Ready to transform your daily life with the power of mindfulness? Join me with my special guest co-host, Erin P. as we explore this profound practice. Together, we navigate through the role of mindfulness in everyday situations, from road rage to food choices, and how it can lead to a healthier, longer life. Discover how you can harness the space between stimulus and response and integrate mindfulness into your daily routine.
Delve deeper with us into the realm of neuroplasticity and the astounding ability of our brains to rewire themselves. Tina guides us through the concept of "Think Fit", the power of acknowledging our thoughts and behaviors, and the influence others have on our personal development. We journey into the world of meditation, debunking common myths and illuminating its benefits for managing thoughts, emotions, and even pain.
Finally, we reveal the potential of mind-body practices, such as yoga and meditation, and the transformative influence they can have on your emotional and physical well-being. Hear our personal experiences and confront the common excuses that deter people from these practices. We then broach the topic of technology and the benefits of disconnecting for achieving peace and focus. Round off the journey with us as we delve into the power of mindfulness in self-care and how you can incorporate it into small moments in your day. Join us in this enlightening exploration, and discover how to lead a life of mindfulness.
Don't get weird, use your head, it'll all be OK!
Looking for a coach to help you be YOUR best self? Let's get in touch!
www.centerstagethleticscoaching.com
info@centerstageathleticscoaching.com
IG: @teamcsfp
FB: https://www.facebook.com/teamcsfp
Ready to transform your daily life with the power of mindfulness? Join me with my special guest co-host, Erin P. as we explore this profound practice. Together, we navigate through the role of mindfulness in everyday situations, from road rage to food choices, and how it can lead to a healthier, longer life. Discover how you can harness the space between stimulus and response and integrate mindfulness into your daily routine.
Delve deeper with us into the realm of neuroplasticity and the astounding ability of our brains to rewire themselves. Tina guides us through the concept of "Think Fit", the power of acknowledging our thoughts and behaviors, and the influence others have on our personal development. We journey into the world of meditation, debunking common myths and illuminating its benefits for managing thoughts, emotions, and even pain.
Finally, we reveal the potential of mind-body practices, such as yoga and meditation, and the transformative influence they can have on your emotional and physical well-being. Hear our personal experiences and confront the common excuses that deter people from these practices. We then broach the topic of technology and the benefits of disconnecting for achieving peace and focus. Round off the journey with us as we delve into the power of mindfulness in self-care and how you can incorporate it into small moments in your day. Join us in this enlightening exploration, and discover how to lead a life of mindfulness.
Don't get weird, use your head, it'll all be OK!
Looking for a coach to help you be YOUR best self? Let's get in touch!
www.centerstagethleticscoaching.com
info@centerstageathleticscoaching.com
IG: @teamcsfp
FB: https://www.facebook.com/teamcsfp
Hello Erin. Hello, so welcome to coaching. We know what we didn't introduce podcasts last time.
Speaker 2:We introduced ourselves.
Speaker 1:This is coaching in cocktails. The podcast God, I suck at podcasting, I don't know. This is why I'm never going to have Brené Brown listen. Listenership, because I'm so unprofessional. This is Tita. This is my special co-host, erin. Hello, and we are going to continue our conversation from Erin's interview that we did a couple of podcasts ago and if you listen to our most recent podcast, we just talked about kind of going from how do you go from like zero to intuitive eating, right, like how do you get to that space, and hopefully we gave some actionable steps in there, but we're, you know, we talked a little bit about this big word mindfulness which I think is such a catch phrase anymore, like I almost wonder if anybody's even paying attention, like I feel like it's gotten.
Speaker 1:So I don't want to say overused, because I actually I do, I use that a lot.
Speaker 1:We want it to be used, but really, you know, I want to kind of demystify it a little bit and talk a little bit about what, what it means, and like how you can start using it, because I I think it's a really important thing to do. Like how you can start using it because I, I think people hear mind, body, mindfulness, meditation and they think things like that and they're like, oh, that hippie fruit, fruit, shit is not for me Right Like that's hippie, fruit fruit, tree hugger shit and I don't have time and I don't like to and I don't want to and that's just not for me, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but if you listen to our last podcast, at the end I said you know I was going to go out on a limb and say I truly believe that this is like the key to longevity is is mindfulness, and it's that's a very broad stroke, right, like that's sort of the wave top of it. But I think there's like all these little tentacles of mindfulness, right that that become this holistic part of like how, how we do live a longer life, how we have more joint our life, how we feel better, how we look better, right, it's just kind of like the thing that helps us get there, cause this is big overarching thing. And, in very simple terms, my definition of mindfulness and when you look it up, it's pretty much the same it's the space between stimulus and reaction, right? So if I were to make this real simple, it is the stimulus. Is somebody just cut me off in traffic? Right, I could immediately, I'm sorry. It's a space between stimulus and response, with reaction in the middle, right. So that sorry, I had that wrong, so it was a response. So if somebody cut me off in traffic, that's the stimulus.
Speaker 1:If I'm not being mindful, my immediate reaction is I'm going to tailgate them, I'm going to get up in front of them. I'm going to zoom in front of them and have road rage Right, I'm going to flip them off. I'm going to get up. I'm just. My heart rate is going to going to go up, my blood pressure is going to go up and do all these things. I'm pissed. Right, that's reaction. I'm going to get up in front of them. I'm going to get up in front of them. If I'm using mindfulness, I give myself some space, whether that's taking a couple of breaths or whatever. We'll kind of get into some practices, but I can take a moment, take a beat, take a thought and go how do I really want?
Speaker 1:to respond to this, right, is it actually going to help me in any way, shape or form to run into the back of this guy or zoom in my blood pressure up, or will I more or less get to the where I'm going At the same time I would have had he not cut me off? Yeah, does it matter in the grand scheme of life? Right? So I just made this, you know it, this sound like really a little hippie-froo-froo, but that's what it is. And then in that moment I decide, no, it's not worth it, right. And so now I am relaxed again. Right, I spiked my cortisol. I was about to like I had to slam all my breaks and now I'm like I'm right back to where I needed to be.
Speaker 1:If I didn't use mindfulness I just spiked my cortisol I could have gotten in an accident. My heart rate goes up, I'm shaking, I'm upset. Now my stomach's upset, and now I can't think straight and I get into work, and that's how I start my day. Yeah, right, would you agree? Is that like, kind of like, totally agree? A really sort of like real life example of like how my? That's what mindfulness is. Yes, yeah 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so really, it's just that it's that space, it's that taking that time to think, right, instead of just mindlessly reacting to something, right? So in our last podcast, we talked about this in terms of of eating, right? So you talked about using mindfulness as a space between oh, there's a spaget chips in front of me. Is this really what I want, right? So if I was being mindless, I would just I'm tired, I'm hungry and whatever. I just came home from work and I'm just going to grab the bag of chips and just start eating, or do I take a moment? Am I really hungry? Am I thirsty? Is this going to help me feel better tomorrow? Is this really, you know, like asking yourself those questions Again? Stimulus is I just got home from work, I'm starving and there's a bag of chips in the pantry, right? What's my response going to be? Right?
Speaker 2:Well, this is so funny. I just thought about this as you were giving that example. So I took my nephew who's nine he'll be 10 next month to Christmas Lays last weekend and I got we packed really healthy snacks and apples and carrot sticks and all the things and popcorn and things. And he was just going to town on that kind of stuff and we had I met my sister at like a fast food place just to meet up and he said mommy, can we get Burger King? And I said, well, wait a second, we have extra sandwiches in the car, we have some apple slices still. And then he goes oh, nevermind. And I was like whoa.
Speaker 2:So it was weird because I think about that with people like adults too. You know, like when you come home from work and you're really, really hungry and you're like, well, I'm hungry, so I'm just going to eat all these chips, okay, well, if you're really that hungry, why don't you eat a couple of apples or like some carrots? And then if you're still hungry, then you can have the chips. So when you do that, pausing a little bit, that can lead you on a better path than maybe what you would have went down if you didn't take that time to say, wait, okay, I'm really really hungry, let me eat some really healthy things now and then.
Speaker 1:If I really want the chips after I eat the healthy stuff, great, eat them Like you know, right, because if you're really, really hungry, if you're truly hungry, then the healthy stuff will be just as appealing, exactly, and in that moment, yeah my nephew was not really hungry.
Speaker 2:He just saw Burger King and was like I want the fries. And when I said, oh, we should eat the, then he was like oh, nevermind. So it was really funny, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about. So that's great, right To be able to use those things, but it really is a skill, right? So it's a skill that we have to develop. So, like you know, getting into neuroscience which is my other leaky favorite thing, right, because I was telling you before we started, like I came up with this whole sort of concept of something that you know I might do as a program at some point in the future called Think Fit, right, because the premise is like, from a neuroscience perspective, you know, our brains are hardwired to be a certain way they're developed. We have the wiring in our brains is the way. It is because of habits and things and learned behaviors that we've had over the years, how we developed as children, the experiences we had as children and to adulthood, so on and so forth. So we have these loops, right? So just imagine I'm always doing things like people can see. So if you can see my hand going around in a loop, we have these loops, these feedback loops in our brain, and those are the things that are comfortable for us, right? So if my comfort is, come home, I'm exhausted, eat a bag of chips, cut people off in traffic, have really negative reactions to everything because I'm always, you know, shooting off the hip or whatever. That's what I'm always going to do. That's natural for me. That is what is programmed currently in my brain, the only way to. I am here to tell everybody that neuroplasticity is the coolest thing on the planet. So if you think you're just the way you are because that's how you're always going to be, it's absolute bullshit.
Speaker 1:Neuroscience, like actual science, says you can change your brain chemistry. Right, you can change everything. It's simple, but it's not easy, right? So, in very simple terms, you can rewire your thoughts, you can rewire your behaviors, all of those things. So if you practice it enough, right is.
Speaker 1:So if you have a particular behavior, so if it's go to the pantry every day when I come home from work, right, because that's my nap go have a drink. Let's have a drink every day when I go home from work. So maybe that's not the best one, because I don't want to. I mean, I don't want to get into, like actual addiction, chemical addiction. So go to the pantry every day on the way home from work or when I go home from work, so I'm hungry. The only way to stop that is to change the behavior, right. So the first time you do it, it's not gonna be easy. You're gonna be like, oh, I really want the chips, right, but instead you go for a walk, or instead you have carrot sticks, whatever, and then you got to do it again. It might be hard for a week, right, but every single time you do it, whatever this new, you replace an old behavior with a new behavior or an old thought with a new thought. You're starting to create a new neurofeedback loop, right, so you're kind of changing.
Speaker 1:So if you think of, like how a river starts to cut through a mountain, right, like water cuts through a mountain and create these crevices and like mountains, right. So now we have riverbeds, but you can redirect that, right, so you could, like, put a dam up and then force the river to go somewhere else and then it'll cut a whole through, cut a riverbed through some other part of the rock. So it's the same thing with our brain science. So I have to practice it enough for it to take hold, because our brains want to keep us comfortable. The only thing our brain is. The number one thing is our brain is survival, right, it's got to keep us alive, it's got to keep us, and comfort is the way to do that, even if comfortable is detrimental, right, because there's a lot of comfortable things we do in our lives that are detrimental to our health and well-being. So the key is to recognize that you have this behavior and to consciously change the behavior or the thought or whatever the thing is that you want to change and do it over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:So I say, like your brain is your biggest muscle, if you're somebody who likes to go to the gym and built big, giant biceps like Aaron's, right, like she'd get big giant, weird bicep peaks by not going to the gym and doing repetition after repetition after repetition, right, you don't change your behavior, your thoughts, you don't change your brain without also doing the same type of repetition.
Speaker 1:So you can change neuroscience says so right, you just have to be able to, and it is actually fairly simple as far as, like, how that the wiring in your brain works, but it does take a lot of work. So it's simple, but it's not easy because you have to be able, you have to actually be willing to do it. Now, to that point, how do I even know I'm having these thoughts, right? Cause these thoughts are just on loop. I don't ever think about my thoughts, they're just happening. I don't think about my behaviors, they're just happening. So how do I get there, aaron, like how do I get to a place where I even know that I'm having these thoughts and I'm doing these things?
Speaker 2:Well, I think this is where other people can kind of help too. If you are living with somebody or people at work or what have you, they can kind of like help you recognize things in yourself that you don't know are happening. So people that I'm closer to, they know what sets me off, quote unquote. I'm very regimented and if something goes off of that time thing or if something doesn't happen the way I thought it was gonna happen, I react a certain way, and that's something that I'm working on right now, so other people can kind of give you feedback on that. Also, the idea of changing your brain yeah, it can happen, for sure, definitely. And no, it's not a simple thing or it's not an easy thing to do. But I think what you need to know is patience with yourself too, because, especially with the new year coming up, everyone wants to change and be better and that's wonderful, but it never, it always kind of falls by the wayside by February, you know. And why does that happen? And it's because people don't have patience with themselves and they don't. If they mess up or if they don't do something or take a step back and have that mindfulness, then they're like oh, it's not for me, I'm not gonna do it anymore. You have to keep working at it. Don't give up on yourself. You are your biggest cheerleader. You're the one that loves yourself the most out of anybody. You cannot give up on yourself. So when you're like, oh, this isn't working, I've only been doing it for a week or two, but I don't feel any different. You can't give up.
Speaker 2:I spent so long of not feeling different and then when I finally started getting the little wins over time and I was like, oh my gosh, I am, I am doing better. Like this is working and I cannot wait for me to be better than I am now. Like you have to keep working at it. But you have to have patience with yourself and with time. Everyone now is the instant gratification. If it doesn't work in a day, then it's not. For me, that has gotta stop, and I think social media and the phone and all the technology has a lot to do with that. But you have to give yourself that time and that patience and consistency to allow it to happen. And it's going to happen, trust me. It will happen. It might not be in a month or a week or whatever. It might not even be in a year, but when it does, you're going to know it and it's going to be great Like you just have to keep working at it.
Speaker 1:And I would say yes, 100%, to all of those things, because changing your thoughts, changing your behaviors, these are the keys to being able to grow, and whatever your goal is right. So if you wanna start going to the gym, you wanna get bigger biceps, you wanna lose body fat, you wanna run a marathon, you wanna you know all of these things, if you want to achieve those things, you're going to have to change your mindset about something right, like whatever it is you're currently doing is probably not going to work to get you there, so you're going to have to do these things. So, really, the thing we wanna talk about today is like, how do we get to the space of mindfulness? Because it is. We are not a mindful society, right? So the instant gratification, the constant simulation, the go, go, go, like we are just this, like fast paced driven. There is no like sort of. There's just no mindfulness, right. So how do we get to?
Speaker 1:I want our listeners to be able to understand how to start to get to this mindfulness place, which will allow them to be able to stop and go. What is my reaction to this? Why am I reaching for the chips? Why am I, you know, why is this triggering something in me, right? Because these things that are going on in our brains are hardwired and they're just going going, going, going, going, like I think a lot of us have so many like the negative thoughts that we have I'm too fat, I'm too skinny, I'm ugly, I'm lazy, I'm this, I should do that, I should do that. They're just on loop and we don't even know we're having them because they're just on loop, right? This is just the narrative going on in our brain. So we have to get to a place where we can do that.
Speaker 1:So I highly recommend to people like I think one of the absolute best places to start is with meditation, and I get a lot of pushback on meditation because I think people have these misconceptions that when you're meditating, you're supposed to have no thoughts, you're supposed to have to clear your mind and everything's going to be like I'm just going to be a blank canvas and I'm just going to sit there for five minutes, 10 minutes, however long, and I'm just going to. I'm going to have no thoughts. And every time I introduce somebody to a mindfulness or meditation practice or like I can't do it, it's too hard, my thoughts won't stop racing. I'm like that's the point. That's the point. That is the point.
Speaker 1:So I want everybody to understand that when you first start a meditation practice, meditation is not about stopping your thoughts. Meditation is about allowing the thoughts, allowing the thoughts to pass through like little clouds and like just let them, without judgment. Right, but the key is without judgment, it's okay to have thoughts. I have ever had a and I've been meditating for years. I haven't ever had a single meditation where my mind didn't drift off to something else. And I personally love guided meditation. I do. I will meditate for short periods of time without it, but I love guided meditations for that reason.
Speaker 2:So I think yeah, that's how I started.
Speaker 1:It's really important when you're getting started to not try to just sit quietly in a room, indian style, for 20 minutes with. Guided meditation is great. There's apps out there. Headspace is great. Healthy minds is a really cool one one of my clients introduced me to because it literally it like teaches you about all the mindfulness stuff. That one's really cool. I use my Peloton app, for I love doing guided meditations from Ross Rayburn. I just love that man. He's great. I do his yoga too, so there's no reason to not do a. There's so much free shit out there for guided meditation.
Speaker 1:But that's how I recommend people start, because it helps to you know, to kind of guide you, to like where am I supposed to be Right? Like trying to go back to your breath or trying to go back to whatever the thing you know, listening to the voice of the person. I think tends to help, or like using that guidance helps because it's again like I can't tell you, like I'm always like, well, I'm thinking about what I got to do the rest of the day, or maybe I'm not really into like whatever a visualization Ross has given me that day, but I'm like, nope, bring it back right. Like I'm just bringing it back. That's what meditation does and it is not, like I said, it's not meant to silence your brain. It's meant to teach you how to bring yourself back to your breath or to something else. Right, to pay attention to your thoughts, without latching onto that thought and hanging onto it for dear life and then running away with it, right. So it's a practice that, again, in neuroscience terms and there are lots of studies out there about this now, how meditation and learn, you know, kind of rewiring your brain through meditation.
Speaker 1:I mean, people live. I'm not gonna go super crazy, but like diseases have been healed. People with chronic pain do not feel they're pain anymore. They can manage pain from it. So, but to kind of bring it to what we're talking about, learning using meditation to learn how to have a thought, let it go and refocus your mind. It's about refocusing your mind is how you get to this place of I'm reaching in the pantry for the food. How do I stop myself from mindlessly eating, right, would you agree? Like that's kind of like, but you can't get there without practicing it. Yeah, and meditation is hard.
Speaker 2:That's the key word here practice, like yoga is a practice. Meditation is a practice. Everything you can't just be good at yoga or there's nobody like everybody does things differently. Like the way I practice yoga is different from you know somebody that I work with. Or the way I do mindfulness is completely different from how Tina does it or how somebody else does it. It's the way that works for you. Okay, it's ever evolving, so it's gonna get better. You're gonna get better. It's not just you reach a plateau and you're like, okay, I'm the best meditator ever, I'm gonna just stop here. Like, again, it's that word practice. You just keep going and getting better and better and better and better. You know.
Speaker 1:But I think that's key though, Erin. It is a meditative practice, it is a yoga practice and it is something you always are doing right, but that is the training, that's your brain training. Meditation is brain training to help you with all these other things.
Speaker 2:Right and I always go back to like when I think about yoga. Most people, when they hear the word yoga, they think of a very thin woman in tight bra, tight spandex, you know stick thin, doing all these poses, when that's really not what yoga is. No, it's different for everybody and there's no right or wrong way to meditate. There's no right or wrong way in a meditative yoga. So, like, when I'm giving my, when I give my kind of how I started the meditation, like I'm not telling you that that's how you're supposed to do it. There's no right way to do it Like and again, thinking about like. When people think of the word meditation, they think of a Buddhist monk in a cave. You know out.
Speaker 1:That doesn't speak for a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who's in the like not eating for a week, that's, you know, not thinking about anything. And yeah, that's part of meditation, but that's not. We can't do that. That's not an everyday kind of thing.
Speaker 1:So it's not practical for those of us who are monks living in Tibet.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:So, yes, but you're right. So it's not. There's no right or wrong way to do it. And before I even started doing like guided meditations cause I really had to force myself to do it I was a. I'm looking at it as hard.
Speaker 1:I can't stop my brain until I started doing it and I was like oh duh, you dummy, like that's that's but I, you know, I would spend, excuse me, there are gutter cleaners apparently coming up on my roof in front of me, so let me put that down. The dogs are going nuts. That's why I have my my earbuds in, so hopefully nobody can hear the dogs and the gutter cleaners coming up on my roof. Anyway, back to being mindful. I spend, I kid you not a minimum of three to five minutes at the end of my shower every morning and scolding hot water, with my head lowered and my eyes closed, and that is how I end every shower and I start every. Well, my day started starts before my shower, cause I work out and stuff in the morning, but that is how I center myself for the day. Right, I do deep breathing. I'm in there just letting thoughts pass. So that is my non-guided meditation and that's how I really started meditating. It was this like three to five minutes in a scolding hot shower every morning.
Speaker 1:And then I started doing actual guided meditations and found you know, found so much benefit from those. And you know, some weeks I do one or two, some weeks I do three or five. But it's that practice of it, right? So you know once, you and I and I can tell when I have fallen out of practice, because I do start to feel a little bit more anxious.
Speaker 1:I start to have a little bit more like racing thoughts that I can't quite get control of and I'm like, and we'd better get back to our practice because we've been a little bit lax on it, right so, but it really does take practice. But I think the number one thing that I get pushed back on, I want everybody to understand is yes, there's no right or wrong way to do it. You do not need to light incense and sit on a pillow and have a special little place. You can do it in your car, you can sit in your chair, you can lay on the floor. The key is to do it, practice it it, keep working on getting better at it, because there is no end to it.
Speaker 2:No, there's not. You can only get better.
Speaker 1:And the same thing with yoga. Yoga is another mind-body practice, right, and the goal of yoga is to allow you to connect with your breath, right during movement, right, so it's body awareness, and yoga is not hippie-frufru. Bodybuilders and people wanting to build bigger biceps, like Erin's, should be doing yoga too, not to keep beating you up about your creepy biceps. I might be a little jealous, but that is the point of it, right? Like you're going to be a better bodybuilder. You're going to be, I mean, bring the physical benefits, right, you're going to be more flexible, but you're going to have better body awareness and connection with your breath, and that's only going to help you physically, let alone emotionally, right?
Speaker 1:So that's why we call all of these things mind-body practices.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's another thing you know I do the habit stacking, you know. So, Tina, that's a perfect example of you know, after your shower you're sitting for just three minutes and you're just standing in the shower. There's nothing that's. You know, you don't have your phone near you. You don't have anybody else there, Like it's just you. You hope, yeah, hopefully, Maybe a dog or cat or something, Maybe you're hungry. I don't even let them in the bathroom, like that is literally my time.
Speaker 1:Nobody's allowed in there during my shower meditation time.
Speaker 2:But, like you know, you take just that and that in itself is great. And then once you figure out like, okay, yeah, I could probably do a little bit more than you, maybe add on a little bit more time, or get out of the shower and like when you're putting your moisturizer on, really like think about what you're doing, you know self-care and you're you know, after your shower, so that could be meditation. When I started I I drink lemon water in the morning before I do anything. So I come, you know, after I'm kind of doing my thing in the bathroom, I come downstairs and I didn't even know it was quote unquote meditation.
Speaker 2:I poured myself my water in the lemon and I was like doing things as I was drinking it and I realized that I wasn't drinking it like because I'm on a time you know, construction for, for work. So I'm like doing all these things and I'm drinking my water and I'm like, well, I have to eat my breakfast, but I like to have my water in for a little bit first before I eat. And then I was like, sit on the couch and drink your water. So I started doing that and oh my gosh, the piece I got just from that and I'm like that other stuff can wait, it's still going to be there, like it'll get done. But I take up just a few minutes and I drink my water and I feel the water going down and I think about, you know, like it's just so crazy how. That's how I started and now I have a meditation corner. I have one in my office, like so you just just build upon those kind of things.
Speaker 1:Because it's addictive in a good way, Right Like it's. It's one of those things where you're like, like. I realized I had this habit of like always having something on in the background. Right Like prior to COVID it was the news, and now the news is like literally never on in my house.
Speaker 1:Prior to COVID in politics, I was like it was like just the 24 hour news cycle. I always got the news on all day long. I worked from home and it was on downstairs and I'd see it when I go, and that went away very quickly. But I realized, like, like, when I'm, even when I'm in the kitchen doing dishes, cleaning, making dinner, cooking my breakfast I've got a podcast and audio book. I've got something going on in the background music, whatever and I've actually started and I still enjoy that. That's how I get my reading done, because I really don't sit down to read. I listen to books on audio book.
Speaker 1:But I started I realized that I had stimulation all the time, right. So besides my actual meditation time I make in my little shower, meditation time, I make myself be in my kitchen, sometimes eating or whatever, with nothing on, no phone beside me, no music on. I'm just sitting there with my food taking a breath in between each bite, right, it might only be five minutes and listen. I am going everybody that's listening to this like I don't have time. Fuck off.
Speaker 2:That's what I was just about to talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, no, no off because, right, like nobody has time, I have the same 24 hours, aaron has the same 24 hours. Everybody has the same 24 hours Right, you can make five. There is five minutes in your day. You're scrolling on your phone, you're sitting too long on the shitter or whatever it is that you're doing goofing off. Right, like you have five minutes. Three minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't care, don't take five minutes, do three minutes, I don't care. Right, you have it. You just need to make it a priority. You're reading, right, heart, yep, heart.
Speaker 1:Meditation is hard. I'm not even going to pretend like it's not, but so is everything you do for the first time, right, I can't do it because I have racing thoughts. That's exactly why you need to do meditation, right? The only way you're ever going to get control of your stress, your racing thoughts. You're all the you know. Your negative thoughts, you're all the things You're not going to.
Speaker 1:So so, yes, and again, meditation is not the Buddhist monk sitting in Tibet, for you know, not speaking for months on end. Right, it is. It could be two minutes in your shower, it could be. I'm sitting in my chair right now and I could just close my eyes if I wasn't sitting here talking to Aaron and just do some deep breathing for two minutes. Mm, hmm, say it, yeah, you just need to do it, and consistently, and put it into practice, and then you can start to. What happens, if you haven't been a meditator and actually done this, is that you do start to be able to pay attention to your thoughts, right? So, again, you're like I'm having these thoughts and there goes that thought and there goes another thought. So now you're teaching your mind, your brain, how to recognize when these thoughts are happening. So now, as I put this into practice, I have now training my brain to see what my thoughts are Right. And so I started going oh, I didn't know I was having that thought and I didn't know I was feeling that way.
Speaker 1:And that's how then you can start to put these other things we've talked about from a nutrition perspective right being a little bit more mindful about your nutrition or your training day, or I mean God, I mean the way that being mindful helps with Training strength is incredible, like the amount of people I see scrolling away on their phone while they're warming up on the treadmill. Right, like I don't ever do that, like my five minute warm up on my treadmill will have a winner. As I'm doing, I'm warming up, I am like visualizing my workout, I am like getting into, like this is what I'm going to do, right. So that's another form of mindfulness. It's another form, almost, of meditation.
Speaker 2:It's like kind of my my training, my brain to get ready, prepare for my workout, kind of thing and picturing yourself working out and what it's going to look like and how you're going to feel and the weight you're going to do and all the things. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Visualization is another form of mindfulness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there's so many things I can talk about with this. I think the most, most of the things that we're going to be talking about in this one, in this podcast and other ones, I think, if you remove your phone away from you for a little bit, that's another thing that I want to. I guess we could tie that into mindfulness too. Yes, everybody is so addicted to technology now it's scary, like it's very scary, and where technology is great, love it. Obviously, use it all the time we're using it right now.
Speaker 1:We're using it right now.
Speaker 2:But there are times and places for it and I think when I would put my phone across the room or in a different room and focus on something that helped me tremendously, and I have ADHD, so having all these things in front of me that would distract me definitely was not good, and I couldn't. I would never concentrate on one thing. I was always the let me start this, oh wait, let me get. Oh I have to do this and go from one thing to the next. And when I put my phone away and I put it in a drawer or whatever and I leave it somewhere where I can't see it, that helps a lot and that could be your first step to meditation.
Speaker 2:Just getting rid of that phone for a few minutes and, my God, the piece that you get from not scrolling. It's absolutely amazing, like you forget what it was like not having a phone. But then, when you actually put it away and like don't think about it, it just feels so much better. You feel so much better. So maybe start with that and get rid of that cell phone. And if you have kids, they'll see that too, because the kids now that's what it is. It's glued to their hand and they're like this. And when their parents are on it they're like, okay, well, I'm gonna be on it too, and they're learning those bad habits from the parents. So put your phone away for a little bit, get some peace and do something. Even if you have to do something like, oh, I have to cook dinner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cook dinner but do it mindfully, like, don't have your phone near you and scrolling on Instagram while you're putting your ingredients in and stuff.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how many things I've burned on my stove doing that. By the way, I set the pan on the stove to heat it up and I'm like, why don't I go scroll my phone real quick? Next thing I know, I'm like, oh God, whatever my pan is. But I wanna add to that. I've had several. I did a podcast a brand new.
Speaker 1:I did one on kind of like doing these factory resets of our bodies. Right, like, kind of like. When I have these we term them high vibration clients who are just like I can't get them to take rest days and it's like when nutrition and training isn't working anymore and weights going up, and it shouldn't be so it's just like the body is in chaos. Right, the body is in chaos, the mind is in chaos. So we do this factory reset, and part of it is 30 minutes a day, part of what I have asked these clients that have had to do this full blown factory reset 30 minutes a day of no stimulus. You literally have to sit and stare at a wall, right, like. You can get out your journal and write, but there's no phone, tv, music, husband, wife, nothing Like I want you to sit for 30 minutes and boy did I get some feedback on that, right, like it was miserable, it's hard, like whatever. Now, once they got into the practice of it like I have some that have continued with it, right, they're just like wow, like wow.
Speaker 1:Some said, you know, I had all these thoughts and then there were tears, and then there was like all of these things, because we have a tendency to never give ourselves time to sit and think, for some, like it's a trauma response, right, being busy all the time is a trauma response, right, because then you don't have to sit and think about anything. So, yeah, that shit's hard, feeling shit is hard, but not allowing ourselves, you know and this can get into a whole topic of like, really why people tend to like emotionally overeat, and there's all the numbing things, right. So, whether it's alcoholism or addicted to training or whatever addictions there are, right. Or being just being busy all the time, right, this martyrdom I think we talked about, you know, and just because I'm so busy, and then just taking on more and more and more this human giver syndrome that we have as women, right? So all of the things that we put ourselves through, feelings are hard, but not feeling feelings is even harder because it's going to kill you, right, like it's probably the biggest stressor you can put on your body to like not let feelings out and like, try to hide them and all these things. So we hide them with mindfulness is how we get through that, right, and allowing ourselves to feel the feels and to let things go without judgment and all of those things. But it's never going to work to just keep trying to avoid.
Speaker 1:So you're and I can see these patterns in these high vibration clients all the time right, it's this avoidance. Have to have to have a goal, have to be busy, blah, blah, blah. And I was that person. And the reason why I can see it? Because I was there. I was that person, right, I was the hashtag team.
Speaker 1:No sleep, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. I only need four hours of sleep. I'm up at 2.30 in the morning to do, you know, like, yes, I've been there, I've done that. We all have to go through it at some point.
Speaker 1:But it is incredible when you can sit with yourself in a very quiet setting and just be right, and the incredible benefits that I know, I know you have had, I have had I'm speaking from experience my clients who have meditation practices and journaling practices and, you know, mindfulness practices and yoga practices and all of these things that we practice. They're just healthier in every way, right, not just physically, mentally, emotionally. They have better relationships, right. Like this, mindfulness carries over into everything. So, whether it's five maybe you don't do 30 minutes but, like you said, five minutes, we did it at our retreat last year. Right, we surprised the shit out of it. It was something we decided to do last minute. We made everybody put their phones in a basket and sent them off. At 30 minutes you can't talk to each other, you can't. You can take a journal, but you go somewhere, you buy yourself anywhere, and some of them went for walks. That's another thing mindfulness, walking right.
Speaker 1:Walks in nature, mindfulness walking, not with earbuds in right, not listening to a podcast, not even talking to a friend. Go out, take a walk, listen to the leaves, listen to the trees, listen to look. My mind starts racing. I do mindfulness walking like I try to go out in the middle of the day when it's nice outside. And I realized, like I'm thinking ahead to like what am I gonna do when I'm home? What are I gonna do when I'm home, when I'm done with this 20 minute walk? What am I gonna do? And I'm like nope, listen to the leaves crunch under my feet in the fall, listen to the wind blow, listen to that duck quack over at the duck pond, right, like it's just that. And again, five minutes, five minutes if you don't have 10, if you don't have 20, right.
Speaker 1:Like these are the just no stimulus and you practice it. You make it as much a part of your daily routine as brushing your teeth and taking a shower. Cause, if you have time to do those things, you have time to do that, yeah Right. Are there other like little things you think people could do to kind of like start a mindfulness practice that aren't like hippie-froo-froo meditation?
Speaker 2:Well, like I said, have it like building on is so key and that's what's working for me, because I'm you know, I'm like, oh, I want more, because this is so great, I want to do something else. So, you know, I don't know morning routines I think that should be a podcast in itself. And evening routines I think we can, we can build on that. But you know, in the morning I don't know, most people reach for their coffee or tea or something in the morning. You know, start like with that too, like, take three minutes and just sip on your coffee sitting at your kitchen table if you have a second before you start getting all your stuff ready for work, and what really worked for me.
Speaker 2:And people are going to be like, oh my gosh, I wake up early, like I'm always been in a morning person anyway, so that really doesn't bother me. But when I told people that I wake up a little bit like before five o'clock in the morning because I want to, not because I have to. I don't have to wake up at four something in the morning to get to work by seven or six thirty, like, I do it because I want to. You know, set your alarm just five minutes early and get up and just sit in your bed for a couple of minutes. Do you like some light stretching or something and feel your body getting like ready for the day? You know, but starting small is so important. You know, we're not asking you to do, you know, 30 minutes of sitting on a pillow with you know, your meditation area and all that kind of stuff. That would be awesome if you could do that, because it does. It's so nice.
Speaker 2:But, but yeah, just starting so small, like think about your day, think about all the things that you have to do, and maybe a little bit of time like be like oh well, after lunch I don't have a meeting until this time Maybe I can take a quick walk outside, even if it's around my work building or you know up and down the steps at work or you know things like that. So that was me and I. I carved some time out after lunch to go outside for myself, because I'm very stimulated at work. I have a lot of things that I have to do, a lot of people that I have to see, but I made that that 10 minutes. I'm like, nope, that's an, I'm putting my boundaries there. I'm going to go outside or I'm going to take a couple of laps around the school without being bothered to get away from my computer and center myself back to being better.
Speaker 2:Because when you do these things, you are a better person, for not only yourself but for other people you provide better your, your listening's, better your, your, your empathy, I think, grows, your gratitude grows so much. And it's really, it truly really is amazing. Once you, you know, kind of get on that, that mindfulness train. You're like man, this is great, I don't want to stop. I don't want to stop, you want to keep getting more and more and more. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:It really. It is like I mean, the benefits are endless, like I can say. For me personally, like I was always, I was that high vibration, high strung, like I will like throw, punch you at the drop of a dime, right, like I was just, I was like a firecracker, ready to be set off on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:I was so high vibration and you know, the more and more I started doing this mindfulness and again, it's little, it's little things, and for me it was turning off the fucking television with COVID and politics. I was like I cannot have that stimulus in my life Period. Right, like it might be backing away from friendships or relationships, even right, like I think the more I I did so, that habit sacking rate that you talk about, the more you do, the more you want right, the more you crave like the more mindfulness I learned and practiced, the more I wanted right, and it was for me to let go of the to identify toxic thoughts, toxic people, toxic emotions, anything that was going to impede on my own piece, cause, like my, my word is like peace, right, like I. Just I need internal peace, and so it became very easy for me to filter everything in my life through this Is this going to bring me peace or is this not going to bring me peace? Yeah, bring me joy. Does this not bring me joy? I wouldn't have had that if I didn't start just doing those little things. Right, like, I'm not telling anybody on this podcast that you know you're going to suddenly find all the joy in your life because you're meditating five minutes a day, right, like it's not. That's not what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:You have to do the mindfulness practice in some way, shape or form. Sit in your chair and do deep breathing for a minute, 60 seconds. If you can't give me five minutes, give me 60 seconds, right, and maybe do that two times a day, right, before you get out of your car and come into the house, if that's your bewitching hour that you're always like. I got to. Like you go from like a hard job to like kids and sit in your car for 60 seconds and breathe deep. You have 60 seconds. I promise you this. Right, it will make all the difference in the world. Center yourself, grounds yourself, and you will be able to start to do more of that. The more you do, the more you will be able to do. Right.
Speaker 1:And then it's weird because I sit here now still practicing. Right, because it is an ongoing process. Like we said, this is not like I have not suddenly, like I'm not healed and perfect. I'm not a Tibetan monk yet, right, so it's like. But it gives me the skill to control what I need to control, right, it gives me the skill to control my mind. It does not make all the thoughts go away. I do not wake up and I'm like filled with joy and peace and gratitude, right Like sometimes I wake up and I feel fat. Right, fat is not a feeling.
Speaker 1:But sometimes you have those and you're like, all right, I'm moving on with my day right Like again. You have thoughts. You do not judge them. There's no guilt, there's no shame. It really teaches you to be able to be. It's about awareness and then being able to do something about it or not.
Speaker 1:That's what it comes down to, right, like if we had to really simplify it, like because we have talked about all these wonderful benefits. But if we're talking about changing habits to be healthier, whether it's nutrition, training, you know, job stuff, trying to be better at your job, trying to be a better parent, trying to be a better co-worker husband, brother, mother, sister, spouse if you can't get control of your own thoughts, your own emotions, you cannot extrinsically be there for anyone else, right?
Speaker 1:The fifth one in this and it lies about there being a very powerful vacuum of custody. Limit a skill, not armor the skill with your brain to be able to handle all the other situations. And then you will find, like I said, like I sit here now and I think back to like, wow, what a different person I am. Yeah, right, like I, just I can watch the new. You know, my husband will still get like really wound up about like stuff and the news, watching the news and stuff and I'm like unbothered, I mean, yeah, I'm like that's horrible and that's really sad and that's, but also I got to let that go.
Speaker 1:Right, like I can't, I can't hold on to all the things of everybody. Right, like there are things I can do things about and there are things I can't. Yeah, but there's just that's just kind of like where I find myself. So, but to add on to your like when you wake up in the morning so my husband does the same thing. He does not have to get up at 430 in the morning, but he likes to have this 30 minutes of it's not really mindfulness, but it is him like preparing for his day with his coffee, he's got the news on and he's scrolling his phone Right.
Speaker 1:So it's not exactly the embodiment of my, but it's his me time, but it is his. That is his 30 minutes of. I just need to just set myself for the day. Right, like I'm scrolling stupid TikToks and that's what makes him happy. Right, like that's not really my finalist, but but that's what he does. Yeah, I, when I wake in the morning, I do. I have a before I get out of bed and when I get into the bed routine and it we could. You said we should do all the other podcasts, but I'll touch on that. I stretch in the morning in the bed like big cat stretches like arms over my head, point my toes like stretching. It literally takes 20 seconds.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I stretch in like a couple of different directions, take a big breath and then I get out of bed. I know Brandi does a gratitude thing. She lays in bed and thinks of like a three to five things she's grateful for before she even gets out of the bed. Right, that's the first thing she does, right? And then I do the same thing at night before I roll over and go to sleep. I do these big. I got this actually from the burnout book.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I have put this into practice every day, every. I don't go to sleep without doing. I tense every muscle in my body and I hold it and I put my breath. I take a deep breath, I tense everything in my body. I do that three times and then I do five really deep breaths and then I go to sleep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do that too. I do that fast. That is the whole concept.
Speaker 1:Like if you haven't read the burnout book I highly recommend by Namasky, but it is. It kind of talks a lot about these things. But there was a somebody did this practice where they like tense every muscle in their body and then let it go, and they called it kind of like breaking the stress cycle of the day, right, it's just like all this tension and let it go, and it was just. It sounded silly. When I did it I was like I'm going to try it one night and I was like this is amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it feels, great it feels amazing.
Speaker 1:It really does feel like you're just like taking all the tension from the day and you're like, and then you breathe and then it's just gone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's such a good release. It really is.
Speaker 1:So little things and there's just going to be different things for everybody. But so that is. I think we've given some really easy ways to get into a mindfulness practice.
Speaker 1:But again like you know. You know, as a coach, I do this for people. I help people learn how to do these things. This is the benefit of having a coach. I think, through some of this stuff, like the things we talked about, things Aaron and I are talking about like this is literally the benefit of having a coach that that preaches this kind of stuff. So definitely something if you feel like you're just a little too stuck and can't get into it on your own. But you know, feel free to reach out. But I really can't stress enough that not to be stressed about all the stress. But I can't stress enough about the benefits of mind-body work.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all right, so maybe we'll get into some more details about some other topics in our next podcast. But, yeah, if you have anything else, any other thing else critical you wanted to add for this that we made?
Speaker 2:I just thought of something really quick. Yeah, a lot of parents can do and I recommended this to somebody a while ago and they love it. If you have kids, especially little kids, play with your kids. Oh my God Play therapy. Set a timer for 20 minutes and if your kids like, play dollies with me and you're like, well, I have to get dinner on the stop and play with your kids because, that not only benefits your kids which nowadays kids are ignored because of a cell phone but two you get into your child, your inner child, when you're playing Barbies or when you're.
Speaker 2:I wrestle with my nephew and he loves playing, wrestling and doing jumping around and doing it, and I'll tell you, jumping on the couch, that's fun. You know like I think that is so key to do too. Actually, sit down with your kids and play with them or read a book with them or do something without a phone or a computer or something distracting you, because the amount of stress relief that is is you'll know. When you're done You're like, oh, that was actually really fun, I want to do that again, you know, because so many people just don't do it. They're like, oh, my kids can play with each other, it's fine, but they actually do want you to play with them and you get a lot out of it. So that could also be a form of mindfulness too.
Speaker 2:You know you're not just stopping and thinking and not thinking about being present in the moment, but being present in the moment being with the people that you love the most, Like that is so important to.
Speaker 1:And if you don't have kids, play with your pets, yes. And if you don't have pets, play with yourself.
Speaker 2:That's a whole other.
Speaker 1:I took it there. I mean it's a thing, it is a thing the whole thing. Go for that. Go for that. Nature walk instead, yeah, there you go. If you don't have pets, play with somebody else's place. Don't play with somebody else's kids, because then that could get weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's a whole other podcast. All right, that was great. I think that was really great. Erin, thank you so much for co-hosting with me.
Speaker 1:Again, we're going to come back on with some more topics. Yeah, if you guys have topics, if you know you want to shoot them over to me or Erin, or you know. You know, just get them out to us and all of the information's in the podcast notes. But, yeah, we'd love to hear your ideas for some other topics. Yeah, but don't get weird, use your head, it'll all be okay. Bye, bye, bye.