96. Emotional Agility: Train and Redirect Your Feelings in a Healthy Way

Welcome to the Holistic Inner Balance podcast with Dr. Nicole Cain and Happy Healthy Hadley.

Your go to resource for natural mental health and wellness strategies so that you can become the expert of your own emotional and physical well being.

Merging modern science with ancient wisdom.

Welcome to Holistic inner balance. I'm Dr. Nicole and I'm Happy Healthy Hadley. Today we're talking about emotional agility, surprising ways your emotions can help you. But it's been a minute, Hadley, since we've actually like introduced who we are.

I know, and we've got so many new friends here.

New friends, new introductions. So Hadley, who are you? Tell me who you are.

Well, I am an Ayurveda health and life coach. I've been a coach for five years now and I mostly help people with their health habits and implementing actual habits in their daily life. So a lot of times I always explain it. Like a lot of times people know what they quote unquote should be doing, but they aren't actually doing it. And so my job is to bring in my background, which is biopsychology and behavior change science, and bring that along with the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda, marry those together and help people actually start to thrive in mind, body, spirit, all of the, all of the above. So that's kind of what I do. And what about you?

Well, I just have to validate and echo what you're saying. Before I talked about me because so many pieces of content that are intellectual just stop there. And it's like, okay, well now I've learned all these amazing things. What do I do? And the work that you bring to this conversation really takes what we learn and makes it actionable.

Totally. Yeah. I used to get so frustrated. I would see things online that was like, oh, like do this, this and this for your morning routine or like, you know, you should be exercising like this or you should be eating this way or whatever. And I would do all of these like diets or workout regimens or like all these things to try to be healthy. And and then I would fall, I would ultimately fall off the wagon because it was like I don't know how to actually get myself to stay consistent in these things. And so that was where I really was super passionate about like what makes us actually do the things that we do and how do we actually get ourselves to change our routines, our habits, our, you know, things about our day to day lives so that we can actually feel the way that we want to feel.

So I love that. So listening to this information is life changing in and of itself, but you're really going to get the transformation from the action. And so Hadley's bringing that to the table, y'. All. And I'm Dr. Nicole. I've studied medicine for over a decade. I have a degree in naturopathic medicine, which is a marrying of conventional medicine. So I learned everything that a standard MD learns, but then I get the holistic side as well. And so that's acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine. We learn about herbalism and homeopathy and different modalities that can help you get to the root cause. I also am trained in clinical psychology. I have a master's. And so I love to incorporate that mind, body, spirit. And then when you bring in that Ayurveda piece, that really adds some richness to the why the body and the mind are doing what they're doing and action to that. And so our. Our whole mission here is to empower you with tools to be your own health advocate. And so we're going to be diving into emotional agility today. And I'm super ready. Are you?

I'm so excited. I had never heard the term emotional agility before, and I've. I've used the word emotional resilience a lot, but I like agility way more. And we can talk about why that is. I feel like emotional resilience has this. This sense of needing to. To be resilient against emotions. And I think emotional agility really allows us to befriend our emotions. I guess is kind of.

The.

The way I would think about it is like, we can actually befriend the things that we're experiencing so that we can then act upon them in an appropriate way and not in a way that's like, you know, we're reacting and not able to control ourselves. Right?

Totally.

Yeah.

In a way that's like serving your ultimate goal.

Yeah, exactly.

What you want to. What you want to feel and what you want to experience in the short life that we have on this planet.

Yes. So do you want to start with telling us, like, what emotional agility is?

Yeah. So emotional agility is. We have the word emotion, which is the totality of the human experience. And so emotional agility. So emotional agility is comprised of the word emotion and the word agile. And emotion, as we all know, is the range of human experiences. So it could be happy or sad or angry or anxious or stressed or frustrated, whatever the word is. And then agility is your ability to be flexible and agile and to move within that as opposed to something that isn't agile. It's like stuck. It's rigid, it isn't flexible.

Totally. I think a lot of times when I started getting into. I don't even know what to call it. Like, like personal development slash health slash, like spirituality is maybe not like quite the right word, but like all of, all of those things where I was like, you know, on like the self improvement journey. When I started getting into all of that, there was a lot of talk around, like not being triggered by your emotions and being able to be like basically calm all the time. And we actually don't necessarily want to be cal the time. Like that's like a collapsed nervous system state, actually. And so I love this term emotional agility, where it's like, no, we can feel the wide range of emotions. We just don't have to either suppress them or like act them out in a way that isn't helpful for us. Like, we can just ride the wave of these emotions and we're going to talk about how to actually do that today.

I love that. I'm so excited.

Yeah.

I have a story that like really makes this feel a little bit more personal for me.

Yeah.

And when I was younger, probably like a tween, like teen, adolescent, preteen, whatever, I was probably 13, we'll say. And I remember having a lot of emotional fluidity where like I would be sad when something sad happened and then I could like laugh and be joyful and then if something annoying would happen is I would be annoyed.

And.

And it's like a very innocent, fluid, childlike state. But then you have the teenage angst, I imagine, piled on top of that. So things are bigger and more intensified. Not to gaslight or minimize my younger experience, but also it might have been difficult for my parents at times. But you know what I was thinking about is at that time I had emotional agility because my nervous system was in its full spot spectrum of experiences. And there wasn't this rigidity or the sticky factors. I could shift through emotions. But this was really troubling for the people around me. And I remember this particular conversation with one of my caretakers and he said, you are so moody, I don't even know what to do with you. One minute you're happy, the next minute you're sad. And it was like a light switch went off in my brain and that agility just flatlined out. And earlier, before we started recording, you were talking about that Merkafa state, which I really resonate with is like this kind of constitutional, like flatline where there isn't agility, where I'm more like, keep it together, kind of keep calm. Like, sure, you can laugh, but like really underneath of it, like the emotions, like you're. You're being like strong and solid or whatever those words are that we apply to being shut down. And that little message that I got has been so profoundly influential in how I've existed in my emotional state since then. And then emotions that tend to stretch outside of those bounds that were self inflicted because of feedback that I got from someone who was not able to deal with their own emotions, let alone mine, it can feel really anxiety producing. So it's like, oh, I feel anxious. Like, I can't feel anxious. That's too scary, right?

Yeah, because people didn't want me to feel that way when I was young. And we felt like we weren't safe if we weren't pleasing our parents. Right. Or our caregivers or, you know, people really close to us, that that wasn't safe. And I think it also comes down to this. I mean, we could totally get into like parenting, but this like, codependence of. And not necessarily like clinical codependence, though, you know, maybe there's some of that too. But you know, this like, need for someone else to feel a certain way, for us to feel okay. And so that's. I've been doing a ton of work around this recently where it's like, I don't actually need anyone to feel a certain way for me to feel okay in myself and in my body and all of that kind of thing. I mean, sometimes I do and I'm working on that. But so being able to do that for other people, but also allowing ourselves to feel the way that we feel. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of the, like, taboo emotions that we may have grown up with? Like not being like quote unquote allowed to feel.

Oh, yeah, totally. And I so appreciate you asking that question because I was not allowed to feel depressed, I wasn't allowed to feel anxious, but anger was really allowed.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. I grew up in a household where anger is completely acceptable. And there's a lot of messaging, like, don't start a fight, but you better finish it. And crying is weak. Lots of this, like real emotional toxicity that was like squishing my, my experience. And there's other members of my immediate family. When I look at them, they're just so flatlined. And if anything comes out, it's anger or complete dissociation. Like, I don't know what to say. To you. And so just like, total emotional shutdown. So I love that question, because when I think about my experience, experience now is I didn't have that opportunity to create the neurodiversity around how to deal with emotional expansion. And, you know, so when we're in our childhood, through adolescence, like, early 20s, our brain is developing so quickly. And so the brain, if it has the experience of, like, I get really, really mad, and then I can switch states and move on to another experience, you're going to create synaptic connections. You're going to wire your brain to respond that way. But I didn't get that. And so now that I'm in my 40s, I'm going to have to go in and audit all of those old neural networks and try to recreate it in a way that is emotionally agile. What about you?

Totally. Well, so for me, it was sort of. I wasn't allowed to feel anger. And so we're the opposite.

How interesting, right?

And I actually find that a lot of times this happens. There's like a split between the way that, you know, females are supposed to show up in the world or, like, how people identify female versus male, where there's a lot of, like, you're allowed to feel more anger if you're a man or if, you know, if people identify you as a man and you're. You're allowed to feel sadness if you're more female. And obviously that wasn't the case for you, so it's not the case for everyone. It's a generalization. But I find that when I have these conversations with people, a lot of women feel like they are allowed to feel sad, and so they'll cry when they're angry. They don't even realize that they're mad. I didn't realize how much anger I held inside me. And. And if you have been listening to the podcast for a long time, you know that I have a lot of pitta, which is fun, the fire element, which is just a little bit more anger. And. And, you know, there's like an anger element, frustration that. That can come up with a lot of fire. And so I tend to have a little bit more of that than, like, the. The norm because I have a lot of pits in my constitution. And I didn't real, like, I wasn't, quote, unquote, allowed to feel that or I didn't feel like I was allowed to feel that. You know, just. Not even just with my parents, but like, society. Society in general. And so I just felt sadness or Nothingness. Like, I did a real, like a. I had a lot of emotional eating, binge eating that would just suppress things. And I didn't even actually resonate with the term emotional eating because I was like, I'm not feeling emotions. Because I was being so successful in my emotional eating that I literally wasn't identifying emotions. So I was like, I don't have emotion. Like, it's not emotional eating. I'm just. I just don't have enough willpower. And so it was only once I started doing the emotional regulation work that I actually was able to shift the emotional eating. And even recognizing that it is emotional eating, it's because I am feeling these emotions that I wasn't allowing myself to feel for so, so, so, so long.

She didn't have that agility. It was like being very managed by coping skills, which, like, having the ability to cope is absolutely incredible. But it didn't make you more agile. It actually made your world smaller and smaller.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It made. It made things dull. Like, if you've ever had, like, you know, binge eating, like, challenges with binge eating or, or even any sort of, like, addiction or anything, it's like this sense of lack of control and you're not able to kind of get out of. Get out of it in the moment.

It's.

There's just like this, like, I'm doing this thing, and then afterwards you just feel kind of like numb. And it gets you away from those feelings that you are. Feel like you're not supposed to feel. And, and the way that we're talking about this is like, we're not saying that, like, you consciously think, oh, I'm not supposed to feel that emotion, so I'm not gonna feel that way. Like it's a subconscious thing. So if you're like, I don't think I not supposed to feel a certain way. Like it's a subconscious thing. It's not that you're. You're actually thinking these things. So, you know, it's probably happening for you on an unconscious level, you know.

Not conscious, and it's wired into our nervous system. So this morning, as I was coming in to meet you today, I was listening to some work by Peter Levine. Ah, amazing somatic healing guru, right?

Yes.

And so he talks about how the brain and the body can store these states, and we see this in clinical neuroscience. So let's bring some of that into our conversation about emotional agility. And that, that dullness that you were talking about is when we go through something difficult Our body will shift into an adaptive state to help us get through that. And so that adaptive state state involves your mind, your body and your nervous system. And so let's say that you grow up in a household where you have very unpredictable parents. And so you have to be on guard because you just never know what you're going to get next. And so your nervous system will very quickly and automatically adapt to make you more attuned and more able to be aware of subtle nuances. And that something's going to shift that could be dangerous, that you have to react to, whether they have an anger outburst or they make a demand of you, or just something stressful that occurred in your childhood. And so when your mind, your body and your nervous system make that adaptation, it also recruits assistance from the rest of your body. So it will recruit assistance from your gut microbiome. And so your gut will change to make you better able to adapt to that situation. It'll recruit assistance from your hormones. And so your cortisol and your thyroid and your sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone and testosterone, they will all change to make you more able to adapt in that situation. And so everything gets put into alignment. And then what we see is that these states can be activated by cues and triggers. And that if that state isn't resolved, that the body will just reproduce it, it will re, express, experience it, it will just keep. It's like trying to start a car engine, but it doesn't fully turn over. And so then we're in this like old nervous system pattern. And that's kind of what you're talking about by this unconscious experience is that your gut microbiome may be saying, like, oh, we're having a feeling right now, go for the donuts. Or I'm having a feeling right now, eat spicy food, whatever it is in particular. And the microbiome, it affects your mood and your cravings and your metabolism and your immune system. And so everything your body is trying to get your attention every single moment and of every single day. And this suppress paradigm that we live in, our medical institution, suppress paradigm is just causing the body to try to shift in other ways to communicate that to you. So that is the antithesis of emotional agility. That's being in a state dependent, rigid state, mind, body, spirit. And what we're talking about today is how do we accomplish emotional agility? And what is that actually doing to the nervous system, to your gut, microbiome, to your hormones, and what are the implications of that in your medical and Psychological care.

Yes. So good. Mic drop.

I'm dropping an invisible mic.

I love it. And. And then I think that there are like, there's some messaging out there that you know this, all of this is true. And so there's some messaging out there that is great. I say this too is like, feel your feelings. But then we can sometimes misconstrue this and we can be like, okay, I just have to feel my feelings. I'm just supposed to feel my feelings all the time. Like, just like go into them and never leave.

And.

And so sometimes we mired in a certain feeling, whether it's anger or sadness or depression or fear or we just. We start to. We start to really just kind of like go into that and never create any sort of levity. And so you guys can't see me right now, but I'm doing this hand motion, which is like, basically like I'm making a wave with my hand where it's like, we need to be able to go into the depth, which is more of those feelings of like, of anger, resentment, sadness. The feelings that, like, we might label as quote unquote negative. We need to go into those feelings and feel them. But if we just allow ourselves to feel them with a, like, sense of, like, detachment of. I'm not actually. These feelings, these feelings are just happening currently and I can feel them and it's okay and I'm safe to feel them. If we allow ourselves to do that with the detachment instead of like, becoming the feelings, then they won't actually last that long. They. They come in waves and. And you'll be able to go into them and come out of them again. If you get attached to them, though, that's when we get really stuck in it. But what we want to be able to do is go down into the depth and then come back up into kind of like the, the light, the levity, the growth cycle of, of, you know, joy and happiness and laughter and humor and all of that. And that's also why we laugh a lot on this podcast, talking about, like, deep things, like we're talking about serious things. And then we can bring in some laughter, we can bring in some of that lightness, because when we go so deep into something, a lot of times we get stuck there. And that's actually not that helpful for our nervous systems either. And so that's where we're bringing that. That's why I really like the word agility, because it's like you're pivoting, you're going into the depth and then into the growth cycle, and you're going up and down, and you're allowing yourself to ride those waves without getting stuck in one or the other in, like, toxic positivity or, like, in, like, shadow work. And, like, just, like, being stuck in that.

It's all about nuance and balance, right?

Yes.

Hadley's favorite word, nuance. I think about you every time I think of the word nuance, because it's so true.

I love it.

And.

And it's like dichotomy. It's. It's. It's like holding the paradoxes. I always. I always like to say that, like, truth is in the paradox. Right. It's like we need to hold the light and the depth, and if we can hold both, then that's where kind of, like, truth is in the middle of that. It's so cool.

I think of it as a teeter totter.

Yeah.

Where we're holding the opposites. And so it's like I have crafted my nervous system around, like, trying to make that teeter totter totally parallel, as opposed to the teeter totter is designed to go up and down one side and the other alternating. You know, when you. When you have kids sitting on each side, they're just gonna boing, boing. You know, they're just gonna kind of balance, which is sort of that sine wave that you were describing. And so holding the opposites is an exercise that you can do where you acknowledge and you notice and you accept and you pay attention to, mindfully, both ends of the spectrum. So maybe you can imagine holding the grief and the sadness and the anger or whatever that is, that heaviness is coming up for you. And hold that in your left hand and mindfully notice that. Notice where you feel that in your body and fully allow yourself a moment to feel it. But then as almost like a teeter totter shifting, and then notice the light and the joy. And sometimes it's really hard to shift back into the light, into the joy. And so I like to do that first and try to think of, like, a moment that I felt that way or things that make me feel that way. Like, right now, as we're recording this, my dog is in my lap, and that gives me warm happies. And so that might be something to shift it. But what do you do, Hadley, like, behaviorally, like, how do you help people notice the opposites?

Oh, good question. So I really like to use the body. I really like to. Because I think there's something so tangible about the body, a Lot of times we try to do, like, mindset work. When and when we're sitting stuck in, like, a. A trigger loop, it's really hard to mindset our way out of that. So I really like to use the body where it's like, okay, where am I actually feeling the physical sensations of this feeling? So a lot of times when people say, like, feel the feelings, we think that it means feel the emotions and, like, be in the emotion. But actually what I tell my clients is like, no, I actually feel the feelings, The. The. The physical feelings, the physical sensations that are arising as these. These emotions arise. And so, you know, maybe it's like a tightness in your chest or a lump in your throat. That's where I get my anger, is like a lump in my throat because I feel like I'm not allowed to express it. And so there's just like that. That blockage in my throat kind of. Sometimes it's like tension in the shoulders or in the neck. Sometimes it's like a buzziness in my forehead. If it's like, anxiety, I'll feel that in my forehead. So basically, I have my clients, like, identify where that is, but then I don't even keep them there because that can still even feel like just mindset, because we're just identifying it with our mind. I have them actually touch that part of their body, so then it becomes super tangible. It's like, oh, I'm feeling tightness in my chest. I'm gonna touch that. I'm feeling that buzziness in my forehead. I'm gonna actually put my hand on my forehead or maybe like, on the top of my head or whatever. And then placing your hand there makes it super, like, salient. It makes it so that it's like, oh, yeah, here's where the emotion is happening or the feeling is happening. So then what I do is I have them allow that to expand from that specific spot in the body. So, like, instead of just keeping that, like, lump in your throat, it starts to expand out through your neck, into your head, into all parts of your body. And as it expands, it sort of dissolves. That's kind of the feeling that my clients have. Have labeled is like it's a dissolving. And so once they go through that, then, like you said, it's. It's like we go. We go into the light and we allow ourselves to kind of feel the next best feeling that we can feel. And a lot of times, we're not necessarily going to be able to, like, jump right up to, like, bliss Right. Bliss and joy. A lot of times people think, like, I'm not doing my meditations, right, Because I'm not feeling this, like, bliss sensation. When in reality, like, they came into a meditation feeling, like, super, super down, super low. It's not going to be, like, unless you're, like, enlightened. It's not going to be, like, possible for you to go from, like, feeling super depressed to feeling, like, crazy blissed out or whatever, unless you have an experience of enlightenment or a moment of that or whatever. But so what I like to do is have people identify, okay, what's the next best feeling that I can possibly feel? Like, maybe it's. I'm, like, gonna laugh at something. Maybe it's. I'm gonna feel like I'm gonna choose one thing about my partner that I really love, or I'm gonna choose one thing that I'm grateful for in my life and just start to do that, but not force it. Because sometimes then we feel bad about ourselves if we can't get into that feeling of gratitude. So I don't want anyone to feel like I'm bad or like I'm doing this wrong or whatever when they aren't able to get into that next best feeling. Your next best feeling might be, like, anger, like, if you're, like, really, really, really low. If you're in that, like, flat, like, depression or, like, collapsed nervous system state. Like, the next best feeling might literally be anger, because that's just. That just feels more empowering than feeling nothing at all. Right. And so then you can go from anger up, kind of up the ladder into, you know, maybe it's just like a neutral state of contentedness, and then you can kind of go up and up and up into the higher feeling emotions. Does that make sense?

It totally makes sense. I love that you go back to the body. Yeah. I think that's really powerful. And that's a lot of the work that, when we were talking about Peter Levine that he does is, like, noticing the body. And what you were describing. I really like in particular, too, where you notice a sensation. You were pointing to the throat, like a lump in the throat. And there's a pro. There's a protocol that I do. It's called somatographic imagery. And I walk you through the process of noticing a sensation and then allowing yourself to modify that sensation. Sensation, as you were describing, maybe making it bigger and letting it dissolve. And so if you haven't checked that out, definitely be sure to. And so let's take a quick break and we'll be back in just a couple of minutes. Hadley has an example of somebody who's actually accomplished what she was just talking about, and so she'll talk to you about that in a minute. And in this little break, I was wanting to make sure that you guys knew about some of the cool stuff that we have going on. And so, Hadley, tell about us about what's happening in your world.

Ooh. So I have my Happy Healthy Habits program going on right now, and it is so fun. Basically, what I do is with my clients is helping you really, really implement the health habits, the foundational health habits to help you thrive in mind, body, spirit. So, like, the routines, the. The setting yourself up for the day with a morning routine and different things like that? No, I don't have a prescriptive morning routine. I help you design it for yourself, and then I take you through your relationship with food, helping you eat in a way that actually makes you feel really good in your body and specifically for your dosha and the way that your unique mind, body constitution is meant to eat, or if you have any imbalances, kind of bringing yourself back into balance through that. And then the third part of what I do is the third, like, pillar of the work that I do with my clients is this nervous system regulation and emotional processing work. And so with those three elements, I am able to help people feel amazing in mind, body, and spirit. And so this is my program that I'm currently running with my coaching clients. So if you're interested in that, you can go to. To my website, which is just happy healthy hadley.com. and you can see my offerings in there. That's my main signature health coaching program.

I'm super pumped about that. And it's such a great way to take what we talk about here and actually make it actionable. So it's a great place.

Yeah. Instead of just knowing these as concepts of like, oh, yeah, a lot of times people are like, well, I already know that. And I'm like, but are you doing it? And that's where my background, like, I. My undergrad and grad school was both was. Well, my undergrad was biopsychology. My grad school was like, health behavior and health education, actually getting into the behavior change science of why we do what we do. And so I help people actually make these changes in their lives.

That's amazing.

So fun. And then what about you? I want to hear about what you've got going on right now, y'.

All. This is my favorite formal official announcement that I'M writing a book. Oh, my gosh. Yes. It's called Panic Proof, and it's going to be published by the Rodale Group of Penguin Random House, and it's absolutely amazing and incredible. So you've probably seen me less on social media because, kids, I've been writing, I've been having an amazing time, and the concepts that we talk about here inspire the book, are inspired by the book. And so definitely make sure that you follow me on social media so that you can see updates on that. And it's going to just be the best book. Please buy it. Support me being able to write more books, because I'm really loving the process.

Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited to read it. I'm just like. I mean, I've been hearing little glimpses of it, and I'm so excited for you. This is going to be really cool. Thank you. Yes.

Right.

Go buy the book.

Go buy the book. And let's get back into our podcast.

Let's do it.

Hey, we're back, everybody. So we've been talking about emotional agility, and Hadley just dropped on us some brilliance on how to actually make that show up in your life by changing some of your habits. And before we got started today, you were actually telling me about somebody that you look up to, that you've seen demonstrate emotional agility. The Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama himself. Self. Oh, my gosh. Okay. This is my favorite example of emotional agility, because I think. I think sometimes we think that we're supposed to, like I mentioned, have this, like, super calm demeanor all the time, and we can come to this place where we mostly are in that state of, like, you know, we're not being, like, triggered by other people's emotions or we're not being caught in this loop of, like, past, you know, past trauma, past all of these things that are kind of controlling our present subconscious mind from our past. Right. We can. We can detach from. From that. And when things are sad, we can feel sad. And honestly, like, that it's a healthy nervous system state to be able to allow ourselves to feel sad. And as I do more of this work, I even find that I, like, tear up more when I watch different things or when I, you know, when someone's telling me a I, I will just, like, tear up and maybe cry. And I used to never do that. I used to, like, pride myself in, like, I didn't really show that kind of emotion or I'll get, you know, really fired up or I'll get really disturbed. By something where, you know, if I've never really liked watching horror movies, but like, even like kind of like psychological thrillers, I can't even handle those anymore because it's like, when we have something presented to us that is, you know, is a certain way, us responding in that way is an appropriate response. So, okay, so let's talk about the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama has experienced a lot of oppression, and his people have experienced a ton of oppression. The Tibetan people, you know, have experienced a lot of oppression. And, you know, he's working to. He's working to, you know, make it so that his people are free and all of that kind of thing. And he's, like, the most joyful person on the planet alive today, right? So. But he's not just only joyful. If someone starts to tell him a story of strife or sadness, he will cry. He will cry pretty instantaneously. He'll, you know, his eyes will well up with tears. He might have tears even, like, come down his face, and then moments later, he's able to laugh if something is funny, if something is happy. And he's not. It's not like a weird, manic thing where it's like, you know, sometimes we will identify that, like, little kids will be, like, in a tantrum, like, screaming, crying, that kind of thing. Like, the Dalai Lama's not screaming and crying and beating his fists on the ground, right? But he's able to feel the emotion, and it washes through him and takes, like, maybe, like, 90 seconds, and then he's able to feel the next wave of emotion. And he's still coming from that place of calmness, and there's the emotional agility there. And so that's the best example I think I can give, because everyone knows who the Dalai Lama is, or most everyone knows who the Dalai Lama is. So that. That's my favorite example to be able to give.

And so an exercise that I learned from Jack Kornfield for doing this is in his book Wise Heart. And he talks about the boats. And so here's a way to do this. If you sit down and you close your eyes and you get comfortable, and you kind of center yourself back to your breath. And imagine in front of you, you're sitting on this lovely grassy hill. And imagine in front of you, there's a stream. And from one side, you see a boat coming around the corner, and it's being carried down the stream along the current. And that boat represents a feeling that's emerging. You look at the boat, and there's A thought or a worry or a sensation in your body, maybe tightness or heaviness or hunger or constriction or maybe excitement. Whatever it is, notice that boat and imagine taking whatever it is that's coming up in you, that feeling that's rising in your body, those thoughts that are going through your mind. And imagine catapulting those onto the boat, and they land on the boat. And then you watch as the boat takes those feelings and continues floating downstream and out of sight. And then another boat comes, and that boat represents the next feeling or the next sensation, or maybe there's some leftovers from the first. And so you keep practicing that exercise. And so then what you're doing is you're allowing those emotions to come up, and then you're giving them a place to live where you don't have to hold, hold onto them. You don't have to be rigid, you don't have to be attached to them, but rather you're allowing yourself to be agile. You're putting those feelings in the boat, and then you're releasing them and letting them go away. And there may be feelings, and, you know, Jack Kornfield talks about, we may have the impulse to just blow up the boat, we're so angry. Or we may have the impulse to jump onto the boat because we're so attached to those feelings. But practicing this visualization will start to create new wirings in the brain. And as the brain adjusts and reorients and re patterns around those new states, so will your nervous system, so will your mind, so will your gut microbiome and your hormones. Right. So all of those states that we were talking about, you're actually working on going in and changing those just by simply practicing that exercise. Like Hadley, you were discussing where it comes up. The Dalai Lama feels that he allows it to be expressed. Tears may come down his face, or he may laugh or he may get angry, but then he doesn't attach to it. He moves on to that next experience. And that's what the exercise of the boats can teach us.

Totally. Yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about how our emotions can actually show us something that we are also missing in our life? Because I think a lot of times we think I just need to process my emotions so I can stop feeling the emotions and then I can move on with my life. But if we're just like sitting there processing the same emotions over and over and over again, it might be telling us that there's something off and, like, out of alignment in our Actual physical experience of life.

Yeah. The first thing is to remember is that your emotions are trying to tell you what needs healing and how. And so their expressions of your body in how it's adapted. And so we have that emotion, we have that experience and it is in its purest form just simply a way of being. But secondarily it's data. And so I love that question because sure you notice that this boat keeps coming, but then you could start to look at the flags on the boat and be like, oh, these flags came from this person who said this to me and said you're very emotional and moody and we don't know what to do with you. And so that boat for me keeps coming around is that I was told that I was moody. And so noticing that and then having the opportunity to actually audit where that came from can be really profoundly helpful. And in parts work, which is it's kind of like an all encompassing way of describing how we go in and activate those stored nervous system states. Parts work is a way to almost like metaphorically personify it. So like I was probably 13 when that was said to me. I remember, I remember it like yesterday. So it actually probably means I need to do some more work on it. Message received. Thank you, parts. And so we have this, this memory. And so that 13 year old, that's an opportunity for you to say, okay, part, what is your unmet need? What are you trying to tell me? Needs healing and how. And sometimes that may mean that that part is still trying to protect you and that it's stuck in a time warp and it still thinks that people are going to judge you by being moody and you have to go in and like nourish that part, time stamp that part, tell the part like what the moment in the presence is and how you want to be. Sometimes it's working with that part, other times it's working with the nervous system activation around that part. And what's really interesting is that I've found that certain parts of ourselves need different treatments. So I have a patient and we have a fire starter Bach flower blend that she uses, has got some Bach flowers and it's mixed with some herbs. And so when she's in a part that's like a collapse part, like earlier you were talking about that like flatlined like nervous system collapse is that part has neuro adapted around collapse. And so she's literally depressed and lethargic and exhausted and can't get out of bed and just hates herself. And so that's an expression of A state that has been suppressed by medications and suppressive thought patterns for so long. But now what we're doing is we're allowing it to come up. We're working on the flag on that ship. Oh, that's where that came from. But then we're also supporting her body in adapting and healing that. That's coming up.

Oh, my gosh. It's reminding me of. There's like three different states in or three different, like, energies in Ayurveda, in Vedic, like, philosophy, where it's like there's like a tamasic energy, which is that like, depressive energy. And it's not, you know, it's. Yeah, it's basically like that collapsed state. It's not necessarily bad or evil or whatever. We need it to fall asleep. Like, we, we need that like, apathy or that like, you know, whatever. To be able to. To fall asleep basically is like the best, the best way to describe it, I guess. But it's not really that helpful in other areas of our lives. And then we've got the rajasic energy, which is more of that fire, which you're saying is like, we have that fire starter because that's the next best feeling is like anger or like fieriness. And then once we kind of can come through that, then we have more of this. It's called satvic energy. And that is like a feeling of. That's more of like the. The bliss, the joy, the kinds of feelings that feel a little bit better in our experience. Right. So the rajasic, I kind of briefly, like, said that. But. But rajastic energy is sort of that like, fiery forward movement, like growth energy. And then we can kind of come to this place of like, fulfillment and actualization and stuff. So. And so it's. It's sort of related to like, Maslow's hierarchy of needs as well. But as you're explaining kind of how the nervous system works, it's like we've got collapse, we've got fight flight, and then we've got kind of like this regulation. It's not necessarily only parasympathetic state or like only rest and digest, but this ability to kind of. To kind of go in and out of whatever state it is that is appropriate for what experience we're having.

And we can measure this with heart rate variability.

So cool.

You can get an app on your phone and so you can measure this like right now, if you know how to find your pulse, you can measure it by just reaching over and feeling your pulse. But what we see with Heart rate variability is that your heart rate should be variable, not a metronome. A metronome is the antithesis of variable.

Right.

It's like complete and perfect, and it's just like, bump, bump, bump, bump. It's rigid. It isn't agile. It's the opposite of agility. It's just there. And so when your heart rate is not variable, so it's beats per minute is the same. Whatever. It's fast or slow or right where it should be. But if it's the same, then that's not an agile heart. That's a heart that's stressed. It's a nervous system that stresses emotions that are stressed. And so the work is to increase the variability of the heart rate so that maybe like one second it's beating at 60 beats per minute, and then the next second you take a nice deep breath in and then it changes. And then you exhale and then it changes. And then you stand up and it changes. I think of it as like a belly dancer heart rate. I'm like, right now I'm like, doing this, like, swervy motion with my arms. I look silly.

I love that. Yeah.

So you can measure that. And more heart rate variability is going to translate into nervous system agility, which is going to translate into emotional agility. And so it's like going to the part measuring your heart rate variability. What is your body saying? How do we support your body? How do we correct that part? And how do we make you more agile so that you can ebb and flow like that sine wave?

So good. I feel like this is gonna be mind blowing.

My favorite podcast so far.

Yes.

Yeah. So as we're coming to the end of it, what are some. Let's come up with some practice, practical solutions for what you can start doing, like, today.

Yes, totally. I think I really like the boat. The boat thing that you gave us, the boat analogy practice. Really? Like, it's a tangible practice that we can do. I feel like we could put together the boat with just placing your hand on your body, where you put that feeling, and then it will become like.

Magic, ten times more powerful.

Yeah. Because it makes it, like. Okay, it's like actually physically tangible here. And so you can kind of imagine the boat. The boat experience there. You could also imagine it dissolving in your body. The actual physical sensation sort of dissolving in your body. So those are two practices that you could do, or you could do those practices together. What else?

Well, I was actually going to expand on the touching of the Body. And so we know with EMDR and tapping and emotional freedom technique that this dual awareness processing is really important. And so when we're activating emotions and thoughts, those are different areas of the brain than just like straight up physical contact. And so with emdr, they'll use bilateral stimulation, whether by a light bar or buzzers, which will alternate left, right, left, right. And with tapping, you're just taking your hands and just tapping at designated places, which, by the way, the places don't really matter as long as you're tapping. It works.

I love it.

I know. Just did a. What is that called when you just like. Spoiler alert. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I feel like I am glad that you just said that because I think a lot of times we get so like, I have to do this technique, right?

Yeah.

And that's why I like just placing your hand on your body because it's like there's no way to do it right or wrong. Like you're just doing it and you're not getting like getting wrapped up in the technique. So I love that you just said that about tapping where it's like just tap yourself like wherever you want. Yeah. And you don't have to do it like quote unquote. Right. And memorize that.

It just feels more like honoring to what my body wants.

Exactly. Yeah.

Because maybe she doesn't want to be tapped in the forehead like EFT says.

Yeah, totally like that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So do touch your. Touch yourself. Touch yourself wherever your body wants to be touched ever.

She wants wherever he wants to be touched.

And if that phrase is triggering for you, that's okay. Go back and listen to our therapeutic self massage episode where we talk about touching the body. Yeah, yeah.

Therapeutic touch. Yeah. And so you could like place your hand and like gently tap or if you wanted to do, you could do a butterfly hug where you put your left hand on your right shoulder and your right hand on your left shoulder.

I didn't know that was called a butterfly hug. I do that with my clients all the time. Oh, so cute.

I'm doing it right now and Hadley's melting because I'm such a cute butterfly.

Such a cute butterfly. You just like tap a little bit like your hands or wings. It's so cute. Yeah.

So you can start doing that, my friends, and then start asking the parts.

What it is it?

What is it that you need me to to know and what can I do for you? Because meeting unmet needs is that obstacle to cure, to help you have emotional agility and to start Living the life that you want.

Yes. I love it. So then, so. So it's like once you do the technique, whether it's the boat technique, the placing your hands where your physical sensation is happening and allowing it to dissolve, or both, then it's like, okay, now what are you actually telling me Me that I need? What are my needs? What is what needs to be healed right now? What's maybe the trigger and then kind of going from there.

Exactly. I love that you got that, my friends.

Ah, amazing. And I want to also just mention that, like, it might just be. It might not even be, like, a deep childhood trauma trigger that is, like, coming up. Like, emotions can also just happen if you haven't set a boundary, you know, or if you, like, you might feel angry because you haven't experienced, expressed your needs and you feel, like, resentful because someone else has, like, stepped on a boundary that you didn't even know you had. So then you can just be like, oh, thanks, anger, for showing me that I had a boundary here that I just haven't expressed. And, you know, now I can just express it and it doesn't have to be this whole big thing that, you know. Can you tell that I'm speaking from experience, that I do this a lot?

I love your passion and I am with you. I'm like, yes.

Where I'm like, oh, that's person didn't know that I had that need or that I had that boundary. So, like, I don't need to be angry. I just need to, you know, and I can be angry. Like, it's just telling me that I just need to set the boundary or I just need to say, hey, this is the way that I actually want to be treated instead.

I love that.

Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't have to always be like, the most deep trauma that you've ever. Trauma work that you've ever done. Right.

Sometimes it's just as simple as, wow, Paul, you drank all of my bubble water. And I am angry. Angry, right?

Yes. Yeah.

Get me more vocal.

Sometimes it's like you're standing in an ice cream shop and someone's leaving the door open when it's cold outside and you're like, angry, and then you're like, or I could just ask them to close the door.

Yeah.

Which is an experience that I had, which was like a light bulb moment of like, oh, this is just anger telling me that I have a boundary that I can set for myself. I love that. Yeah, I love that example.

Thank you for bringing that up because it doesn't always have to be huge and existential.

Exactly.

Yeah. You guys, what do you think about this topic? We would love to hear your feedback and your thoughts and your notes and so definitely leave us a comment if you don't mind. We would love a like on the podcast app. It helps us so much. And if you have a comment, we would love to hear that too.

Yes, please rate and review. It's the best way so that we we can get this information to other people too. Because I think it's not talked about nearly enough, this emotional agility and you know, all of the other stuff that we talk about here on the podcast so that we would really appreciate that. And we love connecting with you. Message us on Instagram too. Like we just love it.

Yeah. And get in Hadley's group. It's amazing. Highly recommended.

And buy Dr. Kane's book.

That's right, buy my book. Awesome friends. Thank you. Thanks for being here. We'll see you all next time on Holistic Inner Balance.

Much love.

Bye bye.

The recording you just listened to consists of the personal opinions of Dr. Nicole Cain, a naturopathic doctor with a master's in Clinical psychology and Happy Healthy Hadley, an Ayurveda expert with a master's in health care, behavior and health education. While these opinions are based upon literature, counseling education, medical training, and clinical experience, this content should not be viewed as the definitive opinion on these subjects. Listening to this podcast is not a substitute for any sort of medical, psychological or other form of treatment. If you are in a Crisis, please call 911 or or call the National Suicide Prevention Line at 1-800-273-8255. If you are in need of counseling, don't hesitate to make an appointment with a counselor in your area.

Dr. Nicole and Hadley are passionate about.

You becoming the expert of your own emotional and physical well being. If this resonates with you and you think this podcast would help someone you love, please share it with them. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Holistic Inner Balance podcast.

Sam.