EP 60 6 swift & easy 3-min techniques to enhance health

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Moving blood and fluid is critical to health, right? So we need stagnation to move. So it really helps with circulation and movement of the lymphatic system to help remove toxins. But guess what, it also helps with your digestive system.

Hey friends, thank you for listening to the All Things Good for you podcast. Join us as we explore ancient traditions, modern tools and practices in the world of health, wellness and personal development. I'm Amy Christensen, your host and your curated mind coach.

And I'm your co host Brian Bowen, founder of Integrative Health Inc. And Better Human Company High Performance Coaching. Are you ready to take control of your life and start feeling enthusiastic, empowered and limitless each and every day for a life well lived, Let your curiosity flow with all things good for you.

What's up Brian?

What up?

Happy Monday.

It's a great Monday. It's been a wonderful start to the day. Super productive already.

I love it.

All these good things I've been doing for myself lately.

It doesn't take a lot, does it?

We over complicate almost everything in life.

I know the processes are important. I totally am a process person. But sometimes they don't have to be as long and sometimes improv improvisation is really good for some things in life.

That's true. And what's every we did a podcast one time and we talked about how you just though taking just five minutes, set a timer and do something just for five minutes and don't overthink it. If you've got a pile of dishes or some chores or bills or something, you just take five minutes and do it. So 10 minutes and do it. And you can get so much done in that time because you tend to overthink it and then you put it off thinking you've got to have this big plan and schedule and you got to get this done to this and. Or you just don't look forward to it and you avoid it because you think it's going to be awful. Once you jump in and start doing it, you can actually get quite a bit done in just a short period of time.

Exactly. Yeah.

Kind of what we're talking about today, but with a little different focus.

Yep. I love it. I love what we're talking about today to highlight what you were saying is there's so many things. Last podcast, we talked about sharing 12 things that we could do in three minutes. We did cut that down to about six because we realized that we could talk forever. And that might take a million, a million years. But really just highlighting the fact that there's so many opportunities throughout the day to do healthy things that do not take a lot of time. We over sometimes think it and it seems like it has to be this big challenge and things don't need to take half an hour. They don't need to take an hour. But where are the opportunities where you can do little healthy things that only take three minutes? And so we're going to share six with you today, but we want to encourage you to generate your own list of ideas and then start to see where you can find opportunities to plug them in. Because the word which we've talked about many times over is the compounding effect. So how can these three minute little things compound? So think about it as 3% instead of three minutes. 3% interest. Right. So we're adding 3% interest to your life of positive something healthy. And what does that look like over a period of time?

I like it. Yes. And ways to just squeeze it in. You've heard about, okay, just park a little bit further away and walk across the parking lot or take the stairs up to work. And all those little moments can compound and add up to health benefits throughout your day. And, you know, people started wearing their watches and checking their steps and pushing themselves to get their 5,000, 10,000 steps. And I've seen people, like, just stand up at their desk and start doing steps because that watch was like, okay, I'm almost there. I just have 100 steps left. I got to get them in really fast. So you can set yourself little fun goals and little ways to get these in. But I think when you start looking at little things, like I would do squats while when I would get up in the morning and make my coffee, and while my coffee was getting ready, I would do squats and do some jumping jacks and just wake myself up because you're standing there waiting for coffee anyway. But there's a lot of little ways we can squeeze it in. And I think with today's point, I said that we're going to talk about six different things that we can do in three minutes or less. And some.

You can do it, too.

Yes, everybody can do. I don't. Yeah, I think, I think everybody can do these, the ones that we're going to talk about. And there's a million different little ways to do this. And these are just six. And these are six good ones that are good. I think if people do on a regular basis can overall enhance their well being in many ways. And a lot of these you can combine and do in the same three minute session actually. So if you think about it, you can stack these. Habit stacking is fabulous. So you can get a lot of these done while you're just standing there waiting for your coffee.

Yeah. Or if you do one, pick the six. If you choose ours, like how can you do all six in the day? And they, they can be spaced out because there's an opportunity again, with everything we're doing, there's always an opportunity where we can add a little tidbit of health and wellness to it where it can help us be more mindful or get our blood moving in our body or calm our nervous or whatever it is. There's going to be a trickle down effect. And so you might be specifically needing something more for stress. Some people might need something a little bit more for circulation and digestion. Some people might need a little bit more for, for mental clarity. Right. So you can see, maybe identify some key components of areas that you want to improve in and then you can cater those specific things to that. Or just try some of this and just get curious and see how it feels. Because a lot of them have more than one health benef for sure.

Sure. Yep. And with all of these that we're going to talk about today, even though you're stacking a few things in just having that moment, three minutes in a day here or there, where you're actually getting in touch with how your body's feeling and quieting yourself, doing a somatic process that helps process what pain or stress and frustration. Like you said, it's an overall healthy process. And, and what you know, we've learned that just if you can do this even a few times during the day, but if you could do it every hour, take a little break and do a three minute little process, it's actually scientifically proven that you'll be more productive, you will think clearer and you will absorb information and assimilate it into a deeper process. If you can stop and reset your body every 52 to 90 minutes. There you go.

Boom, baby.

Yep.

Yeah. And it's amazing. Everything you said. Amy's spot on. I love that. And it's interesting. You just think about like where people have barriers or Roadblocks to actually do some of these. Right. One statement that somebody might have is, I just don't have time in my day to squeeze another thing in. What's another limiting belief or limiting statement that you can think of that you commonly hear?

Just that a lot of the time thing, but also just remembering to do it. I don't. I just can't think of another time to do this or the space. Right. I don't have a space for that. I've got to go to a gym to do that or how can I do that? I have so many. I have the kids I have to deal with.

So it flexes your creativity muscle. And the great thing is we're not like, we could have a whole conversation about stop doing something. Right. What are the things that aren't supercharging you? One of the things that aren't giving you energy that you could stop doing to make time for these, we're keeping it really easy. We're not even asking you to stop anything.

Yep.

We're asking you to find that little time to integrate it. Because there's no reason. Everybody has time to do it. There's no reason. So we're removing that mental block for you. We're not asking you to quit anything. But now, having said that, if there is something that you could stop doing that's more energy draining, that is not essential, and start adding a little bit. These. Or 20. 20% of this. 20% of this. You could do that. But we want to keep it simple. Right. We want to remove those barriers for you.

Yeah, yeah. And just a heads up, if you open up that device that you. Everybody carries around and you plug in an alarm that goes off a couple times during the day that just says these six words, pick one or two and do them. You don't even have to remember it. Your phone can tell you to do it. And I think almost all of these, you pretty much, they might not do them all perfectly, but you can even do this with your kids. So there's really no reason. I mean, start teaching your children at young age to do some of these things and be mindful of their body and their time. You'll be doing them a favor.

That's a good. That's a great point. And couples too, right? This could be bonding or kind of a good connection for couples to have a conversation. Maybe start with these and then, hey, why don't you come up with one? Did you have a new one you could throw me? What are you thinking? What else can we figure what have you read? So it can be really engaging and get us out of our mundane state of getting stuck in communication relationships a little bit.

Yep, that'd be a great thing.

What if we ever have that?

No, I don't know about you, Brian. I don't have any problem in my couple world. I How great would it be if couples started when they got home from work if they just took three to six minutes to do these together and hug each other for the full three minutes? How crazy.

That's amazing. But I that sounds amazing. I just felt barriers go up from people's mind though why I don't want to deal with them when I get home. First thing I don't want like that's.

Oh, we're going to dive into that. We're going to dive into that. Here's my thought on did you know.

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I bet you money bet money if you and your spouse partner actually did these together. You don't have to spend speak. Just go in and start making a regular process of doing this together for those three to five, six minutes when you get home or get together in the evening, I bet that emotional feeling would be a lot less because you will be bonding. You will both feel good. Your energy will match and feel good. You will both have a less threat in your day. There will be less confrontation. So I going to challenge couples to try this out.

I can see the headlines now. There's a giant baby boom in 2024 based off of our podcast. Like for some reason in late September of 2024amass amount of babies were born.

I would love for us to be responsible for that. Let's make that happen. I think we're. I think we're going to need a baby boom.

Yeah, exactly. Got to get that Social Security money up so I can collect mine.

Oh my gosh. Okay, so we totally built this up. Let's get into some swift and easy 3 minute techniques to enhance our health.

Wait, did you say six swift and Easy three minute techniques to enhance your health.

That's exactly what I said. Didn't it come out that way?

Awesome. No, it sounds awesome. That's awesome. I need those six swift and three minute easy techniques. We got this. We'll share. You want to share the first one with us?

Wait, I thought you were going first.

I'll share.

I'll share.

All right, so this is, this is one of. I'm a little bit of a spaz, actually. Amy and I are on video right now and she's sitting nice and still and I'm doing like weird stuff.

I am not sitting still.

I got my hair wav stretchy and so much.

I'm like sitting style and like no prancing. This is why we can't do video. It's going to be so hard to sit still. I can't sit still when I'm in with my coaching mentor. Like we do lives twice a week. I literally sit on my hands the entire time and my legs are like going.

Sounds so torturous. Our audio is going to be bouncing all over the place today though. Okay, so the first number one swift and easy three minute technique that you can do is bouncing in place. You can call it jumping, but when I say bouncing, it's more. It's not a jumping. You don't have to leave three feet off the ground. Right. I do this for on regular things before I start my day, before I go in with my first client. It helps me just shake things out and reset. It's like a reset button for my nervous system. Before we jumped on this podcast, before I do teach a class, before I jump on a coaching call, I love, I love bouncing in place. I do have a trampoline at home, but you do not need a trampoline. There's no excuses, no equipment needed for bouncing in place. You can bounce as fast or slow as you want. You can bounce as deep or as high as you want. It doesn't matter. So a couple big things that I love about bouncing in place. The first thing for me is I use it as a reset and it really helps with my nervous system and stress reduction. So it actually does release endorphins, which are natural mood lifters. And I feel like I can feel that instantly. So it helps me refocus and get out of my spazzy brain and my little anxiousness and just ground a little bit more. So that's one big thing. The second thing that I really like about it is, is it's really good, especially coming from a Chinese medicine Background moving blood and fluid is critical to health, right? So we need stagnation to move. So it really helps with circulation and movement of the lymphatic system to help remove toxins. But guess what? It also helps with your digestion system. A lot of our body's processes rely on movement with gravity, right? And so the bouncing up and downs, getting stuff moving, it's helping aid your digestion, your lymphatic system, your circulation. Now, some of the other benefits just to go through those are some of the big ones that I really use it for. But of course it's good for your cardiovascular system. It's good to get your heart rate up and strengthen your heart. So the cool thing about the increase in circulation and strengthening the heart is again, you don't. What if you bounced in place three times a day and your main focus was for your cardiovascular system, Guess what? You didn't have to go on that 20 minute run, right? And you could break it up. You're still getting this compounding benefit, which is amazing. So it's good for the cardiovascular health, good for heart health, health prevent, help prevent some heart disease. It's also very good for proprioceptive function. So we are proprioceptive deficient a little bit in this world. So it really helps with the coordination of your nervous system to engage muscles and find where you are in space. Therefore, it's also really helping with balance. And as we get older, one of the and important when you're young too, one of the other big things is it's really helping with your bone density. So it does fall into that weight bearing category. So it really is going to help with bone health and with bone density. So there's a lot more obviously in muscular strength you are engaging the calves and the glutes and the quads. But you know what else you're engaging?

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Drive your pelvic floor.

You're getting well. Okay, it's good core but that's a good call. Some people are going to say, as you get older, I'm not going to bounce in place because I pee myself every time. Push through, engage the core. Bounce in place. Remove that mental barrier and bounce in.

Place so that you don't pee yourself. Because the more you can train that area and stay stabilized through your pelvic floor, the better. For a number, number of reasons. It's gonna leave it there.

100, 100. And it's just to end it, to cap it off. It's actually just fun. So it does help bring that spark to me. It's like drinking bubbly seltzer water. It gives me a little pick me up. So it's my. I'm increasing my own little sparkiness.

So sparkiness.

There it is. So bouncing in place is the first swift and easy 3 minute technique to do to enhance your health.

I like it.

What is number two?

I have to just take a quick pause. And I know you said we were going to be very quick and directional on this one, but you just put an image of Ted Lasso in my head and I'm missing Ted Lasso because I've watched them all twice and I think I'm gonna have to go watch them again. Because remember in the very first one, he drinks bubble water over and he's not used to it and he ends up seeing spitting it on everybody all the time. Drink bubble. Don't drink bubble water while you're bouncing.

You're gonna see Ted Lasso on Tuesday. Huh? That's my Halloween car.

Are you gonna go? I'm gonna have to come in then.

Because I don't know, I'm gonna have to. I haven't actually found the. Got the, the jacket yet and the visor, but. But I feel like I'm gonna try.

To pull it off.

Pull off that.

I like it. That'll be so great. Okay. Anyway. Okay, so that's bouncing in place. That's. That's a very good one. I did that this morning. It is fun. And my dog will tell you it's really fun because he thinks it is the funniest, weirdest thing. And he wants to come and jump and bounce on me and jump on me when I'm bouncing because he's just. What are we doing? Are we gonna play? This is great. He's so funny. All right, so bouncing for three minutes. And if you can't do three minutes, just do what you can for three minutes and start and stopping is fine. Another thing you can do that a lot of people don't think about. Are eye movements and eye movements are impactful on our nervous system. Brian is doing great eye movement right now in the camera. It is crucial. It is very impactful on our balance, on spatial awareness, overall sensory integration. But it also helps relax the neck and shoulder. It also helps with proprioceptive and eye movement left and right is actually decreasing threat read in the body. So what can you do? Literally, you can just stretch your eyes, wake up in the morning and do nice, really big eye circles. You don't have to yank open your eyelids or anything. And if you go really slow. And so when I go into this with my traumatic or trauma response in people, what you want to try to do as I'm watching Brian, this is hard to do with the video. I can never concentrate.

I'm doing a really good job.

Both goofy. So if you open your eyes, you don't have to do it really big, but you want to try to make it big. And start with a clock. So start at 12 o' clock, and it does not matter if you're looking at the clock or you are the clock, it just do it, whatever you want. Go all the way to 12 and then really slowly work your way down and around to each one. So 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. And then you would go the other way. And you want to do it slow. Initially, you could speed up and do it a little bit smoother, but you're wanting to make sure you're hitting all the hour marks and not to jump. And what you may notice is there's maybe tightness in one of the clock areas. And you may notice that there's an area that your eyes actually don't like and you have a hard time focusing on that area. So let's just say you're doing the clock 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And you get to 9 and you're like, wow, that my eyes don't actually like that. My eyes are wanting to come away from that spot. What you can do is go to an easier spot, let's say five o', clock, an easy spot. Dart your eyes to the five o' clock and then go back to nine o' clock and then dart back to five o', clock, take a deep breath and go to nine o'. Clock. So to keep it simple, just following the clock, going nice and smooth, stretching the eyes and building some control and awareness. And maybe I'll do a longer podcast at some point that talks about what you can know about those lag spaces or those skip spaces. The other thing you can do are near and far and smooth pursuits with the eyes. So near and far is just basically looking at something far away and focusing on it and then have something close to your face, like a anything, something you could read and then focus quote on that's close to you. So you look far and read something and then look close and read something. So you're going back and forth fairly quickly. The other thing you can do is smooth pursuit. And that's just taking a pen or a pencil or even your finger and just following your eyes nice and slow in different directions. And you could do that all in three minutes. Easy breezy.

So that's amazing. If I think about something that's stressful or troublesome and I do the I stuff, does that kind of. Would that kind of automatically help me with the EMDR stuff, like the psycho emotional stuff? I mean, I know this isn't like trauma healing or anything, but like, why not think of something like, oh, that stresses me out and do my eyes counterclockwise and whatever.

Yeah, I think what that will do. So what we do know is if you go and take a walk, like one of the reasons walking is such a good thing for you, and we didn't. This wasn't going to be on our thing. But if you think about it, you're bouncing, you're creating vibration and lymphatic flow when you're taking fast vibrational walking. And if you're looking up, you're checking the horizon line so you're looking left and right. And that is all signaling to your body that you're safe and that you're not in threat. It also helps that bipedal movement help with the cerebellum reconnection with the proprioceptive system, which is also de threatening to the system. And that's why relaxing walks are so relaxing. So if you are stressed and you can go into an eye movement area, I will say that if you are super stressed, you don't want to hang out in the areas of the challenge. So if that 9 o' clock spot was hard, uncomfortable, and your eyes didn't want to stay there, if you are stressed, you don't want to push yourself into that nine o'. Clock. Okay, that's more of like an exercise. It is helpful. It is good. You don't want to have to focus on it all the time. Again, I can go into a longer podcast on that. But make sure you're breathing and being aware that you're not holding your breath while you're Doing the circles and doing eye stretches and eye movement and yes, it will help decrease threat in the body. But don't overstretch it if you're already stressed and don't force it into a stressed area if you're already super stressed.

I'm going to do that in the morning when I drink my coffee. It seems like a great time for my eyeballs to move after they've been closed all night.

I actually literally this morning was doing the bouncing while I was doing the high drills and a controlled breath work. So you get super. You can get super stacky and start challenging your coordination skills.

I love it.

So with the idea, so I near and far, focusing on something far away and focusing on something really close and doing that fairly quickly and keeping the eye health moving, being able to focus and then smooth pursuits and smooth pursuit is just where you leave your head still and you just do a motion and you just try to follow whether it's a pencil or hand and you're taking it in diagonal motions and moving it side to side and you're just wanting your eyes to stay focused on that object. And that helps with focus and balance. And you'll also notice if you're about to do something like a presentation or play a sport, you can usually do an eye drill in that smooth pursuit or the eye circles and it will help increase performance. You should be better coordinated, you should operate faster and you should be able to speak a little more clearly.

I love it. So that is the second swift and easy three minute technique to enhance your health.

That's right.

Good. All right, so the third swift and easy three minute technique to enhance your health is. I call it global balance breathing. Now again you can. This is just an idea. I like this. It's a kind of a form of box breathing. But you can do any breathing exercise you want because breath work is a direct link to your nervous system. And so I'll just explain it real quick. So I like to say it as north, south, east and west. So if I'm just breathing up into my upper chest and nothing else is moving and I'm going in through my. All of this is in through the nose for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, out for 4 seconds, hold out for 4 seconds so you can remember it easy. It's all 4 seconds. So in the nose, 4 seconds out, 4 seconds, hold out for 4 Seconds and then you're going to go south. So if you put your right hand on your heart and your left hand on your belly, north is your chest where Your heart is south is your belly. So four seconds in through your nose. Hold for four. Out for four, hold out for four. Breathe into your belly. You shouldn't feel your chest rise. In for four, hold for four. Out for four, hold out for four. And then the hard one is think about lateral to your nipple line on your midline, so below your armpits, the fish gills right there. And so this is a really hard one for people to do, but really good because it helps expand and get into different parts of our lungs that we are not used to. But it also helps stretch your ribs which helps unlock your mid back. So you're breathing. Pretend this is called east west in your nose. In through your nose for four seconds.

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Feel those ribs expand. Almost think about pushing your thumbs off your ribs. Okay, so your ribs are pushing your thumbs away. You can feel the space between your ribs open. Do the whole thing. Hold for four seconds, out for four seconds and then you just repeat the cycle four times. So north, south, east, west, 1. North, south, east, west 2. North, south, east, West, 3. North, south, east, WEST, 4. Okay, four cycles. So that puts you at about three minutes. It's actually a little less. So if you want to take six second holds and breaths into your nose, that's okay. So it's really simple to do that. I think it's a really thorough breathing exercise again that activates different parts of our lungs and has some other benefits that sometimes we don't get just from some of the other breathing techniques, but you do you. I'm just happy that you're doing it. And again, some of the benefits with that is huge stress reduction. Your breath is a direct link to your nervous system, but helps shift us from sympathetic which is more fight, flight, freeze into more Parasympathetic which is rest, restore, digest. And so if you think about a dimmer SW when you start doing the breathing techniques, you're going to feel that dimmer switch dialing down and you're going to start feeling more calm, you're going to start feeling more grounded. So huge for stress reduction. And it helping with the cortisol levels in your body gives you that sense of calmness, groundness that can over help overall improve with anxiety, with mental emotional stress. I can also really help just bring you into a much more mindfulness state of where you are in space, where you are with your body, where you are with presence. It's huge for just increasing overall focus and concentration because you are doing this slow mindful drill. But at the same time, don't forget, think about the oxygen that you're helping to deliver to your body maybe in a different way than what you have or maybe a more thorough way. Some of the other trickle down effects that I think are huge is when you do practice breathing techniques like this, obviously it helps relax and bring you into that parasympathetic. That's why I like to do it before bedtime because if you're shifting down from sympathetic more to that parasympathetic state before you go to bed now you're easy to shift into those lower brainwave states. And if you're already at a lower place, it's easier for you to get into a deeper, more restful sleep which is help recharging your body. That in turn is going to help your immune system. It's going to help with your capability to handle stressful situations and overall improvement in connection and communication. Boy, you could talk about breathwork forever. There's so many people that teach it and there's for a reason and it's been practiced for thousands and thousands of years. And the last two things just to quickly throw in there is obviously helping with lower blood pressure and and again those hormone cortisol levels and then increasing lung function and capacity. In Chinese medicine that there's a point right between the nipple line and the center of the chest called a ren 17 and the diaphragm from the ribs up is called the upper jiao. And the only two organs that are in that upper jiao are the lungs and the heart. And so what you're doing is you're really opening up and bringing a lot of energy and qi especially into that area with some of it. But then you're that lower jiao going with the south breathing and then the east west, you're getting that middle jowl. And so you're balancing these three, what we call jowls to harmonize and get the whole body to work together again. Lots of trickle down effects with this. I highly recommend you try the global balance breathing. But if any breath work you choose to do or that you've been taught by somebody three minutes, just three minutes, you got this. So that is the. Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, sorry, no jump in there. Elaborate on that.

I love all of that and I, I appreciate the like the depth of what you're talking about because a lot of people think, and I know I did initially was like, oh my gosh, it's breathing. Who isn't breathing? But it is very different effect with the different processes of breathing and there's so many different ones. And I will, I would point out, I appreciate that you also said whatever works for you. Because if you're high anxiety and you. I've had recently somebody bring this up to me that when they are in high anxiety, which was pretty much 90% of their day, unfortunately they can't do the four square breathing. They do what's called triangle breathing because that last bit of holding their breath out is signaling trauma and scarce. It scares them. So I also know with some other somatic processes for high anxiety, they don't even, they don't even try to get you to force any type of breath work. They actually just have you focus on the feeling of just a nice easy, non scheduled, non forced breath. Just breathe normally but relaxing and then just trying to feel like the breath in your ears, in the nostrils and just the body that happens, just recognizing where your body is when you're breathing that in and of itself can be so relaxing and de stressing for people. Like you said, try the balanced breathing and the box breath if you want. Global breathing is what you call it, right?

Yeah, global balance breathing. Just because I like the cue that east, northwest, south, east, west. Yeah.

So however it works for you, if you're not under a lot of anxiety, try experimenting with some different type of breath holds and awareness. And really man, we, it is such an easy free thing at the moment for us to do.

Mostly safe, mostly, mostly non.

Yeah.

And you can easily do this, do this in the bathroom, right. Like you're literally.

You get to breathe anywhere. It's fabulous.

So that was number three, Number three of our swift and easy three minute techniques to enhance your health.

Number four, number four. You can also do just about anywhere at any time and it's, it's foot Shortening exercises. And there is a bit of a process, but it don't. We don't have to overthink it. And it's literally what you're thinking. It is foot strengthening. The people forget that the muscles underneath your feet are muscles. And there are a lot of little muscles in your feet and your feet are your foundation. So it healthy feet dictate healthy ankles and healthy knees, healthy hips, healthy spine and how you stack and stand with posture. But also that rebound process, it helps the entire stabilization of the body. But I also work with people in somatic places. So a lot of people who I'm coaching with or do somatic work with are completely disconnected from their body. We are so heady. We're so caught up in anxiety or thinking or go, go, go, that just getting to a place where throughout the day you stop and feel your toes. Like everybody feel your pinky toes right now. What's going on with the pinky toes in the body and we're not. Connecting with every little part of your body is helpful to decrease threat in the body. It's also going to help with overall focus. But specifically for foot shortening, if you were to stand with and you can do this with shoes or without shoes, obviously it's a little challenging if you're wearing really compressing shoes or heels or something like that. So if you can have comfortable shoes or take your feet out of your shoes, the better. And you would stand flat. And initially, what you might have to do is act like you're just curling your toes. And so I tell people you're curling, you're going to grab a towel with your toes and curl it up or you're going to do marble pickup. If you've ever been to physical therapy, they would have you pick up marbles. But what you want to try not to do and avoid is twisting. So keep all the toes on the ground. Don't rotate through your ankles. Just pull the toes straight back and try to keep all the toes on the ground. Can you still feel your big toe and your pinky and curl them all back at the same time time and then release them and then curl them and release them over time. What you would want to do is not curl the toes. You're literally just pulling the balls of your feet back towards your heels without twisting the ankles. And you're just creating that higher arch space. And so you could start with the curling the toes, but then try to release the toes and relax them.

And then that feels really good.

And as you get better at it you can do things like adding pressure into the ball of the foot, standing on one foot, doing movement with the free leg while you're balancing and holding that foot shortening exercise on one side. So all of those will challenge your proprioceptive sense and your balance. Different muscle firing throughout the feet and the ankle and that's going to help with long term health. That helps with stability, that helps with running health. Squats. If your squats suck, look at your feet. If you've got hip pinching pain, look at your feet. If you have low back pain, look at your feet. If you have neck pain and you have forward head posture and you have forward rolled shoulders, check your feet. People do not realize how significant. Just having proper balance and stacking your body correctly improves your posture and improves all these different areas of our body that is that are out of alignment and lead to dysfunction pain, muscle firing imbalances. So yeah, foot shortening. That was my foot shortening.

I love it. I love it. You know that again, people like to do this barefoot too because it really helps ground and connect as well. And I've had people that benefit from that from like jet lag to help get over jet lag.

Nice.

But if you think about Tai chi and qigong, how they're always out barefoot on the earth, really helping ground and connect that way. Getting the earth energy connecting with the so important grounding.

If you can go outside and walk barefoot, do it. If you can go walk in the sand for stability, even better. When we I used to work with the soldiers we trained out in a sand pit.

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Number of reasons and it's the grounding, the stability work and that that shifting through the whole body to create stability and muscle firing throughout it engages your core. So if you can go out and do walking barefoot, by all means do that.

All right. Foot clinic on the beach in Bali.

That's.

There we go. Sign up today.

Let's do it. So that was our what?

Yes.

Number four Four.

Yeah, four. The fourth swift and easy three minute technique to enhance your health. All right, so number five, the fifth swift and easy three minute technique to enhance your health is that called a mindful rep. And so there's actually a great book called Positive Intelligence. And he calls these PQ reps. That's his material. He does. It's awesome. I like to think about it as a mindful rep. And with this, again, three minutes. And it's nice. It kind of ties into to Amy's eye thing a little bit, but different in that there's a lot of like mindfulness and there's a focus with that. Right? And as far as looking at something from afar and something close. But with this, you can use your ears, you can use your hands. So for instance, if you find a texture or something and you're literally just feeling with your fingertips and you're thinking about every detail that you feel, how does it make you feel to rub that texture? What are you feeling under your fingertips? And almost think about like you're becoming hypersensitive and really dialing in and fine tuning every little sensory proprioceptive aspect that you feel. Or if you're listening with your ears, do you hear something far away that you can focus on and just focus on that, that sound? What is that sound again? How does it make you feel? What are the textures of it? What are the, the details of it that you can pick out? Or listening to something really close or a certain note in a song. You can use your eyes and again, do some of the techniques that Amy was talking about. Or literally stare at a candle flame. Right. If you light a candle in the morning and you're drinking coffee, just watch that flame and how it moves and the textures it puts out in the shadows and the light that it puts out. And so it doesn't matter what it is, it's just a mindful rep. And so think about your senses. You could do it in taste, hold that coffee in your mouth. I'm just clearly, I like coffee. Take a sip of coffee, hold it in your mouth for a little bit. How does the texture of that, what is the flavors that you're picking up? And just totally geek out and take yourself to another level with that. So it's very visual and tactile and experiential. And so it's just really an immersion into those senses and just hyper focus on whatever it is for three minutes. The sound of water dripping. Just get creative. There's something around you at all times that you can utilize so again, definitely no barriers with this one. And the nice thing about it is this really some of the health benefits is really improving your concentration and think about the ability to meditate for 20 minutes. That can be really hard for people because they feel like they, their brain has so much noise and they get hijacked by their brain. So here it's just three minutes, right. And what you're doing is you're allowing it to maintain and hold a deep concentration and focus. So it does help reduce some of the mental clutter that you have going on in your head. It helps start to build those muscles for you to really focus and practice shutting out those other noises that's around you, which can then lead to huge reductions in stress and the ability to manage and compartmentalize some of the multitasking activities throughout your day, which can then help increase your productivity by helping manage the brain and help you become the manager and facilitator to what it can do and take back, take back control a little bit right of your own brain. Helps with memory, helps reduce, like I said, all the mental clutter. Makes you taller. No, I'm just kidding. I just wanted to throw something, something random out there, but really a lot of self awareness. And then again that also helps benefit some of your other mindful stuff that you're connecting with and just that sense of deep awareness around the things like picture you, you strengthen those muscles and then you're out on that walk out in the mountains and all of a sudden you hear things like the leaf ruffling below your feet that maybe you never heard before or the trickling little river that you just might not have picked up before because you're in your brain and you all the other mental clutter stealing and robbing some of your other senses from you that's down and dirty. But guess what? Again, three minutes, you can do it. And it doesn't matter where you're at, couch, bathroom, bedroom, driving, maybe not there. Be safe.

Yeah, be safe. But you know what you could do is really learn to practice like just feeling the material on your steering, feel the actual pressure in your foot on this, on the gas pedal or the brake. What's get out of the space of overthinking road rage for some people or worrying about where you're going and what time you're going to be there and just be safe with it. But yeah, setting that, is that a three minute timer? You can literally just tell your phone to set a three minute timer and sit and just hear and think and feel and what a great way to. Even if you were to stack that with breath work and foot shortening and bouncing on the dirt in the sand or whatever, what a great way to combine all of those and feel the, the sand underneath your feet, feel the ground underneath your feet, work on your foot shortening, do some bouncing and breath work again, you can combine all that into just a few minutes of practice. And you're doing so much good health benefits for yourself in a short period of time. So I think we're on our last one.

Yeah, that was the fifth swift and easy three minute technique to enhance your health. What is the six?

That's number six. Okay. So we've talked often about cold therapy and we. You do cold therapy often? I've actually, I don't know if we've done a podcast since I started making a habit, not daily, but I have been going and sitting in cold rivers. So whenever I can there's like hiking and there's a couple of places not far from me that I can go and get into the cold river. And even outside my place, I have a nice little walk area and then we have a little creek river space that runs right through by my house. And I don't, can't. It's pretty busy. So I'm not like getting in this, the river here, but I can get into my, put my legs and feet into it. But another good way to get into ice therapy is a cold ice bath for your face in the morning. So improve circulation, you decrease inflammation. It's very awakening. So a lot of people who wake up groggy and tired and have a hard time starting in the morning, their cortisol is actually low. And doing something like a cold bath for some people can help reset cortisol, but also it can help clearly pull up your cortisol. And we need cortisol to be high in the morning if you're, if you want to wake up or when you're waking up, that's what's happening. Your cortisol is raising. It wakes you up if you're having a hard time. That's a perfect way to get energized and ready to go. It helps with mental clarity, all of these things helps you learn to regulate your breath, helps you regulate your ability to tolerate discomfort, which in turn helps. Extremely helpful. Helps with that mood and mental clarity. But it helps with distress reduction because you're actually learning to safely monitor your breath and your control over a discomfort or discomforting scenario. Goodness gracious, how hard was that to say?

I Think you know what? I like the way you said it.

Thanks.

Easy three minute techniques to enhance your health.

Both. Say it again. But also with the cold. So all you have to do is take a big bowl, put water and ice in it, and as early as you can. So the sooner you can in the morning when you wake up, the better. And you literally. As what? As what you can manage. Obviously, if you're. If you deal with a lot of stress or if it's very high anxiety for you, put your face in cold water to hold your breath. You're going to start easing into it. You can just take ice and rub it on your face, but you want to work your way up to being able to hold your breath. Just take a nice little easy breath and literally put your face down into the bowl of ice water and hold your breath. But calm your heart, calm your body, pay attention to the sensations in your body. Work through a little bit of discomfort. You only have to stay in it for just a couple of seconds and maybe do that up to 10 times. You don't have to do 10 times right at the beginning. Try it for three, but for a period of three minutes. If you practice this back and forth, go in cooling, do the ice bath come out. Maybe that's where you do some breath work and some bouncing. Do another face plunge. You will see a lot of great benefits to that space. But the idea there is, in addition to all the things we know about the, the skin, the health, the circulation, the inflammation and all that ability to monitor your body and know that you're in a safe scenario when your body wants to register that this is danger, quote unquote, or this is uncomfortable, your body's ability to manage that really helps with stress reduction and anxiety. So that's the last one. Yay.

And the only thing it doesn't take.

And I'm sorry. And then maybe after sometimes of doing the face bath, you'll be ready to jump in a freezing bowl of ice water up to your neck. Yeah.

The river is so much nicer in nature than my freezer. But that's okay. Gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah. The only thing that doesn't take three minutes is making this podcast. Everything else you can go through.

That's right. Great.

Take a lot longer. A lot longer. I am amazed. And it's just a reminder when we're going through these of how much opportunity we have throughout the day to do so many more things that are badass for us and healthy for us. And what if we just do those Little things, how that's giving back to us. And it's unfortunate now at this going and looking at all those opportunities too, on how much of a gift that we are.

That's it. How much of a gift we are. I know it sounds like cliche to some people, but regardless of any type of religious belief or whatever, you're alive on this earth for a reason and for a purpose for a short period of time. And it is a gift. Like, why not just take advantage of adding to the potential of why we're here and making it it a good for you thing. Right. Just find ways to shift the negativity into something productive and healthy.

Celebrate the gift.

Three minutes, man. It just takes three minutes.

So those are to get you rolling. So come up with your own what fits for you. Just get curious with them though. We're always talking about on all things good for you. It's about curiosity and getting you guys and getting everybody involved in their process taking back control. Right. Because you are the captains. You are have the personal agency. So what are you going to do three minutes today for you, three minutes. What are you going to do three times three minutes? How can you build on that? But be consistent, right? So you can mix it up. You don't have to be consistent with the same one, but just be start getting consistent and curious with the things that you can do for your three minutes.

Absolutely. Use your phone to help you write it down if you need to put it. You've got this. Everybody go spend three minutes making your life fabulous. And Brian, thank you for spending more than three minutes with me this morning.

Thank you, Amy, for spending more than three minutes with me, as always.

And someday we'll be presentable enough for video.

Geez. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I thought. What are you talking about? My dance moves are on fire today. It'll be funny.

That'll be funny.

All right, thank you everybody, as always. And please, I know we fell off our consistency for a minute because we have some other fun projects that we're working on to tie this, but we love this and we're here and we're going to keep delivering some great information and working hard to just share what we love to do. So please share the love. Give this podcast. Share it with a friend or family member. Go back if this is the first time you're hearing it. Explore some of our previous podcasts. If you could like it, leave a review that helps us get ratings and pushed up on our platforms that we're on. Whether if you're on Apple's platform or I can't even think right now. I'm just saying weird noises.

Give us a little hello. Give us a little love. Give us a little love.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. You're all awesome. Appreciate it.

Goodbye, Amy Hi Brian, everybody. Have a good day. Bye. Hey friends, thank you for tuning in to the All Things Good for you podcast. Please note any information, experiences, ideas or opinions discussed today are for educational and thought provoking purposes only and not intended as medical advice. If anything piqued your curiosity, please consult with your doctor or personal medical professional. And if you're enjoying All Things Good for your podcast, hop on over and leave us a five star review so we can continue delving in and providing great content. Thanks again and we hope you are inspired to stay informed and responsible along your health and wellness journey.

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There and feel the in your hair Chevy EVs have you covered like the Blazer EV with bold style that's sure to you away and with Silverado EV towing is a breeze with the capability to hitch up and tow with ease and Equinox EV helps you keep moving along like with confidence Chevrolet together let's drive.