Episode 342: Nurture Your Mind and Body

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Green for the Winey Plowza Podcast, and I am very excited today because I get to speak to the fabulous Brenda Swanson. Brenda, thank you so much for doing this with me today.

Absolutely, my honor to be here.

I'm gonna tell you a little bit about this fabulous lady. She is a former actress turned wellness advocate with a deep passion for yoga and holistic health. After her career in acting, She dedicated herself to promoting wellness and mindfulness, leveraging her platform to inspire and educate others on the importance of physical and mental wellbeing. Brenda is known for her holistic approach to health, incorporating yoga, nutrition, and mindfulness practices into her daily life and workshops. Through her work, she aims to empower individuals to lead healthier, more balanced lives. And I know we all want that. So I am super excited to talk to her today, and I want Brenda to start with telling us a little bit about herself. Can you share with us your journey into health and wellness and what motivated you to prioritize this aspect of your life?

Wow. That's a loaded question. I must say, if I do say so myself, that's loaded up. It's a loaded question. I actually was a gymnast as a kid, so I've always been very active. Although I wasn't, then I was eating McDonald's 3 times a day if I wanted to, because I worked out 6 hours a day.

Oh my gosh.

Pouted at the model and was taken to New York by Wilhelmina Agency and started working in the industry when I was 17, running around New York City, trying to get pictures and trying to make a portfolio and see if I had what it took. And then I'd always planned to come back to New York and do Broadway and sing and dance and be Shirley MacLaine. Wow. When I modeled, I lived first in Japan, like some agency from Japan came and they collected me and said, we'll pay you $4,000 for a 60-day contract. If you make that money, you pay the money back. If you make more than that money, you keep the rest of whatever you made. If you made no money, you had a free trip to Japan. So I went to Japan and made $20,000, $40,000 in 2 months. And I never had made that, ever made that much money in my life. So I renewed my visa, went to Hawaii, came back. And went for another 60 days to make another. And I'm just sending the yen home to my dad. So then I went to Paris and I lived in Paris for a while, and I lived in Milano for 5 years. And I started Giorgio Armani's line called the Emporio Armani line in 1981. So I was his muse and his model for about 5 years. And then when I did come back to the States, I did everything from all the beauty stuff and all the— from Tampax to Hair Color Box to makeup to you name it. I was doing all that advertising stuff. And it was wonderful. But however, being in the modeling industry, you automatically go to, okay, I've always eaten healthy. I've always been healthy. I was a vegetarian for 17 years. And when that wasn't working anymore, I started to eat meat again, which I'm still don't eat a lot of, but I still eat it. I need it because of the iron and the, the protein. Yeah. So I've kept, and also in the modeling, I learned so many things from makeup artists. Like little tricks on just how to wash your face. And when you put on cream, you tap around your face. You don't ever rub your cream into your face because all you're doing is pulling lines in every direction. And you don't want to pull your eyes out this way when you're putting on your cream because you're going with the crow's feet. You want to go against them and come inwards around here. So I learned all these secrets and tricks on skincare, on beauty. I've always been active as a gymnast. As a matter of fact, I used to do no-handed cartwheels and backflips off the sidewalks in Paris and I'd say, tell all the models, hey, ready for a trick? And I'd go do this trick and they'd all be like blown away. Like, how?

I love it.

Because I was a gymnast and I'm still 18, 19 years old. So all that stuff came easy to me.

Sure.

I had to stay in good shape for the modeling thing. And I walked everywhere and I didn't even do a lot of yoga during this time, 17, 18, 19. And I just, I walked and I did sit-ups and push-ups in my home. But I have to be honest with all you ladies out there, for sure, none of this is about a diet. There is nothing to do with a diet ever in your life. It's about a lifestyle that you need to choose and actually live every day. And if you're 35 or 40 and you're getting more grown up all the time, you better make sure by the time you're 45 that you are moving your body because you will be sick and ill by the time that you are 75 or even earlier. And this is where cancer cells come in. And this is where we're not operating at quick enough levels because we're not exercising, we're not moving, we're sedentary. We're, we're, we have kids, people have kids, and the next thing they can't get rid of the baby fat or women going through menopause that are having such a hard time because their body is shifting and changing. There's certain ways that you can go about that and not have that happen, but you have to pay specific attention to what you are putting in your mouth and how you are moving your body. I can tell you everything that I can tell you and give you all the information in the world, but if you don't apply it, it doesn't do anybody any good. And it's same for anything that we do in life, really.

Very true.

My, my experience in health and wellness and starting the yoga thing was because when I started to get a little more grown up and move back to the US of A, because I stayed in Italy for about 5 years on and off, back and forth to New York, I started doing yoga and like all those fitness crazes that were in from the step yo— to the step classes to the, the aerobics to everything that there was. I tried everything. And when I got to yoga, I really fell in love with it because it's a lot like gymnastics in the way, but it's more stretching. And I actually do yoga with weights. So my arms look like this. I'm 61 and my tummy looks like this.

You look fantastic. Like that.

I'm not sucking it in. You're amazing. That's my tummy. And it's because. I wake up and move my body every day. I wake up and I go to a studio. I use weights with my yoga so that my legs— because listen, ladies, as soon as we get more grown up, when you're in those 40s and such, if you don't start lifting weights— and I'm not talking about 1 to 2 pound weights that just make your muscles fluffy, they never ever define them. You need a good 8 pound weight to do that, or a 5 pound weight. So you start out slow, like maybe with, yeah. If you did 2 pounds for a week, move up to 3, 4, and 5, like, after that. And if you have to put them down because you've worn out your muscles, put them down and sit down because you'll burn more calories sitting down for the 15 minutes that you sat down than you did for the 5 minutes that you were lifting the weights.

Believe it or not. So I want to hear, okay, so you're modeling and you're acting and you're doing all this stuff. And then you move into being this wellness advocate. So tell us the shift. How did the shift happen?

The shift happened when I came back to the States and I had problems with my tummy and I wasn't sure if it was irritable bowel. I wasn't sure what the heck was going on. So I immediately looked into holistic health. Today they call it functional health, functional medicine doctors, as they call it today. And I looked into all this stuff and read up on everything and actually eliminated so many things from my diet to find out which things I was allergic to, what things were making me hold weight in my tummy, why I couldn't go to the bathroom or why I was so bloated all the time and crampy and uncomfortable. And so it was really important for me to figure out, get to the bottom of it and figure out what that, what and how that was. So I went into studying and reading all about it. And the same thing with the body, with the yoga. I really wanted to know, like this practice was great and it was wonderful and I dig it and I dig all the namaste and doing really slow poses and yin yoga. But when I learned about Sculpt Yoga with the weights, loud music, hot room, never thought I was ever going to dig that, thinking, oh my God, I've never listened to rock and roll music at a very high level and been in a room that's 95 degrees. This is like all new and different. And I fell in love with it. And my mother got bone cancer. She had multiple myeloma. So I was all about the weights then. I was like, besides our bones that get weak and women more than men, and we tend to get osteoporosis and all those things that come come along with it from the weak bones. That's why we have to lift weights. As much as it's for the muscle, it's for the bones, especially the more grown up we get. I don't like to say getting older, I like to say more grown up.

Like that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna save that.

You can totally steal that because I think it's the greatest.

Okay, so I have 2 questions based on everything you've just told me. Okay, so question number 1 is how often do we need to be doing weights?

I would say starting out 3 days a week. And whether you go to the gym and you decide that you want to get a trainer, and if you get a trainer, get somebody that shows you how to do this stuff and then write it down or learn it and go back and do it yourself and push your own self. Because I don't know, I've been to many gyms. I've had private trainers that I worked with for 3 to 6 months and not a thing changed on my body. Nothing. No six-pack tummy, no anything. But they don't really do a great job. They really don't. It's a bunch of younger people that come in, they study, they do a quick 6-week routine thing, and the next thing you know, they're a personal trainer. It's just maybe not the case for everybody. Maybe there are some really great ones out there, and I'm sure there are, because Lord knows enough people go to personal trainers and pay them thousands of dollars. But my experience from the LA Fitness to you name it, the places that I have gone, have none of them have ever changed my body. The thing that changed my body the most was the Sculpt Yoga. I dropped everything from my tummy, everything from the mid area, and just make sure that I walk and I do my Sculpt Yoga. And I do regular yoga too, but it's also power yoga. It's in a hot room, not sitting there in the same position for 5 minutes holding and meditating, which is a great practice.

It's a great—

it's, yeah, a week or once a month. So you stretch and elongate your muscles and your body. But on a regular basis to keep your body in shape, You want to do a power yoga or do you know what I can do is I can send to you or we can put up in the chat or I don't know how it works with podcasts, but we can put up, I'll share a 33-minute video for the audience here that I, that I've done that was on that I have, it's YouTube. It's, I think it's on YouTube as well, but it's all my social media, but I'll share that with the group. So you guys have 33 minutes to try out whatever they want to try out and as much as they can and just see what it looks like.

And that's awesome.

Do that. And that's 30 minutes. So it's not that long. If you can only get through 15 at the beginning, get through 15 and do that.

I want to try this. I'm very excited. So you also talked about nutrition. So let's talk about nutrition for a second and we'll go back to yoga. You figured out, and you don't have to share if you're not comfortable, but you figured out what was upsetting your body and what you needed to, like, what did you need to eliminate to feel better is, I guess, my question.

Believe it or not, probably the things that everybody should eliminate. Eat dairy, soy, and I do eat some dairy. I eat like sheep cheese. Like I'll have pecorino, it's called in Italy, Italian, and that's a sheep cheese. So I will have sheep cheese every now and again, but only when I'm in Europe can I eat cow's cheese. When I'm here, because it's pasteurized and they just beat the heck out of it.

Oh no.

It's just ruined and I can't eat it here or I'm having all those stomach problems again.

Okay. Okay. That makes sense.

Yeah. And I just eliminated that stuff and I actually went on and I'm still on it. I still do it and I have been on it for 10 years is I'm, I use Arbonne and if any of your people want to know a little bit about Arbonne, I can explain that to them and tell them about it. And it's basically, you literally, I drink it to keep weight on, but most people drink it to get weight off. Right.

Okay.

Okay. It's a probiotic. That's a powder that you put in your drink the first thing in the morning, which I think is one of the most important things that they have in the thing. Cause it goes right in, in the package because it goes right into your digestive system and your colon and your transverse colon goes right into your. Where you need to have your probiotics, not antibiotics, where you need to have your probiotics go in the gut. And then it includes shakes and it includes a detox tea. It includes energy greens. So you have your greens in it. So for me, like I'll go work out in the morning and I'll have a coffee and some fruit. And then I'll, as soon as I'm done working out, I'll have the shake. And that, because it feeds, refeeds the muscles. And then I come home and I'll have something to eat a little bit later. And then I eat really one big meal a day, which is usually around 4 or 5 o'clock. And then I try not to eat after 7 PM because if you don't eat after 7 PM and you sleep until 7 AM, but you don't have a coffee till 8, you've almost 11 hours, excuse me, 12, 13 hours. And so you're putting your body into some sort of ketosis and you're giving your body to rest and digest. It's so important to let your body rest and digest, especially when you're going to bed and late night people. Tend to snack all night, including me. If I'm up all night, I've found popcorn, I'm whatever, I'm watching a movie and I figure something out because I want to munch on something. But honestly, if you stop eating after 7 p.m., the bloat and the gut and all that stuff is going to start going away and you will watch it. And you, when you start to see it, you get really happy and that inspires people and they keep going with it. And then some people just don't do it. So with that Arbonne and doing that, I eliminated coffee. Cheese, bread. I eliminated 7 different things. It was the other one is alcohol. And there's one more thing and I'm not thinking of right now, but there's about 7 things you need to eliminate for 30 days. That's it for 30 days. And your body's going to tell you once you start to have a piece of bread again, like you'll add bread in or you'll add a cheese in or you'll add something and not everything altogether. And you'll start to figure out what's making your tummy fat, what's making your tummy hurt, what's making you gassy and bloated. But you just introduce these things one at a time, like during the next month, and you still stay on your shakes because you got to do something for 90 days or it just doesn't matter whether it's your thought process, whether it's your workout routine, whether it— what, no matter what it is, 90 days is really how long you should be doing it. Even people that go to get sober are always doing 90 days. It's a reprogramming of the mind when you do things for 90 days. Takes a while.

And I want to tell you, everybody listening wants to listen to you because man, do I want to look like you when I'm 60.

But you too can do that. You too can do that. I promise.

I'm listening to everything you're saying. And I know that we all want to be more mindful. I need more mindfulness in my life. And I know everybody listening feels the same way. So can you give us some advice? How can we add this into our days?

The most important thing that we can do is listen and not react. Mm. Because, and I work on this all the time, maybe I've got my body in shape and I've got this and I've done that, but this is my practice all the time, is to be mindful. And being mindful is not only being aware of what you're going to say to somebody, what you're, how you're going to behave in front of people. Being mindful is, I don't know if you're God, universe, or source, but the Bible tells you do unto others as you would have done to you. That's being mindful. It's just about paying attention to what's going to come out of your mouth. It's also how you take care of yourself before you go to bed and when you wake up in the morning. If you can do 15 minutes of some meditation and chill your mind out, your whole day changes. And before you go to bed, if you could do, just put on even like a Yoga Nidra where they talk you down or put on one of those sleep meditations and you listen to that and just fall right asleep afterwards. When you wake up, you're more refreshed.

So meditation at the end of the day to unwind and go to sleep. And feel more refreshed makes total sense to me. Can we go to the morning? So if we meditate in the morning, how does that set us up for better success during our day?

Well, again, I cheat sometimes because I like to listen to a morning prayer. Yeah, I'll listen to— and it's all YouTube stuff, you guys, so it's not going to be something that you can't do. I'll listen to a morning prayer. I love the mindful movement. There's a, there's a mindful movement meditation for new beginnings, for your career, for your life. And sometimes it's great to listen to those at night. And if they have a morning one, the morning ones. But if I'm not listening to some morning prayers, I'm listening to Start Your Day Like This, and it's affirmations and it's confirming what you want to happen that day. Mindfulness is also setting your intention of what you want to create. This is what I was looking for.

I love that.

Create your day. So you don't just live your life, you create it. So when you're being mindful and you're paying attention and you're focusing on what you want to bring about, you're being mindful. It's like God, universe, source has everything for us here. We just need to make our plan and let it come to us because it will be answered.

That's beautiful. That is so perfect. I'm taking notes, which I don't need to do. And I laugh at myself every time because I can just listen, but it's nice to take some notes sometimes. I'm a note taker. It goes into my brain better that way.

So.

We're talking about mindfulness. We're talking about nutrition. We're talking about yoga. And I know that there are mothers listening who are struggling with their own wellness. So to the person struggling, can you give them some advice?

It would have— it would depend on what they're struggling with. If a person is struggling with— if the person is struggling from weight loss, for losing weight, it'd be a different story than if somebody was suffering from depression.

Let's talk about stress. Let's talk about people are struggling with their amount of stress and overwhelm in their life and incorporating. But you handle it. I know you handle your stress and I know I handle my stress. How do you handle your stress and give other people some advice on that?

This is what I do and this is what I tell myself and this is what I practice because stress comes in and out every single day for whatever reason. Like I just mentioned to you about what happened. And it's things that we are out of our control sometimes, and we tend to get overwhelmed. And when you are stressed out and you're in that mode where you just can't even think straight, you got to stop. If you're in your car, pull over and just do what we call box breathing. So you sit in your— you're stressed out, you're practically having a panic attack. Sit in your car, sit in your house, go sit down in your house, whatever it is. And start to breathe. Breathe in for 4, close your eyes, go inward, breathe in for 4, count for 4, breathe out for 4, count for 4, and keep doing that until you feel your heart rate slow down. You can even put your, your left hand on your, your heart and your right hand on your tummy and feel. Start at the bottom of your tummy, feel, come all the way up through your chest and your heart. That's the 2, 3, 4. Hold for 2, 3, 4, and then exhale out your mouth just really slowly. And then hold at the end for 4. That automatically brings your heart rate down. It helps a lot. Also, another thing that I tell myself all the time, and it's usually before I go into the meditation part, and it's usually after, because you just never know how stress is gonna affect you. And I'm already full of energy all the time, so it can hit me pretty bad. I always have to remind myself, always remind myself that when you wait, when you're stressed out about something and there's nothing you can do about it, if you just wait and breathe and wait, everything in the end always works out. It always works out. Leave it in God's hands. Leave it in the universe's hands. Whatever you believe, leave it out there because it will finish it. It will answer itself in the end. And I'm going through something right now where I'm like, can't get somebody on the phone to help me with a very important thing. And I leave for Italy in 6 days. So I'm very stressed all day yesterday. And especially when you can't get somebody on the phone to help you with something that the service doesn't give you the thing for. And, uh, I was in so much stress. The next thing I knew I was in tears. The next thing I knew I was like screaming. And then all of a sudden I was like, what? Do what you tell everybody else, just let it go. It will work out. And by the end of the day yesterday, they were calling me to tell me that they got the payment. So, but the problem is now the insurance company got paid by two, my mortgage company got paid by two people. So now I'm like, so I just let it go. And today I'll get on the phone again and I'm not going to let it bother me because it will work itself out eventually.

That's great advice.

The phone works in Italy. It's not— so remember, ladies, just remember that everything works out. It really does. And if your young one gets sick, don't panic. Just go to the doctor because it's out of your hands. You don't know what to do. And if it's a brand new baby, you really don't know what to do. Just go to the pediatrician and get it checked out so you don't have to worry. It's like me with my kitty cat. He doesn't go to the pediatrician though.

So move to, you mentioned two more things that I know women struggle with that I want to get your advice on. Number one is weight loss.

Yes.

Can we talk about your advice for the women struggling to take off the weight?

Okay. The advice is, like I said a little bit earlier, it's very similar. The advice is to cut out the things in your diet.

Yes, that was great.

That are processed food first.

Yep.

Just have to get rid of the processed food, even if it's a veggie burger. Even if it's whatever it is, try to go shop at the farmers markets, try to get things fresh, try to get fresh soups or make your own at home. But cans of soup are full of preservatives, even when they're healthy. And they're Amy's. Everybody's got preservatives in their stuff. And that is what's making us get inflamed. And the inflammation just grows and grows. You add a chocolate in there a little later, you add a croissant or maybe this or whatever you're eating or your kids French fries, it's just building up more inflammation in your body. That's already going to make you feel sluggish, lazy, fat. You're going to feel like you're just like, brah, right? And I have to say that beginning with stopping all processed food and just try it for 3 days, like, and see how easy and uneasy that is. It's not an easy task. So try for 3 days to eat everything whole food. Just try for 3 days and you're going to see it. 3 days by the end. And don't eat after 7. 3 days. Don't eat after 7. Don't eat inflammatory food like processed food. Don't eat the cheese and the dairy and all that stuff for the 3 days and just watch the difference on how you feel in 3 days. Then add something like Arbonne in, then add something like 5 days and you start to feel so much more energy. You start to really And if you're really sluggish and you're really hurt everywhere and your body's aching, literally not to lose weight, it has nothing to do with losing weight, but go on a juice fast. Even if it's for a day, but just drink the 6 juices that they want you to drink all day and drink a lot of water and start flushing your body out. Then maybe do start your 3 days of no processed foods. Because once you clean your body out for a day and you're starting to feel that energy and you're starting to feel feel your cells move a little bit, you're, you change, like your brain chemistry changes. Look, since I had irritable bowel, I'm 61. I'm talking about when I was like 18, 19, 20 years old. And it still comes and goes depending on what I'm eating or what I've done or whatever. If I get crazy and eat a bunch of healthy Nutella, which doesn't start out with sugar, but it's basically hazelnuts and chocolate, which is like Nutella, but healthy. That still gets me inflamed.

Yeah.

What you want to do is keep away from the infla— inflammation because that's what puffs you up. It's what makes all your bones sore. And literally, once you start feeling like that energy, you don't want to stop. You don't want to feel that other way. And as soon as you start to feel that other way, shift again and come back to it. Because listen, we all make our New Year's resolutions and many of them are to lose weight and everybody gym memberships go up in January and by February they're gone. It's 30 days in, 2 weeks into this, most people are going, okay, my New Year's resolution is over now because I've already eaten cake and whatever. What? Like, yeah, their New Year's resolutions don't last that long. It's better to make an intention for the New Year and intend to do something and make a manifested board of what you want to look like.

I love it.

Love it. Manifesting. It's manifested. It's as if it's already done. So you've got a picture of what you look like. You got the clothes that you want to wear. You got the skincare that you want to use. You got everything on this thing that you can look at every day and go, what am I missing today? And maybe throw some fruit and whole foods on it, whatever it is that your story is. If it's working out, throw the body that you want to look like up on there. If it's whatever it is, if it's boxing, put a boxer on there that's a woman or whatever. Just start sending that energy out to God and universe and source.

Yeah.

So once you start doing that, it's going to flow to you. And once you start feeling the difference, but you've got to give yourself those days. 3 days is nothing out of our life. Think about it. Nothing.

And you're— oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

I'm good.

So your advice might be very similar to what you just said, but you mentioned something that I'm hearing a lot of lately. And the women who are my age are starting to go through perimenopause. So how old are you? I'm 47. Oh, wow.

Okay.

Yeah. So I guess the question is, would the advice be similar to the women who are starting to go through those changes with their bodies?

It's even better then. That's when you really need to start doing it. Like when I say 30 and 40, if you don't start then, by the time you're 55, you're already in this zone of like, how many more medications do I have to have? Am I diabetic? Am I, is my bones bad? By that time you've got 15 more years that you haven't moved your body. So you've got to do it. Like, you know, you're not moving, you're rusting. Really, you're, if you're not moving, you're rusting. And like I said, like a walk, like just start doing something. And if you do have a baby, put that baby in a carriage and rock and roll them up and down the street as much as you can morning, noon, and night. Don't have your nanny do it or somebody else. Move your booty.

I agree. And I want to pick your brain about yoga for a couple minutes before I let you go. So tell us what your week looks like, how often you do it, what your practice looks like, how it benefits you.

My lifestyle, lifestyle is my life is my lifestyle. So every morning I get up, pretty much every morning I get up and I go to a yoga class. I go to a hot regular yoga class. Then I train people personally or in small groups, the Sculpt Yoga, at some point during the day, 3 times. So 3 times a week. So I've got my 7 days of yoga in. I also make sure that I do, um, infrared light sauna, red light saunas, and cold plunges and hyperbaric chambers where the oxygen— Wow! All that stuff goes along with that.

You're amazing.

It goes along with your lifestyle. And if you don't have time, get a sitter for an hour and a half and go get in a hyperbaric chamber that gives you oxygen, makes everything in your body breathe again.

And I don't even know where one is around me. I would have to look that up.

Where are you?

I'm in Buffalo, New York.

You're in Buffalo. Okay. It's, there's a place called Restore and I don't know if they're nationwide or what, but it's R-E-S-T-O-R-E, Restore Wellness, I think. And they're all over the place in Florida. I don't know about up north or not, but if they're on the East Coast in general, they're usually all up and down the coast.

Yeah. I will look into that.

The red light, it has compression therapy, it has an infrared sauna, it has the— it doesn't have a cold plunge in there, but it has the hyperbaric chamber and it has the cryo thing that you go in and stand in for 3 minutes and hope that you're not going to sweat or—

I've done that.

I've done that. Water on you because you'll— have you done that? I've done that. I'm better off at the cold plunge person.

My husband just bought a cold plunge.

He did? So get in it and you're not going to be able to stay in it very long the first time. You might even be in there for 15 to 30 seconds, but I'm up to 4 minutes now. And you don't really need to go past 3 minutes really. But if you can handle the 4, do it. I go from sauna, I go from the hot yoga class into the sauna. This is 3 times a week, the yoga class every day, but 3 times a week I'll go right from the class into the infrared sauna. And I'll stay there for about 10 minutes because of after you sweated through the class, you don't want to dehydrate your body and stay in there for another 20. You've been in an hour of a hot class, but you do want to sweat. So you go in there and sit in a sauna for 10 minutes or until you're just soaked and you can think about going into that cold plunge and you get in the cold plunge. So you're really cold by the time you get in the cold plunge and you're happy.

Okay. So he did, my husband does it every morning. I tried it. I got my legs in.

That was, you know what, some people get in there and they put their shoulders, their elbows on the side of it and they don't even get their chest in. They're just like this and their lower part bites in.

So you're telling me I need to do it.

You should do it. You really should. It gets everything moving in your body. See, the thing is, you guys, when we eat processed food and when we eat— you ladies, I should say— when we eat stuff that doesn't get along with our bodies, our cells start to slow down. And cancerous cells are dead cells, meaning that they're just hanging out. So when cancer has got the cells here and you're being— you're not moving them, you're not moving your body, you're not doing anything to take care of yourself. Other cells that are weak start to— that's what causes a mass of cancer because the weak cells start going there. When you're moving and you're eating right and you're eating clean, your cells are operating on such a quick level. Your body, your oxygen in your blood is all going really well. Because the thing that America wants is America companies want you to get sick. They're wanting to make you get sick so that you have to take medication. Pharmaceutical companies, They're waiting for everybody to get sick and diabetic.

No, thank you.

Yeah, but instead of doing the things that are proper to— and, and pushing those things like the doctors should be doing, and our insurance companies should be giving us anything that's preventative free, our pap smears, our OB-GYN appointments, our doctors that you go for a physical, all those things should be a normal thing to prevent you from being sick so you don't have to take the drugs and die. And suffer.

Yeah, I agree. I agree.

It's, it's a terrible thing that we've got going on here, the way that, that we're operating things. And all we can do is stay positive and hope for a shift and a change in that because we need it.

And I have one more question. Of course. 7 days a week, you do yoga 7 days a week.

In my lifestyle and how I am mentally, emotionally, and physically, I call it beauty, body, and balance. If I don't get up and do that yoga every day, for my body, I'm doing it for my brain.

Amazing. I'm so impressed. So impressed.

Thank you so much. That's so nice.

Your body is amazing. Amazing. I'm working on it. I've been working on it.

Good girl.

Good girl.

We all are working on it. I'm a constant work in progress. You know what I mean? I'm going back to Europe and I'm probably going to do some modeling over there again right now because I'm fit and I'm 60 and they're not amazing. Don't want to see— yeah, Europeans don't want to see an 18-year-old girl putting on their, their skincare and saying that, look at the difference between one side and the other and you're 18. They want to see somebody 40 or 60 or 50.

Absolutely.

And actually you can see a difference in what the product is doing for you.

Wow. I've asked you a million questions. Is there anything else that you want to share that I didn't ask you?

No, I just wanna tell everybody to just wake up every morning and look inside and tell yourself how much you love you. And today's gonna be a, something really exciting for you is gonna happen today. And just remember, go back to that as many times as you can. Even when the bad stuff comes in, turn it around. And whatever you're telling yourself in your brain, oh, I'm not good at this. Oh, I didn't do this right. Oh, you know what? I didn't look that great. And you'll get whatever you're gonna tell yourself. Wherever that comes, get a pen and a paper or talk into your phone and your notes and say just the opposite of that. Oh my God, my yoga practice was so good today.

Yeah.

And the phone rings. My yoga practice was so good today. I was perfect in every move, just the way my body can do the moves. Because not everybody is perfect in every move. Everybody's got a different body, so they're all a little different. And I just rewrite it down. Or I type it into my notes because you're gonna reverse it out to the universe out there, as opposed to just mumbling it in your head. Now you've put it out there the opposite because what's in your head is going out there too.

I feel so wonderful and inspired. I knew I was gonna feel this way after talking to you.

I'm so happy.

And what about the people who wanna come find you? Where can they find you online?

They can find me online. They can find me at, on Instagram at Brenda L. Swanson, and they can find me on Facebook as Brenda Swanson. And my website is www.brendaswanson.com. I don't have a bunch of stuff up on that now, but I make, hand curate my own body butters and bath crystals that are very luxurious. I couldn't find anything that would really go into my skin without having to reapply. And I don't care. I was buying everything from Eucerin to you name it. To everything. I couldn't get anything to stay on my body. So I became a chemist in my kitchen, just like I did with the health and the nutrition and figuring out everything. I became a chemist in my kitchen ordering things online from cocoa butters to skin barrier creams to hyaluronic acid to everything I could find and made a really thick, juicy butter. Like, it's almost— it's so luxurious. It almost feels like it's a little greasy almost, but it stays on my skin. And everybody that gets it are like, oh my God, I can't believe I wake up in the morning and my legs are still soft.

Oh, I love it. That's awesome.

Yeah. So that's a really good thing to do. I wish I had a bunch of those that I could give to guests on your show. Oh, a little body butter. And it's so good for pregnant women because it's so thick for stretch marks. I've sold it to a lot of pregnant women in the last 10 years. So, so that's another thing that I do. And, but the other way to get in touch with me, which is even better than all of them, is to send me a text. On 310-951-0002. And if you want to put that in the chat or however you do it, you're more than welcome to do that. And if you want to reach out to me, try to do it by WhatsApp because half the time I live in Europe and half the time I live here. So WhatsApp is free and I can give you all the advice or whatever questions that they may have.

You're amazing. I can't thank you enough for your time and you've taught us so much. I just can't thank you enough.

You're so welcome. So welcome. This was an honor for me to be on. I'm so happy. I hope I've done something for you ladies that inspires you and makes you feel your best self. And if you're not feeling that, to get to that point. And it doesn't last every day. We have to work on it. That's just the way it is. It's life.

I agree. Such good advice. She's full of so much good advice. This is Rebecca Green, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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