The Nuero Side of Training with Jessica Raaum Foster

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 220. Today I'm sitting down with my friend Jessica Foster and we're discussing the neuro side of training. Are you ready? Let's get started. Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and if this is the first time that you're hanging out with me today, welcome. I'm super excited that you're here today. I have a very special guest. This is someone I have known for, I mean, almost 20 years. It's incredible, our journey. We have known each other from back in the day, from singing, dancing, auditioning. We were both in the bay. We both moved to New York. Our journeys have been very similar and different at the same time. And I'm really excited to introduce to you Jessica Ram Foster, who is a neuro performance coach. In this episode, she shares her journey about how she came to find Z Health, how she integrates Z health, how she became a master coach in Z health, and how that has been her unlocking of helping people really actually hit their movement goals. So without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. What's up, Jess? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you?

I'm so good. I'm so excited to talk to you.

This is going to be amazing. I was just thinking, actually, as I hit record, I think I have known you for like almost 20 years.

It's 20 years, actually. 20 years. I was thinking about that this morning too. I was like, oh, oh, okay.

I mean, it has been a minute. If we just like, just go there for a second. I can't believe it. So for those of you who are listening and who have not had the pleasure of your work, can you please share with us a little bit about who you are, who you serve and how you got there?

Yeah. Good questions. I'm Jessica Rahm Foster. I am a neuro performance coach. So I help people get out of pain and improve performance by teaching them how to play with their brains. And I do this by using practical tools and techniques from Cutting edge neuroscience that can help people understand and then uncover and overcome obstacles in the nervous system itself that may be blocking them from achieving their health or performance goals or whatever goals you're working on.

Can you please dive into that? Because for the record, I know Jessica from, like, back in the day when we were auditioning. So, you know, let's, like, tell me, explain this journey to me how.

Yeah, so I. I got certified in Pilates about 12 years ago, largely to stop waiting tables. Needed something to do when I wasn't performing. And I fell in love with it, though. And I. Interestingly, I mean, I'm flashing back to that. We did a American musical theater San Jose training program. That's where you and I met. And, like, the dance classes. And I would go to these dance classes and train all summer long. And I still, like, by the end of the. I mean, I improved, but I always had balance issues. There was. I was always falling over and. And didn't matter how much work I did on the proprioceptive side of things, it never got better. It would sort of. I'd have good days, but most of the time I just fall over trying to spin around in a circle. And Pilates helped with that a little bit. Like, it got me. I like to say it kind of got me in my body enough to realize that there were problems that I wasn't even totally aware of. But, you know, that didn't. You know, you just keep doing your thing and you don't really think about it. Moved to New York, which I'm pretty sure was the last time I saw you and started auditioning. And for me, one of the biggest kind of issues was performance anxiety, especially in an audition setting, it would just vacate my body. And that was extremely painful. But thought if I went to New York and did more of it because it's a skill, I would get better at it, but I was getting worse. So there was that. In any case, I suspect it was probably weeks after I saw you at the gym. This other girl who trains with my voice teacher in New York, Andrew Byrne, was doing this Z Health for Singers workshop. And I had been using the Pilates for singers and actors and was not sure what exactly I was doing with it, but this was interesting to me. And I'd never heard of Z Health. So I went, and in 45 minutes, my life changed. And, you know, I still, like. I know we did a vision drill. I know she did something with my pelvis. I don't remember what the third thing was, but the vision Drill in particular was extremely impactful. And I found that if I actually like sang with my eyes crossed, I wasn't scared of anything. And so it was just very, very strange. And the perform, I had auditions the next day, like national tour auditions. And they went really, really well. And I was like, I don't know what this is, but I need to find out more about it. But I'm also flashing back because I came to see you probably on like a gym pass or something like that, and you did an assessment of me and like, I could not squat. I couldn't do jack all. Like there was. I, you know, and I'm a Pilates trainer and like there just wasn't. You put me in a vertical position and I can no longer move. In any case. I. I started training at the Jewish Community center in the Upper west side and they wanted Z health trainers. And I had jumped in when I figured all of this out, that this was going to be important for me, jumped into training there. And so it was an interesting opportunity to kind of segue this into the training world, in the fitness world and not just have it be about my performing and, you know, ultimately these movement skills that I knew I was lacking and no trainer or whatever had been able to fix it. Suddenly I was actually in a squat workshop and had the epiphany. This was weeks or maybe like six months into learning about some of these higher order systems. I was like, wait a second. A squat is a vestibular drill. I'm moving up and down. My vestibular system is a network of organs inside my inner ear. That's entire purpose is to stop my head from hitting the ground. And if it's not getting appropriate information, if something's wrong with it, it's gonna lock me down so I don't fall over. And that's what was happening over and over again. So I gave myself a vestibular drill. I just kind of, I'm just doing this, like, I looked at my finger and I moved my head up and down, which is a, like vertical vestibular drill. And all of a sudden. Yep. But don't move your. Don't keep your eyes on it and move your head so you're staring at the target and moving your head up and down.

Okay.

And I went into a full squat.

Like it was.

The whole class, like stopped and we just kind of were like, what? What just happened? It went from the worst squat in the room to one of the better ones. Just giving my brain the information it needed to be like okay, you're having trouble going up and down. How do we signal better that this is what we need to do? And I, you know, I can't necessarily explain all of this. Right. Like, why does it get that information and go, okay, got it now? I don't know, but it did. And so, you know, that became one of my what I'd call high performance drills. So my brain needed that stimulus and I could get, give it to it before every workout. And lo and behold, I could squat and I, you know, could squat really well and started being able to load it and you know, go on from there. So yeah, I had to go through the whole Z Health curriculum to kind of figure out what my problems were. They were many. And, and so I ended up becoming a master trainer and like, you know, spent five years flying to Phoenix like five or six times a year and taking the classes and I just fell in love with it. And it's, you know, to have the opportunity then to share it with other people and see it, you know, apply to other bodies and see their lives change as a result from it. It just was like, okay, this information needs to be shared. We all should understand how our nervous systems work like this because rather your goal is yeah, like building the high notes in an audition or mastering a pull up or a squat or whatever, being able to walk without pain. Right. Like this is your brain is a.

Big deal and yeah.

And you're training it even if you're not paying attention to it. Right. Everything comes through the lens of the nervous system. But if we can give your brain the information it's seeking, like that little head movement was for my brain, then it can move us in a direction, in the direction that we want, probably faster and easier. And sometimes it feels like magic. It's science, but it feels like, oh.

My gosh, okay, I have so many things that I want to dive into and I cannot wait. But I just want to share. What's interesting is that I can't remember what year that was when I saw you, but I remember that right around, that was right around it as I was starting to transition out of moving out of the gym and you know, being, becoming a mom, running my own business. And it was right around this time that Z Health was starting to get introduced to my gym. Like I was start trainers were starting to go. But then I left that, that world. So I didn't really get a ton of feedback on, you know, what the experience of Z Health is, what it is specifically. Now here I am sitting with the Master trainer. So I would love for you to dive into. Well, but even, but before that, are you still auditioning?

Are you still singing? Are you doing, still singing? I'm not auditioning right now because I'm also mommy so I'm not willing to be away at night.

Oh my gosh. Totally got it. Totally got it. Okay, so can you share with us a little bit about what is this Z Health? Tell us, kind of walk us through the process. And also can you share with us a little bit about what are some of the common mistakes that you see trainers, coaches diving into without this experience? Like what, how is this going to change our lives?

Yeah, so Z Health is, it's a program created by Dr. Eric Cobb whose genius is taking cutting edge neuroscience or any kind of science and making it extremely practical and usable. And so he initially was targeting elite athletes and elite athletic trainers. And so it was, you know, I think in the last Olympics we had like 74 athletes and I think seven trainers, 12 trainers. So it's, it's hitting like the high levels. We've had professional football coaches and like strength and conditioning coaches in classes. So like it's getting to that level and then it's sort of this, you know, you know, more and more trainers coming in and being able to apply it into the traditional fitness setting. And there's now like gyms across the world that are specifically sort of neuro focused and they're amazing. There's some really cool facilities out there. So yeah, it's basically looking at the body through the lens of the nervous system and applying neurology to movement. So basically what kind of inputs can we give your brain, your nervous system to improve motor outputs? And it's somewhat infinite in what's possible with it. But there's a lot of focus on the visual system and the vestibular system because the brain pays so much attention to those systems that oftentimes it will put the brakes on like I was talking about myself. It'll put the brakes on and prevent movement from happening or cause pain just because there's an issue in one of those systems and has nothing necessarily to do with like the muscles and bones per se.

Okay, so how do you differentiate or find or determine whether or not this.

Is.

A mobility and muscular bone access versus vestibular or neural, your brain.

And the interesting answer is it's all of it, right? Sure, it's all communicating to itself, but that if you're planning on moving in any way, it behooves you to look at those systems. Regardless, just because Dr. Cobb breaks it down as like 80% of the information comes in from the vision and vestibular System and only 20% comes in from the proprioceptive system. So if there is even a minor deficit, and I'm here to tell you, everyone has minor deficits in their vision and vestibular systems, it can be hindering performance in the mobility. So one quick way to figure it out is if you've been trying traditional routes, which are mobility focused and it's not working, then probably we need to go look at the vision and the vestibular system. With my clients, I do it a little bit backwards. I'm going to screen everybody. We're going to do vision and vestibular assessments and see how they go and then improve them and see if that improves the movement side of things, which it does.

Okay, great. So can you walk me through a little bit of your assessment that you do for vestibular and visual?

Yeah. I mean, there's some basic skills that your eyes should be able to do. Our world right now is so focused on just staring at one thing right in front of us, but we have six muscles of the eyes that need to be trained, like your glutes and your abs. So moving your eyes, you can even just do eye isometrics. So, like, if you imagine nine points around you, you've got up, down, side to side, and the diagonals straight in front of you is the ninth. But you can actually just hold your eyes in a position looking at that target for a few seconds, and you're training the muscles of the eyes in an isometric form. You can do tracking. So if I'm tracking an object in any one of those directions, yes, I'm moving those muscles. There's also visual skills in the brain that, you know, are impacted by those different types of visual skills. But so I can watch. And if someone's doing this and they, you know, are not looking at the object that they're supposedly looking at, well, you've got something to work on. The other side of it is what does this do to or for your nervous system? So this ability to actually communicate with your nervous system and ask it for direct objective feedback is probably like the biggest takeaway I have from neuro performance coaching. So you could do something like a squat or a neck, you know, like a range of motion, something that feels tight. I always use my neck because that's where I hold all my tension. But like, yeah, if I check my neck, right, I'm checking something, then I can Do a drill. Let's say I do some reps of, you know, some tracking and then recheck. And that got better. So it's giving me feedback that that was a appropriate level of challenge. It was something my brain was seeking or it liked it or whatever, but it made me better. If it's neutral, then it's just kind of like, well, that wasn't challenging enough or not something we need to pay attention to. But when it gets really interesting is when it actually gets worse. And that is a problem. Right. Like, so for me, when I first started doing this, just looking to the left for five seconds, it'd be like brakes would be on.

Not good.

There's things that happen on the left. So that means I'm walking through the world and I'm getting all of this threat anytime I look left into my nervous system. So we want to clean that up. And that would be, you know, so that assessment, when they give us an inroad and say, okay, cool, we need to focus on this and find ways to make this feel safe for your nervous system. And that would be where we started our training. So we do just kind of run through all of these skills and sort of see what, what your nervous system has to say about it.

So how do you do the audio?

So it's not actually audio.

Good question.

They're connected. They share a nerve, the vestibular cochlear nerve. So you have these semicircular canals that sit in this funny, like three dimensional pattern in your head. Right. Kind of where they connect are little organelles called the saccule and the utricle, which deal with lateral movements. The canals deal with rotational acceleration. And then after that is the cochlea, which is that little snail shaped thing, if you've ever looked at that. So they are, they do impact each other, but the vestibular piece itself is. Yeah. These little organs that signal to your brain where your head is moving in space. So we would move your head in space in those directions and see, A, can you do it? And B, how does it feel?

Yeah. So what are some of the common things that you see? Like when you first started trying this out, like, what are some of the common things that you would see people and notice about people when you were doing these assessments and how. And. And also, you know, the correlation and causation. How do you define, like, how do you navigate that?

I mean, some of the main things that I see, I do, like gait assessments. That's a really great way to kind of screen someone Initially, because you can start to see things like, oh, their head's bubbling while they walk. Probably there's something going on there that we want to look at. Or, or they're not moving at all. Like, they're really rigid in their movement, which would tell me that the brakes are on in some way. Also, other things like, yeah, can, how, how well do they move? You know, and especially if it's someone that's had a ton of movement training and they're still not moving, well, then, yeah, probably we need to look at some of these other things. But for, you know, most of my clients at the gym, they were coming in for basic fitness. And so not, not everyone, you know, they weren't terrible movers, but they weren't great movers. Right. So there's plenty of room for improvement there too.

I would never think to do an eye training and then know that that's going to clean up my, you know, my squat, you know, how do you know if it is, you know, how it just, you know, and, and I guess part of the other question is like, do you have to do specific eye parts of the eye training in order to elicit actual change in specific ways? How do you know?

And you were asking about cause and, and some of those things too. And, you know, the real honest answer is I have no idea. What I love about neurology is like, I can tell you all of these things and it's like a sliver of a sliver and we don't even know most of it. Right. Like, so there's, we're using models and they're useful and they work a lot of the time. And at the end of the day, like, what I. That's why this sort of check, try, recheck piece is so important for me because we don't know is this the cause or is this the effect. Right. And in the end it doesn't really matter because if I'm able to create change, then, okay, great. That's all, that's all that we're after. Your question about the specificity is really important. And there's two answers to that for me. One is if I'm training someone, yes, we're going to get really specific and, you know, so for me, like, looking left was a problem. We're going to clean that up. There were things I already did well, so we didn't need to pay as much attention to that. But for some people, that's going to be an issue. It's, then it becomes really important about, like, what is the goal, Right?

Yeah.

And in some ways there's an element of throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. Like, we're going to run through all of these things. Your tongue matters a lot. Like, there's a lot of tongue work we can do.

Sensory work.

Yeah. So, I mean, like, the nervous system is all connected and always communicating to itself. So one of the coolest and freeing pieces of this is I don't necessarily have to get it right. Like, I might not be getting the exact thing, but if I'm making a difference in the nervous system, it's going to impact everything. And so even the thing that might be the quote unquote cause may be improved by my working somewhere completely different because it's, It's. I use the threat bucket analogy. I have a funny video on that if anyone wants to go look it up. But it's, you know, basically, if. If you have a bucket that kind of represents pain in your nervous system, threat coming into your nervous system, there's only so much we can handle. And if there's an over. If you can imagine an overflow valve at the top of it, if that bucket reaches that overflow valve and water starts coming out that overflow valve, that's when I would say we have pain. Whatever it is, it can be physical, emotional, it can be a limitation of some kind of anything we can do. Then to decrease that threat level in the bucket increases our capacity to show up for challenging new things, for, you know, whatever it is that we're trying to show up fully for. So, again, can I come in and really just whatever I can do, decrease that threat level in the nervous system so that your capacity to heal an injury or whatever, you know, overcome whatever it is you're trying to overcome, master whatever it is you're trying to master is increased? Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Right.

Because you were talking about, you know, specific. Specific training to elicit specific outcomes. So I'd love for you to go into, like, what are some of. What are some of the outcomes that you have noticed in your clients and in yourself that you would attribute to your training with. With the neuro. With the. With the brain. Mm.

I mean, for me, the. The experience of being in a human body is completely different now than it was 10 years ago. Like, I can move. I can. I was dancing with my daughter the other day. I haven't been in a dance class in seven years, five years, whatever it's been. And I felt amazing. Like I had control over my movement. I could Ask my body to do things, challenging things, and it would respond. I never thought I could do a pull up. That wasn't something that was ever going to happen. I have pull ups, you know, the squat piece, being able to do that, that was, I mean, that was shameful for me that I couldn't do that, you know, as a, as a health professional. And that's, that's huge. And I, I think the curiosity and the empowerment of knowing I could probably do anything, I darn well want to at this point. And using these tools. Yeah, to kind of improve things or learn new skills or whatever, it is like it opens the playground up infinitely. And that's, that's huge. A lot of my clients though are people that have fallen through the cracks in the medical system. So we're looking at people that are in serious pain. And so, yeah, I mean, pain relief is huge.

Hope.

I think the hope piece is just like easily the best piece of this. We may not solve the problem instantaneously. I actually had a client recently. It was the hardest person I have worked with to date. She was, her nervous system was just fried and she had been to doctors and psychologists and everything. She was bedridden for six months and no one could figure anything out. But she had found Z Health and was like, I think this is the solution and found me through them. And we started working and like she would tank in five minutes. That was all she could kind of handle. But she kept showing up diligently and like she went back to school, like, just amazing. And we actually got down to a place where we were able to go, oh, look, every time we do something with your vagus nerve, you fall apart. This should be helping you based on what I think I'm seeing, but it's not. And so she was able to actually go back to her doctor and say, hey, what is this? And he was able to actually finally give her a diagnosis and some things that she could do in the medical world, you know, and she is now literally improving, which is just so cool. So part of my job feels like it's to ask better questions, ask the questions not everyone even knows to ask yet. And yeah, so, I mean, I've seen, I've seen miracles and it's just such an honor and a privilege to get to be even a small part of that. But my goal is to really wake people up. Is the phrase I. I kind of, that's what's coming to my brain. I don't mean for that to sound condescending at all, but life Life is shutting us down all the time. Like, we live in boxes, we drive in boxes, we're very two dimensional. And like, no, what if, like, to be human in a three dimensional physical world and to really experience that and to find curiosity and play and, you know, all of these things that just make, if you feel better when you're in that kind of place anyway. But yeah, like the whole, our whole nervous system is asking for sensorial experiences and it's not just looking at a screen and it's not just, you know, putting food in your mouth. Like, there's so much more available. And it's just. Yeah, my quality of life, the quality of life of the people that I work with is just. It's vastly improved. And I want that for everybody.

I love that.

So I would.

There's some, there's a couple things that you said that I'd love for you to unpack and just kind of unpack a baseline for us. When you're talking about the nervous system. Like, you know, what comes to my mind is that a lot of people are really, they cannot activate the parasympathetic nervous system. And then they don't even realize it. Like, they're just. We're constantly in a state of stress and we can't even recognize it. So that's an example that comes to my mind when I ask you this question is how do you define the baseline of the nervous system? How do we access it and start communicating and get feedback from our nervous system? And one of the things you said was like, she would just tank. What does that mean? How do we know that we're tanking?

Really good question. So the nervous system is, you know, I have this picture I love using where it's like the brain and the eyes and then the nerves coming out of it. And it's like we are in fact, the flying spaghetti monster. We're really pretty. But that is, it's. I love it because it just shows how connected it all is. So the drivers of the nervous system, the main components obviously are your brain and the spinal cord. That's your central nervous system. And then you have all the peripheral nerves that come out of that. I mean, it literally connects everything. And so as a sense, you know, in a sense, everything is a part of your nervous system. It's driving everything. It's driving, yeah, the parasympathetic nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, the, you know, the muscles and the bones and the circulation and the lymph and all of these Things have a neural component to them. And so again, the cool piece is like, I'm sitting here talking to you. I am in communication with my nervous system. My brain is driving things, some that I'm not even aware of on the autonomic level. Right. Some of it, you know, extremely cognitive. Some of it, some subconscious whatever, right. Like, so we are automatically. That's just life is this communication with this nervous system. System. Where it gets interesting is when you can actually start to deliberately communicate with it in a way that's going to impact change. And this idea of like the parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system, that's a really useful tool in sort of describing how I see these. This communication, this languaging. I mean, if you think about that threat bucket analogy, what I'm talking about is sympathetic load, right? So if I've got some threat coming in, there's a little bit of a sympathetic response. We need that. It's not, you know, if you want to walk upstairs, you need a sympathetic response. So it's not like it's bad. And, you know, it's interesting that the, the woman I was just describing actually was having a hyper parasympathetic response. So she was having a. She would have a sympathetic response and then her parasympathetic nervous system would hyper respond and she would feel like she was going to pass out. Her heart rate, like it just. Everything would just kind of literally shut down. And I actually, in researching this, think that may be more prevalent than we're aware of. It's the first I had kind of come into experience with that, definitely. But it's interesting. But regardless of what's driving it and what's causing it or any of these things, the. Cool. So I used my neck range of motion as like a communication. You can use pretty much anything. You can check balance, you can check a strength assessment, you can check range of motion. There's some neural assessments we do, you know, that test the cerebellum or the brainstem that you can use. And then you can start to test everything. So, like the height of my computer, the lighting in my room, the shoes I'm wearing, my workouts, my nutrition, all of these things I can start to test and go, okay, cool. If there's an appropriate balance of parasympathetic and sympathetic tone, the brakes are off and I'm ready for. I'm ready. That's kind of the feeling I describe it as, is like, cool, what are we doing next? Yeah, so I can measure that based on how well Do I reassess? How well do I recheck when I go after I try something, do these shoes make me feel more ready to go out and play or do they make me feel like I need to sit still and not go anywhere? Is this height of my computer screen going to impact my ability to go play later when I'm done doing this, or is it actually stimulating me in a way that is going to help me feel more ready to go out and play afterwards? Does that, does that land for you?

Yeah, that does, yeah. So how do you, you know, how does a client start getting present to where, what their current baseline is actually.

Just went live before talking to you and I, I had this brilliant idea in the moment. I'm not sure if it landed, but I actually just was demonstrating like how I do this in my real life. Like, yeah, I was cleaning my kitchen and you know, how do I start to. So kind of coming back to your earlier question about cause or the specific. Specificity. The specificity takes a coach and some understanding in some of these things. But what everybody can and I would say should, although I don't like that word, but like, you know, be doing is what you can do is start to bring more awareness of some of these higher order systems in particular into our daily lives and into our self care practices. Because most of us. I didn't know, I didn't know that I was supposed to move my eyes. Like this wasn't. That's not common language. So I, yeah, I have what I call like these. My gold star neural hygiene program just has got five points and like I want to keep it as simple as possible. Like 5 Things to Think about as you're cleaning your kitchen or whatever, you know, out playing or adding it into your workout. And basically it's to see better. So what can I do to challenge my eyes? You know, is, is it, you know, I was just using the example while I was cleaning my fork. Like, okay, cool, I'm looking at the fork. But can I bring my awareness to my peripheral vision? Can I see what's happening in the world around me that way? Balance better is the second one. So your vestibular system, again, knowing that to challenge, challenge my balance, I need to move my head through space because that's where the vestibular system lives. Can I add rotation into like putting the dishes away and rotating more? Can I lunge? Can I make things more athletic so that I'm getting more movement in different planes? Can I look up at the sky, right? Like, whoa, there's a bird. I mean, getting outside solves half of these problems anyway, right? We just start interacting with the three dimensional world more. So see better, balance better, move better. You know, this is where trainers are already awesome, right? Like teaching people awesome movement skills, but novel movement skills. Constantly challenging ourselves. You know, we have 360 joints in our body and each one of those joints is communicating constantly with our brain. Like, can you move every one of those joints through its full range of motion at every speed? Because I can't. So it's a constant playground of opportunity there for, for improvement. So see well, balance well, or see better, balance better, move better, fuel better. So nutrition, it has to be mentioned, right? We all have, there's a gazillion different ideas about what that means, but the basics for the brain, the brain needs oxygen, it needs glucose and it needs nutrients. And if you're missing any of those things, you were talking about this woman that kept tanking her fuel, she could not keep the fuel on board largely because her nervous system was using it up so quickly. Trying to just stay alive, right? We need to have. Our tank has to be full if we're going to do cool things or, you know, exist. So there's that. And then the last one is feel better. And I put that one last because yes, we all want to feel better and that's a nice result. But I literally mean feel things better. Like can I, you know, get out of the shower and really feel the towel on my body and not be, you know, thinking about something else? Can I really experience that? Can I smell my food before I eat it? Can I taste it? You know, really waking up all of our senses and, and participating in them more. The more we pay attention to something, the higher the load on the brain.

So it's being present.

It's being present. Yep. Yeah. And that's my business name is the neurology of presence. Like that's, that's what I'm after, right? Like it's that I'm fully here right now and ready with every piece of me for whatever's next.

So I, I want to tap in just real quick to feel better because I have a couple of questions on this and you know, if, and if you don't know the answer, like, listen, that's fine too. Like I have, I. People ask me things, I'm like, I don't know, ask, you know, but so, so just want to clarify and throw that out there. But you know, I know that the, you said that the brain needs, you know, glucose and then you know, in terms of, of their energy, I just feel like there's also the ketones component of the brain and I'm curious your stance and thoughts on that, if you have any. And then also, you know, what about things like, you know, the fats for the brain, at least for the developmental portions of the brain, not necessarily how the brain uses glucose for energy, but like what about ketones and the fat components of our brain?

So I'm going to say my knowledge on this is low and, but here's what I, I believe and you can fact check me on this because I might be wrong. I believe that all of those things eventually get turned into glucose to serve as fuel for the brain. Got it, Got it. So whatever we eat and whatever reason we're doing that, you know, for other parts of the body and yeah, for brain health, I mean there are elements that, the nutrient side of it. Right. Like it's, I'm not clear on what passes from the blood brain barrier like over that. That's the question. But the, the, the fuel for brain is glucose. So I do know I can eat no glucose and my brain will, my body will turn whatever I eat into glucose. And I think that's where the ketones come in.

Yes.

And for the brain. For the brain.

Yep. Yeah. So it's amazing. I also am curious for you just out of, you know, as someone who has been on, you know, felt like they've been in a. You didn't say this, these are my words. But felt like they were in a fog and then now they're awake. You know, what are some of the big, biggest performance differences that you have felt? I know you said movement, but I just mean in your presence. If we were going to talk about like the feel better components, like what are some of the things that have made you, you feel like limitless when it comes to such a.

Good question. And I, you know, I didn't say this, but the other half of the feel better piece for me is actually what we call interoception. So like how we feel inside our body, it's a combination of the autonomic nervous system and you know, and our emotions. It connects those two. If you want to nerd out, you can look up the insular cortex and it communicates via the vagus nerve down into all the guts and everything. So like that the gut feeling you get is literally your brain body connection. Right. And that for me, like the changes that matter the most to me all kind of fall under that category. Yeah. I mean I used to just, I didn't, I didn't share this. But like when that, When I saw the announcement of the Z Health for Singers workshop, I wasn't sure I was going to make it. Like it was up in Harlem and I was in Brooklyn and I didn't feel good because I never felt good. I didn't have energy, I didn't have, you know, I, I would run out of fuel instantaneously. I had a raging binge eating disorder trying to like resolve this problem. Like I, I, you know, I didn't know if I could make it to Harlem that day. And I, you know, decided to. Some part of me decided it was worth whatever cost for me to get there to go do this thing that doesn't happen anymore. I don't, you know, I am still a sensitive nervous system. I still have to like really take care of myself. These things. I teach this and I apply it, you know, apply it into my daily life constantly. Because if I don't, then I start to not feel great again, right? And I'm no longer willing to do that anymore because I've had a taste of what it feels to feel like, you know, limitless, to use your words. And you know, I have a 4 year old. I definitely don't feel limitless. All the time.

I'm laughing because I, you know, you know, I have a, I have a 7 and 5 year old. I can't believe I, I can't believe I have a seven year old.

That's amazing, Beverly. But yeah, like I just, I had seen doctors and specialists and everybody trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I had been diagnosed with Lyme disease. Whether or not that was true or not, you know, I don't, I don't know. But none of it fixed anything. You know, I would get Band aids, things that would work for a minute. I had tried every nutrition plan under the sun. Nothing solved it. And that's not the case anymore. I can get off track now, but I know how to get back on track. And so yeah, the depression, the, the anxiety, the, you know, the eating disorder, all of it. Like it's, I don't, it's important for me to talk about these things because I actually start to forget what it was like, you know, it's been long enough now that I don't viscerally remember it in some ways. And I'm really glad that I don't. This is way better.

I mean, I mean that's amazing. I just think that that's. I have, I, I Also have an. I'm curious three things, and I want to be mindful of your time, but I'm also curious about, you know, your perspective in terms of, you know, you were talking about the gut, brain, body, connection. Like, what. Where does intuition come into play here? Where does this sense of like, you know, like, oh, you know, I don't. I, you know, that gut feeling of like, I don't know, something doesn't feel right. Like that sixth sense. Right. Where does that come into play with the brain and the body for you?

Yeah, it is, it is. That. That's. That's what I'm talking about is like, there is this, this sense of, of self, you know, and like, and, and what's interesting though is, you know, it can be faulty in a way or it's not. It's. It's. It's a, It's a clue as to what's going on in my. In the circumstances. And so again, kind of this check, try, recheck piece, having a. What's the word? I'm looking for an objective response because my, My brain often has a bunch of narratives running about a situation, and I can't always tell if what I'm feeling is like that gut feeling or if it's, you know, my mom's voice.

Or God knows what, your childhood trauma, whatever.

The poll can be just as loud from multiple sources. And so really being able to check in and be like, is this my gut feeling? Oh, look, my neck really likes this response. Okay, I'm not going to that party. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's actually. I forget where I did this. It might have been in one of my lives recently. It was, it was a little scary because I wasn't sure how it was going to work, but like, trying, like demonstrating a positive thought on my neck, range of motion versus not. Oh, I did a post on it. Like, I knew I needed something. I wasn't feeling particularly great. And like, I kind of listed out some things I was gonna try and it. I thought I needed sleep, and that was not the one that tested. Tested well. It was something. Something else. But it was so interesting to be like, oh, I know I'm tired, but what my brain actually is asking for right now is activation. And so going and doing that. And I did. I felt so much better afterwards. So, you know, it's. It gives you. Or it gives me another really powerful tool in my decision making so that I know I'm coming from. Yeah. That deepest place, you know, of my sense, my sense of self. And you know, I'm. That can be wrong too.

Sure. You know, part of it is so.

Much control over this.

Yeah. You know, part of it is just discernment.

Right.

We just need to practice, do skill, practice. Right.

So. And I get that.

So last question because I am curious, you know, do you think that you know the ways of learning?

Right.

You'll hear people will say, you know, I'm kinesthetic, I'm visual, I'm an audio learner.

Right.

And because I'm thinking of neuro linguistic programming as I, as I ask you this question is do you think that this ha. Do you think that that comes into play when it comes to how we, you know, training our brain and our eyes and how, how, how does it come into play?

That's such a cool question. Yeah. I mean the way I would language it is we're all, we all have different skills. Right. If I'm, if I'm looking at something and it's funny, I'm, I'm a blend of all of those and it really does sort of depend on the moment for me, you know, whereas like my, my partner is extremely visual and it's always visual. But for me like I, I kind of rotate and so kind of knowing that like if my eyes are tired then it's going to be threatening for me to take in information visually whether I'm aware of that threat or not. But if I'm, you know, so listening to something may be better in that moment. I probably am more kinesthetic than anything. Like for me to learn and do something, it goes into some part of my memory. I think we all are at some point, you know, doing something is going to help us experience it and program it at a deeper level than just kind of taking it in visually or auditorially. But I would language it as like that's the way that you feel the safest. So you don't have as much energy having to go to some subconscious place that's trying to feel safe while you're taking in information. Does that make sense?

Yeah, perfect sense. So good. I mean that's so good. So powerful.

So you know, and I will say one other thing on that that I think is super important is like it calls out how unique an individual each and every one of us are. There is not a set thing for, you know, everyone and I think, you know that that's such a huge takeaway for me. Like what works for you in terms of fitness and health is not going to be what works for me. There is Not a blanket statement. You know, you have to try these things and then having a way to actually test them objectively and go, yeah, that Pilates class made me awesome. You know, then you know how to kind of keep choosing things, you know, and that will, you know, like I was just saying about myself, it can change for the individual person, too. So it's. Yeah, pretty cool. We are. We are. We are ever changing and completely unique, and I think that's pretty awesome. So cool. So cool.

Okay, so this has been amazing, and I want to be mindful of your time, so thank you so much. For those of you who want to go deeper with you, learn more from you, connect with you, what are some of the best places that I can share?

Yeah, Instagram, for sure. I'm having a field day over there just trying to create content that, like, helps explain this, because it is, like, you know, a whole paradigm shift for a lot of people. So. And I am a performer, so it's just. Is my fun way of sharing information. So that's a really great place to just kind of come learn.

I have.

You can sign up. I actually do free explorer sessions. So if you do want to try this on and see if coaching is, you know, a good fit for you, then that is also available. You can find that link on my website, which is Neurology of presence dot com. There's links in my Instagram. Instagram is Jessica Rom Foster. My middle name has three vowels in a row. A, A, U, M. So the N is not a vowel, but you know what I mean. Jessica Rom Foster. And yeah, I've got private coaching, small groups. I have. I'm actually headed back into. I'm going into lockdown again this weekend. I'm working on a. On a mini course for anxiety and depression that will hopefully be coming out in January. Cool. Going in to get that up and running and. And then, yeah, lots of courses coming in 2023. I really think that's the future of, like, you know, it's so much cooler when it's shared. It's more efficient when it's personalized. But there's just so you. If you want to learn this, it's really neat to do it in a.

Group, too, so I'll definitely make sure that I link all of that up. So thank you so much for hanging out with me today, pouring into my community. So amazing. I really appreciate it.

So fun. Such a great podcast. I'm excited to, you know, go listen to some of the ones I haven't heard yet. Thank you.

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