankfully is, like, incredible now. Has no lasting effects. But I had placenta previa and emergency C-section, and he was in the NICU for a couple weeks. And they talked so much, especially with the micro-preemies, about how that skin-to-skin was vital for temperature regulation, but also because babies would interact with and, like, mimic the breathing patterns of their parents, and the heart rate.

And so, even pre-verbally, when we are holding our children, and in that probably relaxed state ourselves, our child picks up on that, and their nervous system adapts. And so, it’s really cool that even from the earliest of moments with our kids, and, of course, while they’re in utero as well, they’re interacting with our nervous systems, and we’re interacting with theirs, and they can, if we’re able to stay in that calmer state, I feel like our kids do pick up on that.

And as parents, I’m sure many people listening have had experiences of if we are chaotic and stressed, our kids feed off of that. Whereas, conversely, if we’re maintaining a state of calm, our kids benefit from that as well. And so, I think your point was well made that they do what we do and not what we say, and that that’s always, of course, the first step, even in simple things. Like, if I sit down and draw, my kids are much more likely to sit down and come draw with me, than if I was like, “Hey, you guys should draw and be creative.” It’s, they mimic what we do. Or if I work out, they’re much more likely to come join me, and it’s play, for them, versus if I just told them they should get some exercise.

So, I think that’s a great starting point. And I know, like, the importance of community is so important when integrating any new habit. So, if people are able to do this as a family, not only does that create benefit for everyone, but it also probably makes the habit much more likely to stick, I would guess.

Josh: Yeah. I would say you’re guessing right on. And I just wanna presence what you said. We were…I haven’t talked about this yet. You’re my very first podcast interview I’ve done since we got back. We were 10 days. We were 10 days in the NICU. And so, like, when you said that, my heart just dropped, because it was so traumatic. I mean, God, like, it brings up emotion to me right now just thinking about it. Like, all the leads attached to him, and…it was really intense. And if I didn’t have my breathwork, like, I don’t know what I would have done, really. Like, I…first of all, she had to have emergency C. He was 10 days there. I had to fight the hospital to get him back. They wanted to do a spinal tap, they wanted to do extra antibiotics. I literally had to pull on 18 years of being in wellness, and bring them study after study, and second opinion. And then we had CPS called on us, because we weren’t, like, being good parents. I’m just like, “Oh, my God, the Western medical system is great. It’s great. It saves lives. And, there needs to be a deep inventory of the practices that exist there.”

So, yes, I wanted to presence that for a moment, because it’s so insanely traumatic, and just, my heart goes out to every single parent that has ever had their baby in the NICU. Like, yes, they save lives, but also, there needs to be a deep inventory of the systems and practices that go on there. So, if I didn’t have my breath, Katie, I don’t know what the hell I would have done. Like, there were moments where, I wheel her up there, and I’d go off and I’d go to the bathroom, and I would sit in the bathroom. And I would breathe like a circle, for seven minutes. I would, like, just do the breathing. Because I knew that it wasn’t just the time for me to walk my own talk. It was, like, literally how I’ve trained myself over the past five years.

That was the only thing that allowed me to stay grounded. And there were moments that I wasn’t, as I’m sure you can relate to, being in the NICU and worrying about your baby. It’s like, it’s the most insane thing any parent could ever experience. But the breath is the only thing I had. I wasn’t drinking, I wasn’t eating crappy food. Like, I was in the hospital. So, that was a beautiful space for me, that I can share, like, that really allowed me to surrender to what was happening, instead of trying to fight what was happening. Yes, of course, I experienced waves of anger, too. But what really saved me was all this training I’ve been doing since 2016. All this training I’ve been doing, it was almost as if God said, “Okay, well, now that you’ve trained, you’re ready. Here’s your initiation into being a parent,” you know. So, yeah, I just wanted to presence that for you, and all parents that go through that.

Katie: Yeah, that’s an interesting point as well, that I feel like has a crossover metaphor into maybe, like, physical training and exercise, is, you know, strength is built under load. We don’t build strength by just thinking about the theory and the practice of strength. We build it by testing it. And that’s been a recurring theme for me as well these last couple of years, is… And I even had a mentor say that to me recently when I was stressed out about a lot of things, and I had done all this work. And he was like, “Oh, that’s cute. You thought you were gonna get all this strength and not have it tested? Strength is developed under load.”

You know, and, like, this is when you actually get to see if those things are gonna work. And we’re all gonna encounter things in life that we would maybe choose not to go through if we got to choose. But instead, we get to choose to maintain that inner peace and that inner calm, and that feeling of love and kindness and gratitude, especially in the hard moments. And I think maybe that is part of the lesson in the journey, and when we really get to test it.

Josh: Yeah. I feel like I am coherent with you right now. You asked me earlier, and I skipped over the question, so I wanna go back. You said, “How do we connect to our partner, and how do we go through that relational conscious connected breathing?” If you look at the work of HeartMath, HeartMath is probably, I think, they were first on scene, Katie, in the scientific community, when it comes to HRV, and this term called coherence.

So, we’ve done a lot of episodes on this. It’s a little device that you wear on your ear. And it actually allows your respiration to be matched with your heartbeat. So, when you have heart-to-body or heart-to-mind coherence, you actually can increase your HRV, you can decrease your stress, you can become a better breather, essentially.

So, we have some data and some practices in the BREATHE program that allow people to wear that little device on their ear, train themselves over time, have some feedback on their phone, so that you can actually see yourself, both data and anecdotally, become a better breather. And when you can become a better breather, you can practice this with your spouse, your partner, you know, however you relate, and you can actually compare your data together.

But more than that, you can practice breathing like a circle together. That’s essentially what this is all about. And I hate to be so reductionistic, but yo, it’s just so easy here. It’s so simple. If you breathe like a circle, and you breathe with the right posture, and you just combine good posture with good breathing, I absolutely promise you, 100%, and I say this because it’s my own experience and thousands of people in the program, you will have a higher quality of life. Period, end of story.

Like, if you’re the kind of person who has been stressing out, especially, Katie, with what we’ve gone through, the hell we’ve gone through since 2020, there is no better time to become a better breather. But you have to be in a trusted space where it’s not just a bunch of woo. There actually is some science behind it, there is some real data and some real significance to this process that I’ve created. Trusting your teacher, trusting your community is huge. The results will speak for themselves if you have the trusted container or spaciousness, essentially, a vetted space, with both science and spirit, for you to learn.

So, if you can learn how to breathe, then you can learn how to choose. It’s written on my arm, but it doesn’t have to be written on your arm. You can just practice the breathing in a space that’s trusted, and it will allow you to connect better with your partner with that coherence, to connect better with yourself with that coherence, and give yourself some accountability along the way. You know, we really need, as human beings, that external locus of control sometimes. Sometimes we really just need to be obliged.

I interviewed Gretchen Rubin, as I think you have, too, and she talks about obligers. I’m an obliger personality, so I do really well with external frameworks of control. So, when I can see things, when I can have frameworks around me, if you’re that type of a person, this is the program for you. This is the path, because we really fortify this space around you, so that you know, you can see, you can feel, that you’re on the right path.

Katie: Oh, I did interview her as well, and I was their rebel. So “you can’t tell me what to do, and I can’t either”, which was a thing I had to overcome. I couldn’t even, like, give myself too intensive structure, or I would rebel against that as well.

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I really think all these things that you’ve said really drive home that point of just how important and core this habit is. Like I said, and it crosses over into every other aspect of health, and it’s a free daily habit that we can all learn from and benefit throughout our whole life from.

The data, especially right now… I’m a data nerd, so I always go back to this, but it’s really cool. We know that we’re seeing a huge rapid increase in things like dementia and Alzheimer’s, but we also know that people who make a regular habit of breathing and meditation, their brains are on average 7.5 years younger than those who don’t. So this is an extremely tangible science-backed way.

And even just, you mention the oxygen component. Like, that impacts every system in the body, in a very, very profound way. So that’s why I just think, I think really important to drive this home as a core foundational habit that will cross over into every other aspect of health. And I wanna make sure, of course, the links will be in the show notes. But I know that you have a very specific course related to how to integrate this habit, so can you just talk a little bit about that before, and I have a few more questions I wanna move on to with you?

Josh: Yes, Katie. I love how much into science you are. And I also wanna point out, like, there are some things in life that we can’t always explain. And I think, for me, maybe you can relate. Like, it kind of bothers me. I’m like, “I wanna know why.” I wanna know why something exists. Like, show me the data, show me the things.

When it comes to breath, I built this program. It’s a three-week program. It’s called “BREATHE: Breath & Wellness.” And I have a really special gift that I can share with your community at the end as well. And this is really about getting people to clear their stress by using their breath. I know that’s very simple, but the only way you can clear your stress is by using your breath to consciously respirate. And notice I said conscious. It’s actually taking back your breath, so you can let go of the old stressors, by the way, both physically and emotionally. I talked about my weight gain, and you and I both have shared that in our lives.

This program is built for people that want to, in three weeks, learn the fundamentals, the brass tacks. The things that are actually going to allow you to groove those synapses in your brain, so that you can apply this conscious respiration, in three phases. And this program has acute stress breathing practices, we have meditative practices, and then we also gear people towards one-on-one coaching with myself, that is more of a catharsis breathing. And that is for journey breathing and for letting go of a lot of things that are much deeper.

I’ve had a lot of people cry with me, I’ve had a lot of people shake, I’ve had a lot of people get rid of some very dark things. I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a therapist, this is not medical advice, but those three phases, the acute, meditative, and the catharsis, those are the things that we cover in the most depth, for the average person like you and I, who doesn’t wanna sit on a mountain and chant. Like, this is for the grounded person that just wants to get the real science, the real practices, in three weeks or less, in a guided format, so you have accountability to actually get a result. That’s what this program is all about.

Katie: I love that, and it’s the shaking part that you mentioned, like, the catharsis of that. I had that experience as well in trauma processing. I thought I had talked through and processed a lot of it, and then when I had the actual, like, body somatic experience of processing it, I likened it to when an animal is almost killed, like in a nature show, and then they get out of the danger situation. Animals instinctively, like, shake, and they release all the extra hormones.

Josh: That’s right.

Katie: And, as humans, we kind of have a little bit more control over that. And often, we can, like, pack down that response. And that’s what I had done in the trauma, was be like, “I will never feel these emotions again.” I put up walls, and, like, locked it down. And then, when I finally unpacked that, and was able to, like, release that trauma, I shook for hours. For like two hours, all those hormones just came out, and it was such a profound experience, and that was kind of the thing that started the cascade of hormones changing. And for me, being able to lose weight, to your point, as well, is I started to feel safe in my body again, because I had to release that somatically. And I think that is a tough thing for a lot of people to get to, and breath is probably the easiest, most accessible tool to be able to start doing that. So, I love that you brought up that component as well.

Josh: Katie, it’s tough to wrap your head around, for maybe a lot of people, what you just said, but it’s because the solution isn’t in your head. That’s really what we’re talking about here. Like, for most people that have been through capital T severe trauma… And by the way, we all go through lowercase t trauma. Trauma is not necessarily just sexual, physical, mental abuse. Trauma is also maybe not being held enough, not being acknowledged enough, not being seen enough. There’s so many variables in the emotional intelligence front that we’re just beginning to both science and anecdotally understand.

We know that a baby that potentially has trauma through circumcision, an incredible documentary, “American Circumcision,” that’s why we chose to not get our son circumcised, because we did not want to traumatize him. There’s also a lot of things that happen when kids are growing up where they’re bullied, and if you look at the research on bullies, the trauma that happens from bullying is so severe that when kids grow up, it actually stunts their expression.

So, all of us, Katie, and I’m so…I’m honestly so, like, enamored, and I’m so grateful that you share about your own experience on your show. Because, man, haven’t we all been through certain things? I mean, some people more than others, but we all go through these things. And so, how do we make sense of it all? How do we wrap our head around something that has nothing to do with our head?

Well, that we have to get out of our head, and we get into our body. That’s the only way we do it. And so, using practical language here, I’m just gonna speak to everyone. You have to get out of your head, you have to get into your body. If you can do that, and use breath as a bridge, to connect yourself back home, right, to your heart, to your tissues, you will go through some shaking, I’m sure, like you did. You will cry.

I’ll never forget the first time I ever did catharsis breathing. I was laying on the floor with a bunch of Navy SEALs and Special Operations people, through Mark Divine at SEALFIT. And I’m like, “why am I crying?” I just had, like, tears coming out of my eyes, but it was just my body releasing all these things that I didn’t even know were there.

And the last thing I’ll say, because I know I’m going on a tangent here, but I promise it’ll all make sense, is that we have experienced so much micro-trauma in our life that the only way we can let go of that is to leave the mind completely. And you can’t get it through meditation. I always tell people, like, the BREATHE: Breath & Wellness Program is for people that can’t meditate well. It’s for people that have trouble meditating. So, you have to get into your body, you have to get out of your head.

If you have trouble meditating, this is the path for you, with this breathwork. I talked about this with Michael Ruscio just recently. Like, we have to be able to be still. You know breathwork is for you if you can’t be still, and if you’ve tried to meditate and you’ve been kind of struggling with your meditation, like, give breathing a chance. Because when you breathe, you can get back here, and out of your mind, and then you can probably become a much better meditator. I know it’s made me a lot better, too, so thank you for letting me share such a long tangent, but it really makes sense for all of us that struggle being still.

Katie: Yeah. Oh, such a great point. And a question I love to ask as we get toward the end of our time is if there’s a book or a number of books that have had a profound impact on your life, and if so, what they are, and why?

Josh: Well, I have, like, hundreds. I remember, somebody asked me this and I was like, “You’re gonna make me say one book? You’re gonna make me say one book?” I really love Hawkins, “Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender.” I would say that’s the number one. Number two is David Deida, “The Way of the Superior Man.” And that’s for women, too. It’s really this mastery path of health-wealth relationships. You know, the triangle that we’re all walking here. But I love “Letting Go” because he has this approach, and it’s not necessarily Buddhist, or Christian. It’s a non-denominational approach to letting go of the things that we’re having struggle surrendering to.

And why I love that book is, I love the audio version, is there’s actual practical things that I’ve put into place over the past seven, eight years. People don’t know this, but, I mean, I even launched the podcast in 2015. “Wellness Force” came from my own pain. It came from me fighting, and not surrendering. So I just took it upon myself to discover, like, okay, what are the tools? What are the things? What are the ways of being that I myself must do so that I can have peace in my own heart, peace in my own body? Like, the physical and emotional intelligence that we talk about on “Wellness Force” is really a byproduct of my own lessons, my own learning, my own trauma, my own healing with public spotlight on me, like, how do I heal?

And so, I think if we all can, like, let go of the pride and the ego around healing, and around how do we have peace in ourselves, we can all just connect more with one another. Because everybody’s got their own journey. Everybody’s got their own battles. I’m sure there’s a quote out there that I’ll butcher but, you know, be mindful, be kind to people, because everyone has a battle that they’re fighting. And so, we don’t know what people are fighting, but these books will really help you if you’re interested in stopping the war with self, stopping the fight within your own self. I think those two books can really help people.

Katie: I love those recommendations. Those will be linked in the show notes as well, at wellnessmama.fm. And if you could leave one piece of advice with everyone listening, what would be the one piece of advice you would want everyone to know and remember?

Josh: So, whether it’s with me, or whether it’s with someone else, you must do the work to be courageous, and really to be brave, that when you’re in the face of fear, and, like, the fear dragon is right there, or you’re triggered by your partner, or you’re experiencing pain in your life, if you can do your work to take a breath when it matters most, and love your wife, love your husband, love your children, and actually, as Gay Hendricks told me on the podcast five years ago, love your fear, which might seem a little crazy. If you can do the work to love the things that scare you, and actually accept them and be friends with your ego, and be friends with your pain, that is how you win the game of life. You win the game of life by treating it like a game, because life can get so serious, Katie. Oh my god. Like, there can be so much suffering in this world.

So if we can train ourselves to have the courage and the bravery, to really be present to what’s going on, and to do as much work as we can to love it, then that is what can set you free. That is what can connect you with the most enjoyable life. And that’s how you win. But not win from a competitive standpoint. Win, like, in the same way as if you were playing tag with your kids in the park. You wouldn’t treat it so seriously. We have become so serious in this world. And I’ve fallen into it so much. I think if we can learn how to breathe and that can get us closer to the piece of advice, I would want everyone to know.

Katie: And now it’s my turn to share a thing that’s written on my arm, which is Amor Fati which means “love what is,” and not just accept what is, but truly love what is, even the hard things. And like we talked about earlier, that’s when we get to apply these things and learn such beautiful lessons. And I think that’s a perfect place to wrap up. But you mentioned a gift for the audience as well, so wanna make sure we just touch on that briefly, and I’ll put links in the show notes as well.

Josh: Is that Italian, Amor Fati?

Katie: Latin, actually.

Josh: Latin, okay.

Katie: And I have a memento mori on the other wrist.

Josh: Okay, yes.

Katie: Remember you will die.

Josh: Yes, yes. It’s a great reminder, isn’t it? I’ve so enjoyed this, Katie. I didn’t… This is the first time you and I are really tuning in as friends and as colleagues, so I just wanna thank you for letting me be here and just share my experience. The greatest gift I can give to anyone is my own experience. But I wanna give your community an incredible gift, and that is 20% off this program. You go to breathwork.io. That’s breathwork.io. And the code is “WellnessMama.” So, enter “Wellness Mama,” you get 20% off. And then, for that, it’s three weeks long. I add an absolute promise to everyone here that if you commit to something like this, you will change. You will change in three weeks, because thousands of people have already proved it to be so.

So, it’s the code “WellnessMama,” over at breathwork.io. That is the gift. It’s already a very affordable program, so do this instead of going out for drinks this weekend, okay? Learn how to breathe instead, with me. And thank you, Katie, for having me. And thank you to everyone for spending time with us. You guys, this is huge. Your time is your most valuable resource. So, truly, from my heart to yours, thank you for being here with us. And thank you for hearing me out about the power of breath.

Katie: I love that you said that, because that’s a thing I often say as well, just gratitude for everyone for sharing their time. That’s the most valuable resource we have. And I don’t take it lightly that people share that resource with me on this podcast and with you today, and also very grateful for you and the work that you’re doing, and congratulations on the new little one.

Josh: Thank you. Nova says hello to the global community. Thank you, Katie.

Katie: And thanks to all of you guys as always for listening. I hope you will join me again on the next episode.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

This article was originally published by wellnessmama.com. Read the original article here.

There’s something about mastering a new skill that feels so good. And not just a practical one; any kind of learning can boost your wellbeing, and there’s a growing pile of research to prove it. Studies have found that learning throughout our lives can improve self-esteem and increase life-satisfaction, optimism and belief in our own abilities. It can even help those with mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, and some GP practices actually prescribe education as part of the treatment package.

Self-development, adult education – no wonder experts consider learning to be essential to a rounded life. In fact, it is so important that ‘Keep Learning’ is one of the New Economic Foundation’s (NEF) Five Ways to Wellbeing, along with the phrases ‘Connect’, ‘Be Active’, ‘Take Notice’ and ‘Give’.

‘Learning addresses competence,’ says Saamah Abdallah, senior researcher at NEF’s Centre for Wellbeing. ‘It can boost your self-esteem and show you that you can do things. But it also builds that sense of autonomy, and a lot of learning happens in groups, in classes and courses which, if done well, means people can build relationships too.’

So how can we keep that eternal student within us alive? Dr Ryan Niemiec, psychologist, coach and education director at the VIA Institute, an American non-profit organisation founded on the principles of positive psychology, suggests that the best place to start is to discover what interests you.

‘Research has found with love of learning, one of the best ways to build it up is curiosity,’ he says. ‘Ask yourself, what am I passionate about, what am I curious about, what am I interested in? And then ask yourself where that leads you.’

Here is some inspiration, notebooks at the ready:

1. The School of Life

These clever clogs were ahead of the curve on the importance of lifelong learning, offering ‘good ideas for everyday life’, including workshops on subjects ranging from how to find a job you love and how to stay calm, to how to be a better friend and how to realise your potential. They also provide one-to-one therapy – you could have a Creativity MOT or a Career MOT – plus there’s an online shop and a library of resources (blog posts, books, photos and videos).

theschooloflife.com

2. FutureLearn

This innovative company works with top UK universities across disciplines from business to the arts to offer free online courses to all. Find management courses that could help your working life or creative writing courses (if you’ve just been inspired by The Artist’s Way), to sessions that will help you turn your kitchen into a chemistry laboratory…

futurelearn.com

3. The Open University

If you’re looking for a formal qualification but don’t really fancy going back to eating beans on toast and drinking student union beer, you could enrol on a distance learning course with the Open University. As well as offering full undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, there are also short courses and vocational qualifications available, from business management and leadership to career guidance and travel-planning.

open.ac.uk

4. Frui

Much-loved for its inspiring, tailored creative holidays that help you learn to paint in Tuscany or cook a tagine in Morocco, Frui also offers UK-based courses, specialising in photography (in London, Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham and Brighton). Choose a lesson in the art of street photography or learn how to master shooting in black and white.

frui.co.uk

More inspiration:

Sign up for our Life Labs Practical Wisdom online course Achieve Your Goals here

This article was originally published by psychologies.co.uk Read the original article here.

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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This podcast is brought to you by Paleovalley – they’ve been my go-to source for grass-fed beef sticks for years and I’m also loving their bone broth protein these days as well. It’s made from 100% Grass Fed and Finished cows never given antibiotics, steroids, or hormones – so these dangerous compounds do not end up in the final product. They are also made from bones, not hides. Most companies use the hides from animals because it is cheaper. When collagen is sourced from the animal’s skin, we miss out on all of the extra nutrients and restorative benefits of the bones. Another thing that sets them apart is that it’s not processed with high heat – which can denature and coagulate the protein making it harder for the body to absorb and use. Extreme temperatures can also destroy more heat sensitive amino acids and other nutrients or make the protein resistant to digestive enzymes, which also decreases absorption. It’s also 3rd party tested for pesticides, herbicides, and heavy metals to make sure they are safe. Check this out and all of their products at paleovalley.com/mama for 15% off.

Katie: Hello, and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com. That’s Wellnesse with an E on the end. It’s my personal care line. This podcast is all about flow states. You know that feeling when everything just lines up and you’re able to get a ton of work done or you’re in intense creativity or maybe a sport or physical activity and you’re just in the zone? That’s what we’re talking about today. And it’s called flow states in a lot of research. I’m here with Rian Doris, who is the co-founder and CEO of the Flow Research Collective. They’ve done a lot of work on researching the neurobiology and the chemistry of what’s happening in these states and then also applying that research to people in various walks of life to make people more effective at the things that they’re doing, especially in a work capacity.

But we take a really fun deviation into the educational side of this and how we as parents can help nurture our kids into having a high-performance mindset and a solid foundation for life using things like flow states and how kids are naturally even better about this than we are so we can learn from them due to some really cool research about their prefrontal cortex and their ability to drop into flow states. It’s a fascinating episode that takes a lot of really interesting twists and turns. So, let’s join Rian. Rian, welcome to the podcast.

Rian: Thank you for having me, Katie. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Katie: Well, I’m excited to go deep on the topic of flow, and especially applying this to ourselves and our families. But before we get to that, I have a research note that you ate the same thing for two years, and I have to hear this story.

Rian: That’s good. That’s good research. Yes, I love routines, personally. I love being very consistent. And I love automating things that I don’t care that much about, me personally, at least. And one of those things is food. I’m not necessarily a foodie. So, I, for one intensive work period, over two years, just standardize exactly what I ate, and managed to stick to it for a fairly long period of time to free up headspace, and time, and energy to be able to do the things that I cared more about, and also the daily routine I had, the diet I was sticking to was was delicious. So, it wasn’t too hard.

Katie: What were you eating? That’s fascinating.

Rian: If you really want me to give you the breakdown, I’m happy but it was…So I was on a keto diet, which makes it important to be consistent because they’re crazy strict. Every day, I would eat two packets of nuts, cashews, and almonds. I would eat 500 grams of minced beef, grass-fed Irish minced beef, two avocados, six eggs, a bar of 85% dark chocolate, and a little bit of fried broccoli, and some greens. That was pretty much it daily, one meal a day for two years. So, that was the routine.

Katie: Wow, that’s impressive to stick to it for that long, fascinating. So this episode is about the topic of flow, which I’ve touched on before with Steven Kotler, who we talked about briefly before we jumped in. I really, really love him and his work. And I know that you guys work together on the flow collective. And I’m excited to go deep on this because I think there’s so many springboard from my first conversation with him, which I’ll link to, if you guys haven’t heard it. But to start broad, can you, kind of, just give us an overview of when we say the word flow, what we mean?

Rian: Sure. Yeah, always helpful to define it. So most people know of flow as being in the zone. When you hear someone say that, yeah, I managed to get into the zone at work today or I was out biking and, you know, I got into state, or I got into a groove, generally they’re referring to getting into a flow state. And it’s more technically defined as an optimal set of consciousness where we feel our best and we perform our best. And then the descriptive definition is that flow occurs when action and awareness merge, time dilates. So, often, minutes go by in what feels like a longer period of time. And then long periods of time go by in what feels like moments. So, you spend three hours in an afternoon writing, for example, and you look up, check the time, and it feels like you’ve only been writing for a few minutes. So that’s, sort of, flow state is the state of optimal performance and total immersion in the task at hand.

Katie: Are there differences happening neurobiologically when we’re talking about a flow state? I mean, certainly, I’ve had that experience and felt that difference in mindset, and focus, and being able to work but are there actual physiological changes happening as well?

Rian: Yeah, it’s a great question. One of the questions that we get quite a lot is, what’s the difference between flow and focus? Isn’t focus, you know, just the same thing, what’s actually the difference? And the difference is that first off, flow often occurs after a period of uninterrupted focus. So the way that I like to describe it is that attention involves directing your awareness to a specific focal point. When you hold that attention for an extended period of time, we call that focus. And often, when you persistently focus, you’re able to shift state and get into what we call flow state. So it kind of goes attention, focus, flow. And there are a number of physiological shifts that are distinct between a flow state and just being focused on something without being inflow.

And those shifts occur across our neurochemistry. So there’s different neurochemistry that shows up. Those shifts are measurable from a neuroelectric perspective. So there’s a shift in, sort of, our brainwave state. And then those shifts are also apparent in terms of experience, in terms of what it actually qualitatively feels like versus just simply being focused. So, for example, the time dilation that I mentioned. Neurochemically, we believe at least the research is largely out, we believe that anandamide, dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and norepinephrine are all present during flow state. And that is distinct from the normal state of focus, so to speak.

Katie: And I know you guys have done a lot of research on some of these parts of understanding what’s happening in a flow state and also in the practical application of how this affects our lives. And I think that’s a really important point to delve into because I would guess most people listening have had the experience of that timeless flow state where everything is just clicking into place and you totally lose track of time. I’ve had it happen with writing. I’ve had it happen with art and creative pursuits and also with, like, really fun, physical activities. But it also seems like I think a lot of us would maybe say we’ve had that experience but it’s kind of elusive. It’s not something we can just kind of find or turn on at will. And I think you guys have done some interesting research around this area as well. Is that right?

Rian: Yes, not necessarily research but I would say our primary focus as a company, as an organization, at least from a training perspective, is in helping people take this elusive, sporadic state that has immense benefits to it that we all know of and have experienced and want more of and turn it into something that is accessible with consistency and on-demand and in a way that we can actually or predict at least as much as possible so that the goal is to take flow from being this elusive thing that sometimes shows up to making it a consistent thing that we can drive ourselves into so that we can get sustained peak performance. And so, the optimal performance and flow is not a matter of luck or chance, but rather a matter of circumstance. And one of the things that’s important to clarify is that accessing flow like this is not mechanistic. It’s probabilistic. So, people often ask, what’s the push-button thing I need to do to drop into flow right now or be able to drop into flow all the time? And it’s not, unfortunately, quite as simple as that. Rather, it’s probabilistic, there are stacks of things you can do that are gonna greatly improve your likelihood of accessing flow, but it’s never going to be 100% consistent.

Katie: That makes sense. And an important distinction, although it does seem in conversations I’ve had with really elite performers, whether that be high-level athletes or elite performers in other realms, they do seem to have developed the ability to do that more often or somewhat more reliably, I guess it makes sense not completely at will. But what are some of the factors that come into play there?

Rian: Well, that’s just a really important point in and of itself. And that’s the fundamental paradigm shift, which is that getting into a flow state is, in and of itself, a skill set that you can get better at. People often think of skills and it’s very apparent that you can get better at a certain skill. People know that if they practice learning a language, they’ll get better, or if they practice surfing, they’ll get better, or X, Y, or Z. But often, we don’t realize that the actual state that sits underneath these skills is also something that we can actually get better at manufacturing for ourselves. We actually were interviewing, myself and Steven, we’re interviewing Laird Hamilton, the big wave surfer last week. And he was talking about the fact that over his career, his ability to drive himself into the zone with consistency has constantly improved. And he can get himself into that state very, very rapidly now. So there’s definitely the ability, I think, to improve one’s own skill at driving themselves into a state of optimal performance. And there’s a number of different factors to that.

The first is understanding what triggers exist for flow, in general, for all people. And we can talk about those a little bit. And then the second thing is gonna be individualistic. We often talk about running n to 1 experiments, or running experiments where, you know, you are the only one where that may apply to. And that’s a really important piece of it as well is knowing your own individual quirks, the things that you need to have in place as an individual to be able to get into the zone. So it’s both understanding what works for everyone and then understanding what works for you and finding a nice balance between those.

Katie: That makes a lot of sense. And I see it a lot in relation to the more physical aspects of nutrition and health too is I everything is a guideline because we’re so individualized that at the end of the day, I think that the n equals 1 experiments get discounted. But for each of us individually, those are the most important ones because it doesn’t actually matter what the collective research says if something does or doesn’t work for you. And so I’m a big proponent of personalization in every area of health and makes complete sense that that would apply very directly here as well.

You mentioned triggers. Let’s delve into some of those because I would guess maybe, for instance, like Steven wrote about, I believe it was “The Rise of Superman,” about extreme athletes being able to do this more reliably. So I would wonder if there’s maybe an adrenaline component or something going on there. But I would guess that most people on a daily basis aren’t gonna wanna use adrenaline and extreme sports as their triggers. So let’s talk about triggers and how we can start to identify those.

Rian: Sure. Yeah. So the first thing to note is that flow states do have triggers, which are preconditions, that are going to increase the likelihood that we’ll be able to get into a flow state. And there are a number of different categories of triggers. There are environmental triggers. There are psychological triggers. There’s group triggers that show up when we’re interacting with others. Now, what’s interesting about extreme athletes and certain sports, you mentioned, for example, that you get into flow when engaged in creative activities, often. What’s interesting about certain activities is that they naturally or inherently have lots of flow triggers baked into them, which means that getting into flow, doing those activities alone is much more likely. And an example of that is surfing. Just to take an example of an extreme sport. So, within surfing, there is complexity. There’s unpredictability. There’s risk. There’s challenge. There’s feedback because you’re either, you know, surfing the wave or you’re not, you know how well you’re doing at any given point.

And similarly, with creative activities, you see a lot of those sorts of variables show up within the activity itself, which makes those activities inherently very conducive to the flow. But what we can also do is identify the triggers that show up in those activities and then take them out of those activities and put them into activities that tend to be less naturally conducive to flow, which for a lot of people is the case with their work. So it’s one of the things we help people do is take those triggers out of certain activities and embed them in activities that they don’t naturally show up in. And one example that’s a big trigger for flow is the challenge skills balance, which you may have heard of before, which is the idea that flow shows up at the sweet spot between challenge and skill within an activity.

So, we wanna be engaged in an activity that is causing us to stretch, but not snap. And if the activity is too difficult relative to our skill level, we’ll get propelled into a state of over-arousal and anxiety. If the activity is not difficult enough relative to our skill level, we’ll drop down into a state of under-stimulation and boredom. And flow sits right at the sweet spot between challenge and skill level where the challenge level just slightly outstrips your existing skill level. So that’s one example of a trigger flow that we can actually use within any activity, really. You can gauge and tune the challenge skill balance within any activity.

One of the ways that we have our clients do that within their work is by using time. If you allot yourself more time to a certain task, that task within the context of which you’re completing it becomes easier because you’ve got more resources with which to complete that task. You’ve got more time to do it. On the contrary, if you’ve got a really boring, mundane activity, giving yourself an artificial sense of urgency and reducing the time allotment that you’re giving yourself to do that thing, it’s gonna increase the challenge level, which can be helpful for getting to flow if the activity you’re doing is boring, like doing your taxes or something like that.

Katie: Got it. So that would apply to any activity, not just physical activities. You could apply this in, for instance, maybe school settings for kids, work settings for adults. And it really sounds like any task that you would complete.

Rian: Yeah, interestingly, in school settings, I mean, I think one of the challenges with education and one of the reasons that a low student-to-teacher ratio is always the goal and is always appealing is so that the teacher can tune the challenge skill level to have it be optimal because if you’ve got 1 teacher and 40 students, and they all have differing skill or ability levels, with respect to a certain task or topic, a lot of them are going to be finding the material that they’re covering either too hard or too easy and they’re not gonna be in that sweet spot for flow whereas when you’ve got as close to possible as a 1-to-1 teacher-to-student ratio, the teacher can play the role of helping the student get that optimal challenge skills balance by going at a certain pace, for example, that is good for the student to be able to keep up with, and thus more conducive to flow.

Katie: So, there’s a lot of homeschooling families that listen to this podcast as well. I homeschool my kids, and I’m intensively working right now on something called Unstitute, which is essentially an uncurriculum.

Rian: Nice.

Katie: …but focus very much on the mindset and the practical application and minimizing the bookwork as much as possible. And so, I’m really curious, like are there special ways when we have that much control over the educational environment? Both the physical environment that we’re educating in and the time constraints related to it, what are some of the ways that we could best set up education to really help maximize that for our kids?

Rian: Yeah, it’s a great question. I was actually listening to an interview with Elon Musk, earlier this week, and he was saying, “Why is education, why is learning not more entertaining for kids than a video game?” And I think it’s a great question. You know, why is doing calculus not more fun than playing “Fortnight?” And it should be because it matters more to those kids’ lives than playing “Fortnight,” but we just haven’t got there yet with education. The reason of playing “Fortnight” or whatever video game it is, is more fun generally, is because it is creating a flow state. It’s creating flow states that is inherently pleasurable, and engaging, and meaningful, and is an end in and of itself, whereas doing calculus often is very far from that. But in terms of what can help drive flow within education, one of the big things is autonomy. So, we pay attention to those things that we care about and that we choose to pay attention to. And if we don’t have the autonomy to choose what we’re learning about or looking at, then our ability to pay attention declines.

Another important thing is having, and this is related to autonomy, but it’s going macro to micro. So often when you start a topic with a macro perspective, a big broad perspective, like, let’s say, the context is trying to build a business related to something, you know, you’re immensely passionate about. Then from within that macro context dropping down to more micro-specific things like learning about, you know, how to do accounting, all of a sudden, that gets infused with meaning, and with purpose, and with significance because of the fact that it is a means to a greater end. And that’s an important thing, just in education, in general, I think it’s creating these macro contexts, whether it’s using stories or projects or challenges, and then having the more dull things be a means to that end, rather than an end in itself. And the conventional education system, I think, in many ways, at least, when I was in school just did a horrendous job of that. They throw trigonometry at you, rather than telling you to build a bridge project, for example. And then you have to learn trigonometry as part of that fun overarching project. So I think that’s another important piece.

Katie: Yeah, and I wonder if…have you guys found any information about if kids are naturally a little bit better at triggering these states if given these tools? Because it seems like kids do have a unique ability, especially when I watch my really younger ones, to drop into that kind of time dilation idea and, like, immerse in a project. And it seems like they can stay in that balance state for a lot longer when they’re given enough tools and stimulation to get into that fun part of it. Are kids…because of their maybe higher theta and developing brain chemistry, are they able to do this more easily?

Rian: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, interestingly, one of the things we believe happens in a flow state is called transient hypofrontality, which essentially refers to the slight deactivation or down-regulation of the prefrontal cortex. And that’s what creates the reduction in sense of self where, you know, you lose yourself in the activity and also the time dilation that you mentioned. And kids, by default of sheer, you know, development of their biology have less developed prefrontal cortexes. And so, they are actually closer at a baseline level to a flow state all the time, which is one of the reasons I think that kids engage in play. And play is very, very much related to flow.

One of the interesting things about play…the definition of play is really interesting. And one of the key things about the definition of play is that it is not goal-oriented. And flow, one of the cool things about flow is that it is reporting the research to be worthwhile as an end in itself. The state itself feels good enough to be its own reward. We don’t need to get into flow just to produce some other result. We wanna get into flow just because, and it’s similar with play. Play is fun just because, it’s not necessarily just about achieving some, you know, end result goal.

Katie: In that sense, are there elements of play that…? Because I think that’s a thing that kids are naturally given more space and freedom and encouraged to do and that’s the thing that’s often lost as we get older. And you were saying I wonder is play a useful trigger and is that also an element of why these sports make it potentially easier to fall into a flow state?

Rian: I think so. Yeah, I think so for sure. And yeah, one of the interesting things about play, and about kids in general, is that inherently within play there is not that much self-judgment and the level of self-criticism declines. And that’s one of the reasons we believe that creativity increases flow because when you’re in a flow state, that sense of self, the nagging, defeatist inner dialogue, that’s telling you not good enough and comparing you to others, that quietens down and goes offline because of transient hypofrontality. And so we’re less critical of ourselves, which is assumed to open up creative possibility because we judge less and do more or play more. So, I think for sure, that’s one of the drivers of flow and creativity within flow.

Katie: Is incorporating more play a thing that you actively encourage adults to do until, like, reinvigorate as well? And if so, what would be some, kind of, springboards for getting back to that, for those of us who have, kind of, thought of ourselves as grown out of that?

Rian: Yeah, it is actually one of the things we encourage people to do, believe it or not. So, the way we describe it is that you wanna have a primary and a secondary flow activity outside of your work generally. And this actually goes back to the point of getting into flow as a skill in and of itself that you can develop and get better at. And as Laird Hamilton was mentioning, over the years, he’s gotten better and better at getting into flow. And so under that principle, the more flow you get, the more flow you’re likely to get. If you’re able to get into flow doing X, you’re gonna be more able to get into flow doing Y because you’re developing the overall skill of getting yourself into that state.

So what we have people generally do is identify a primary and a secondary flow activity. And that activity is essentially play of whatever one, you know, decides their play to be. It might be snowboarding. It might be surfing. It might be painting. It might be playing a musical instrument. It might be improv rap. It might be, you know, comedy. It might be any number of things, but it’s usually gonna be some sort of play-like activity that’s very conducive to flow. And what we find anecdotally is that when people reboot their ability to get into flow through those sorts of activities, it transfers to their professional life and they’re more easily able to access these states in a professional capacity.

Steven has this great story about speaking with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is sort of the godfather of flow and the original researcher on the topic who actually coined the term flow. And he was telling Steven to diversify his primary and secondary flow activities. Steven was talking to him about the fact that he gets into flow mainly while skiing, and that that’s Steven’s biggest flow activity. And that transfers it was writing, which is his professional role. And Mihaly was telling him to make sure now, before he gets too old, to take up another form of play or another flow activity that does not require physical exertion because there’s gonna come a time where Steven is potentially, you know, too old to be able to ski or at least be able to ski as frequently as he does now. And if he does not develop another activity or another gateway into flow, there’s risk of being locked out of flow at that point and not being able to access the state less frequently.

So, it’s really important to have multiple forms of play, and multiple avenues into a flow state so that you’re not solely dependent on one. And interestingly, we get a lot of clients who are ex-athletes and who are ex-military. And this is one of the biggest challenges they have is that they were professional athletes and their whole life was centered around flow, whether it was playing football or basketball, or whatever it may be, and then their career ends or they get injured, or whatever the case may be, and there’s just a gaping hole in their experience of life. And they then realize, “Oh, wait a second, I was spending X number of hours a week in flow and now I’m spending, you know, zero hours a week in flow.” And so, one of the things we have them do is reboot their ability to access flow by getting another activity like that on board. And it’s the same often for military folks, as well, even other service providers like firefighters get very, very high levels of flow. And then when that career ends, it goes away, there’s this lack of it. So, rebuilding it in through play intentionally is a really important piece of being able to access and more consistently within your professional life and just getting the general benefits that come with flow as well.

Katie: Can you share some examples of maybe non-physical sport-related activities? Because there are a lot of people listening, especiall moms, especially if they’re pregnant or in certain phases, those are discouraged, or for people, like you mentioned, maybe are in a phase of life where they can’t do that or they’re injured, what would be some ways of…or maybe, like, a roadmap for starting to find those flow activities?

Rian: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, interestingly, there was some research done, it was in the late ’90s, early 2000s, that actually found that the highest flow activity was graffiti, which is really interesting. One of the reasons for that, I believe, is the risk involved. There’s inherent risk when doing graffiti because of the fact that it’s illegal and then there’s all the other creative triggers within graffiti, obviously, because it’s a creative act. The point being, though, that physical paths into flow are absolutely not the only ones. You can get into flow socially. You can get into flow creatively. You can get into flow cognitively. And you can get into flow physically. So socially, one of the examples I mentioned there was, you know, improv rap. Another example is public speaking. Another example is stand-up comedy.

But also, other examples that are just more common are getting into flow within conversation with a close friend, getting into flow, brainstorming with the group at work, getting into flow, you know, building a start-up with a team that you’re close with and onboard with, and we can talk through some of the group flow triggers as well that drives flow within these contacts if you’d like. And then with respect to creativity, there’s a whole host of different activities there as well, everything from singing to painting to dancing, which obviously is on the verge of, kind of, physical and creative, through to, you know, making pottery, through to all sorts of different creative activities. The list is long. And again, the end to one piece applies here, if you find that you get into flow very well doing a certain thing, you know, that’s totally fine and great. And then you can also get in the flow cognitively. People find that they get into flow reading or thinking about philosophy, for example, or coding is a big one or solving challenges and doing sudoko.

And then, obviously, there’s a whole host of physical activities that can drive oneself into flow as well. But I think the point there is that there are different categories of activities that you can get into flow within. And it’s important to find those that are just most suitable to where you’re at right now and also most conducive to flow for you. For some people, they find their deepest flow states socially. For some people, they find their deepest flow states cognitively, depends on you as an individual as well. So it’s worth just experimenting with that.

Katie: I definitely have noticed, for me, the cognitive ones seem to be easier. And so, I’m constantly looking for mind puzzles or chess, like hard challenging tests, things like that. But I also have been talking about, from the physical and mental health perspective, the importance of community for a really long time on this podcast and how, like, truly that is one of the best things we can do for our health. I think it’s one of the main reasons why blue zones are blue zones, it’s not the diet. It’s because they have very, very strong community. And I’ve talked about how, you know, it’s more important to have strong community and relationships than it is even to exercise or quit smoking when you look at it on a biological level. So I’d love to delve into some of those group flow triggers because that’s, I think, a really cool way if you can nurture community and also get into a state of flow, you get that double benefit there.

Rian: Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it’s interesting on the community front, belonging specifically, is extremely important. You use the word community, which signifies that but what we find sometimes within our clients is that they’ll try and get that need met by just increasing social time or social contact but that’s distinct from belonging. If you are in contact with lots of different people all day long but there’s no overarching sense of belonging to a community because those individual people you’re in contact with don’t know each other, for example, that does not necessarily get your belonging needs met. So, community specifically, is actually a really, really important piece of that versus just simply the sheer quantity of social contact.

So the group flow triggers are really interesting. And a lot of them come out of work done by Keith Sawyer, who’s a University of North Carolina psychologist, who wrote a great book called “Group Genius.” And I’ll run through some of their group flow triggers. So the first one is shared goals. So having shared goals, which is fairly straightforward, is extremely important to be able to get in the flow. And you can think about with respect to sports teams. You can think of that with respect to the military. You know, there’s a group going out on a mission that they’re all aligned on. You can think of that both in terms of what blocks flow and what drives flow within organizations and startups. If there’s misalignment on what the goal is and what the actual objective at hand is within a team in a professional context, the likelihood of flow occurring is significantly lower. And it’s one of the reasons that a lot of business gurus and things like that emphasize getting in sync, that’s such an important thing because if you’re not in sync, and you’re not all aligned on what the goal is, you’re, you know, not gonna be able to get into flow together as a group.

Another one is equal participation. So that’s an important piece of getting into flow as a group, which is all having kind of a related level of contribution to whatever the task at hand is. If some people are engaged and some people are disengaged or less engaged, that’s gonna throw off your ability to get into flow as a group. Another interesting one is shared skill level. And if you’ve ever been on a team with someone who is either, you know, infinitely more competent than you are and speaking at, you know, five times the rate that you can comprehend, or someone who can’t keep up, you can feel the tension that emerges when skill levels are distinct and lacking.

And that’s one of the other reasons that it’s so important within teams to bring on talent that is, you know, as good or better than the current team because if there’s different skill levels, you’re gonna block the team from getting into flow together. And one of the biggest frustrations and drivers of attrition within teams is that the team was not, you know, “at the level” that that individual who left the company felt they were at, and it can be an immense source of frustration for people within teams when other people on the team are just not able to keep up or just not able to operate and move at the same level that someone else is. So that’s another big one.

Katie: Yeah, writing down notes, that’s helpful as a business owner and also as a parent in nurturing the kind of the family as a team. And also to use myself, I’m happy to be the guinea pig here, but on a personal level, I remember in the early phases of growing Wellness Mama, that it was fun because it was probably surfing that edge of challenge and skill, and I was constantly challenged. And then as things have grown, and I’ve created systems for everything, it was much harder to get in that flow state, and it felt much more kind of like a job versus a fun challenge and activity.

Rian: Interesting.

Katie: And so I’ve kind of instinctively tried to figure out ways to reactivate that. And I had done things like voice lessons or I’m right now playing calculus just for fun or doing stand-up comedy to, kind of, reinvigorate the creativity side of that. But I’m curious if you have any tips. I’d love to make that were intentional of being able to kind of find my flow triggers and then transfer that into business and parenting as well.

Rian: Yeah, one of the reasons that, in the early stages, startups are so conducive to flow is risk, risk level is higher. There’s the social risk that’s being taken with respect to the startup itself. Someone’s venturing out into the unknown and putting their name behind something that’s not yet determined to be successful. And then there’s often financial risk. And risk is a driver for flow. So when that risk goes away and a company is consolidated, often flow decreases as well. So, bringing that risk in, in certain ways, by continuing to push the edge or continuing to push for growth and improvement can be a driver of flow. And that also relates to job skills balance. Often, at an earlier stage, the individuals in a company are pushing into their edge and leaning into the edge of their comfort zone, which often correlates with having the sweet spot between challenges and skill that drives flow. And then they hit a certain threshold where the company is consolidated or built on either they pull back and are no longer in the sweet spot for flow with respect to the challenge level of what they’re engaged in, or they’re doing the same thing but they are more skilled because of being more experienced. And so, to compensate for that, you gotta push harder and set bigger, larger goals.

Another important piece is feedback. And feedback is a massive trigger for flow. It’s often baked into video games. And you know, so you can think of the example I was using earlier was “Fortnight.” When you do something in “Fortnight,” you get all sorts of feedback and you get it immediately. The faster you get the feedback from having taken an action, the more conducive that feedback is to flow. So within a video game, you take an action like shooting a bad guy and your remote controller vibrates, you hear noises on the screen, points go up and, you know, something flashes across the screen or whatever the case may be. And that feedback is very conducive to flow.

Similarly, at an early stage often for startups, the quantity of feedback they’re getting is enormous. They’re talking to users or customers, they are seeing whether the direction they’re going with respect to their product suite is working or not. They’re starting to, you know, hit certain KPIs, which is a form of feedback from their actions. And the quantity of that feedback is large and the speed at which they’re getting it is large as well. And then often, over time, as we build a team and become bigger, we become more removed from that feedback, whether it’s clients or whether it’s, you know, doing the work yourself and then seeing how that work gets received within the business that often declines. So adding feedback mechanisms back in for yourself as an owner can be just really helpful, important way of doing that, that I think, yeah, is important.

Katie: Those are all amazing tips. I was over here taking notes while you were talking. I also from one of the questions I love to ask, in the research phases, if you could give a TED talk, what would it be on? And you mentioned the idea of thinking big, which I think also, like, is very much a dovetail piece of the idea of flow states and what you just mentioned about setting big goals. It’s also something that’s very top of mind for me, both in business and also now that my kids are getting older. And basically, how do I nurture this in them and help them develop a high-performance mindset? So I would love any specific advice you have related to that because I think this is also universally applicable.

Rian: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think just understanding, very simply, that the reason belief is so important is because belief is a predicate for actions that you will take. So, often people poo-poo “The Secret” or the law of attraction, or all these different things that emphasize belief, and you gotta believe, And, you know, if you believe…you can achieve whatever you believe and there’s that whole self-help world dedicated to belief that often gets discarded. And one of the reasons it gets discarded is because people emphasize that belief alone is not enough, which is absolutely true. However, the valuable thing in that world is that belief is a predicate for action. If you don’t believe that it’s possible to create a “New York Times” best-selling book, you are blocking yourself from the actions that would potentially make it possible to create a “New York Times” best-selling book, if you don’t believe that you can build a $100 million company, you’re gonna block yourself from the actions that would potentially make it possible to build a $100 million company.

So that the belief is a predicate and a filter for the actions that you would potentially take and the actions that you would take are the things that are gonna ultimately create that, you know, end result, that thing that you actually want. So, if you don’t think big enough and if you don’t actually believe something’s possible, you make it less possible by simply shrinking down the quantity or the scope of actions that you would, you know, go forward to take that would end up producing that end result. So I think that’s what that’s one of the reasons why thinking big is just so important because how big you think is directly proportional to how many possible actions or routes forward you are willing to take, which then goes on to, you know, lead you toward whatever result you end up producing.

Katie: That makes complete sense. Yeah.

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I think kids also come out of the box naturally thinking big and with a lot of imagination and without the limits that we, kind of, train into them over time. So I’m thinking as a parent or anybody in education, a big part of that is simply not training them to limit their beliefs and not training them to be cynical about what they can accomplish and just nurturing that natural inherent idea of imagination and belief that we all had as kids that seems to go away a little bit over time unless we’re conscious of it.

Rian: It does with every year for a lot of folks with every year that goes by their possibility space for themselves and their life and their business shrinks and gets narrower and narrower and narrower. You know, when you’re a kid, you think you can be an astronaut flying across the galaxies. By the time you’re often…At least for a lot of people, by the time you’re in your 30s, the amount of things that you feel are possible for yourself and your life has shrunk down significantly. And it shrinks again, by the time you’re 40 and 50 and so on. But it doesn’t need to shrink. That’s just simply, you know, a function of what you will allow yourself to believe is possible.

Katie: And anytime we’re talking about something, I think it’s always important to also consider the flip side and to ask the question, are there is there a dark side of flow to be aware of? Are there any risk associated with the idea of getting into flow more that we need to be cognizant of?

Rian: Yeah, it’s a great question. So one of my favorite chapters, actually, in Steven’s book “The Rise of Superman” was called “The Dark Side of Flow.” And definitely, there’s a number of risks that need to be associated with it. One is that flow is, as I said, autotelic, which means it’s a means in and of itself. It is inherently intrinsically rewarding. And as a result of that, it can be very addictive. So we want more of it. We wanna get into that state, and we wanna maintain that state, and we wanna heighten the intensity of that state. And one of the ways that people often do that is by pushing the challenge level because as I mentioned, you know, you have to have that sweet spot between challenge and skill. But if you get better at something, then you have to increase the challenge to be able to hit the sweet spot for flow.

And so one of the ways that shows up in action-adventure sport athletes is that they keep taking on bigger and bigger and bigger challenges to be able to get into flow, which, unfortunately, as Steven outlines and “The Rise of Superman,” very often results in death. And again, to use Laird Hamilton as an example, he was telling us last week that he can only get into flow now hydrofoiling. He pretty much can’t get into flow surfing unless the waves are massive because his skill level is so high that if the challenge is not also very high, there’s gonna be a mismatch between the challenge skills level and an inability to get in the flow. And that applies to companies and to professional life as well. I always mention there that one of the ways to get increased access to flow at a later stage when building a business to increase the challenge level. But there’s downsides to that also constantly pushing for more, constantly taking on more risk, constantly striving and pushing, and getting trapped in the hedonic treadmill is not necessarily a good thing.

Another thing that is something that needs to be watched with flow is mania or hypomania. Hypomania is a mild form of mania. It’s like, yeah, essentially just a less extreme form of mania but it can still result in issues from a mental health standpoint. And there are definitely just corollaries between the, sort of, state flow results in and hypomania that are really important to be aware of. One of the things people often say is that you shouldn’t make any lifelong decisions within the two or three weeks of getting back from Burning Man, for example. And that’s because often people are in this kind of hypomanic state. It’s like an altered state. And that can be the same for flow, getting into an extremely heightened state that is slightly manic within flow and then deciding that you’re gonna go and you know, do XYZ or pull out a huge bank loan or whatever it is, when in that heightened state can cause real issues for one’s life.

And then I think the other thing is needing…this relates to the challenge skills balance thing, but what can often happen is that we just need excessive levels of stimulation or want excessive levels of stimulation to drive ourselves into that peak state all the time. We get uncomfortable not being in a peak optimal state. And that’s really important to be aware of because, and I’m sure Steven mentioned this, but flow happens as one part of a four-stage cycle starting with the struggle phase going into the release phase and the flow state itself, and then the recovery phase. And often the high of flow, that feeling is so compelling that we wanna just stay in the flow state itself. But the recovery phase the come down, so to speak, from a flow state is an incredibly important piece, and resisting that and wanting to just, you know, only be in a flow state can cause challenges as well and be a little bit of a dark side, I think.

Katie: Yeah, I’ll make sure to link to that podcast as well as we walk through the four stages. And I wonder, are there any other ways to counteract the potential for those things. Like, I’m thinking, I wonder if maybe like fasting, meditation things that are on the other extreme and the calming side, does that help balance it out or just leaving in space for recovery without intentionally trying to do these things?

Rian: Definitely. The recovery is an incredibly important part of the whole picture. The harder and more intensively you recover, the more able you are to drive yourself into flow and achieve your optimal states of performance. And in fact, the extent to which you recover is largely the extent to which you can reach a flow state. And most people are in this, sort of, no man’s land where they’re not really getting into peak performance and they’re not really recovering properly. You wanna be extreme about recovery so that you can get extreme results on the flow side of the equation. And an important distinction as well for people is that recovery is distinct from relaxation. Often activities that are relaxing are not very conducive to recovery and often activities that are extremely conducive to recovery are not relaxing at all.

So what is distinct about recovery is that it’s gonna give you a neurophysiological shift. It’s gonna often create a parasympathetic response within the nervous system and down-regulate your nervous system, which then also gives you generally a mental shift or a psychological shift in how you’re actually feeling. So an example there is an ice bath. You know, an ice bath is the furthest thing from relaxing, yet, it’s incredibly powerful in terms of physiological and psychological recovery. Sauna is a similar example. Foam rolling. If you’re trying to recover from cognitive exertion, then intense exercise, intense physical exercise is a very, very effective way of recovering but often that’s not relaxing at all. On the contrary, you know, sitting down on the couch and flicking through 5 or 10 minutes of different Netflix shows is potentially relaxing, but it’s actually not gonna recover you very effectively. You’re not gonna be able to wake up the next morning fresher than you were when you finished work the day before.

So yeah, recovery is super important and being willing to push yourself within recovery, which is sort of a paradox, is also really important. People often think that, you know, the pushing or the work ethic is applicable within the work side of the equation only, but actually the work ethic and the discipline is just as applicable within the recovery side. At the end of an extremely hard workday, the most tempting thing to do often is gonna be to veg out and, you know, scroll social media and flick on the TV. But in reality, the most effective thing to do when factoring in your overall level of output, including the following day is gonna be something like jumping in a sauna or taking the time to do some yoga, whatever it is, which requires more discipline and just more exertion. So, yeah, definitely an important piece of it all.

Katie: Wonderful. And I wanna make sure I respect your hard stop at the end of the interview. But last question I love to ask is if there’s a book or a number of books that have had a profound impact on your life, and if so what they are and why?

Rian: Oh, God, it’s a good question. I read so many books that I find it hard to even remember what ones were useful in what way. It’s a little bit…I always say now that because of Spotify and the release radar and, sort of, the automated recommendation system it has, I don’t even know who I listened to or what music I like anymore because it’s just auto-generated for me. And I feel slightly similar with books. I’ve got the Kindle and Audible and just constantly absorbing all these books. I lose track of what one was what. But I’ll give you…yeah, I’ll mention one book that I found extremely impactful.

It was probably the first self-development book I read and it was called “Blink” by Matthew Syed. He also wrote “Black Box Thinking.” I read it years and years ago when I was a teenager. But it was one of those books, there’s about three or four of these books that attempt to myth-bust the idea of talent. It was one of those books that call talent a myth and said that everything comes from practice and time spent intentionally improving something. And whether or not that’s true, I found that argument to be incredibly, incredibly, incredibly inspiring and motivating. And I remember reading that and intentionally picking arguments with friends at the time to try and convince them that there’s no such thing as talent. And the only reason they were greater rugby was because they had, whether they were aware of it or not, accumulated all these skills and sub-skills that resulted in their abilities. But I just found that mindset shift to be incredibly inspiring. It gave me this sense of agency that ability is nothing more than the sum total of the work put in or the practice that one has done on a certain thing. So that’s one.

Katie: Perfect place to wrap up and a new recommendation, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. I know you have a deadline to stop. And I’m really grateful for your time and for all of this fascinating information today.

Rian: Thanks, Katie, I appreciate it. And yeah, thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

Katie: And thanks to all of you guys, as always for listening, and for sharing your most valuable resources, your time, and your energy with us. Were both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you’ll join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama” podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

This article was originally published by wellnessmama.com. Read the original article here.

If you or someone you love has to deal with chronic pain every day, then it can be a real challenge. Some days can be good and some days can be terrible, and it is hard to know what it will be one day from the next. You should also think about the triggers for chronic pain and one good day doing certain activities could then mean that you’re out of action for a few days after. You really have to know yourself and know how you can deal with your symptoms specifically.

When it comes to your health and your chronic pain, having the right kind of support around you does make a difference to how you feel. For example, medical professionals and a supportive family will make your bad days easier. There are also other people that you can look to for support as well, such as a talented team of mesothelioma attorneys, if that is where your pain comes from. Support definitely makes a difference. But if you are looking for new ways to cope, then have you thought about the following?

Deep Breathing Or Meditation

Deep breathing and meditation are tools that can be used to help your body to be able to relax. This in and of itself can help to ease some pain, especially if you have some stress-related pain or tension. There are a number of ways that you can meditate, however, repetition is something that can be really soothing, which is great for meditation. When you can focus on your breath, clear your mind, and repeat a particular word or phrase such as a mantra, it can help your body to be able to relax completely.

Reduce Stress In Your Life

Any negativity in your life such as depression, stress, anxiety, and anger, can all lead to the body to have an increase in sensitivity to pain. That is why learning to control stress can be such a good thing to deal with pain and get yourself some relief. A lot of the strategies to relieve stress are around relaxation, however, there are some things that you can do to make a difference such as listening to music, dancing, exercising, or other visualization techniques.

Exercise

It can feel like one of the last things that you will ever want to do when you are in pain, but exercising can help you to feel good. It gets you moving and it gets you to feel naturally happy through the release of happy hormones. Of course, the exercise that you do does depend on you and what level you can take. Yoga or gentle stretches could be more than enough for some, whereas others may be able to cope with more, such as running or cycling. Just find something that works for you and it will help you to become fitter and stronger which can boost your health and wellness and relieve some pain.

Is there anything else that you would add to the list? It would be great to hear what you think.

*collaborative post

This article was originally published by artofhealthyliving.com. Read the original article here.

Simple Ways to Help with Anxiety

By Annie Armstrong Miyao

My family has pet bunnies: two tiny creatures who, even after years of us holding them, act as if we might eat them every time we approach. The other day I sat down with the fluffy white one, John, who recently received a haircut courtesy of my three-year-old daughter, who, perhaps in solidarity, also cut her own hair. As I held him against my chest, I could feel his little heart racing. Soaking in a moment of quiet in the sun, I measured my breath, smelling the lemon blossoms in the air. As John and I sat there, his heartbeat slowed, and his little haunches relaxed. I think a lot about our tender animal bodies: how we endure threat, upset, and trauma and how we recover.

As a therapist and a mother of three small children, I also think a lot about how I manage my own stress. I find my own center so that I can clearly detect, feel, and hold space for what comes up with my clients without mixing in my own emotional reaction. I try to soothe my own buzzing agita so that I don’t put it on my children. That is not to suggest that one should strive to be in some unattainable state of emotional neutrality. I am speaking more to the moments or days when we are moving through life unknowingly in a heightened state, when everything becomes a challenge, we get worn down, and it’s easy to come undone by any upset.

Name Your Anxiety

I believe the first piece of managing anxiety—or at least a good place to begin—is to develop an understanding of it.

Simply recognizing your anxiety as anxiety is a good first step: “Ah, it’s you, anxiety,” I say when I find myself agitated, abuzz, and worried about tending to seven things at once. “Anxiety, now is the time to rest,” I tell myself when I am kept awake in the middle of the night by a busy brain, my chest tight with tension.

Anxiety can stem from many sources. Those include fear of the unknown, desire for control, an overwrought nervous system, or simply having excess energy. If we can identify the root of what we’re feeling and observe anxiety as a defense mechanism in overdrive, we can start to parse out the actual level of threat we’re facing. For example: Getting lunch on the table does not have the same stakes—nor does it require the same intensity—as responding to one of my kids falling from the monkey bars. If I’m feeling stressed about making lunch and reacting to that experience as if one of my kids has just fallen from the monkey bars, I can learn to recognize that anxiety, rather than the experience itself, is what’s shaping how I’m feeling and behaving. If I can recognize that, then I can create just the tiniest bit of space from the feeling. Maybe enough to take a breath and tend to myself.

Slow Down

Once we understand anxiety and how it’s working in us (or against us), we can create some space to remind ourselves that we have some agency over our own experience. We can hold ourselves gently and practice being present. I do not apply this to a moment when we are actively being traumatized; this is for the moments when we cannot slow down our thoughts, when our fear is stopping us from doing things that bring us pleasure, or when we are exhausted by our own internal engine. My favorite ways to slow down—and help my clients slow down—are derivatives of mindfulness and creative practices.

Sometimes tending to ourselves can be as simple as noticing when we feel good. When in doubt, splash some cool water on your face; remind yourself that in this moment, you are safe; and take a deep breath. Treat yourself with compassion and gentleness. Now is not the time to for self-flagellation. The bunny in my arms did not calm down because I shouted at him or forced him to do it. Treat yourself as you would treat that little bunny who is scared, uncertain, and overwhelmed: Take a breath, feel the sun on your face, be gentle, and reassure yourself, “In this moment, I am safe.”

Annie Armstrong Miyao is a Los Angeles–based psychotherapist, writer, and mother of three.

This article is for informational purposes only, even if and regardless of whether it features the advice of physicians and medical practitioners. This article is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice. The views expressed in this article are the views of the expert and do not necessarily represent the views of goop.

This article was originally published by goop.com. Read the original article here.