Dr Monique Andrews : You’re Not Your Anxiety & Here’s Why

Today's special guest is Dr. Monique Andrews, and we're going to go deep on embodied neuroscience. I hope you enjoy it. Dr. Monique Andrews, a huge welcome to the Habits of High Performers Podcast. How are you?

Wonderful, James. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited to have this conversation with you.

Oh, thank you to you for taking the time. You're from beautiful British Columbia, Canada, one of my favorite parts of the world. And I'm excited to talk about something unique. And I would guess that maybe 99% of my audience have not heard of this, and it's embodied neuroscience. So, can we just start with that concept, Dr. Mo? What's embodied neuroscience?

Yeah, basically embodied neuroscience acknowledges that the body and the brain are not separate, that these are integrated systems that work together. And so, my work really focuses on redefining our understanding of things like pain, stress, and healing, really through a nervous system lens. We don't come with a user's manual. And I think we're kind of having a little bit of a clunky approach to how we navigate life and our lived experience.

Interesting. And would you say that this idea of top-down, bottom-up is top-down the idea that the brain controls what happens in the body and bottom-up is actually the body impacts what happens at a brain level?

Well, what a great question because that really depends on your lens. And when I think about top-down, I think more about mind concepts than brain concepts. Like top-down is CBT, you know, like talk therapy, things like that, and mindset-focused work, which is really relevant to our conversation today, right? But the mind is really only one part. That is the top-down piece. And the bottom-up is how can we affect what's happening in the brain, the mind, the nervous system, through the body. And now, neuroscience tells us that we can be incredibly impactful with embodied or somatic practices in changing our mindset, our pain, our stress, our entire lived experience.

Incredible. It's interesting, the last 5 to 10 years, I've been kind of delving into breathwork and I've had some incredible breathwork practitioners on the show, havening in recent years, tapping. And that's my understanding of maybe some tools that we could use that could impact at a brain level. Am I on the right track or are there different things that you think of?

100%. Like breathwork, you mentioned breathwork as an example. It's probably like we can't control a lot of our physiological processes, but we can alter them. And breathwork is the one way that we can rapidly shift our physiology. It takes like 3 conscious breaths to radically change our stress state, for example, to shift us out of fight or flight into a more relaxed parasympathetic state.

What I love about that, Dr. Mo, is you're saying that we actually can participate in our own rescue. There's choices there.

Yeah. And I think so many people are, they're trying to fix their problem, they're trying to fix their pain, they're even trying to fix their relationships without really understanding the operating the operating system that has created it. And so, once you do start to understand that and apply the rules, you can radically transform your lived experience. And I mean, who doesn't want that?

We all want it.

100%.

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Caroline@jjloughlin.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes. It's interesting, at the time of recording right now, there's a lot going on geopolitically and globally and even at a regional level. And it's everywhere. It's hard to avoid it in conversation, newspapers, media, social media. It's everywhere. And it has such an impact. I feel the impact it has on me. And I think unless you ignore it, you're going to experience something. What I'm understanding maybe in an initial part of our conversation is that actually, even with all the external things that are going on, we can actually have some control and agency over what happens in our body and our mind.

Yeah. And I think that's the beauty of it is that sense of agency, because truly the one thing that you actually own in your entire existence is what? Is you, is your body. We are privileged enough to say that. For some people, that's not the case, and we won't go down that path today. But when you start to understand that you're not a slave to your emotions, you're not a slave to your physiology, that anxiety is not, you know, a terminal sentence, and that you can actually shift your experience. Now, I think a lot of people are out there and they're doing the things, they're breathing and they're doing this, they're doing the stuff, but they're not The intention is wrong. And if you ever set out in embodied work anyways with the intention to change something, you're already off course. Because the most important thing when you— and we can get into some specific practices today if you want— is that you just get curious about your experience. And that in and of itself changes the outcome.

Amazing. Tell me more about that curiosity piece because what comes to mind for me, I had a great conversation with Dr. Ellen Langer, who's known as the mother of mindfulness. So, when you talk about being curious, is that the concept of being mindful?

Well, we can use mindfulness as a tool to embody curiosity. So, one of my favorite practices is somatic tracking, where we literally with curiosity, without judgment, focus on a sensation in the body without trying to change it. This is a really hard thing. It's why it's a practice, right? Because we're performers as humans. We want to do good, right? We want to get the A. And so we're— we think we need to fix something. And I think probably one of the most important lessons I've learned in my life is that our goal is not to fix, it's to embody, it's to understand. And if we can really, like, I think the sense of choosing curiosity over fear, curiosity over anything really can help us just engage with our experience without trying to change it. You already are winning.

That's beautiful. And I wanted to just pull it back to something you said earlier, the operating system and actually understanding what the operating system is and how it functions, the rules. Can you just maybe explain that a little more?

Yeah. So I think essentially there are 5 basic rules for understanding the body. And I love thinking about it in terms of like, we never came with a user's manual, right? And we still don't really have one. And if I ever write a book one day, it's in the near future, it's going to be around a user's manual for the body, right? So number 1, the brain controls everything. It runs the show. So your sensation, every emotion, every experience that you're having is filtered and created by the brain. So your brain hallucinates your reality all the time, right? And people, I think, are familiar with that concept that the brain likes to complete the picture based on past experience and what it's learned. It's kind of like AI in that way, right? Where it's giving you a picture that it thinks you want to see. So number one, your brain runs the show. Number two, it's always adapting. This is how we can learn and grow, right? The concept of neuroplasticity, that your brain changes and response to its environment, which is great because that means change is always possible. That's the good side. The bad side is change is always possible. So you need to be intentional about it. And then number 3, pain is an alarm, not a problem. And so what that means is hurt doesn't mean harm. And a lot of people think that if they have a sensation of pain, that that means there's damage somewhere to tissue. And now research points out that that's absolutely not the case, that you can have a pain experience regardless of whether or not there's any physiological damage happening in your body. And that's really important because I think we're getting it— we're getting the pain piece really wrong. And you only have to look at things like the opioid crisis to really grasp that, you know. And that becomes a real bridge. That's how I got into somatic tracking because I was in a place where I was in chronic pain. And my ability to use somatic tracking helped me get out of fear. Because there's a— gosh, it's, it's escaping me right now who said that pain equals sensation plus fear. And if we can remove the fear piece and get curious about the sensation, it, it puts pain in its place, you know, and I think that's really not just powerful, but I think necessary if we want to shift from the over-medicalization of our human experience. Yeah. That's powerful.

Puts us back in the driver's seat.

Yeah. Number 4, your nervous system has different states of operating and it drives your entire lived experience. So if you're in a stressed-out state, that's going to drive your experience. If you have a high level of anger, like whatever state you're in, that's going to determine your experience every day. And like, it's something that's so changeable. We can transform out of that. But most people, well, we didn't come with the user's manual. We don't know how to do it. And if we just are following the little bits and bites we get on social media and trying a bit of this and trying a bit of that, It kind of like, again, it comes back to the idea that the focus, we get stuck on outcome as opposed to just being curious about our experience, which is literally all that's required to get agency.

That's lovely. That's awesome. What's number 5?

Yeah, number 5 is you can learn to regulate your nervous system. So all of these things that has built on the fact that it's actually trainable. And, you know, really there's only 3 things required, and that is attention. So you have to focus on it. Action, you have to do something about it, and repetition, you have to do it and keep doing it again and again and again.

Not one and done.

It's never one and done. Like, we don't go to the gym one and done. We don't go to the dentist one and done. You know, there's a million examples. And because we live in this hyper-accelerated world where we want instant gratification and now we hardly even have to think for ourselves, just go ask ChatGPT, I think it's kind of eroding our capacity for, I won't say capacity for change, but maybe our capacity for seeing.

I think you're totally right. It's interesting. I put a post up just on LinkedIn recently and I just said, look folks, I've recently unfollowed or disconnected with 10 people on LinkedIn because clearly they're just posting ChatGPT crap. And I don't want to read that. I don't want to read a book written by ChatGPT. I don't want to read a post. I want to read something written by a real human. That's their opinion, their lived experience, their profession. That's what I want to read. So I agree with you. We're diluting our ability to be creative and to critique things. So that's vital. So a couple of things I want to go back to. Somatic tracking, I definitely want to come back to. Regulating our nervous system, I want to come back to. I wanted to share a couple of examples of my own life and how I think maybe it really connects with what you've said. So one, so I travel a lot. I do a lot of keynote speaking all around the world and I'm away often. And the night before I leave, I feel a bit sick, nauseous. I feel in my lower left abdomen physical pain. I don't like leaving my son and my partner, and yet the night before, I tend to pull away from my partner. And all I want to do is hug her and not leave, but there's this anxiety that builds. And the second component of that story is I had to go to Antarctica for the first time last year. And about a week before, I find myself in the emergency department. Now, I would say generally, I'm quite a relaxed person. Generally, I flow a lot. I'm very optimistic, positive. So, it's not like me to maybe go and create stuff. However, I ended up in the emergency department with a really sore left lower abdomen. I went in, they thought, "We're going to need to operate on this guy. This is something serious." They couldn't find anything, nothing there. And When I went to Antarctica, 2 days in, pain disappeared. My second trip to Antarctica a year later, no pain. So really interesting. I think my mind and body are kind of to and froing, and I've got this thing with travel. So as I share that with you, do you think there's tools that I could use if I understood the operating system to help me practically?

Yeah, I think the first thing you need to understand is the operating system. Like, you got a lot of labels on your experience. So you have anxiety, so your brain goes, right, we're gonna, this is happening. And it's not even, it's not your mind that's creating that reality. It's, well, it's not only your mind, it's your brain, right? There's the people, I think Bessel van der Kolk wrote a book called Your Body Keeps the Score. And I kind of disagree. I think your brain keeps the score, but your body acts like the scoreboard. So your body, your brain begins to create your reality maybe a day or two before travel. So the physiology starts to change, we start to get hormonal shifts into the realm of elevated cortisol, adrenaline, that starts to create changes in your body physiologically. So what you're experiencing is very real. It's not like the pain in your left flank isn't real, or your left lower abdomen. It's, it's truly a real physiological experience, but it's a perfect example of no tissue damage. And it's something that's created by your brain, right? So that you— it's like your brain always wants to suppress entropy. It makes you wanna think it wants to make you think it has the complete picture, even to your detriment, like the pain that you have in your left side. Now, Maybe when you're 85, you'll have something wrong with the, you know, your sigmoid colon or something. Who knows? Right? That's always been there. That only squeaks up a little bit, you know? But even if we feel like this is maybe something digestive, who knows what it is? But even if we think about something like how the vagus nerve connects the brain to every other part, every other organ in your body, that's a bidirectional communication. And in fact, information coming from probably that distal third of your colon back to your brain is even faster and more full than messages coming from your brain out. So again, your brain gets this flood of information and goes, he's traveling, we're stressed. Oh, let's finish out, let's fulfill the story. So it gives you something else maybe even to focus on. Let's distract him from the travel and make him think about the pain in his side. Instead? And maybe that will help ease this path.

Who—

I don't have the exact— I don't know what your experience is. Only you know what your experience is. But a lot of what you are experiencing is pre-programmed by your brain, and it plays out in your body.

Amazing. And can I reprogram?

100%. Just takes attention, action, and repetition. And I would start with my favorite tool, which is somatic tracking.

Let's talk about it. So I did want to come back to that systematic tracking. What is that?

Basically, it's a way to listen to your body with curiosity, without judgment. And I'll come back to— again, I want to say, I can never seem to repeat this enough when I teach people. It is, you're not trying to change the outcome. You're not even trying to change the sensation at all. You just attend to it and you notice it and you notice how it changes. With your breath. We can even, we could go through it today if you want. We could take you through a somatic tracking experience so that you, and then you can do it easily on your own. And you could also, I mean, there's, you could, you know, there are scripts and all kinds of stuff on the internet that you can have somebody else guide you through it, but it's very powerful.

I'd love to do that. That would be so amazing.

Yeah. You want to do it now?

Yes, please.

Okay. So a few rules before we start. And again, I don't want you to try and change or fix anything. And maybe you don't have a pain or anything like that today, but I'll give you some prompts and I just want you to follow along. And if you feel uncomfortable at any point, you just, you just let me know. But so get yourself in a very relaxed state. Yeah, you've already closed your eyes. And so my invitation would be, if it feels comfortable to close your eyes, go ahead and do so. And now, James, I want you to just note, is there any sensation anywhere in your body? It doesn't have to be good, bad. We're not going to label it. I just want you to notice, is there a sensation somewhere that you can attend to?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Great. And all I want you to do is just notice it. I don't want you to try and change it at all. So just look at it. Let's take a nice deep breath in together. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Just extend that exhale a little bit. So you have a sensation. Do you have a sense of where that is in your body?

Yeah.

And is that— does it have a shape or a color maybe, or A characteristic?

It feels like it's like hard and it would be probably like a circle shape.

Okay.

And color. Yeah, like red.

Okay, so we have a red, hard circle shape. Let's go ahead and just take a nice full breath in again, in through the nose. Maybe a little pause before you breathe out. And then a nice long exhalation and really extend that exhalation a little bit. I want you to do that again for me. You feeling pretty safe right now in your experience, in your body? Okay. Let's go back and visit the red, hard, circular kind of thing. As you sort of breathe into that area, is it changing at all?

Yeah, there's less tension.

Okay. What about the red circle? Smaller, bigger, changing color, changing structure?

Feels like it went from like 3D to just like flat, like 2D.

Ah, so it's maybe lessening. It's changing. Yeah. And it's not causing you any harm. It's just there, right?

Mm-hmm.

Let's take another big breath in again. Great. We can't get this wrong. You're doing it perfectly. Now let's just zoom out for a minute and check in with the rest of your body. Right? Maybe place a hand on your chest and a hand on your belly, and I want you to just say to yourself, right here, right now, I'm safe. Nice. Another calming breath, breathing in that sense of safety. Then whenever you feel comfortable, you can bring your arms down. And then we're just gonna visit that sensation one more time today. Where are we at, James? What does it look now?

Interestingly, There's no sensation. There's nothing sticking out in terms of any tension. It's, yeah, oddly disappeared. Wow.

Amazing. James, when you're ready, you can open your eyes again and just come back into this room, into this experience. Wow, that you're, that you're like the poster child for the perfect somatic tracking experiment. But that's basically it. It's so simple. And you can see how you You can do that yourself, right? Again, with attention, action, repetition. But it's very, very simple. Now, how are you feeling about that?

Dr. Mo, that was, it felt like such a straightforward, pragmatic process, but something odd, like I can't name it, something odd happened where it was a physical pain. It was the left side. I am traveling tomorrow. It was noticeably sore and it was there during the initial part of our conversation. And then when we did that exercise, a few minutes in, started to dissipate. And then right at the very end, I was trying to find it and look for it and I can't, it's not there.

You were trying to find it and look for it because your brain has this expectation. What we just did was a little bit of rewiring where we're like, oh, hey, Let's just look at this and not label it and lay all this heaviness into it, but let's just examine it with curiosity. And did we try and change it?

Not at all.

Never said anything about changing it, did we? We took some breaths, we felt safety, we embodied safety, and it changed on its own, right?

Yeah. Like really powerful. It's interesting. Not on a pain front, but on a performance front. I'll go back to my earlier days, I was a drummer and I had to compete on a stage and get adjudicated. And now I speak on a stage and essentially, you're being adjudicated by all the people in the audience. And there's this performance element. And certainly as a drummer, I had things like sweaty hands and then stiffness. And had I known this somatic tracking, then I imagine it would have elevated my ability to perform with that pressure.

Yeah, with anything, right? Like public speaking, you're a public speaker, you know, they say, the people say, it's— people have more— there are more people that are afraid of public speaking than of dying. Okay. I find it energizing. I do not— there's nothing terrifying about it. But I have a very vivid memory when the very first time I did I think the first time I had a big public speaking gig, it was, I think, like 2,500 people. And I had a lot of feelings in my body. And I remembered reading, you get to choose what to call them. And so I labeled that as excitement instead of anxiety, and it never left me. And basically what we're doing through the somatic tracking is we're literally telling your brain it's safe. Now, there's a part of your brain called the amygdala that's kind of like the smoke alarm. It's, it's what— it's where fear is generated in the brain, and it's your amygdala that turns on the sympathetic fight-or-flight system. And when you feel safe, it dampens the amygdala, and so we don't get that revved-up sympathetic fight-or-flight response. And that's one of the Some people include the safety narrative in somatic tracking, some don't. I love it. Do you know Rick Hanson?

Yes.

He's a famous neuroscientist. And he said, you know, there's 3 things required to feel safe. One is like a really good sense of your environment, like you're sitting in your office, it's pretty safe as long as you feel that. And then is trust your gut instinct. Again, I'm in a, you know, I'm in a privileged place where, you know, I'm not a war veteran. I'm not— haven't been a victim of domestic abuse or any of those big T traumas that really disrupt things like your gut instinct. And then the third thing is literally telling yourself, right here, right now, I'm safe. So a good sense of your environment, trust your gut, and then right here, right now, I'm safe, which is the part with the hand. And you're literally— you're telling your brain that that sensation, that experiencing that you're having, is safe. You're not saying change it or I don't want, you know, like it's, you're changing the story. And, and yeah, the brain runs that, the show. So you can change it very simply. And we just did that today, even though that wasn't the, anything that we did with the experience, with the process had nothing to do with changing it. It was just about paying attention to it without judgment. With curiosity. And it changed by itself with the help of the brain because we reprogrammed.

Really incredible. And as you say, it's not the body that keeps the score, it's the brain. And the body, you said the body is the scorecard.

Yep.

I like that. Yeah, I've read the book and my partner Caroline read the book by Bessel van der Kolk. But I love the way you look at it is different. And I think that's a unique perspective, but also it makes sense to me.

Yeah. And imagine if we like learned how to navigate the human experience, the body, like if we just had the tools and understood the basic rules. And so that's really been my mission is to help people, is to take complex neuroscience and translate it so that people can start to embrace their lived experience by having a deeper understanding of things like pain, stress, and healing, which predominates our entire life, right? And so doesn't it make sense that we would want to navigate that in the most easeful— I don't know, just, it's— I think we made some big mistakes in the beginning. Like, of course we need a user's manual. We get a user's manual with our toaster.

Yeah, you're so right. This is like transformational. It's interesting because what you're creating in the book that you're going to write is common sense, but it's not common practice. None of us have it.

That's an amazing way to say it, James. It's common sense, but it's not common practice. Yeah. And I think even there are people who are doing, using the tools, but the intention is not right. It can't be to fix. You just— it has to be, I'm just going to get curious here because relax, nothing is in control, right? It's like, if that's the case, then it's the definition of insanity if we're trying to work against that, if we're trying to push the river. Instead, let's just get really curious about our experience. And then we could do that in a structured way that actually does change outcome. It does change our experience because we can literally wire the brain. Now, why is that faster through the body than it is through the mind?

Why is that?

That's the way we're wired. So the prefrontal cortex, which is that like that logical thinking part of our brain where that's responsible for executive function, it also plays a role in other things, right? When It's because it's a conscious experience. It actually takes longer to create change in the amygdala. It takes longer for you saying— like, if it worked for you to say, "It's okay, it's fine, it's nothing, it's nothing, it's nothing," does that ever work?

Never.

But did what we just do in a few minutes work? Working through the body, right? So anytime you go to the cortex, that wrinkly outer part of your brain that's responsible for your conscious experience, Anytime you wanna send a signal to there, it has to go through the thalamus, which functions as a relay station. That's part of your brain. That's where all the sensory signals has to go through. Unless of course you're going to subcortical structures like the amygdala. So I can send a message from the body to the amygdala without having to stop and check in with the thalamus. There's no delay. It's instant. So when we work through the body like that, we're sending instant signals to the amygdala. To that everything's fine, no need for the smoke alarm. If you try and do that through thinking, I won't say it's impossible, but it's really hard. It's like the slow road to get there. Because I mean, literally, if that worked, well, we would never need psychotherapy in a cognitive way, right? The talk kind of therapy, which I think is great for a reframe. But I'm just going to say this, I'm probably going to get in trouble. If you're still seeing the same talk therapist 10 years later, and you're like, yeah, you know.

What are you doing? What is that talk therapist not doing, you know?

Yeah.

I agree. Can I have an example that comes to mind and just see your thoughts on it? Because I think what you've said to me about the body communicating with the amygdala. So, We'll go back to flying because it's on my mind. When there's severe turbulence, like the plane goes, "Boof," instantly, I feel it's instant, my mind starts racing, hands start sweating, breath increases, heart rate increases. Now, I always thought that's because of my thinking, but actually the physical sensation of the plane dropping is where it started. So, it's a feeling thing, a body thing first. And then it becomes— am I right? I'm on the right track?

Yes. So here, the thinking is the last thing that comes. We make up a story about everything. Here's what happens. Let me explain this. So you have that your brain is having an experience. And so the turbulence, immediately your amygdala goes, ah, things get really smoky. What's the job of the amygdala? Turn on the sympathetic nervous system, palms get sweaty, you get anxious, da da da da da. So There's an action, turbulence, your brain responds by turning on threat response system, the amygdala and, you know, hypothalamus and all of those parts of your brain that are responsible for creating mobilization. Because when there's a threat, and this is normal, we want this to happen. We, when there's a real threat, we want the amygdala to become activated and for it to then activate the mobilization system, which is the sympathetic. So, that's the whole response. But, by the time you have sweaty palms, turbulence could be over, then you make up the story. The narrative is last.

So, there's no point in starting to try and rewire narrative. What I should consider doing then is something more somatic.

Yeah, a little bit of breathwork. Oh, hey. And in fact, instead of the narrative going, "Oh, I'm stressed. Oh, I feel that I'm sweaty." Instead of going there that whole place and even still breathing in that way, because literally there are receptors in your lungs that go to your amygdala that say, "We have shallow breathing. Turn on the threat response system." So, the act of the deep inhale-exhale with the elongated exhalation, again, dampens amygdala output, turns down those stretch receptors in the lungs, turns down the amygdala, turns down the threat response system, no longer flooding the body with harmful mobilization hormones.

Makes total sense. I mean, it just makes sense. And I use a lot of extended exhales when I am more heightened. And even as a performer back in the day, I would do that right before I'd perform. I'm like, whoa, I feel pretty chill.

Yes. And that's exactly how you do it. And that's pure physiology. And we can use that physiology to change our lived experience because if we then layer that with changing our narrative, or just recognizing, like, again, once you understand the rules, okay, of course this is what's happening. We're not crashing. It's okay. We're going to take some breaths. We're going to turn down that threat response. Nothing smoky here. We're safe right here, right now. I'm safe.

It's incredible. I love that. And you mentioned something earlier about healing. So what role can embodied neuroscience play in the healing space?

Yeah. So again, if we go back to if we're in a state of sympathetic distress, that fight or flight, that floods the body with things like cortisol, adrenaline, which in the short term, again, required to mobilize, right? Now, what happens is if we get stuck in that loop, like if let's say you are a person who tends to hang out in that fight or flight platform, then you start to see this like accelerated inflammation in the body. Again, acute inflammation, great for healing. Chronic inflammation, bad. And so what happens is it makes it harder for your body to heal because you get stuck in these chronic loops until you even get to a point perhaps where there's exhaustion and, you know, you can't even mobilize when you need it. And that's a whole other situation. And so again, when you can learn to— and we're not supposed to be like flat, calm, like we cycle, right? We go up, we go down, we go up, we go down. That's normal. But we want to be able to do that. And when we get in one of the, you know, in the extremes of either in too much fight or flight, or maybe in what Porges calls dorsal vagal, where we're in shutdown, We're not in a healing place. Healing happens best when we're in what Dan Siegel called the window of tolerance, right? Where we feel connected and energized, where, you know, that's where we can tolerate anything. It's when we are most joyful, most impactful, most open and curious. If we can be within our window of tolerance. Now, we have to go outside of it to learn and grow, right? There needs to be some stimulation. There needs to be some Rest. Yeah, I forget where we started on that.

No, that's brilliant. Yeah, just around that healing concept around what role that embodied neuroscience plays in it.

Yes. So you can imagine then if you can bring practices in to get you into a parasympathetic state, that's literally where rest and digest, but it's also where healing happens.

So if we're in this heightened sympathetic nervous system state, on a regular, too often, let's say, the ability to heal is greatly diminished.

Well, there's no healing happens when you're stuck there. Healing doesn't happen, which means aging accelerates as well.

So what I'm hearing is an afternoon nap might help us.

I just read the other day that it extends. I was reading a study the other day that the afternoon nap actually will extend life. Now, I'm not somebody who's into longevity. I think you get what you get. And if you're doing all the right things, you know, you're going to have a great experience in life. But yeah, like we know that the body only heals outside of that fight or flight state because the focus during fight or flight is mobilization, energy systems, movement. We move away. We don't digest well when we're stressed. We're not into healing because we're diverting our energy into blood flow into the arms and legs so you're ready for fight or flight to run or whatever it is. That's not the job of fight or flight, is not to heal. So then, if that's the case, we know that we, in order to heal, then we need to be in a parasympathetic state. And studies on heart rate variability and lots of different things really show that that's the case.

Yeah, that makes, again, a lot of sense. It's interesting because a lot of listeners I know are driven They're high achievers and they go, "I can do an 80-hour week multiple weeks in a row and I can run the marathon once a week and do 5 HIIT exercise classes and also run the business and have 3 kids and a wife." Well, actually, what I'm hearing from them and understanding what you're saying is they're constantly in a sympathetic state. They're heightened, dysregulated, and the chances of them performing at their best are greatly diminished.

The chances of them getting an autoimmune disease probably greatly increased heart attack, stroke, rapid accelerated aging. Yeah. And yes, probably you can do all those things you just said if you're 30. And then let's look at that picture again when you're 50, you're creating a very different experience in the body. And really for those people around you, like, I think something that has really driven me in this work comes from my own spiritual practices that say, You're responsible for how you show up in the world because it impacts everybody around you. And when you show up at your most elevated state, I mean, who doesn't? That changes not just your experience, but it changes the experience for your family, your colleagues, your community. Isn't that what we all want, right? 100%. It's totally achievable. And we can expect peaks and valleys every day. But if we can keep coming back to this space where just be curious about your experience instead of trying to change it, because we cannot account for all of these things outside of our control, which is almost everything. Just be curious. And keep, you know, the practice is really important because it's easy to, you know, oh, it's a busy week. I have to fly here and do it. I'm flying somewhere to speak myself this weekend. And so it disrupts your schedule, right?

Of course.

But if we, I just, I make my, that my practice is like, that's a non-negotiable.

That's awesome. I want to talk about the practices before we finish up. But before we do that, the one thing I've been interested in and learning more about is the vagus nerve. And I've been studying it, understanding it, And I actually got these things, I had a guy on the show, a scientist called John Hacker, and he's created the things called ZenBuds. And it's like a headset. And then one of the, there's like a little nodule that sits in your ear in around here and you turn it on and it sounds like a buzzing, but this frequency stimulates the vagus nerve. And the evidence through the science and the research that he's done is that it increases the HRV.

It does.

It's amazing. So please tell me a bit more for the person going, what's a vagus nerve and why should we do these things?

Yeah, yeah. The vagus is called the wanderer and it's the longest cranial nerve. So it starts in your brain at your brainstem and then travels right all the way through to every organ in your body, right? And the vagus, this place that you're touching right here, so the place that it's closest to the skin, so there's something called the afferent branch of the vagus nerve, the ABVN, sits in your ear right there, right in what's called inside the tragus in that area. And you can stimulate that. And now they've done studies, and actually they've been doing vagus studies for decades, that if you stimulate the vagus, you reduce inflammation, you improve sleep, all of this stuff. In fact, it's FDA approved in the United States for intractable epilepsy and treatment-resistant depression. So, We tried everything else, but if we stimulate your vagus nerve, it actually works. This is a big deal in chiropractic because the vagus sits right in around this area. And a lot of places, times you get adjusted is this upper cervical area. And if you're stimulating this, then you do see things like elevations in heart rate variability, just so many different things improve. There's a lot of studies on it. If you just search like vagus nerve stimulation, thousands of studies showing how impactful it is. And that a lot of my work is focused around the vagus nerve and how we can impact that to change our experience to become more regulated. It works really well.

That's incredible. So, for the person that doesn't want to fork out $400 or $500 or whatever it costs to get some ZenBuds, what can we do every day? What are some of the practical tools or practices that you maybe use that we could all implement?

Yep. So literally just getting in and massaging your ears like this, right? Now, people will get tired of that or they'll forget to do it. But here's another one. This is called the basic polyvagal exercise. You take your hands like that, just fold them, and then you put them behind your— kind of like behind your head and your upper neck. Okay? And essentially what you do without moving your head is you look to the left. Now, I'm not yawning because I'm bored. I just yawned because that was a physiological sigh. What you want to do is you want to hold that position, look to the one side until you yawn or sigh. And then once you do that, then you look to the other side. There you go.

That's weird.

Now look to the other side and do the same thing again. Oftentimes one side is higher than the other. Sometimes it might take people several minutes. I get all these people freaking out going, oh, what if I— I'm not yawning, it's taking too long. Just keep doing it and you will. Now what happens to me, there you go. See?

That's weird.

I do this so often that the yawn comes almost immediately. And that is a sign of increased vagus output, which means your parasympathetics are coming up, sympathetics are going down. Now why does that matter? Yeah, because you're chilled out, man. You're ready for rest and digest.

Wow. That was simple. And I could do that once a day?

You could do that whenever you want. You could do it whenever you feel stressed. Add on a little breathing, right? Where you do a short inhale with a long exhale. Perfect. And you just will show up in the world as a calmer person, which makes you a nicer person too, I think, right?

Yeah. We need more leaders in the world like that, Dr. Mo.

Yeah, tell me about it.

So what are some of the other practices that you practice often that we could install as habits?

I think that's a really good one, especially if you're someone that's prone towards a lot of anxiety. The somatic tracking, hands down, right? And adding on the safety piece. So these are practices that are to just get curious. And again, you're not trying to fix. Just get curious. The breathwork, of course, you know, 3 breaths and you change your physiology. Add on that what's called the basic exercise and you're changing your regulation. And again, just commit every single day, I'm gonna do that.

Yeah. That's beautiful. And that's like 3 to 5 minutes.

That's it. And, you know, meditation was really big for a very long time and mindfulness. Like these are mindfulness practices that are not sitting in a corner People, there's so much heaviness attached to the meditative experience because you think you're not supposed to think about anything, which is also wrong. Like, why don't they tell you that? It's not about not thinking. It's about paying attention to your mind. Right? Yeah, the somatic tracking, breathing, anything that you can do that's like, that really is embodied. And again, just remember that you're not trying to control anything. You're just paying attention with curiosity and trying not to judge it.

Amazing. And may I ask, with the somatic tracking, what you took me through is amazing. Do you have any recordings of you doing a somatic tracking, like, experience?

I don't, but that's something I could do.

That'd be amazing. And I would happily pay for that, as would many others that are listening right now. We could download that and use it. That would be definitely a tool that we'd all be happy to pay for.

It's so simple. I'll put something together.

Amazing. Thank you. And when you do write your book, I want to order 25 copies. I want to be the first person to order it and get it out to lots of people, lots of friends and family and clients.

Thanks, James.

No, pleasure. I think the work that you're doing is so important. And a couple of questions just before we wrap up. I believe in possibilitarian thinking and possibilitarian leadership. So, we see all these problems and people often focus on the problem. But I think getting, leaning into curiosity of, well, what are all the possibilities? I know the problem's there, but what are all the possibilities? How, if we're trapped in our bodies and our minds, I imagine we can't think through the lens of curiosity and possibility as much. What role does the body play in helping us with that possibilitarian thinking?

Yeah, I think you're right. When we feel stuck, and again, that's like, That's, um, that's a narrative that we're creating, this sense of stuck, right? Because what that means is we're not free, which is antithetical to how we want to exist. And I just want to offer a reframe that you're not stuck, you're adapting. And typically when we first adapt, it's in ways that we learned to when we were kids that no longer serves us now, right? Like Gabor Mate says, our personality is just a long list of coping mechanisms we developed since we were kids.

Beautifully said.

Yeah. And so like, if we can acknowledge that, say, and like, again, right, there's an acceptance. I'm not stuck, I'm adapting. And I just need to help my body shift and learn to regulate so that I'm adapting better so that I'm more stress resilient. Because when we're in these really stress vulnerable states is when we feel most stuck. And if we can just shift our lens This is where some cognitive mindset work comes in too. You're not stuck, you're adapting. And you're adapting in a way that your brain learned a long time ago. And here's the great news, that can change. And so, we have to start first to work through the body because we know it's the fastest way to create change in the brain. And we know the brain runs the show. And the good news is that's trainable.

The one thing you've given me, and I'm sure the listener right now, is hope. There's actually a sense of hope and agency. We can actually do things to help ourselves and that we're not just at the mercy of everything around us. There's certain things within our control. I love it. A couple of, well, just one last question, but before I do that, a couple of things for the listener. Please go to the show notes and I'll have all of Dr. Mo's socials in there, website in there, LinkedIn, everything. Please go and follow Dr. Mo and connect. I can tell you that her Instagram is awesome and full of incredible tools and practices and insights. And then last question. So, if you and I were to hypothetically fast forward many, many years into the future and someone very young that you cared for, maybe a young kid, came into the room and they said, "Dr. Mo, how do I go about leading my life on purpose?" What might you say to them?

The first thing that pops into my head immediately is to be more curious than afraid.

Beautiful.

That fear is manufactured. And to just notice without trying to change things, it seems like mindfulness woo-woo. It's not. It's a prescription for an elevated existence.

That's really powerful. I needed to hear that today. That's amazing.

Great.

Thank you. I just want to say, I think this should have been a 4-hour podcast because there's so many things I want to go deep in. So if you're open to it, I would love to have you back on the show.

I'll write my book first. Give me a year.

Write the book. I'll give you a year. I'm going to write the date down today and I'm going to follow up with you about 3 months out and be like, is the published date on track? I can't wait.

All right. Thanks, James. This was really fun.

Dr. Mo, thank you so much.