How to FEEL YOUNGER while GROWING OLDER?

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Do you want to learn how to feel younger while growing older? Then check out today's episode with Dana Frost, wellness expert, coach, and host of Vitally You podcast. To learn all about how to manage stress, why self-care is so important, finding calm in the midst of chaos, HeartMath techniques, healing physically and emotionally using aromatherapy, feeling younger while growing older, and so much more. I'm your host Claudia von Boeselager, here to uncover the groundbreaking strategies, tools, and practices from the world's pioneering experts to help you live at your best and reach your highest potential. And don't forget to help spread the word of the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast by sharing the show with your family, friends, and colleagues. The more people we can help with this message, the better the world will be. So thanks so much for sharing, and please enjoy.

Welcome to the Longevity and Lifestyle Podcast, Dana. It's such a pleasure to have you on today.

Claudia, thank you. It is a pleasure to be here.

Dana, I'd love to start with stress management. With so many people, I think this is such a big topic, particularly coming out of COVID We've all been— life turned up upside down. And what are different stress management strategies that you advocate for, you share with your clients?

Yeah, that's a great question, and I think it's something that we're always thinking about, right? I remember it was probably 8 years ago, Claudia, I was trying to do a stress management workshop, and I will tell you No one was interested. People didn't, people didn't wanna talk about stress. They wanted to talk about things that appeared to be happy things. And I found that to be so interesting. I was coming out of a decade of stress in my own life, and I thought, we all need this. I needed it. And so I just put that workshop on the back burner, and now it really is a topic that people are interested in because I think that with the pandemic, with the global pandemic, Claudia von Boeselager, I feel like the veil was removed from our eyes in terms of how we were pre-pandemic, the roller coaster that we were on, the fast-paced go. And when we had to stop and we had to retreat, we, our nervous system did a— she was, it was shaken up. And we could see that even though it was hard, we could see that that fast pace that we were on, it was never really sustainable. I really appreciate that we are all really looking for stress management tools because it's all— I feel it in my own life. It's all, it's ramping up again and the social gatherings are coming back, the work commitments, people are going back to work even though I work from home. Everything is ramping up. Tra— I'm like, I'm traveling to Europe in a few weeks. Things are happening again. And so I think if we can move into whatever the new is, I don't think that there's ever really a normal, but whatever the new is, if we can move into that with some thoughtfulness. And I guess that's where I would start really when it comes to stress management is we have to just be aware. So if I talk about what I do with my clients and what I learned to do in my own training and for myself, it really was bringing awareness. Awareness. How am I feeling in this moment? And how's the body responding? Because the body, it really is our compass. It will speak to us. So first, we really, we have to understand what is the weight or what is the load of stress on our body and how is our body responding. Because if we can tune into that, and it really just starts with if we can just take a moment of quiet and What's happening in our body physiologically? How is our breath? Where do we— the way that I teach the body speaks to us is through constriction. It's actually through the muscle responses and the way the breath is flowing. And wherever we find constriction, it's the body telling us that, hey, pay attention. I need— I'm feeling— if we're constricted, at some level we feel stress. So I really start with just awareness. Bring some awareness to how you're actually feeling about any situation. And there are so many deep layers to this, I have found. Once, once you think you have it figured out, you realize, oh, there's another layer of stress that I'm feeling. You're smiling, so I'm— I think that you can relate to this totally as well.

And there's an expression I love that the more, the more you realize how little. And this, yes, totally applies to this as well. Can you talk about that awareness and in a little bit more detail, perhaps for people unfamiliar, what is that? What do you recommend? Is it eyes closed? Is it breathing into, or is it doing a body scan? What are the different methodologies you recommend?

Yeah. You, okay. Really, I would love to share where I start. And honestly, it was my very first coaching tool when I did my life coach training in 2006 with Dr. Martha Beck, and it's called the Body Compass. So the body, if you can just tune in to your body and you can think about the most stressful time in your life, as long as it's not super triggering, but if you can access, when are the times in your life where you felt really stressed? I can immediately go to a decade of my life. I can go to a period when my parents separated, when I was launching into college, I can go to a postpartum experience, postpartum depression experience, and I can go to this decade of stress I had after we adopted two children. So you go to those periods of time when you felt stress, what were your physiological symptoms? Not how did you think about it, not even how did you emotionally feel? Because those, the thoughts, even though our thoughts actually do determine the feelings and then the feelings can become the energy and then get stuck in the body, but the body, it's just responding as an animal responds. It's how the human responds. The body responds, takes in the information. So if you can go to those periods of time when you have stress, So what are the symptoms like for me? I get herpes, my shoulders get really tense, my breath becomes shallow. Those are really the main— my, I can feel it in my face. Will feel tension in my face, especially around my jaw, right?

As well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And yeah, the jaw, my, my smile doesn't feel— it feels a little bit forced. It doesn't feel like as flowing and natural. Yeah. Those are some of the things, but always got herpes is one of the big symptoms. And then when I had this decade of stress, I was in the emergency room several times for a cough that could not be diagnosed, which is the vagus nerve. It's my nervous system was just wired and yeah. And fatigue is a way the body will speak to us, either feeling wired or really tired. Those are some of the things. Those are some of my personal symptoms. So think about each listener. What are some of the ways your body responds physiologically during stress? And then think about the times in your life when things were the best times in your life. How did your body speak to you in the best times of your life? How did you feel? Again, not how did you think and not were your feelings, but physiologically, how does that feel? How did you feel in your body? For me, I feel strong. I stand up. With— I just, I feel confident, like my whole, my spine is just, it's erect. My head is held high. My shoulders are back. I feel at peace when I'm just lounging and sitting and working. The breath flows. I really want to tap into what, how does your body communicate with you? That's first. That's like the very first way to start approaching stress. And then we move into the next thing I bring my clients to, and I've heard this on your podcast, is the breath. The breath is so powerful. We know my deep study in terms of breath techniques is through the Institute of HeartMath. Have you heard of HeartMath, Claudia von Boeselager?

Not since I wasn't looking at reviewing your details. So maybe you can share for my audience more about HeartMath.

Yeah. So HeartMath is a research institute in California. They've been researching heart rate variability and how that impacts how the breathing patterns can impact heart rate variability. And heart rate variability is actually regulated through the vagus nerve. And so the vagus nerve travels, we, vagus nerve travels from the brain, it goes through, it goes to the spine, it stops in the heart, goes in the heart, goes through all the organs, goes in the stomach, and then it travels back and it's sending information. It's the information highway. Internally of the nervous system. And so the heart, what HeartMath has discovered through their research, the heart is a powerful communicator through heart rate variability, which is the uptick and the downtick of your heart rate. It's what you see when you look at your electrocardiogram. So my, I, why, how did I discover HeartMath is because I had this very serious health crisis that ended with a pacemaker implant. Because I burned out my electrical conduction. My heart, it literally just doesn't work. It will pace maybe 1 to 3% of the time if I don't have the pacemaker. So it really took— when I had that health crisis and I had the pacemaker implanted, I still felt tired. I was told by my electrophysiologist, you will feel like your old self again, but I didn't. I was still really tired. And so there, that was that deeper discovery that there was something else going on. So let me just go back to HeartMath as I interlude with that personal story. So HeartMath has created, they have different iterations of devices. The one I really love is the latest and it's called Inner Balance and it connects through Bluetooth, connects through Bluetooth. You have an app and it teaches you how to use their breathing techniques to moderate your heart rate variability. That tells us if our heart rate variability is strong. If there's great distance between the down and the up and it is regular. You want your heart rate variability to have great distance between the bottom and the high, and you want it to be regular. If that's the case, your breathing has a regular pattern. And you can use the breathing techniques. I don't really use the device anymore unless I'm working with a client and teaching them how to use it. Because once you learn, you really— I want to bring people to feeling in their body. We really, if we can go back to our true nature, Claudia, we really don't need the external things. Are wonderful and we love them, but we really don't need them because everything we need for stress management. Actually, it's built into our system. That's the beauty of the Human Design. But because of the modern world, we need these things. They teach us a lot and they help us to connect to our internal systems. So with HeartMath, these breathing techniques, the very first one that— and you don't need the device to learn the breathing techniques. You're— it's a visualization. You're inhaling, you're imagining the inhale and exhale to flow to and from the heart center. So we'll just invite the audience to do that with us. Visualize the inhale and exhale to flow to and from the heart center. You can do this when you're— HeartMath always says you don't have to make this mysterious. I find with clients it's really helpful to close the eyes down as you're learning, just because it helps us to see inward. You're inhaling and exhaling, visualizing it flow to and from the heart center. And you notice right away the system begins to calm. And then we'll invite the feeling of inner ease, inhaling and exhaling from the heart center with the feeling of inner ease. And notice right away, all of us can grasp what inner ease feels like, how that shifts in the body. The breath goes physically deeper. You have inhaling and exhaling from the heart center with the feeling of inner ease. Those are the two very basic techniques from HeartMath that have the capacity to move us out of the fight and flight. We really want to neutralize when we have stress. The nervous system is in either freeze, fight, or flight. Disregulated and we want to know how can we neutralize that? And it really doesn't have to be— it is as simple as going to your breath and inhaling and exhaling, visualizing, and just connecting to yourself, calming that right there. It calms the thoughts.

But I love that as well, like the embodiment as well. And Dr. Mark Atkinson, I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work as well, but he calls it being in the mind is like in the cave. And if you drop into the body, It's like being in the ocean. It's just so much more wise and there's so much wisdom there. And one hack he also recommends is like lightly smiling and relaxing the tongue, which also helps with the vagus nerve. So I think just that, that breathing, and I personally as well have been, have to really work on my breathing because of bad habit for many years. And I think this is also many women is this sort of ribs tight, shallow breathing from the top part of your lungs. And if you think about how badly you breathe and if you even watch like a baby breathe, I think it's beautiful. You just see the whole belly like completely. Inflating. And I think for so many people, just even to check in with that, like, how do you breathe? Do you breathe into your diaphragm, into your belly, like this big sort of Buddha belly, or inflating a balloon? And even just retraining that. And that was really tough for me because it was just such a habit to breathe badly. So breath is so powerful, like you were saying.

Yeah, that was really before I was introduced to HeartMath. Actually, it was before I had my health crisis. I was studying the work of Dr. Andrew Weisz, and he's a functional nutrition integrative medical doctor in the US who's done a lot of work on integrative holistic healing. And through his work, I started retraining my breathing pattern because if you remember, I talked about that cough and I did have some craniosacral work that helped with the cough that really took it, it really actually took it away, but my breathing was still dysregulated. Physically, when we talk about HeartMath, it's that visualization, inhaling and exhaling, you're imagining. When we talk about physically, where do you want the breath to do? There are 4 qualities from Dr. Andrew Weil's book. It's deep, so you get the Buddha belly. It's quiet. If you think about if you're sitting next to someone and you can hear their breath, It's disturbing.

I'm doing it right. Yeah, exactly. Or they have—

It's disturbing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Or you could maybe have actually some physical issue with your sinuses. So we want it to be quiet. We want it to be regular. And this, that regular is what I was talking about with heart rate variability. The regular breath moderates the heart rate variability. So you want your inhale and exhale to be roughly the same and you want it to be deep. Deep, slow. That's the fourth one. Deep, slow, quiet, regular. So we, this just makes sense, right? A quick breath. We need the quick breath. We're running. We're with fight and flight is a real thing. We need the stress response. It actually is.

Yeah.

Yeah. But everyday breathing pattern, we want it to be slow. So this is another like very powerful stress management tool is to begin, as you said, you had to retrain your breath. I did too. We were taught in our education system that the breath is a part of the autonomic nervous system and you don't need to think about it. But okay, we all have trauma and at some point the trauma put us in fight and we just get stuck there.

Yeah, exactly. And I think, yes, you automatically breathe to survive. It's a, and also the audience of this podcast is all about optimizing, right? Like who wants to live in the basic state when you can live in an optimized state and live really well?

Yes.

And as you said, it's a free tool. It's so powerful and you can do it anywhere, anytime, even sitting at your desk. And it's just that taking 2, 3 minutes and just recentering, rebalancing. And there's an expression, I'm going to butcher it, but it's like when you think you don't have time to take a few minutes to meditate or to breathe, that's when you definitely need to do it.

Yes, I agree. That's, yes, that's really beautiful. I was thinking about another, because there are so many HeartMath techniques. And since we're talking about stress today, I would love to share. And it's actually a framework that they have for thinking about our emotional experiences. This was very powerful for me to learn. If you just visualize a, a piece of paper with a quadrant and it's, it's cut in two across. So you've got four quadrants and the upper quadrant, those two quadrants, those, that's, it's sympathetic nervous system. So that's when your heart rate is actually elevated and your, if you can think, your foot is on the gas of the car, so you're speeding up. The bottom quadrant, it's the parasympathetic. So things are slowing down. You've got your foot on the brake. We need both of those. We need, they're built into our nervous system because they're powerful. That's how we can have our way in the world. If you look at the left side of the grid, Those two quadrants are depleting. The right side of the grid, they're fueling. And if we look at the horizontal part of the grid represents the hormones that get released with different emotional experiences we have. So this is how the body works. We have an emotional experience, a cascade of hormones are released along that cascade of hormones. Some are depleting and some are fueling. So if you think about your emo— like, where are you today emotionally? Are you in the upper left quadrant where your heart rate is elevated and those feelings are depleting? This was my case: rage, anger, frustration. Or the lower quadrant on the depletion side would be— could be sadness, depression, could be grief. Maybe you have the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job. I think in the pandemic, a lot of us were in that lower left-hand side of the grid. If we go to the fueling side of the grid on the upper quadrant. Those are emotions that increase the heart rate, thrill, excitement. Love is both. Some emotions are on upper and lower. Joy, exaltation, appreciation. The lower would be peace, calm, maybe gratitude. And if you just think about, you can think about your emotional experience from a day, a snapshot. You can think about it from— I had to really think, oh, I've had a decade of being in the depletion. No wonder I have adrenal fatigue.

I had it too. I know I went through many years of issues as well. I was almost hospitalized. So I know all about chronic fatigue and adrenal fatigue and doctors looking like, how is this possible? You don't look like this. The inside is not reflecting what's on the outside. Yeah. Or vice versa. Yeah.

That's very true. Some people are really surprised when they hear the full scope of my health crisis because I didn't present to other people that way. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You know, so if you think about your emotional experience and if to be human is to be, have all those emotions, we, this is the beauty of the human experience. It's really when we spend lots of time on the depletion side that it wears in our tissue, in our body, in the whole mind-body system. So how do we move to neutrality or to fueling the system? And HeartMath has actually proven that simply using their tools, it really helps move the nervous system. Now we know we need— there are many different ways to fuel ourselves when we've been depleted, but specifically speaking of HeartMath tools, they've proven scientifically that using these breathing techniques, whether it's heart-focused breathing, which was that imagining the inhale and exhale to flow to and from the heart center, the inner ease technique. Another really powerful one is to have an experience that from your life story where you had an emotional response that was from the fueling side of the grid. So off the top of my head, I remember when my oldest daughter graduated from college, it was just such a big deal. Like I felt so much pride as a mom. And I use that, I use that experience really for a couple years. You just want to have something that's just like right there, it's just so real. And you bring that memory up, you're inhaling, exhaling from the heart center, and you're remembering everything from a sensorial perspective and that feeling state, how you felt at that time in your life. And you allow that memory to flow to and from your heart center. That literally moves your nervous system over to the fueling side if you're depleted, if you're in depletion.

So spontaneous as well. It's almost recommending people listening to jot down like some of these and have them on hand at any given time, right?

Yes. So I do recommend my clients have one ready, one memory ready that you can use. It's just, it's really a powerful practice. We know how powerful the mind is. So I think when we are in a period of depletion, let's say we've lost a loved one, that there's so much grief and it's, we need to feel all of that and we need to move through it. But what I had to learn to do is put the stress on a shelf for a period of time. Whatever I was, whatever I was going through, put it on a shelf. There was, I went through this really intense marriage crisis. And I, at that time, I actually had all these tools and I proved they work when you feel like your world has, there's been an earthquake. Yeah. Because at that point in my life, I had all these tools. I had gone through my health crisis. I was really practiced with HeartMath and it really worked. I was able to move through something that felt like my world had experience this deep fissure and continue to have my way. I never— I was— yes, I felt everything, but I could move through it without being drowned by it.

I love that. And that's part of the human experience, if you ask me. I don't know how familiar you are with Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as well, and I think when you shift The interpretation of like, why is this happening to me instead of this is happening for me? What can I learn from this? How is this making me stronger? Changing those questions shifts the mindset from this sort of victim and poor me and negativity into this more empowering one as well. And I've been through divorce and like health issues and everything as well. So I know all about these and I think it's so powerful to have these tools. And that's why I'm so delighted to have you on to share these with my audience as well. Because no matter how stressful the situation, big or small, just knowing that there are these tools, that it's not that you have to have a certain gadget with you or something like that. Like it's the body, it's us. It's the biggest gift that we have. And it's just so powerful as well. That's such a beautiful story, Dana. Thank you for sharing.

You're welcome. Yeah. I love talking about it because it's a game changer for people.

And so I'd like to move on with restoring energy levels. So we were talking about breath, but what are some other strategies that you recommend for getting up to high energy levels, especially coming out of burnout or maybe very difficult situations?

Yeah. So I firmly believe that you need to slow down. And I resisted this, Claudia, when I was having adrenal fatigue. It took— yeah, because we are high-functioning people. And I'm sure that if your listeners, longevity, they're optimizers, they're high-functioning people. We underestimate the power of rest. And if you want to get to the time, if you want to get to, if you want to replenish, the body only replenishes when it is resting. So you need a, you need to really look at your sleep hygiene so that the times when you are sleeping, your body is actually able to restore itself. And if we, we talk about food is another optimizer, I really, people whose systems are depleted, they actually need a high quality— from— this is just my framework— animal protein, animal fish protein. When your system is really depleted, there are so many amino acids you really can't get from the plant world. And I— it's just what I've— it's just what I've found with myself and with clients to bolster your system with some really good protein. It's the building blocks of the human body. So if we talk about that's really important from a food perspective, being properly hydrated with a good source of water, I think making sure you have the right combination of minerals activated in your system. You may need to have a professional to help you figure out what's your mineral profile. Yeah. And really understand what's your cortisol profile. So sometimes we really do need some hard data to know where are we and what do we need. Like last year I was, I had almost no zinc and my glutathione levels were very low. And so I started optimizing actually with a technology, a patch technology that not for the zinc, but for glutathione with a patch technology that creates biological shifts in your body so that your body is jumpstarted to produce its own glutathione. But so you may need to get some data on what's going on with your, with everything in your body, the chemicals, the blood, everything in your body.

Yeah, I highly recommend that as well, because I think if you don't know what your baseline is, and even if you're feeling well, um, and I highly recommend that it's also from a functional medicine perspective, right? Because that normal range that doctors are currently trained under is based on a white male in the '60s. And do you represent that person? And do you want to be on the lower end of that range? Because is that optimal for you or not? And That's why I love functional medicine, because it looks at the holistic view and then you specifically and what you would need and where your markers should be as well and optimizes for them. And the difference is really incredible. And I think it's also so important, like you were saying, there could be just one thing, vitamin D or zinc or something that— or magnesium, like the impact and the amount of people that have low levels and they start taking supplements and within a week or two they already feel completely different. And without having that data, without being able to analyze it, it's just so paramount. And then gut health is a huge role. I say the gut is the second brain. I think people go through and they're just taking multivitamin. They're like, oh, I'm taking everything I need. A, the quality of the multivitamin is probably not what it should be. B, it's like, how's your diet, sleep, et cetera? So there's other lifestyle things. But I think that having that data and doing those tests, and yes, some of them do cost, but does it— that's why I think like your health tax, because it allows you to be really healthy versus going down that medication route and the huge cost that entails as well. So good point about testing and the importance of that.

Yeah, and I echo your— I agree with you what you said about the gut. I think that is the other thing you really— if you are truly depleted, you need to know what's going on in your gut. You really do, so that you can have— there are times when we need to have— I, I've learned this in my own life— the times when I really move forward is when I've had somebody beside me helping me and helping me create a strategy, even, even for myself with all my training, I actually still want another set of eyes on, on my labs, on my work. So yeah, I think in terms of just moving from depletion to renewal, you really do want to look at data and you want to have a very clear strategy.

Mm-hmm. I love that. Let's talk about aromatherapy. So some people just know it as the aromatherapy for massage and it's just this relaxing thing, but you have another philosophy or a stronger philosophy in terms of aromatherapy.

Can you talk a bit about it? Yeah. I was first, I've always been really interested in smell. Even I can remember as a child being interested in smell and I've always been into candles and perfume and everything, but it was after I was a coach and I don't know where, but somewhere I was reading about essential oils. I learned that when we use our sense of smell, we're tapping into the limbic part of our brain, which is the impetus between behaviors, memories, and motivation. And I was like, light bulb went off and I was like, oh my goodness, if I use essential oils for myself and with my clients when they're in these dealing with life transitions, big issues in life, how powerful is that if we bring in essential oils and the sensory sense of smell? So that started that. And as I engaged with it, I realized this is these plants, these essential oils, aromatherapy, they come from nature. And how powerful is that to use something, it's something from nature in our healing journey? The body recognizes like. And so if we think about healing and we use nature as a part of our healing journey, the body easily recognizes it and responds to it. We don't always respond to pharmaceuticals. And there— why do we have all the— there are side effects to herbal medicine and herbs and plants and stuff. Essential oils are delivered— aromatherapy is delivered in such a gentle way that unless you have— there are some genetic coding that actually the sense of smell— there's some like real specifics for people who have some issues in that way. That's deterrent, but for most of us, using the sense of smell, and if we're just doing it from the aromatherapy, from the smell perspective, there are no side effects and it actually does shift things internally. If we put them on our skin, the skin is the largest organ, the skin absorbs them and also creates biological changes. It's just so, it's such a powerful healing modality that is gentle. That's why I love it.

Can you give some examples of different essential oils that you recommend? Obviously everybody's different, but just in general.

Yeah, yes, I would love to. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring up lavender. Everybody knows about lavender, but what they might not know about lavender is that it makes you more productive. And this is a study that comes out of Japan. Fusing lavender in, in an I don't know which office, but in, in Japan in an office, it increased productivity. Why? Because it calms the nervous system. So if you think about your most creative, we are our most creative when the nervous system is harmonious and lavender brings that harmony to the nervous system. So I think that I love that one because it's no, we don't think about it. We think, oh, lavender is gonna chill. I'm gonna get chilled out with lavender. I go to sleep with lavender. Yes, you can still chill out with lavender, but actually If you use it during the day, it has this effect of making you more productive. I like to layer it in my aromatherapy diffuser. I like to layer it with a citrus because citrus has— it brings happiness, it brings an uplift to the system, it brings vitality. So if you combine lavender with a citrus oil, it has really a very powerful effect in terms of you just Honestly, try it. It is just really interesting how it really brings this mood, this very vibrant mood.

I can imagine.

I really like to recommend also to put drops of citrus oil in water.

So I put fresh lemon in. Does that count?

Yeah, it does. No, I start my day with fresh lemon water.

Yeah.

If you're just as a habit to bring, layer that hydration with some different oils. So citrus, because it's just easily accessible for people. Citrus oil is not expensive, even organic citrus oil isn't expensive. So I suggest that, but it could just as easily be— you could use like the mint, just getting a sprig of mint and doing mint tea. Mint tea or just mint in your water. That is in essence, that is aromatherapy in essence.

Adding—

you can do it with drops or you can actually just do it with putting the sprig of mint in, or as you said, lemon as well. I also— this is a really interesting way that I use aromatherapy is in the— I don't know, in the UK a lot of people don't use dryers, but in the US we use dryers for our clothes. And what was popular for all my growing up years are dryer sheets, and they're actually quite toxic. It's a sheet that you put it— are you familiar with those?

I know them very well. Yeah. I've lived in different places in the US, but here in London, I know a lot of people have dryers as well and the dryer sheets. Yeah.

So substitute that for this really cute wool ball. It's a wool ball and you put it in your dryer. It takes the static out of the clothes and sprinkle it with essential oil. And there's your aroma in your clothes. Those are your sheets. Your towels, your clothes. I use— every time I dry something, I sprinkle. I have rosemary, lemongrass, citrus, lavender, bergamot. You choose any one that you— the aroma that you like. And that's another— there's so many ways to use aromatherapy. And then even just on the tummy, if you rub aromatherapy, let's say you have some digestive issues And you can rub a mint on your tummy. Licorice. I'm trying to think of the— I'm blanking on the essential oil that is actually like behaves like licorice from the plant.

It'll come to you. It'll come to you.

It'll come to me if I don't think about it.

With the woolen ball for the dryer, is it just an ear— like what type of woolen ball is it? Like cotton wool?

No, no, it's wool. I don't know if it must be sheep. Okay, it's wool. It's real wool. It's in— it's a ball Is there— you can get them. Yeah, you can get them on Amazon.

Okay.

It's just, it has a little— they're so easy if you just go wool ball and it's sheep's wool.

Okay. And it's—

and they come in like a pack of 6. Okay. And then when you're pulling your sheets out of the dryer, they fly everywhere because they get stuck in things. But yeah, that is, that's a really fun way to do aromatherapy. One that people may not think about that I use in one of my blends is wintergreen. Wintergreen, and this came from my grand— my paternal grandmother who, she grew up on a farm and she would make different concoctions. And I remembered this because she used to make my dad a gel for muscle aches and she had wintergreen in it. And you can get wintergreen as an oil and that's really good for your muscles. I combine it with lemongrass, wintergreen, Coconut oil is a nice carrier oil. If you just can even just any almond oil, any kind of oil, olive oil, put that on your, the palm of your hand and dabble it with other oils and then rub that on your body. Those are— we forget that we can just have those single oils with our clean version of lotion and combine them. Taking a bath is a really powerful way to use aromatherapy because water and oil don't mix. And so what happens when you drop your oil, your drops in, and I usually like, I'm like 20 drops of oil in a bath. It depends how much water you have. When, as soon as you get in, your skin is opening up and the oil goes automatically to your skin.

Yeah. And such a wonderful way. So thank you for expanding on that. So many great tips that I need to try out now as well. Dana, do you have some key strategies strategies that help one feel younger while growing older? What would you say are your top 5 strategies to keep that youthfulness?

Yeah, that's such a great question because that is, that's what my podcast is about, feeling younger while growing older. I will tell you, I'm going to just admit everything that we've talked about, let me just preface, that's all a part of it. Yeah, but I'm going to share two. I wanted to share one practice Kayut yoga, K-A-I-U-T. That was actually the inspiration from my practice and experience with Kayut yoga really was the inspiration for that phrase, feeling younger while growing older. Because when I was introduced to Kayut yoga, I was actually in the middle of my marriage crisis and Kayut yoga taps into what they call three girdles, shoulder, hip, and ankle. And through the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system, we know that issues get stuck in our tissues. And really what carries the brunt of that, it's our joints. It's all of our joints. And at the time I had very limited range of motion in my left shoulder. And I remember my very first exposure to Kayote Yoga, we were sitting on a bolster with our legs crossed in front of us, and my hips were in so much pain. All I could think about, I just want to get out of this pose.

Yeah, I've got tight hip flexors.

Yeah, yeah. And I have to tell you, I can sit hours on the floor now. I— my, my range of motion, my shoulder now. Kayu yoga is gentle in the approach because we want to feel safe. We want the nervous system in the, from the Kayuth Yoga perspective, we use the body to expand the mind. And so we're accessing the mind through the body. And the body has, as we talked about the body compass, Claudia, the body, we actually, the spine is the library, the spine and the body is recording everything that's ever happened to us. And the, and then the body responds with constriction.. And we can set the body free. It really is amazing. I was, I went on my first Kiyute yoga retreat and I was a little bit tentative because I'm not like super yoga girl. I had a yoga practice that there were so many poses I couldn't do. And I love going, but I had to have lots of props. And, and this was a yoga group from Boulder. And I'm like, oh my goodness, Boulder, Colorado is like the epicenter in the United States for yoga. Like super athletes. And I'm not either one of those things. And I was like, oh my gosh, what's this going to be like? And I was shocked. There were— I was one of the youngest people. I was already 50. I was one of the youngest people. And these, they, some of them were athletes, some of them weren't. They all just looked like normal people. And, but a large portion were like 70s, a couple women in their 80s. Wow. And what they could do in terms of just function of the musculoskeletal system, the potential in the musculoskeletal system, how we were originally designed as humans. We can be on the ground. We can sleep on the ground and be comfortable. Our joints are designed to have amazing range of motion, and our ankles are designed to have tremendous pressure. If you think about walking barefoot as ancestral humans, how yoga really, it is restoring that. And What I can do, I don't, I have cellulite on my arms. It's not like I look like this super fit woman, but what I can do after, I think it's been 5, it's definitely been 5 years with Kayote Yoga. It's amazing how the fun, I feel so much younger than I did in my physical body. And so Kayote Yoga, you can find it online. You can put a link in the show notes to their website. I'll send that to you.

I will definitely do that. But I, I am so interested because I have a recurring issue with my right shoulder that with osteopaths, and I've got brilliant osteopaths and things, but still trying to get down to the bottom of it. So I'd be really curious if you can just walk through what is that process like? What are you doing? Is it certain positions and movement?

Yeah.

The mixture of mind-body training?

Yeah. So in a Kayote yoga class, there's no music. The instructor is considered an instructor. You're not mimicking what the teacher is doing. You're listening to the cues and you're moving through a sequence of poses. There are hundreds of sequences. I'm trained in the first 100 of the sequences. There are hundreds of sequences. And you're really, you're in the, you're doing different poses. You're moving through sequences of poses. And each class is anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour. And you're just, you're present with your body. You're feeling everything. And if you need, if it's too much for your nervous system, like you really, then you are going to stand up and walk around. So, in one class, you're going to have however many students there are, that many different bodies. And so, one person may need to be actually sitting on 3 bolsters to be comfortable in a position. You may have some, you may have somebody in a chair doing the position. So, we're moving through yoga positions that access the shoulder, hip, and ankle girdles. And you can— they say it's the octopus, the onion, and waves. So we know the onion metaphor, that there are layers and layers. This is— you uncover layers in your tissues because you've got the fascia, the— you've got all these layers in the human body. It's like an octopus in terms of it has tentacles, and you'll feel something, a sensation in your body, and it it moves out to other areas. I've, I've felt this in the, in my yoga practice. And then it's like waves. You'll have, you'll notice waves in your body in a Kayote yoga sequence. You know what my most recent, once I, now that it's been a couple years where I've had better range of motion in my shoulder, what I'm finally tapping into in my spine is my thoracic spine, the mid spine. I'm finally, it's been so stiff all my life, and I'm finally— I feel— I now feel things happening in my thoracic spine. Wow. So that is what Kayuth yoga is, series of poses and no music. And it's actually not— it's not a spirit— Francisco Kayuth is the founder and creator of the method, and he really doesn't want there to be barriers to Kayuth yoga because it it's for everybody. He says it's yoga for everyone. And so we're not really attaching a spiritual practice to it. Each person has their own spiritual practice. The meditation is actually you being present with your body and what's happening in the practice. So that, I would say, was a little overview of Coyote Yoga.

Thank you so much for sharing that. I hadn't come across it before, and it sounds fascinating, so I'm definitely going to check it out. So thank you for that inspiration. Dana, I'd love to do a few rapid-fire questions at you before we we finish up, if that's okay. So thinking of the word successful, Dana, who's the first person that comes to mind and why?

Okay, this is the first— I was like, who's come— first person was Louise Hay popped into my mind. For people, yeah, say who she is. Yeah, so she is no longer alive. She is— it was an American woman who came up with You Can Heal Your Life, You Can Heal Your Body, and she made the metaphysical connections between emotions and physical physiology. And so she started Hay House Publishing Company. Some of your listeners may be familiar with Hay House. They have published a lot of self-help books. And she did not start her work until in her late 50s.

I love that. That's beautiful.

And she, if you listen to her talks, I think in her 70s she started working on her handwriting and gardening. She was vibrant until the very end. So she just—

that's who popped into my mind.

Amazing.

Now, if I understand correctly, you have 5 children, you're an entrepreneur, you've lived, and you have 32 years of a successful marriage. So what is your morning routine? How do you start your day to be at your best?

Okay, so my nest is empty now. I will say that it's been empty. My oldest— my youngest daughter graduated from college last Friday. Oh, congratulations. Thank you so much. So I started with a morning practice, Claudia, when I was in high school, and it was through a, a spiritual mentor, and that has evolved. So even when my kids were younger, I had this idea of a quiet time in the morning. And so I raised my kids knowing that mom has a quiet time and it's evolved through the years, but that is the foundation. What do I do What I do during that time has evolved also through the years. Really at the heart of it is being quiet with myself. And sometimes it might be gratitude, meditation. I do Kajud every day. So that's a part of my practice. Early on, it, it started with praying and prayer requests. And when I had that, after we adopted and I was in my— we adopted two children at the same time, a brother and sister. What happened in my quiet time, Claudia, I was so tired. And the stress was so heavy, I lost all my words. I had lots of words in my quiet time before that, and I just— the only thing I could do was to sit. And it taught me how powerful that was. I want to cry thinking back to that period in my life where I really learned sometimes we don't even need words for our prayers. It's all— universe already knows. Everything that's in the depths of our heart. Sometimes it really is just sitting. So that time in the morning, I, it's an, I can't start my day without it, number one, but it really has shifted through the years to like right now I've been in Miami for 6 months because we have this home in Miami and every day I walk barefoot in the sand and the water. That's been a prac, you know, that's been the consistent thing that I've done. So It really shifts what I do.

I love Miami. I'm there a few times a year as well.

And yeah, you need to—

we need to get together when you're here. Next time I'm there, I'd love that. And for me, the moment of bliss is when I'm on vacation, is the toes in the sand. Toes in the sand, like warm weather, and you just feel super connected to nature. I love the ocean. I feel super connected as well. So yeah, I'm envious that you have a daily practice of toes in the sand.

I will tell you this morning I did my last— before I go, I'm going back to Chicago for the summer, although I'll be here a little bit this summer, but my last morning walk was this morning before I leave because I leave in the morning. And yeah, it was very sentimental.

I can imagine. It's so beautiful there as well.

Yeah.

In the last 5 years, what new belief or behavior or habit has, uh, would you say has improved your life the most?

I would have, if we say the last 5 years, I would have to say Kayuth Yoga, Claudia, because it's been 5 years and it has really dramatically improved my life in terms of what it's done for my musculoskeletal system that has tapped into my nervous system.

Definitely going to be trying this out. Dana, when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused or have lost your focus temporarily, what are some of the strategies you use to recenter?

I drink water. I, my breath. So we've talked about breath and I drink water. And if I can, I might go outside when I really feel like my system is agitated. I will make sure I get outside. That's not always, yeah. I mean, there are times when I haven't been able to do that. So I may use music. I have a playlist, Chants for the Label, Chants for the Soul. I might access the music. But those are the things I do.

I love that. Yeah, walk in nature is so powerful, that grounding as well. Dana, do you have a favorite quote or piece of advice that's been a real game changer for you?

The game changer for me, Claudia, is understanding at a very deep level that all the answers are actually within me. I can remember in, after my pacemaker was implanted and I had waited for months to get into this integrative physician, I showed up and I had the wrong day in my calendar and I was devastated. I burst into tears right there with the poor receptionist. And that it was a month, actually my appointment was for a month later. And that lesson for me was stop looking outside of yourself. That particular doctor really did help me. So it's not that I didn't need those strategies. However, the deeper lesson that really we, it's inside of us, everything we need. And I think that, I think that's a really powerful lesson to learn. Trust yourself. You gotta work through the layers, but the knowing, the wise inner teacher is here inside yourself.

I love that as well. And I think if something triggers you, it's always like going back to why is it triggering me? And like, it's from within, and you can realize that it's a choice to let it trigger you or not. I try and teach my kids this. They're 5 and 8 years old, so a little bit younger though. Like, what is she talking about?

Okay, I wish I could go back in time and have this information I have now. So because our kids are sponges they can absorb all these beautiful, all the beautiful work that you do in the world. It's wonderful that you still have kids that you can impart that to.

They hear me. I don't know how much they're going to, they're probably laughing again, but I'm, I have a morning practice routine as well and they know it's my morning time and they're amazing and they just do their own thing even if they wake up early during it, cuz they know that's my blocked off time as well to have that morning primer.

Yeah.

It's so amazing. Dana, what's been the most exciting purchase you've made in the last 6 months? Can be something very inexpensive, but something that you love or that's impacted your life.

That's such a fun question, Claudia. Two things are coming to mind. One thing I'm so excited about, but I haven't had a chance to learn about it. I just actually shipped it yesterday to Chicago. It's called a Spooky 2 machine. It's a Rife machine that I need to learn how to use it, but it's a, it's actually a healing machine. How do you spell it? Spooky, S-P-O-K-Y-2. So I'm really excited. Number 2? Number— yeah, just the number 2.

It's nothing to do with Halloween, right?

No, it's nothing. I know it's a strange name, but if you look up Rife machines, there are other Rife machines. I just have the Spooky 2. I was introduced to it through my best friend from my childhood. Her dog trainer uses it. So I won't get into the story, but that's what I honestly, I'm excited to learn how to use that when I'm back in Chicago. The other one, this is like super personal, but it is something I'm excited. I have a new wedding ring and that sounds so silly, but beautiful. I actually am very excited about it. I've been, as you said, married for 32 years. We've gone through a lot together. We got married really young. We obviously have raised 5 children. We've lived on 3 different continents. We had a very ugly crisis that we both chose to lean in and get counsel and therapy and healing. And my wedding ring hasn't fit me, my real, my original wedding ring hasn't fit me in a decade, more, maybe more than a decade. I just wanted to do that when it felt right. And I just So excited. It has so much significance to me. So my new wedding ring.

Thank you for sharing that.

It's beautiful.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven 18-year-old or college student about to enter the real world, and what advice should they ignore?

Oh my goodness. Gosh, I'm thinking about all the different things I tell my children. Number one, trust yourself. Learn how to trust yourself. Do your work. The first time I saw a therapist, I was in college. And when I've needed that, things haven't shifted until I've made the decision to get help. And life, modern life is really complicated.

It's there.

The answers I think are very simple, but getting to that simplicity can— and with the complexities of modern life, I think many times you really do need out— outside perspective. And it's brought a lot of really good things into my life. So don't be afraid to get help. Know what you're chasing. Know what is your endgame.

And that—

this is something my husband and I knew early in our marriage, and it's what helped us to make a decision when we were in a crisis. And I'm not against divorce at all. I'm not like, I, everybody's relationship is different. We're all on our own soul journey. So my scenario is not other people's scenario. It's just my scenario. It's my human experience. But know what you're going for, know what your endgame is. When we started with our kids, we knew we wanted to be friends with them when they were adults. So that with that endgame and focus, we parented a certain way. So know your endgame, know what you're chasing. You can chase a lot of different things, but know, be purposeful about what they are.

So powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that, Dana. So for listeners interested in finding out more what you're up to and to follow you, where can you direct them to? You have your podcast, obviously, website, social media.

Yeah, the Vital You Podcast. That's really where I'm super active right now. I'm active on Instagram. My website is danafrost.com. So super easy. And all those— Instagram, I'm Dana Frost, Vitally You. Very easy to find me. And I would love to connect. And I do, I have a free download. I got your download yesterday, which was super fun. Thank you. And it's a check— yeah, checklist for vitality. And it's really everything I learned in my own health crisis.

So wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. Dana, do you have any final ask recommendation or parting thoughts or message for my audience? Gratitude, actually.

It's just very nice to be here. And I think gratitude is really something that we can all benefit from. We started our conversation with both of us acknowledging that it's so nice to meet the people that we have the opportunity to meet through the world of podcasting. Actually, I just would like to offer up my gratitude. Thank you so much.

And gratitude to you for coming on today, sharing your wisdom also with my audience as well. And so wonderful to connect with you. So thank you so much, Dana, for coming on.

Thank you, Claudia. It's been a pleasure.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

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