EP 67 Mind Body Connection

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Whether you believe in ancient wisdom or modern science or whatever is, you have to know at a visceral level that the things you think about in your mind affect you on a physical level. And physical level for sure affects us all on a mental level.

Hey, friends, thank you for listening to the all things good4u 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. Happy Sunday, Amy.

Oh, happy Sunday. It's a fun day. We decided we were singing today.

Sunday before Martin Luther King. Monday.

Yes.

Can you do some. Some editing on that for me and just like tune that up a little bit?

I will see if there's an AI script that I could plug in there to make you sound like Frank Sinatra. There you go.

Okay, I'll take a little Frank.

Okay. Okay, perfect.

I've been up since 4am today, and so just so you know, I might be a little loopy, so you're gonna have to put up with me.

All right. Any particular exciting thing that you're happening at 4am? Usually I'm up at 4am to go skiing, but that is not happening today because it's like, cold. Really cold.

I do think I was taking somebody to the airport, but I do think it is 20 degrees warmer in the mountains than it is actually here.

Okay, well, that's a wrap. It's time to go skiing.

See you later podcast.

Actually, it's. It's Martin Luther King weekend. It's a mad house. So I'm actually looking at going skiing on Tuesday or Wednesday this week because I can.

I love it. Yeah. And they just got, I think, two feet of snow. So excited, baby.

I'm looking forward to it.

Okay, so what are we talking about today, Amy? Let's just improv this up a little bit and throw something out there.

What do you Got. I thought we were just having coffee and catching up. It's been forever since we've joined each other in a podcast again.

I know. The last one we did was the Quantum Pulse, I believe.

Yes, yes. And how were your holidays and all that?

Everything was wonderful. It was a nice balance. The nice thing is it wasn't overwhelming and it was a little bit of everything. So it was just nice family time and just adventure. Little small adventures here and there and lots of cooking, of amazing food and chillaxing.

Yay. Mine was very relaxed. Yeah. It wasn't too hairy. Carried. And my daughter actually hosted Christmas this year, which is really exciting. And she did a great job and good job. Yeah. So I didn't do anything too wild and crazy. It was pretty. Pretty chill, which I enjoyed it. Yeah, I needed some. Yeah, I really needed some downtime, I think. So it was perfect timing.

Good way to start 2024.

Yes, yes. I. There's a whole shift of things happening. Did you pick a. Did you pick a word for the year?

I did not pick a word. I have been and I need to finish it today. I do a thing called Lifebook for the beginning of the year. And so it's basically, I have different chapters for every part of my life, whether it's relationships, finances, whatever. So picture like a book, different chapters, and then I put different images and quotes into those chapters to set my intention and what I want it to look like. And then there's four different categories within each chapter that define what that looks like. And so instead of a word, it's a little bit. Yeah, it's like a crazy vision boardish, if you will. But I rewrite. I look at what I wrote the previous year for each chapter, and then I'll rewrite it for what I want it to look like. And sometimes it's just changing like a sentence or two or change in a whole paragraph. So I did not pick a word, but I picked a lot of other things.

I like that. How can you share this with me? Because I do the life wheel on a regular basis. But that sounds really fun, this chapter thing. I like that. I like that. And it also. Just shifting like a focus. It's not a rewriting.

Yeah, yeah, actually. And sometimes, like some of the stuff I wrote, I was like, oh, my God, that was really good. And sometimes, again, it's just changing a word or are you off the path? Are you not being congruent to what you were trying to create in the previous year? Do you still want that? Did you level up did you grow for what you had put down before? So it's just a nice self reflection. So it's not a lot of people. When we talk about goals and setting your intentions or big things, it's just nice to like regroup, revisit everything. How are you? Like, where are you at? What do things look like? It's good.

Yeah. Nice.

I'll show you. I'll show you mine. And you can just have the template and you can rewrite it if you want. I'll give you the little template for it.

Awesome. Yeah, let's do that. That's very good. Yeah. So my. Yeah, my. My word came up. I didn't pick it. It just kept showing up and then it just was like, all right, I think this is. This makes sense. And it's a focus word and it's fruitful.

What is it? What is it? Tell me the word.

That's it. Fruitful.

Fruitful. I'm sorry, I thought you're saying the word is fruitful, like it's going to be fruitful. I like fr. That's good.

I think I've mentioned before that I have a massive irritation about the word serving. It no longer serves me. And I. That bothers me. And if you use that word, I'm not judging you. You do what you do. I do not care what words you use. For me, it bothers me. I don't appreciate it. And I definitely feel that the word fruitful is much more applicable. And so I want to just be more reflective of my life and focus my energy, my words, my time spent on what is what fruits, what does that bear? What does that show up in the end? What is that producing? So for me, it's much more fluid, has more flu.

Fluidity.

Fluidity. Because what is that like, what's showing up from the efforts that I'm making and what I'm putting my energy to, what are the results that I'm getting? It doesn't have to be performance driven. It just means that there's growth and influence in a good way and that I'm showing up for myself and for others, pushing forward with the kinds of intentions that I need throughout the year.

So very beautiful, Very beautiful. Good job. Good job.

Thanks. Thank you.

Today's topic that we actually do have a topic for, I think as just to tie in since you started talking about the moving into 2024 and words and things like that. I think that this is an important one to help also guide us into having a healthier mind and body and a deeper Understanding of the mind body connection. So I believe we are going to be talking about the mind body connection and all of its aspects on how to increase the sensitivity to that awareness. What does that mean? A little science behind it. Is that. Is that the correct topic? Am I on the right page today?

I think so. I think looking forward. Just like the word, your word for the year, you're setting an intention and. And I think what the focus of our conversation, what spurred this was a book I read and that we shared and that it's really understanding. We talk a lot about positive thinking and mindset and on it. But now we have so much more studies that are coming out that show really what you think and what you focus on and how you decide to interpret a scenario. The influence of your thoughts on not just your productivity, your mindset, but actually everything. Your body, your. Your health. It is really just significant that your interpretation and what you choose to think is possible and how you decide to interpret a. A situation is significant to your entire life. Whatever it might be applied to. I think of the book that I spurted on. It was a recent book. It's called the Mindful Body by Ellen Langer. I actually mentioned that in my last podcast where I jumped on because I. I was. It re. It was confirming a scenario that I was dealing with and a process that I was working through on just trusting yourself on a decision. But then I read her book and it confirmed a couple of things and it just spurred on a lot of other research. It reminded me of some of the other books that I had read, like the Happiness Project by Sean Archer. I'm not sure if it's Archer. Sorry, Sean. But it just tied together a long history of thought processes. And then she's just been really diligent and doing a lot of actual research studies. That confirms a lot of the suspicions or the thoughts that I had about things. Yeah. And then you have great wisdom and insight on the process of how that translates or how that may show up with the Chinese medicine. And coming from that acupuncture, Eastern world side of things, that I'm very curious to hear more about how that ties in.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I just think that for going through some of this stuff and especially like from a Chinese medicine role, which we'll talk about later, thinking about how the mind and body's connected and how the things we think about shape our world, but how it also affects our physical body and how our physical body also therefore affects our mind and our mental health. And just that Connection how we're still like every time science has researched that, has proved this or the new scientific thing, they're putting this. And it's just amazing still to think back that for thousands and thousands of years there has been much more hypersensitivity, hypersensitivity and awareness about all of this. And we've in 2024 still, I think we've moved away from that sensitivity. We're less sensitive and less aware of those things because we have so much external noise and things like that's affecting our lives. And part of my interest in this conversation today too is to understand those connections and how we can really fine tune and get back to some of those sensitivities to it. But it's just interesting that for thousands of years people have been really in tune with the movements of our thoughts and how it affects our organs and our, in our internal body and the things around us that's manifested. And we still need proof, we still need scientific proof to come back to that. Oh, the latest research, Men's Health magazine, a study was done and oh my God, meditation actually does lower your blood pressure. And so I'm going to start meditating. It's like why do we need now into this new scientific article to come out and to, to validate something that has been around forever. And for me, I'm all about what's your experience? What's been the collective experience over time on, on how this relates and let's pay attention to it. Like why do we have to keep restarting things? Let's build from the wisdom from the past. Let's build and move forward. And here we are today and there's still something to learn. There's still like your words of wisdom and these conversations hopefully ignite, ignite and fuel an interest and curiosity to, to get more experience with that.

Yeah, yeah. It is funny when you think about it. We always, I think just human beings tend to need a lot of evidence for things in general. They're looking for proof or other people to have similar experiences. And that trust factor, again, it's that I don't want to do this whatever because I need to see it worked for so many people and, and this was the outcome to prove to me that I can do that or that I want to participate in that or whatever. So I know it's human nature, I think to try to look for evidence. But I also think something like you've said, we've lost a little bit of focus on or practicing. Is practicing the possibility of curiosity one of the reasons we started this was like we just got curious about what could work. What does this do when we try this? And you're always very much in our practice looking for new devices and new approaches. And even in coaching, one of the main processes is us just asking questions, presenting our clients with their opening their mind to look for a what if it was this, or could it be this? Or why do you think that is? And being more open to possibilities and showing how that actually opens up the idea of better health, better life choices, better appreciation, a different option for you to look at things that might be a challenge. And yeah, I think that's why I like all of this is it does tie together. Unfortunately. Unfortunately, we are coming to a place where things that you and I have been interested in for a long time and clearly other people have been practicing and doing for thousands of years is becoming more mainstream. And it's because more people are getting curious and looking at these things as a potential what if. How do I feel? How does this work for me? What if I didn't get upset about this? What if this was working in my favor when it could have been looked at as a tragedy? I love all of that because I just think it creates stronger people and a more enriched life. And I think we can benefit the world better when we look at it in that way. But let's. So let's jump in. One of the things that I was intrigued in, like from Ellen Langer's book, she. One of her biggest research programs was called Counterclockwise. And it's where they took a bunch of elderly group of people and they recreated a 1959 environment. So they took older elderly people who were participating in this and they put them in an environment that was all in their early 20s. I think it took them back to their youth. There were no mirrors or anything like that. But everything, the furniture, the wallpaper, the photographs, the newspapers, the tv, the shows that were on their clothing, they put pictures of them in that time frame in this environment. And what they found was that they adopted a mindset of that time frame, really. Their body became more resilient, they had less pain, they had better heart rate, they had better blood pressure, they moved better, they were happier, they remembered things better, they engaged with each other better. All because they were surrounded with the idea that they weren't.

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Elderly. They were back in their 20s and because they started thinking and believing that process, their body actually healed itself in that way. And it's absolutely fascinating. And what Ellen Langer is really good to say is this doesn't mean that every scenario is going to work that way. She's not trying to tell us if we could just make believe we're in a young environment. But what she does say is that it makes it possible that it could influence a number of people in a positive way, depending upon what we set our focus on and what we see ourselves as. That it can in fact affect your health. Yeah.

Real quick, it reminds me when you were talking, I was like, oh, it's like the movie Somewhere in Time. I don't know if you ever saw that movie. It's old Christopher Reeves movie that took place on Mackinac Island. It's a love story though. But his, he has to set the room to this time period. But it's more kind of time traveling. But it's a very good romantic movie, so you should watch that. I think that's a fascinating study because again, experiences that I have with that kind of same situation with clients or your parents or like when I see older people hanging out with younger people, it helps them like they're really a younger, older person. They really behave and again have less pain and they're more active and stuff like that. And vice versa. If you're a lot younger person and you're hanging out with a lot older people, then you start changing that. That's one of my thought processes about. I don't want to go to a retirement home. No. I want to go to like Club Med and hang out with 30 year olds when I'm old.

Yeah, yeah.

To rewind that because there is again that mental perception of stuff and that that goes to those miri neurons too. So in a way like that study is tricking the miri neurons. So it's starting to mirror that those more youthful things. And then the body neurologically is adapting and changing or whatever. And so you hang out with older people, those mirroring neurons, maybe other people with a lot of health issues and stuff like that start to. You start to sync up with it.

Yeah, yeah. And we've talked a lot about just mindset and health and like studies that show visualization. When somebody is just watching or visualizing themselves, they get Stronger or better. Like they this the. We've talked before about the cyclists who visualized winning and muscle development. They actually developed muscle more. We've talked about this a lot. But I think it's good to remind ourselves that is something that we have to continue working on and being aware of, actively learning and noticing new things. Right. What is even just the perception like a session I did with all my coaching clients. It was just a building project that we do that I do with my clients that they get assignments to choose to participate in. And it was to notice how many irritating scenarios you were. You encountered. Like you're walking the dog and somebody to pick up the dog poop and you start to just. You just have this. You notice your thought about this. That like that irritated me. Why did that irritate me and why does that bother me and why did I think that was like somebody being neglectful and disrespectful and that's gross. Well, what if you shifted that. What if you turn that scenario into the idea of, oh, maybe it was dark and it was really cold and their dog ate something they shouldn't have and they had to go out in the middle of the night and they couldn't see it and they didn't have a bag and they'd probably come back out in the morning and pick it up. Is that a possibility? Yeah. And it was funny. Is just like the shifting of even my thought about. And then I thought I'll just run over and grab a bag and pick it up. It's fine. I'm gonna help that person out so they don't have to worry about it. Of course then they're wandering on or the next day looking for the poop that they can't find for 20 minutes, but whatever.

Well, I think in all that too just I feel like we just need to also really highlight the fundamental belief that needs to be adopted or the fundamental knowledge to this that is 100 true. Whether you believe in ancient wisdom or modern science or whatever is you have to know at a visceral level that the things you think about in your mind affect you on a physical level. And the physical level for sure affects us on a mental level. And we can easily see that because when people are pain or in pain, they're more irritable, they can be depressed with chronic pain, they're not getting enough sleeps, body's not in rest and repair mode. So then they start that chronic inflammation cycle and then it's a cascade of other health issues. So we can easily See where the physical can affect the mental and emotional, but it's harder to see where the mental and emotional affects the physical. And there's a word called interoception. And it's really the key link for having that deep insight into and the ability to feel what we're feeling. Like you said, what is that emotion about? Or what emotion am I even having? What is that emotion about? Where do I feel that in my body? And then how is that affecting you? What is it affecting your gut? Is it affecting your thing? So you understand how those play a part? And then by changing that, how does your body feel here? That fine tuning and listening to the two systems, if you will, and in that, from this kind of framework, how they have this inner dialogue and how one affects the other. And we'll talk about it here in a bit. But the Chinese medicine is like very clear on how emotions can affect you and what are some of the imbalances and symptoms you might present.

It'd be really curious to do a little experiment with people about just like what you're saying, your emotions affect your organ system. Right. One of the things that, it's a big topic and that Ellen Langer talks about in this whole process is the labeling, like the naming of things. And she talks about like the idea of borderline, the borderline effect. So she, I think in one of her situations, she was talking about an education process or even, I think she also talked one about a diabetic and giving a diagnosis or receiving a diagnosis. So let's say she says, okay, you, you take a, you're taking an exam, or you, you're going through your college degree and you get a 69 versus a 70. 69 means you're less than average. You don't pass, you're not really doing great. 70 means you're acceptable. And then you're labeled with that and you're in your mind are thinking that too. And that could have been, Man, I just misread a question that way. Or you could go on and work harder the next year and really be an A student in something. Or how many of you have gone into a doctor and asked, what was your actual graduating gpa? Were you just barely squeaking by? Or you in a. Okay, you went to Harvard or Yale or whatever is the prestigious education system these days, but did you just barely. How smart are you? Nobody does that. We look at the results of what happens afterwards. We look at the proof in the pudding. We look at their numbers and their stats and their research and what they say and how they show up. Same thing with the diabetics. She was saying, like, man, there's somebody who. There's the line of being a. A diabetic could be just one thing, point, dot, number. And if they just shifted a little bit, they wouldn't be diabetic anymore. It's like she's. But yet they could probably change their entire life in thinking they're a type 2 diabetic. And they label themselves as that forever. When does that fine line happen? And so same thing, like your emotion, your thought, your understanding and interpretation of a label, a name. You're single, you're married, you're divorced, you're. You're this age or that age. Like, there's so many perceptions of what you're being labeled and what you think and the emotion that runs around that.

Yeah, that. Yeah, that also a part of that too, that I feel like is that things are always fluid and constantly moving and in flux. And that's. Everything's supposed to be moving and changing and. And I think that speaks to a lot of stagnation and belief systems. And when somebody tells you, I. You are this, that's very stagnant. That's. And then unfortunately, you have a growth mindset. You have a fixed mindset. So maybe a physician told somebody that with a fixed mindset say the same thing. You are this. Right. And the person that's receiving and listening happens to be somebody who, from social conditioning, from epigenetics, whatever, has more of a fixed mindset. So they're going to take that in a whole different way. And unfortunately, that could again, have. I'm sure there's some studies around this that they're probably going to be more prone to more disease process and imbalance and a cascade of effects where if that same physician told somebody that with a growth mindset who believes in more fluidity and change and possibility of getting out of that, then probably, statistically they're going to be able to adopt some behaviors and changes and stuff that can maybe pull them out of having more of a cascade effect of other health issues around that.

Yeah, yeah, that's what they're coming up showing is like, it's a lot about what your preconceived ideas, your expectations about a scenario and what you decide is the potential. So another study that they've done is the wound healing process. And it's a minor wound, but they're not hurting people, but it's a minor wound. And they say on average, this is how long it takes that Wound to start to heal itself or what have you. And they put them in front of. They do three different groups and they put them in front of a clock. But one of the clocks is slowed down, one of the clocks normal speed, and one of the clocks is set to go faster. And so they're watching time go by and they've been told the expected average time for that wound to heal itself. And what they have found is that, okay, I'm just generalizing it just for the name, the study is more significant. But they get a wound, they say it takes an hour and a half for that to start to close up and feel better. They put them in front of the slow clock, the regular clock, and the fast clock, whatever that time was. For that, an hour and a half was how fast the wound healed, started to heal itself. So whatever they perceived to be real was what happened in their body. They did another study with people cleaning the hotel rooms and they ran this experiment with them. And they told some of them that their daily activity was constituted as exercise. Good exercise. It actually helps, you know, you're doing good with all your exercise. Like you're working out.

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Drive during your time at work. And then the other part, other people, they told that it wasn't or they didn't tell them it did anything. And then they watched them. And the people who perceived their daily activity as good exercise showed improvement in their weight, blood pressure, their. Their heart rates, their other. I don't remember all the numbers, but there were actual physical measurements that they were taking that all improved because they didn't do anything different. They just decided and understood that what I'm doing constitute as much as an.

Hour in the gym, which is really cool because the. In sports psychology that's so accepted, right? So all these amazing athletes are. A lot of them do visualizations of what does the game look like, how am I playing in the game, what am I? Or how am I performing? Or going through a gymnast, going through their whole routine in their mind and seeing the every move leading to the next. And. And so how the mind then affects the physical body and you actually do perform better just by adding that actual extra visualization. And it's so accepted there. But why don't we. Why are we not visualizing that as. As well, on a regular basis? Why? It's. We're just as good as an athlete. We deserve to incorporate some of the same things. So let's adopt those and improve and grow.

Yeah. And here's where I got into it. I was like, oh, man. When she was talking about the potential and telling people, let's tell people how quickly they can improve or how quickly they can heal. And that my first thought was, oh, I know a lot of people are going to set a really hard expectation on themselves and then be disappointed and convince themselves that they failed if they didn't achieve or heal or do something in this short a time frame. And then of course, I'm like, but that is part of the process. And she goes, and we go into that. It's your thinking still limited. Like, maybe I'll never be a marathon runner and win the Boston Marathon. Does that really mean I can't improve my running speed and feel better and enjoy a run because of my mental state? I reflected, I'm going to tell you something funny. I was going to wait and do it, but I'm just going to jump in here and tell you because you know how I've often said I can't stand running, I don't really enjoy running. And I. It dawned on me the other day because I was out running with Tavi and playing, and I was like, that's crap statement. Like, I do running. It actually feels good. I enjoy a trail run. And I was like, I have to stop that. And so in February, I'm. It's silly. It's more about consistency and commitment than anything else because some of people are going to just laugh if you're a runner. But I'm running a mile every day from the second day in February. There's a reason why I'm doing that. On the second day of February is a time frame that matters. So Basically, I'm running 26 days. Every day, I'm running a mile. That's it. Every single day. So I was like, I'm going to run a marathon in the month of February.

That is awesome. That is awesome.

But I'm just doing it one mile a day.

Hey, that is awesome. I think that's hilarious and good for you. For.

Yeah, so, yeah, it's more about a consistent program that I'm working towards because there's other things involved in it. But I just kind of laughed and I just thought, oh, my God, I'm going to Run a marathon.

Running a marathon.

I love it.

I love it. I'll get you a little badge when you're done. Create a little marathon certificate from here. You have to have a name for your marathon.

But it is funny that we just. That even just that, like laughing and just having a lighthearted process about it. And I'm going to laugh every time I get up in the morning and just go, I'm going to run a marathon every day or a mile every day. It's just, it's humorous and it literally just shifts the way we think about things and the interpretation of our idea. And it's not that I will fail because I didn't run all 26.2 miles in one day. It's that I still ran it. It's fine, like funny. And it is a shift of the preconceived expectations of what we think we're doing as good. Okay. So if you don't heal as fast or you don't get your knee to the level of this in your recovery after knee surgery as fast as this person, does not the idea that it's possible to heal in three weeks as opposed to six months, inspire you a little bit to think that there's a possibility for a better improvement and not to beat yourself up with this idea that you failed and you're having these negative, limited thinkings about yourself? Because what I laughed about was then I was reading in Peter Attia's book Outlive was like one of the measures of long life was being able to run under 10 minute, one mile. It wasn't how often, it wasn't how many times you're doing a marathon or 5Ks or anything. It was literally, can you run a mile under 10 minutes on a regular basis? And so I just laughed because I'm like, oh my gosh, I could be beating myself up and making fun of myself for not running a marathon in one day, but I'm actually doing something really good for my body long term by training my body to run an under. I'm gonna do it less but 9 minute mile every day. And that is actually potentially much better for my joint health, for recovery time, for muscle building, for heart building, than me trying to push myself to go run a whole marathon. So again, it's just perception of possibility and what could be.

Yep, there's just to tap into the longevity aspect of running the mile under 10 minutes. There's been studies over the years with people that have more mobility. For instance, if you have somebody lay down on the floor and get back up. Somebody who can get up quickly off the floor and move swiftly has. Has been associated to a high. Now, same age. We're talking about the same age of people. So if you took 27275, you're. And you had them each lie down that technically the person that can get up and have more mobility and move more effortlessly is going to have a longer lifespan than somebody who is really challenged to have that mobility, to get up and have that with the smoothness and the quality of movement stuff.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of studies out there. And it's. Oh, it's a longevity test. Lay down on the floor, get up, bounce up. You're looking good.

Exactly. And then what's our perception around that? Because I got hooked into this, right. I got into. Oh my God, I got to run this. And my grip strength, what I do for a living. My hands are pretty frigging tired at the end of the week. And I actually have a hard time doing the grip strength because my hands are exhausted and those muscles are tired. Now if I gave them a rest, I can probably have incredible grip strength. I'm told all the time My. My hand strength is phenomenal. But I got freaked out one time because I was like, what? My grip strength. I'm going to die. And then I thought, oh, my gosh. My great grandmother was 102 when she passed. She was. Walked a quarter of a mile on farmland. She didn't run a mile and under 10 minutes. She. I don't know what her grip strength was. I'm assuming she had great hand strength. But I remember she had a struggle near her end of age, cutting a lemon and holding her knife correctly. And she was starting to lose vision and awareness. So she was starting to. She would sometimes recognize she had the. The knife upside down instead of down on the serrated side. And she'd cut her lemons at 101.

How many fingers did she have left at 101?

All 10.

Okay.

And she had pretty good posture. She had a little bit of a kyphosis happening, but not bad. And. But I just thought, okay, these are all really good things to be aware of, but let's not trick ourselves into also labeling and naming our failures and our wins and our potential to live long because of these ideas that we have to do it this way and it has to look like this. And if we're not hitting this measurement, because I'm guessing these are still labels and overall generic averages. Right. Do we know people who lived My grandmother Did not eat a friggin Blue Zone diet. She ate. She ate healthy food, she exercised her body. She enjoyed her family. He believed she had a spiritual connection. She didn't drink, unfortunately. It always makes me a little sad that my grandmother didn't at least drink a little wine because that would make me happier. But like she didn't worry about a lot of stuff. She did eat off of the ground most of her life. They farmed, they worked hard, they moved their body, they exercise. It's okay. We have to keep things in perspective and understand what are we focusing on. What's our brain deciding to interpret information and pain as or difficulties and challenges as. How do you When I shifted when I was riding a lot back in Texas and I just started cycling, I was riding with a group of guys mostly. I don't forgive me if I've told the story before, but I got out there, I had no idea what I was doing cycling. I. I didn't know what I was doing. I bought a book, it was by this guy and his trainer, Lance Armstrong and Chris Carmichael. I had no idea who they were and then found out Lance was something impressive and oh, they have this thing where they ride through France and I was on my mountain bike that weighed 45 pounds with slicks on it on a trainer that a friend had given me reading this book and then found out about the Then I was riding, watching the Tour de France, riding along with them, visualizing myself in the and then I, you know, found a road bike and jumped in with this group and they laughed at me and they were like there's a lot of the ladies and there's a group that rides this ride. It was a little shorter, a little easier. And I was like no, I'm doing that one. I'm doing the one you guys are doing. It's a longer ride. It was all the badasses and.

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I joined in with them. I dropped like crazy. I I think I've mentioned this before, right that my nickname was comes in last and puking but never quits.

I love it.

And eventually I really kept up with them. And then what I learned was that the guys that really led this were semi Pros and I never caught up with them and they could drop me in a second. But I didn't know. I, I just thought I'm just going to keep working harder and get better. And then there was a time where it was literally blowing wind raining uphill and I thought, this is nonsense. This is awful. Why am I. I can't believe that God is sending this rain right here. I really just need to feel good today. And then something clicked in my brain and I thought, oh my gosh, this is going to make me so much stronger. Like how much better of a rider am I going to be? Because I'm riding uphill in 50 mile an hour wind, guys with rain smacking me in the face like, I'm gonna have great quads. This is great. And I got to the top of that hill and it was so freaking wonderful. But it was literally the interpretation of how this scenario was going to look for me. Okay. This hard thing is actually going to make me do better. How. Anyway, so I think we might be getting off topic just a little bit. But it's our perception of time and even like a lot of the stuff that Dr. Lang or Ellen Lang, I think she's a doctor. Yes, she is not a medical doctor, but research doctor. And that was a lot of her studies, was just like your interpretation of pain, your interpretations of difficulty, your interpretations of how, what your potential could be and what you focused on really determined what you achieved and how well you felt, how you healed, how you age, how you move, your pain, understanding your memory. All of it starts with what you're focused on and how you choose to think about it.

We'll go back to your grandma for a second if you don't mind. So.

Not at all.

You mentioned that your grandma didn't physically eat healthy. And I'm not saying she just wasn't as concerned with that stuff. But that goes back to the physical effect and the emotional and emotional effect in the physical. So she sounded like she was happy and you said she didn't. She wasn't like super worried or over in that headspace. But so again, she had, if she had very positive emotions and she was not stuck and stagnant in. Excuse me, in one aspect of that or how she perceived some of those emotional things also affect the physical body. So she might not have been balanced maybe in some of the nutritional stuff as much. But even though you said she ate on the farm and things like that. But so you can have somebody that is, let's say deficient in one and and really full in the other can, it has this role to play. So if you took somebody, for instance, who is physically not doing the right things for the body, whether it's exercise, whether it's nutrition, all those compounding things, and then you also added the emotional stuff where they are somebody who has a lot of anger and they're overthinking and over worried and you add that together, that combination isn't going to turn out well. Maybe your grandmother had strengths in other areas to offset some of those other things. And you had mentioned earlier about her good posture too. And I just want to talk about, just for two seconds if it's okay. In Chinese medicine, there's different emotions and they do different things to what we call qi or our body's energy. For instance, anger is believed to cause the qi to rise. And some symptoms of that can, you know, be high blood pressure and anger and irritability and so forth. And joy can cause chi to scatter or slow down a little bit, leading to insomnia, palpitations. This is like over exuberance. This is a whole different conversation to get into. But worry and overthinking, I think that it's. This one's so common like the, the wood element, but the earth element is worrying, overthinking. It's said to not chi and cause it to become stagnant. And that can lead to the ability to not be able to have proper digestion and all this stuff. And then the grief and sadness is believed to deplete or dissolve or suppress. Going back to posture real quick to tie some things in together. And I'm going on a tangent here for a second, but when you were going back to that school example where somebody wasn't successful and they were told they're not good enough or smart enough or whatever, and so that caused somebody to be sad or right and to have some self doubts. So that sadness depletes and dissolves what we talk about chi and suppresses the posture for that person is usually going to be hunched over, rounded shoulder and not staring at the horizon line, harder to make eye contact with. Therefore, that then also leads to a lot of times some shortness of breath, immune symptom issues, asthma. And we can think about that as a compression of the lungs. And the lungs have this like immune system function as well. But on the flip side of that, through postural alignment, we can see you can read somebody's body and their posture and kind of start to see how and determine how their emotions typically are. But if you Also start to have poor posture. Your emotions also follow that. Right. So when we're head tall, chest open, shoulders back, we tend to have better self esteem, we tend to have more energy and we show up at a higher level and again the opposite of that. So just seeing how again going back to your grandma, maybe she wasn't as strong as one area but you saw these other strengths that also showed up in her overall health, her longevity, her posture. I just think it's a beautiful thing. And you could take each one of these pieces and based off clinical experience and things that you've seen and observation, you can paint some pretty amazing stories and scenarios on how all these play out on a physical level as it ties to the motions posture and and so forth.

Yeah and I.

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Let's drive no And I love the way it all becomes interwoven and I think of like the infinity loop when I listen to these things and like the tie in of all these different things that affect and lead to another thing and that it really becomes cohesive in the whole and Chinese medicine how our posture is how it ties into a physical understanding and even like reference to my grandmother just to I doubt that most of my family is listening but in honor of my grandmother. So I do think she ate healthy. I just don't think she's counting macros and worrying about how many beans she was eating and was she eating enough greens or she ate good healthy food and it was luckily at a time where they didn't have so much processed crap. She ate from the ground, from the earth, from most of the farm that she did. But her chickens I remember being young she still had her own chickens that she went out and gathered and collected and de feathered and cooked when I was in I don't know probably seven, eight. I think I died she died when I was like 14, 15 and I but I also think her mindset and again I didn't sit down and interview my grandmother which I great grandmother which I wish I had more but my interpretation of what my great grandmother was like this is life. It's not a you have a pick, you keep going and move forward. Like my granddaddy, my great granddaddy died when I was. Was pretty young. So she spent the last probably 12, 13 years of her life, which to me seemed like forever without her husband. And I think she just continued to live life and do things. And I think when the ailments, like when she passed away, apparently she had complained a little bit in the last few years about, like when she was 100. That I think was when she ended up moving over more into a wheelchair. And when she died, I think they found out that she actually had. She had no hip joint left, and she had complained about some hip pain, but they never. She never went to the doctor and found out. And I. She still continued to walk and move and live and do things. And I think it was just her mindset of, yeah, it's just this kind of comes with life and the territory of living. It's not the end of the world, and I don't need to go into depression and beat myself up. And yeah, I think she just kept moving forward with what she could do in the way that she could do it. And it ties into that whole process of. It's how you interpret. Do we get to go through life without bumps and pains and disappointments? No, but what. How you interpret what that does for your life and how that can be turned around for good or it's just an acceptance of. I. Okay, we're just gonna. Now what do we do? Just keep going forward. And it ties into with what you're saying is like the emotional content and how that affects your body, your muscles, your organs, your energy. It all kind of ties in together and. Yeah, go ahead.

That. Digest that. No, that gut example you were talking about, just as far as like counting macros, I just wanted to tap into that because that's a huge thing topic right now as far as weight loss and nutrition and things like that. And I think it's very important to be mindful and eat balanced. And everybody's body's different. So maybe some people can be great vegetarian, some people can't. But the. The interesting thing about that is, is you can be. If you are somebody who is trying to make nutritional changes, but you are so overwhelmed and so worried and overthinking, then actually that potentially, like I said earlier, knots chi and causes stagnation, which leads to digestive issues. Right? So it's like this balance. So you want to eat. Eat healthy and you want to eat balance. But it's also important not to overthink, not to be consumed by worry around it, because that becomes counterproductive. Right? Because now you're going to, it's going to lead to digestive distress, whether it's ulcers, whether it's constipation, whether it's diarrhea, whether it's just inflammation in the gut in general. So it's just again, you're fueling the body. This is the physical thing. It's important. But then you have to think about the emotional piece and what does that look like around it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that it's. And same thing. It was my analogy with running, right. It's my comparisons with running. Go out and run a mile and be happy for that. And I'm guessing over time, if you run a mile pretty much every day of your life, you're going to be doing really well. You don't have to go run a marathon. Just enjoy what you can do. Make it a fun thing, even if it sucks. It's okay making that flip. But also. Yeah, because just where in your life can you flip what's possible? Where? How are your thoughts influencing the outcome? How are you choosing to perceive limit or non limit yourself? Are you inhibiting yourself or are you creating habitual limitations in your life? If somebody gives you a diagnosis or a label, are you accepting that? Or are you saying, okay, that's one option, but what else? Is there somebody else who did it differently? Is there somebody else who overcame this or is there somebody else who took this and became better because of it?

What can you do? What can I do to change this? What can I do to play a role in it? What can I do to take charge of it?

Yeah, yeah. And I think journaling and even like you said, your chapters and stuff are words of the year. What's your intention? How is this showing up for you and can you shift? You look back on what you wanted and some of it was achieved and some of it, you maybe decided that you didn't really want it that way. And for me, like, for me it's like, what's the fruitfulness of this? What's the fruit that's going to be developed from the thinking and the process or me, this habit that I'm doing or this choice that I've made and how's that going to turn out for me and what's that going to be? How can you look at being. And mindfulness is a big word that she, Ellen Langer, focused on and that's a big important word. Right. And meditation allows actually for mindfulness. And a lot of people tie in meditation and mindfulness maybe almost in the same place. But what we're seeing is that meditation allows for better mindfulness. And all mindfulness is just an awareness of what's possible of what you're thinking about.

Yeah. That ties just to go the. The mindfulness piece. That word that we said earlier, the interoception, is actually considered a sixth sense. And but it's that ability. So it's the communication of internal. What's happening internally. Even your. From the organs to the brain. And for you to be able to. From your brain, from your mind, be able to feel and understand what's happening internally as well. And so it's technically considered sixth sense, but to do exercises to help create more sensitivity. And there's that book we talked about a long time ago that does the PQ reps. And it's just hyper mindfulness, hyper awareness for even two minutes. See if you can tune into your. Close your eyes, breathe. How are you feeling emotionally? What is that emotion? Can you feel your heartbeat? Right. What is your intestines doing? Do you feel them having a little berygamus, a little bit of movement? If you're stressed, where do you feel that stagnant at? Do you catch yourself not breathing? Because that's helping you also feel and understand where you're at in the parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system. And so that those mindfulness, the meditation, the qigong, the Tai Chi behavioral modifications, all these like little awarenesses help to increase and create a sensitivity in that interoception, which is again a key component to understanding the mind body connection and how we can. One can affect the other. Just as meditation can lower blood pressure and hyper. Oh my God, I just lost my word. Hyper something. So how that can affect everything else. Let's take it to the next level in 2024.

Yeah, let's do that. I feel. Yeah, I feel it. And you know what I think is interesting is the interception. When you said that word earlier, I was writing down notes when I wrote down introspection. And it's really curious how this is an actual tie together both those words interception. And it takes intercept. Introspection, ability to just go inward and think about what you're thinking. Be aware of this inner dialogue, be aware of this mental emotional process and being able to get a little quiet with that and yeah, see what's going on the inside your mind, but also the inside of your body, the physical state of your body and your organs and. Yeah, very interesting. I like the little tie in Brendan.

Brendan Burchard talks about the four human drives and one of the human drives is aliveness. And if because we are a little bit more deficient, I would say, in general, especially compared, since we have so much external stuff going on that pulls us away from that introspective or introception, I think that's where part of us, part of where we're leaking a little bit of our aliveness, right. Where we don't have some of that. The other drive is deeper connection, and that's a deeper connection with yourself. So by understanding this, you are getting two out of the four human drives. You're getting a deeper connection with self, which then helps you have deeper connection with others because you have a more understanding and then that more aliveness as well. So I think it's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. And it's not always easy. And there is good in the difficult. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah.

I was talking to my dad, and my dad's gonna listen to this, and dad, I'm sorry. And he's acknowledged he's becoming a little bit of curmudgeon as he gets older. And the other day I was taught, I talked to him, like, almost every day, and he was just going on this, like, little rant about everything. And then I stopped and I'm like, wow, now I'm really awake. And he's what? And I'm like, you just went on a whole thing of complaining about. You complained about three different things in five minutes. And I just think. Think about his. Some of those emotions. One, he was overthinking. Two, he had anger. So at that level, like, what is it doing to him on a physical level? And I want him to have a good quality of life as he ages and gets older. And so when I heard that, there's a concern for not just his attitude, but, like, how is that physically affecting him? How's his quality of life going to be as he gets older and vice versa? I'm like, dad, go to the gym, get more exercise. You need to go do yoga. You need to stretch more. But that also, in turn, if he was doing that would therefore also affect his emotions, maybe he wouldn't have so much anger, right? Maybe that he would help disperse that chi, disperse that energy. And we just have to link that together. When you're talking to somebody, when you hear somebody, don't just think, God, they're a jerk. Right? No. Oh, I feel what's going on with this person. It sounds like they have a lot of sadness and grief. Oh, how's that going to affect them on a physical level? Like, how's that affecting their quality life and also physically, what are they doing in their world? What are the. What are they sitting down, watching TV all day? How's that affecting their emotions? Tying it together. Yeah, go.

Yeah. I like it it all together. And I'm hoping for a big shift in our country at some point where we treat our. We treat ourselves and our elderly population much better. And I do. I wonder what's your dad experiencing because of.

Well, now it's anger because you just. He's angry now because you just called him an elder elderly. I'm just kidding.

I'm guessing he's older than us now.

I will say this. He hangs out, he's very social, and he actually hangs out with a lot younger people. So he's pretty spry to, to, to keep up with in there. So he's got that component going. But. I'm just kidding. I know he's older, but.

But that's what I mean. Even as we're getting older, as we get older, what are we accepting for our diagnosis, for the predetermined expectations of health and mobility and going into care and whatnot? There's a big process. Even she, you know, Alan Langer did, did a study on choices in nursing homes and how we try to protect people and our older people when we put them into these environments. And what they were finding is that when we make things normal and safe and expected and everything looks the same and they were never really challenged, that they actually even. They get older even faster, they lose their memory, they lose their drive. And that these people that we need to treat our aging population, our grandparents and our parents, with so much more respect and dignity and allowing them to have challenge. I. I just would love to see things change and how we treat ourselves and others as we age and walk away from some of these labels and diagnoses and predictions that we stick people with. Go out and look at the world a little differently today. Ask yourself what can be potentially happening? How can you look at something in a better perspective? How can you recognize your negative thoughts about yourself, about life, about difficulties and irritating situations, and flip it a little bit. Just give yourself the option to see it maybe in a better, more positive, playful light and see how that changes your life.

Yeah. Cheers. I'm gonna go visualize myself getting younger. I'm not getting older, I'm getting younger. Flexible, agile, happy, balanced. Not stuck, not stagnant. Moving forward, growing. Let's grow together. Let's do this.

That's right. Let's do this. So go out and do something fun today. Happy 2024 Brian.

Happy 2024Amy.

And everybody else listening and as always, share this with someone you love. Follow us, give us a shout out so we continue to be able to give this message to more and more people and it helps us out if you just go in and give us a little hoorah. We appreciate that very much.

Yeah, we'll take some new reviews in 2024. Five star reviews are always welcome.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Brian. Go have a fabulous day. Happy Sunday.

Thanks. You too. Happy Sunday. Bye.

All right. Bye 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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