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all right Maria welcome to True Hope cast thank you so much for being with me today how are you what is going well

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thank you to the audience who's listening and giving us this time whether they're unloading the dishwasher a lot of times

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I'm doing stuff around the house when I listen or driving appreciate the time they're giving us so I'm doing well it's

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a um fall day a little warmer than we had hoped to be in fall but still a beautiful day so grateful for that

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wonderful thanks for sharing well why don't you just give us an introduction about who you are and what it is that

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you do sure so my name is Maria Mays obviously and my um background is

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actually in the technology industry but I am now a founder of a well-being

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company so I'm a well-being coach as well as a teacher and I'm on a mission

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with my business which is called take five to help others take their power back from anxiety

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so I do that by offering a variety of services with the intention of kind of meeting the folks where they're at on

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their Journey um so I have a workplace relaxation videos called take five stretch and

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breath breaks designed to help you step out of the uh stress of your work day to

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just ground reconnect with your breath and come back more focused and then I have some online courses and I do

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private instruction for both businesses and individuals and then also do one-on-one coaching for those who are at

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a point where they're ready to really make a transformation in their life so cool when people connect with you

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is if are there any similarities or like wild differences in regards to where people are at with with their anxiety

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because I I'm just presuming please correct me if I'm wrong but when people come and see you to start you know

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really assessing these things and stop putting things into their life to you know take their power back from anxiety

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must be a tricky very different thing for a lot of people and they've probably gone through conventional means and now

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they're looking for something different because maybe things before haven't haven't worked so how does that kind of

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look like the patterns of people that come and see you yeah so most of my clients are working parents with high

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stress occupations and hind demand caretaking lifestyles in that they're

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oftentimes in that sandwich generation where you're juggling caretaking for your children and your aging parents and

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then have a pretty demanding career so when they come to me it's not necessarily

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um you know no one comes in and says I want to take my power back from anxiety right um but what they will do is uh

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talk about how overwhelmed they feel with their life in some cases anxiety

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maths itself as digestive issues it can manifest itself as not being able to

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keep control of uh our tempers having you know reachable outbursts at our

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loved ones and then feeling guilty about it in some cases it's self-medicating with substances you know trying to numb

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um and in other cases it's just a feeling of uneasiness and not being able

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to be focused or productive so it can manifest in so many different ways and for me

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um my anxiety manifested is probably all of those and then some um so it's really as we start that

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process it's just really looking to to figure out how it's affecting their

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lives how it's manifesting in the body and the mind and what's going to be the fastest way to help them take their

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power back so really cool I just something really came out for me when you were talking about

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that manifestation in the body and you know I feel like anxiety depression these kind of symptoms or pathologies

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that we kind of that we label to kind of get there with the diagnosis

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they're kind of the end stages of an experience right so like there's obviously something happening

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within the body something that's happening in the outside of outside world that's causing this energy shift within the body and I

4:12

find that I find the body so fascinating in regards to how my my personal like work stress

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can um no that energy has to go somewhere right like if I'm not like doing daily routines in regards to to managing with

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that stress and digesting it and doing something with it it's certainly going to manifest and it's literally going to store up in my body because the energy

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kind of has to go somewhere and depending on where we are as an

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individual where we might be susceptible that might end up in someone's digestive system or might end up in someone's

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brain it might end up in someone's like hips as pain or back pain you know and it's really it's really fascinating that

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the body kind of does that and the body does have these like little susceptible areas but you know what we genuinely do

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is like we'll go to the doctor and we'll talk about like that that hip pain or that back pain or that brain pain or

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that digestive pain and the last thing that you would probably have a conversation with a you know a

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conventional doctor is like okay what's your stress levels like what's you know how do you experience anxiety what do

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you do to you know help yourself out with that what's your self-care routine like do you actually take care of that

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energy because we all feel that stress and everything like that so I love that you're talking about that that

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manifestation in the body and my question my follow-up question I think is going to be what do you

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how do you approach the um the idea of talking to somebody who might not be

5:36

aware of like like the mind-body connection or like what holistic medicine is or functional medicine how

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do you bring that to the table because we're so like conventionally um driven in regards to I've got this

5:51

pain I go to the doctor and I get this pill and it's like rooted in like one area of my body and that's like the

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specialty like how do you help people like open up their idea away from that like reductionist

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um pathway yeah so um I leverage a lot of somatics for that

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so what what happens and and I'll kind of expand a little bit but what happens when we are in a chronically anxious

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state or even in a chronic stress state right is we end up being

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um also caught in the sympathetic nervous system right caught in that mobilization that go go that fight or

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flight where we're we're not even able to really get present enough and

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self-aware enough to realize how we're feeling so a lot of times if I'm working with someone who's maybe

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really in the the depths of it and maybe um you know oftentimes I'll get

6:44

referrals from you know they're working with a therapist or um in some cases they've tried their on

6:50

Pharmaceuticals or not on Pharmaceuticals or at different points in their Journey right and with someone

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who's in the thick of it oftentimes if I say well how does that feel in your body

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where do you feel the anxiety in the body they can't answer because and and I

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understand because you know my own Journey with anxiety was a long one and an ongoing one but

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we tend to kind of dissociate right and so part of the process to get them

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opening up their awareness to more possibilities is using the breath and so

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I am a firm believer that the breath is probably the most powerful and under

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domestic underestimated tool that we have and so we get so caught up in our

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thinking Minds that initially when I ask you where do you feel the anxiety in your body you're going to be thinking about it right

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and so if I ask you to just take a few breaths with me and if we slow things

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down and I ask you a series of just awareness questions placing your awareness on different parts of the body

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then those answers will start to arise and then as a result of that they'll

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start to make some connections and maybe what they see within their day how it

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might affect them um and and really that's the the first part of it is so to really take your

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power back from something you have to one acknowledge it exists right and

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oftentimes I know for me I'll just take you through a quick um you know the timeline of my journey with anxiety my

8:27

symptoms started in early childhood so before I entered the school system but my diagnosis wasn't until I was in my

8:34

early 30s and it took me about 18 months to two years to actually accept that

8:41

diagnosis now I was already getting treated for it I was on a variety of pharmaceuticals and and this is when I

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started to seek out um alternative uh methods for managing my anxiety but I wasn't in what I'll

8:55

call a deep acceptance of the fact that this is something that is is going to be

9:00

a lifelong journey and it's something that I really have to understand and so

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um as I got in my later 30s after that acceptance then I really truly started

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to understand it which allowed me to kind of befriend it so it went from more of a a battle with my anxiety to a

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little bit more of a dance then and then as I moved into my early 40s that's

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where I was able to make that pivot through that understanding and then having cultivated the lifestyle

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focused on uh managing my anxiety and leveraging a lot of schools that are

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skills that I had schooled myself in that's how I was able to take back my power but it took me quite some time to

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accept that so I think that first step for us is just acknowledgment and a lot

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of times we can't get that if we're not self-aware so for me I wasn't self-aware enough at the time to even really

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understand and feel how it was manifesting in my

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body I didn't make the correlation that my digestive issues were a result of it or that you know my Outburst at my

10:10

family or the different things I'd experienced and so I would just say that as we use the breath to start to open up

10:18

and become more self-aware that's where the power lies and begins in that then

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once you have that awareness then with curiosity you can go and just kind of

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explore and start to really understand it and appreciate you know how it has

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maybe protected you at times that Lisa thought it was right I mean this there's all these things that our bodies try to

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tell us oftentimes if we're disassociated with the mind-body connection um you know it falls on on deaf ears if

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you will so yeah I think that um that accepts a piece and that self-awareness

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is very very important because I think that we go through massive chunks of Our Lives where we do

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experience like anxiety stress and you know maybe for some people like an actual disease that needs care we we

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kind of live through a lot of that subconsciously and our mind and our body aren't really connected in regards to

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what's going on you know like we may even like biochemically change ourselves with drugs which is

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actually you know physically changing what's going on within the body and we

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might not be able to even make those connections and then also like as you were talking about like as a self and

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defense mechanism you know the body does this on a short-term basis very very well but it's supposed to like

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recalibrate and you know not not live in a sympathetic stressful state for a long period of time but people learn to or

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not learn to where they end up living kind of constantly in this like low-grade stressful environment where

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you know they're not going to be super connected to their bodies because they're kind of just all up here just pumping out adrenaline and being like

11:59

yeah yeah just being acutely aware of like their like narrow narrower-minded

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Vision because you know the body is technically putting them in a situation to run away from a predator so being

12:10

able to actually like connect with with the body is very very difficult and then when you're talking about breath which I

12:16

completely agree with you is one of the most powerful and one of the quickest ways that you can completely reset your nervous system

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you know you actually start if you start having to think about your breath and having your hands like on your belly and

12:26

making sure you're kind of doing it well you're immediately like engaging in your nervous system because when we just breathe most of the time it's going for

12:33

us you know it's automatic but once we can actually start taking some good the quality breaths we are immediately

12:39

making this like vagus nerve connection and we can start like reconnecting back with the body and maybe like relearning

12:46

and checking you like where is my pain and how is it and like you know really start and then start dealing with the

12:51

the energy buildup that we were talking about so I love that we're talking about that mind-body connection and that

12:58

acceptance piece because yeah there will be you just say you took you know a couple of years to rebuild on maybe like

13:06

nearly two decades worth of you know habits and acceptance and mind thought and so many people so many people do

13:13

that you know they go for such a long period of time like bound to the personality of their like

13:19

dis-ease and that's kind of like who they are and then to have have like an enlightened moment to

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kind of challenge that narrative to challenge that like um connection that you have in your brain of like you know

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I am this personality that lives with this disease you know that's part of me is who I am if you challenge that it's

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quite tricky and scary because then you're stepping into the unknown right you're stepping into the unfamiliar but that's a really beautiful

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place to obviously you know cultivate change and to to and to go through these different things so what other like

13:48

simple techniques do you kind of incorporate you mentioned the breath if you want to you know go further into the

13:54

breath work because there's many different different techniques in regards to breath work for like

13:59

beginners and advanced people and like whether you want to do something so maybe you could tell us about some of those smaller techniques yeah simpler

14:07

technique sorry sure so yeah we'll start with the breath so um I you know all of my work

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incorporates breath work because it has so much power so what we were talking

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about earlier with you know when you're caught in this um and conditioned right so at least for

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me I I found myself you know as a working mom taking care of my kids

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taking care of my dad my parents um with some chronic health conditions

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juggling a full-time career you know doing all the stuff and just

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you know most of us I believe in this Western world are on this trajectory of

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you know you get good grades you go to college you get keep your credit score high you buy a house you get a career

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you do you do all the stuff right and so what happens is we get caught in that

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hamster will of productivity do more do more do more and when we are in that

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constant go mobilization you know work emails being in here social media is

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being in here this is going on in the news it's it's that chaos and that noise

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Keeps Us in that sympathetic State and when we're in that sympathetic State as you know things that are not important

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like our digestion um like our all those things are throttled back right and our heart rate

15:33

increases and what happens to your breath is if you think about the last time you were in a state of just real

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stress or anxiety or Panic or let's say for me it would be a snake if a snake

15:43

came rolling in here I would immediately go like that so what happens is your breath becomes high in the chest and we

15:50

get caught in that short high breath cycle which means we're not taking as

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much oxygen in to nourish all the cells in the body and we're probably not

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releasing as much waste product you know carbon dioxide leaving the body and so that has effects over time right and so

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one of the easiest tips you can do is just notice your breath right and maybe

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I oftentimes have someone place a hand on the belly and a hand on the chest

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and as you breathe just noticing where you feel the breath and by deepening it and by deepening I

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mean just mindfully as you inhale visualize it going deeper into the body

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and as you lengthen it so as we lengthen the breath specifically and lengthening

16:39

the exhales we can help ourselves drop into that parasympathetic nervous system

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so um the best way to maybe do this is maybe just take you and the viewers

16:53

through just a few moments of relaxation if you'd like that I'd love that okay so

16:58

let's just start with just noticing how we're feeling in the body in this moment and so if you're driving keep your eyes

17:05

open if you're not and can close your eyes you're welcome to close your eyes if that feels safe and comfortable to

17:11

you but if your if your eyes are open just take a yawn

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because what's gonna happen when you yawn is it's gonna help those eyes

17:22

soften a little bit with the Gaze and we're just going to notice just how we're feeling in the body and I want you

17:29

to bring your awareness to your shoulders and just notice

17:35

the weight that you might be carrying there let's just release a little bit of that so we're just going to mindfully as we

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inhale draw those shoulders up towards the ears and as we exhale just allow them to

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soften back down two more times so just like a turtle

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going in taking his head in the Shell inhaling shoulders come up

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exhaling [Music] shoulders release back down one more

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like that let's just inhale in all that oxygen

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and as we exhale just release the weight that you might be carrying there

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we'll just take a few more breaths together just looking to deepen the breath so inhaling for two three four

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five and exhaling two three

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four five again inhaling to three

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four five and exhaling two

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three three four five and I just want you to notice now

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just notice that breath notice how you're feeling and just notice if anything shifted

19:02

I certainly feel lighter hmm yeah good yeah so a lot of times

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um you know we carry a lot of weight on our shoulders energetic weight uh the

19:14

weight of all the responsibilities all the to Do's all the worries all the ruminations of the past all that a lot

19:20

of times exists and that I find a lot in the neck and the shoulders for those of us who do a lot of desk work there's a

19:26

lot of chronic tension there and I believe it's another manifestation of anxiety as well and so

19:32

what oftentimes I'll do is take people through five minutes of a relaxation like that or release the neck release

19:38

the shoulders and then after just notice how we can come back with more mental

19:44

Clarity more focus and just uh lightness right and so that's that's one way you

19:51

can um change your your state right and so I just encourage your listeners you know

19:58

to just start to play with this a little bit maybe you've never thought about doing um deeper breath Cycles before just you

20:05

know take five slower than normal deeper than normal breaths it can um really change not only your

20:13

presence from basically looking at maybe the external circumstances that are

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causing you stress and and taking that presence inward but it can also then

20:24

help you change a kind of a Mindless response into a more mindful reaction so

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it's it's really important too when we transition from work to home and home to work and all these different roles these

20:36

different hats that we put on anytime you transition maybe just think oh let me see if I can take a few breaths here

20:41

before I transition when you start introducing breath work as you know a

20:46

new skill set that people can start using do you experience that it can be a challenge for a lot of people because I

20:52

think if we don't actually take the time to be conscious of our breath then just like if we don't you know exercise or

20:59

move our bodies and then we have primary and secondary you know muscles of breathing right so

21:05

they need to be strong they need to be toned they need to be functional so I suppose for a lot of people who you know

21:12

don't you know maybe consciously work on their breath let's

21:17

say consistently they're not going to have like the tone or even like the physical ability at the beginning to

21:23

even like you know breathe let's say properly um so that do you find that's a challenge for some people when they when

21:29

they start yeah absolutely so sometimes when I'm starting to see a client um

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what we'll notice is some breathing dysfunctions so sometimes that can be that high short breath

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um so one of the things that I work with people on is kind of diaphragmatic

21:47

training to help them take that breath deeper into the belly

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um and there's a lot you know when you're when you're starting out and if you're really in a high anxiety state

21:59

there's certain breathing exercises we wouldn't do um there are things so just so it's kind

22:05

of a rule of thumb as you lengthen the inhale that's a more energizing breath taking us into the sympathetic system

22:11

slightly very slightly increasing your heart rate when you inhale as you lengthen the exhale that takes us back

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into that more relaxed State and so um if someone's coming in and they're at

22:24

a high sense of agitation we're not going to do any work where we just notice the breath really other than just

22:31

notice it quickly and move on but we're not going to spend a lot of time looking at awareness there because we need to

22:37

work on moving some of that frenetic energy through and out of the body first which is why

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um part of the way I approach whether it be a meditation teaching whether it be any of the things that I do is first

22:50

just releasing some back and shoulder tension and sometimes some low back tension because I believe we are

22:56

containers right these vessels that we have these containers of energy if we don't allow that to release we're not

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going to allow ourselves to get into that relaxed state so what I find um what I found in in aiming to develop a

23:12

meditation practice personally is I was challenged for many a year because I

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physically couldn't get my body to be comfortable enough to be still

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and I think that's a big disservice that I think the um a lot of the not an

23:30

intentional disservice but I think a lot of the structured teachings

23:35

um you know there's a there's a perception out there that you have to be you know still and in a very particular

23:42

posture with a specific um in order to get into the benefits of

23:50

meditation and the reality is is that when our body is making movements as we

23:56

try to meditate um it might be a sign that we need to do some release work prior to right which

24:02

is part of what I do but also to have the freedom to really get comfortable by

24:07

using pillows and by using benches and different things to get the body in a state where if you've got a couple

24:13

herniations like um I have um that you can that you can be restful

24:19

and then also having the compassion and self-awareness to know that that is

24:24

stress's way of leaving the body when you're trying to get quiet and still and the body is a little bit of fidgety then

24:32

just allow it you know you can notice it just like the thoughts come in notice it and then allow them to release because

24:38

it's just stress leaving the body and so it's got to get out somehow yeah whenever I experience that when I

24:45

first started to meditate where you know sitting still and my I always felt like it was my mind trying to tell my body to

24:52

move like you're so my mind's like so not used to being still and kind of like you know inactive

24:58

obviously it's never inactive but like not stimulated my brain would like tell

25:04

my uh took like make my hand itchy or like try and throw something in my mind but I needed to take care of immediately

25:10

but like then you've got like your conscious mind is like trying to tell your um

25:16

um your like kind of Reptilian Brain I suppose it wants you to get up and get moving it's like it's kind of like teaching a dog to like stay so I

25:24

remember one of my practitioners um would teach me like that like you know you'd be sit there you'd sit still

25:30

or even I think more a more advanced meditation technique is to do like walking meditations which is some of my

25:36

favorite ones because you can really get you really get conscious with the breath there and that's really important and you can feel your body moving and

25:42

changing as you as you do that and I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend to just jump into walking meditations if you've

25:49

never done meditation before but it's certainly a fun fun way to do it um but yeah that's the it's that

25:55

interesting disconnect that we have when we attempt to sit down even for a few minutes so just like breathe and be

26:00

still how your mind will do work so hard to get you up moving again because the

26:07

mind really likes to be you know in control and you know be be right there and it's difficult for it to let go of

26:14

like you know that Body Connection trying to be involved and get some attention as well for sure yeah cool

26:21

well can you we touch briefly on the vagus nerve and I think that's a great way to segue because um as you're

26:28

talking about breathing for sympathetic sympathetic response as well immediately

26:34

immediately takes me to like Wim Hof breath work it takes me to learn I jump in my like cold ice bath my breath is

26:41

aggressive like because you know you're jumping in like 35 degree water it's super super cold and the only way I can

26:48

do it is to just like pump myself up for it so the breath so the breath is like really powerful in regards to how it can

26:55

completely engage and get your body ready for fight but it could also completely take you down and get get you

27:01

ready to sleep so it's just amazing how that works can you talk to us a little bit about that and like the importance

27:07

of the vagus nerve how do you introduce that to your clients um so uh we'll just start with a just a

27:14

quick overview of what it is right so the vagus nerve is our 10th cranial nerve and so it connects in the the base

27:21

of the skull here and then it actually wanders throughout the body wandering touching things like the diaphragm and

27:28

our digestive organs and that's I believe Vegas is Latin for Wanderer

27:34

um so it's important because when we talked about that sympathetic and pair are sympathetic which you know I'm sure

27:40

most of your listeners are familiar with that but two of the three parts of the autonomic nervous system so our

27:47

autonomic nervous system manages those things that we don't have to think about right our respiration cycle our heart

27:53

rate our digestion our bladder you know all those different things it's got a

27:59

really important job and so that when we are in that sympathetic which is our

28:04

mobilization which is designed to allow us to move to action

28:10

um or in that fight or flight in some cases too but really I like to think of it as more mobilized State and then the

28:18

parasympathetic of course the the rest and digest state or in some cases Detachment disassociation and

28:25

demobilization if if you're in more of a dorsal vagal State and so that vagus

28:33

nerve has a huge job because it's it's basically really the key player in

28:39

keeping homeostasis between those two right and so um

28:45

the vagus nerve is also very interesting because it has all these nerve fibers

28:51

right eighty percent of the information is going from the body to the brain 20

28:56

so that's afferent right going up to the brain 20 going from the brain to the

29:01

body which is something that seems kind of backward we wouldn't realize that right and so that's why this

29:07

developing the ability to have that mind-body connection to develop new reception and all these tools is really

29:14

important because it can allow us to really pay attention and to move from a

29:21

monologue where we're just telling our body what to do and not paying attention to what it's telling us to more of a dialogue

29:28

really kind of listening to the cues okay I need to my heart rate's really high right now what's going on maybe I

29:33

need to take a deep breath um so that's the importance of the vagus nerves so what they found especially in

29:41

more recent years with a lot of research being put toward this is that you can increase heart rate variability which is

29:50

that variation between every heart beat that we have right through increasing

29:55

vagal tones so there's a variety of exercises that you can do to do that some of it's Sue breath work some of

30:01

it's something like even like what we did when you when I said if your eyes are open just take a yawn so if you yawn

30:08

right now just notice how that feels notice how it automatically

30:16

allows you to feel a little bit more restful right so we're engaging the vagus nerve they're humming

30:22

um the hot and cold like you said there's some movements where we can go past midline with our eyes

30:29

um and some specific movements um known as pendulation with the body that can engage the vagus nerve too so I

30:38

oftentimes when I'm working with a client we're not going through a ton of the anatomy on it right but what we are

30:45

doing is getting an understanding of how when I do these different movements I

30:50

start to see a difference and so having kind of a basic understanding of your

30:56

nervous system I think is important and there's tons of information out there on it to just help you with maybe the

31:06

um you know we all have a why right so once we've acknowledged and accepted the fact that we have anxiety let's say in

31:12

my case anxiety there has to be a why in terms of why I'd want to Pivot out of that anxiety

31:18

why I wanted to take the reins back for me it was my children it was this is I

31:24

believe truly a generational curse in my family we've had so many um you know if I look at you know my mom will talk

31:30

about oh well my my mom used to just uh think of things to worry about it was like her job and it's like well that's

31:36

just like you Mom and how we got it from so we get caught up in these Habits Like These worry loops and habits and so for

31:43

me seeing the opportunity to the buck stops here with me with this

31:49

generation make sure that I can cultivate a lifestyle for my children that really is mindful of managing um

31:56

Stress and Anxiety and cultivating a lifestyle that uh um can turn up the genes for health and

32:03

turn down the genes um that are um responsible for a lot of these

32:10

chronic health conditions and so I would say we start with a little bit of an overview like that and then start with

32:16

some exercises whether it be breath work or humming or a variety of different ways to

32:22

to look at that vagal toning and so that's perfect I mean I think yeah it's

32:30

just what amazing that we actually have this structure within our body to be able to connect with and engage in

32:35

different ways that can immediately like help us completely change our mood change our thoughts change our emotional

32:41

state and and change our behaviors is quite quite remarkable yeah in regards

32:47

to like I want to talk about kids and teens um so how do you help like young

32:52

children or teens manage their own anxiety when you've got yours I'll give you an example with me so I'm

32:57

so connected and like energetically with my three-year-old son my oldest son I've got a three-year-old and a one-year-old

33:03

and whenever I am like under slept or stressed out or burnt out I'm just like

33:10

I get agitated really really quickly and um it's difficult for me but he like

33:16

it's so funny because he'll just like regardless of how he's feeling he'll just like connect with me energetically

33:21

and just get there like the right way as well like just like immediately so how

33:27

do we please teach me how do I how do I how do I help like because I want to

33:33

obviously in the moment be able to deal with situations better and you know not have

33:38

my body running through it with stress hormones you know I want to take care of myself but I also want to instill good

33:44

habitual psychological behaviors in my children right as you were talking about

33:49

how like you know your mother and your grandmother you know they they inherit genes but they also inherit behaviors

33:55

right so oh absolutely yeah so how can we help um so how can I help my like my

34:00

kids and how can we help out all of our kids you know help um you know deal with their anxieties as

34:07

we have our own so um a lot of front breathing practices for example

34:13

that I teach can be taught to children as well but the number one thing you can

34:18

do as a parent to help your children's anxiety is to get a handle on your own

34:24

and by that I mean we really underestimate our ability to Model Behavior for our

34:30

children and so I've done a lot of analysis on this just in my personal life because you know

34:37

looking at the is it nature versus nurture so if I look at my children for

34:42

example and they're um and they're a little bit older my daughter actually turned 14 today and my son's 15 and a

34:49

half um so I'm a little ahead of you on the parenting Journey but I can tell you you

34:54

know when I look back at uh when they were young I don't remember seeing really any you know Tendencies for

35:02

anxiety in them that was you know they were they just not something that I remembered seeing but what I do know

35:09

occurred is that I hadn't yet taken my power back so what was modeled for them

35:14

was for example we're late we got to get in the car we gotta go we gotta go we're gonna be late okay let's go get buckled

35:20

up get your cheese fuss whatever and we're off right and so just that

35:25

that Act of rushing to get somewhere that can

35:33

create I think a a little level of anxiety right by your anxiety rubbing

35:38

off on them and so now as I it's very interesting as I watch now as I've made this shift in my journey and for the

35:45

last you know five years or so been I'm really mindful about okay we're gonna get in the car we're gonna go there's no

35:51

don't worry about being late I mean even this morning my daughter was stressing out about being late and I said what's the worst thing that can happen if

35:57

you're late do you get a beating I don't think they do that anymore you know but maybe they

36:03

do some places but my point being is I do a lot of thinking about okay is that just wired in her which I think

36:10

there's some of that um or was that because she saw me rushing around you know when she was two

36:18

and three absorbing that versus what I'm doing now

36:23

much more calm approach and so um I think our ability to model for our children is really important and so I

36:31

think you're probably not giving yourself enough credit Simon you probably do a great job modeling that but I would say for something that's uh

36:37

and I'll give you an example of of how this works so I I teach breath work I'm a breath coach this is I live eat and

36:44

breathe this right so obviously I'm exposing my kids to this well teenagers

36:49

they don't want to you know do what mom says and so okay yeah Mom I'll breathe right we'll last a couple days ago when

36:57

I was in the ER with my son he had broken his radius and ulna um

37:03

I was it was a beautiful thing to witness him stop the doctor before they

37:08

were going to do the reset and different things and say I just need a moment to breathe on several different occasions I witnessed him do that and it was such a

37:15

win personal moment for me because here I thought that was all you know in one

37:21

ear out the other but he was listening he was getting it so I think also seeing me when I am in a moment of maybe

37:29

some stress taking a deep breath that's something that they notice and then they can engage but something that's really

37:36

um kind of fun for young kids is I actually might have one on my desk here

37:41

um is a pinwheel for example you could use a pinwheel you can think about birthday candles or a dandelion but the

37:49

purse lips breath where you purse the lips like you're blowing something out

37:55

it's a great way to get a more calm effect so let's say your three-year-old

38:00

skins is me right and you know ow and they're in that pain moment a lot of times with young kids I'll say oh let's

38:08

let's blow out some birthday candles here so just take an inhale and then blow out the candles or and with the

38:14

pinwheels I look to see how long can they get the pinwheel to spin because

38:19

when they're thinking of that challenge of doing it what's happening is it's slowing down the spin by taking that

38:27

slower deeper breath cycle cool I like that so yeah so there's a lot of little tips we can incorporate and the thing is

38:34

if we practice these things with our kids then enough you know with enough practice then we do imprint on the

38:40

nervous system where a coherent breath for example where we slow the breath down to five second inhale five second

38:47

exhale if you do that on a daily basis where I think it's like five or six weeks the studies say you imprint on

38:53

your nervous system to where you when you're in that next moment where you need it you can go to that so yeah lots

39:00

of techniques for breath work and for and building self-awareness too with kids because they certainly don't teach

39:07

that in school I wish they did um but um again I'll just circle back to the most important thing we can do as

39:14

parents is model it by really being Mindful and starting to

39:19

get the reins back from our own anxiety and that'll that'll show through the kids so I'm living proof person it's

39:26

certainly a challenge I mean and also there's like so many schools of thought in regards to Parenting and you know you could spend your whole life going

39:33

through the the library on parenting books and like we obviously parent somewhat how we were

39:39

parented and I think that the whole kind of like discipline punishment

39:45

idea you know I think that's very very old school I think that's very um obviously you need to discipline your

39:52

children but I think that there's I think a lot of let's say a couple of generations back didn't really see the

39:57

difference between the two and I can't see really any benefit in you know punishing a two three four year old that

40:04

is so new to the world and you know you're talking about when you were and they're rushing around in a particular

40:10

example you as an adult you know you know like what it's like to be late but you also

40:16

know what it's like to have time but in that situation your kids are kind of understanding oh this is how you behave

40:21

in a in this event and just taking a step back and realizing

40:27

that you know these young children are so impressionable and they're so new in the world I mean like my son's been on

40:32

the planet for three years it's nothing so to have that to have that as like my Forefront and my wife and I made a very

40:38

very you know big decision um probably when he was around like two two like we were going to be like trying

40:45

to have like the most abundant amount of patience and understanding and love and love even when he's just like on the

40:51

rails and just like not and just not listening and not doing anything just to try and have as much compassion and love

40:57

and understanding for that and as soon as we've done that you know he's mirroring us more and more like the outbursts and the wild you know three

41:04

major um the behaviors are just like getting reduced and reduced and reducing it's

41:09

all because of you know where controlling our own levels of anxiety anxiety and stress and then when we are

41:15

like like this morning was insane and my wife and I both understood and like our patience was like super thin and then

41:21

like you know the kids act out it's just so it's just you can just when you see those patterns as well like it's just

41:27

like it's just okay like I need to take care of some stuff today on my own my wife needs to do that and just like come

41:32

back into the room come back into the situation with a different energy and we do have like breath work and we do have

41:37

these times and yeah it's such an interesting Dynamic when like you know as a husband I could recognize that my

41:43

wife needs that now and the kids need that now and I need that now and like it's this whole like wild

41:49

organism this like this family and you know anxiety and stress and all these things are very very normal parts of

41:55

biology but it's like how much do we um how much do we engage with them and

42:01

how Reliant are we on them and ultimately how strong a habits we do we create our kids

42:08

around that anxiety and obviously obviously we don't want anxious kids but if we're not conscious about like what

42:14

we're doing ourselves and taking care of ourselves then it's only inevitable that we're going to have anxious teenagers and anxious and create

42:22

anxious adults in the last couple of years with with covid like just just goes to show that if we're not as adults

42:28

like being role models for mental health and role models for you know these things then we are just inevitably going

42:33

to have like the most stressed out generation coming up so it's so important now more than ever to have

42:40

these tools have these tips that we can just jump into like right away to anytime during our day that we can start

42:46

to like reshift our nervous systems for sure and I should just mention that you know that's one thing just

42:53

um you hit on two things there one is that self-awareness right I think that's such a key tool and it's a skill like any skill it

43:00

has to be honed right their practice has to occur to develop that but also the self-compassion so when we find

43:08

ourselves you know oops got a little too rushed this morning or got a little uh

43:13

agitated with the children um if we can meet that with compassion

43:20

modeling that self-compassion that's also going to go through to the children and I think that's something that's

43:26

really needed right now so when I look back you know I mentioned my journey started really early well that was

43:31

because of it at a very young age I was um having episodes where I would lose Consciousness and seize and so what

43:38

started anxiety in me was never knowing when I would lose Consciousness and hit the floor and so that is what started it

43:46

right and then there was some modeling going on obviously but then it was the conditioning of the world where we got

43:52

into the rat race and all the stresses where it just I got caught up in that um

43:57

that constant cycle and so I just want to say that because I I don't want

44:03

people to think oh my is my three-year-old you know have anxiety I would say that's probably rare to start that young but I do think that right now

44:11

I mean I was looking at some of the data yesterday on rates of anxiety

44:17

um and where they're at today versus where they were at yesterday and I think it was the 18 to maybe 29 was this the

44:26

largest uptick and I think it was at about a 39 percent where it was about 29 on average I think the CDC data is what

44:33

I was looking at but if we look at as parents what we went

44:39

through as we were coming of age right as we Early Childhood adolescence

44:45

um all those different experiences and the stresses of the world that that we had or didn't have maybe and then we

44:51

look at what our children are experiencing now as a result of the pandemic and everything

44:56

um I just really think it's so important that we I'll just kind of circle back to

45:01

it as parents you know uh develop that self-awareness and develop that

45:07

self-compassion because I really don't think it's good to have one to have the

45:12

self-awareness but if you don't meet that with self-compassion then you're really gonna never get over that edge

45:18

because the thing is we're human we're gonna have you know the minutes where we're short-tempered with our kids or

45:23

we're gonna mess up and so by saying you know what I'm sorry I really screwed up I didn't mean to lose my temper I should

45:30

have taken a breath let's take a breath together I mean that's another thing you could do with your kids is just say you know what hey I'm gonna try this weird

45:36

breathing technique where you make a Bumblebee sound when you breathe do you want to try it with me so just asking

45:42

your kids to explore with you I think is is good too but I really can't

45:48

I can't I guess harp on enough that self-compassion has to be

45:54

um a follow-up to that self-awareness especially with parenting because we we oftentimes beat ourselves up as parents

46:01

so yeah I agree with you I don't think we have I don't think I think it'd be quite rare to have like a you know actually like clinically anxious

46:08

three-year-old but what we all do have is stress in our lives whether that's conscious or unconscious coming in and

46:14

it's like but as parents like are we laying down the foundations for that stress to turn into anxiety or

46:21

depression or are we instilling by by by modeling ways in which to work with that

46:29

stress and yeah that stress and and I think we have such a huge responsibility to do that I don't think we are given

46:35

enough tools and tips to do it um ourselves from like the government or health Canada or the CDC or whatever but

46:44

we um yeah it's so vital that we you know we work on it work on ourselves so we can

46:50

you know model that for our children to you know help them be able to deal with the inevitable stresses that are going

46:56

to come come their way and like you know all different kind of stressness of this right so one thing we didn't have

47:03

um your listeners I'm holding up my cell phone one thing we didn't have is

47:08

a constant media feed constant I mean it's it never stops so we have to

47:14

mindfully as parents step away from that and model for our kids I think stepping

47:19

away from that because then it'll be a lot easier to get the kids to step away so I think that's just one big component

47:25

that has a whole different aspect to mental health and also its correlation

47:30

to being in the sympathetic nervous system all the time because when you're getting an onslaught of hits with all

47:37

this media this dopamine hits all this stuff all the time um again we have the tendency to get

47:43

caught in that mobilization so I think I think just you know having that

47:48

awareness and that mindfulness of you know what it's different than when we grew up and we

47:54

um we just do our best right as parents but so we have to have compassion for

48:00

ourselves when we when we don't when we've caught ourselves on our phone too much or whatnot but yeah

48:06

um yeah so yeah we have to we have to be able to adapt as well because you know that technology piece is new right so we

48:11

have to start thinking maybe outside the box and maybe educating ourselves and we'll go so how do we like you know how

48:16

do we monitor this how do we deal with this because yeah as you say like it's a it's something that's changing the brains

48:22

and the biology of of the human race let's be honest and those young kids and

48:29

teenagers and even babies born into an energetically very depleted changed

48:34

World in 2022 it's like you know if it's you know there's no way we can't take that into consideration as well so

48:39

that's also another piece that allows you to have a little bit of empathy and self-compassion self-compassion for

48:45

yourself and others and even trying to hold yourself in gratitude but um Maria that's that's it that's a perfect

48:52

closing Point thank you so much for coming onto the show today and sharing such wonderful advice and experience

48:58

with us I really appreciate it absolutely thank you so much and how can

49:03

people connect with you so you can connect with me on my website which is take

49:09

the word take the number five DOT health you can also connect with me on social

49:16

media and that's at take five health no dot there and I have

49:22

um if you subscribe I have a service where I just I release uh stress

49:27

relaxation videos stress release these attention relaxation videos breath work trainings once a month I feature one so

49:36

you can get those in your inbox as well as a variety of tools to cultivate well-being so beautiful will I make sure

49:43

that the website and your Social Media stuff is all in the show notes so people can take advantage of that offer because

49:50

that's awesome thank you beautiful yeah thank you so much perfect well that is it for this episode of True Hope cast

49:56

the official podcast of True Heart Canada will be back with you next week don't forget to subscribe if you haven't yet please leave us a review on iTunes

50:03

and their little five star on Spotify but that is it for this week we'll see you soon

50:10

thank you [Music]