Pleasure Meditation | Heartmath | Coach Rebecca Hazelton

Wellness force radio, episode 65.

From my experience, people like to feel good. They want to feel joy, they want to feel pleasure. I know that I do. And so I want to do something that I know if I give three minutes of my day, I'm going to boost those feelings that I most want.

What's up, my friend? Welcome back to another episode. This is your host, Josh Trent. Thank you so much for spending time with me here on the podcast. If it's your very first time to the show, welcome. This is where I bring you access to the most inspiring and passionate experts in behavior change and wellness technology. These are thought leaders. They dedicate their entire life to driving real transformation in our physical and emotional wellness. For today's special Friday episode, we're talking to my good friend Rebecca Hazelton, a licensed nutritionist, health coach, personal trainer and heartmath coach who runs her own consulting business for the past 15 plus years. Rebecca's passionate about teaching self care and how to treat your body with love and respect. She is the author of two books, Choosing Health. A One Size Doesn't Fit All Guide to Diet, Exercise and Motivation is a must read for anyone interested in living the healthier lifestyle. Her new book we're going to talk about today, Pleasure Meditation. This is such a cool title. Your guide to joyful stress reduction. You're going to love this. When she goes into explaining why she chose that title. It's just been released, it's actually out this week. It's a simple three minute guide in there that teaches you how exactly to boost your feelings of pleasure and melt away feelings of stress. You can learn more about her@choosinghealthnow.com but I owe you a backstory about how Rebecca and I first came to meet. I used to host a few episodes for Sean Croxton's Underground Wellness back in 2010. Well, I interviewed Rebecca when she launched her book Choosing Health and I just love this woman. She has the best heart. She's also a busy professional and a busy mom. So not only does she walk the talk, she walks it in familiar shape. I am so excited to share this episode with you. Coming up right now we are gonna talk about what pleasure meditation is, who it's for. All the benefits from a certified heartmath coach. We're gonna learn what biofeedback device that Rebecca uses called Inner Balance. This assesses meditation affected by heart rate variability. I'll link a few of those in the show notes as well for other HRV shows. But I think what you're really gonna get from this episode the most is, is how to use meditation, pleasure meditation, to let go of the things that don't serve you. All right, we're gonna bring on Rebecca right now, but before we do, there's a quick note. At the very end of the show, I actually pieced in something really special. It's five minutes of Rebecca and I talking off the air super candidly, super open and quite vulnerable about something that I'm working on right now as a health challenge. You know, even as a wellness coach, I'm still a human being and I am not perfect. Newsflash. Who is? So definitely stick around till the end of the show. I think some of the things Rebecca and I talked about off the air are going to connect with you quite deeply in your journey as well. Let's get into this conversation with Rebecca. I'm excited to talk about what pleasure meditation is. Walk me through, like, what you've been up to for the past few years.

Yeah, it's been, it's flown by, let me tell you. I swore I was never going to write another book. I don't know if you remember if I said that to you when you interviewed me last time, but this was such a different animal, you know, so it's so much shorter than my first book. And it's got such a certain focus as a tool. A short, quick, easily accessible tool. I've been working as a health coach with people on a much more global basis. I've been working actually for FDN as a part of their staff, but also doing my own thing as a consultant. So I've been working with a larger volume of people and I just noticing some really common threads with lack of stress management, to put it bluntly.

What do you feel like you're seeing the most? I mean, I know it's hard to put that into a little sentence or two. Like what comes up the most as an FDA coach?

Fatigue, gut, health issues, and I'd say hormonal imbalance. Those are the three that I'm seeing a ton of. And thyroid issues. That's another big one. Usually low thyroid. And you know those. And you've got quite a good education yourself. So you know that there's common threads to that. You know, when diet and lifestyle are out of whack, then the system, you know, the body as a whole is going to break down. And I'm definitely seeing that. And the. The common thread is that poor self care, poor stress management.

You actually wrote this pleasure meditation book. It's called Pleasure Meditation. Your guide To Joyful Stress Reduction. I love that by the way. I've never heard of that. Joyful stress reduction. Like why'd you choose that tag to go with the book Joyful Stress?

That's a good question. Well, it really summarizes what this tool is. It's a different type of meditation. I know that a lot of people out there, myself included, are sometimes resistant to meditation, even though we know it's really good for us. And so when I was thinking about the people that I'm working with who are struggling and that really need something like this, the book pretty much wrote itself as I really got down and honest with myself about what is stopping people from really tapping into getting healthy. I have all these great tools and if people would just use them, then they could feel so much better. What's stopping them? And the answer came in loud and clear. Stress. They're overwhelmed. They can't possibly take on another thing. And so rather than feeling better, they just plug through. They don't change, you know, or they change a few things or sometimes nothing. But even if they change just a few things, if they're not getting off of this just absolute stressed out state of mind, then they're not going to see those results. They're not going to feel better. And my job is to help people feel better, not just, you know, give them tools that they're not going to use. Right. And so I developed this tool as a way to make meditation incredibly accessible. It's something that people look forward to doing because it feels good.

I love the part in the table where you have flow. Let's run through that real quick. So there's some sections in the book and the first one is F for flow. It's focus on your breath. Tell us a little bit about this for focusing on the breath. The F of flow.

Yeah, well, it's the very starting out place of getting connected with your body and mind and it connects both. So to tap into your breath and doing that for even just a couple of breaths, being very present with your, with your body, how the breath, where is the breath coming from? That can signal what's going on in your system. A lot of times when people are stressed, they're breathing from their necks, their shoulders, and it's tight and they're not breathing deeply. They're not getting oxygen to their bodies, to their brains. And it really hinders their ability to do their jobs, to focus on their work, to communicate with other people and to not get over emotional in response to things that other people might Say, that could be considered constructive, right? Yeah, yeah. To really take that few moments and notice where your breath is coming from and if it is in the shoulders or the neck area, to just draw your presence, draw it down. I really love abdominal breathing. Just to bring it down into the belly and just to be present with your breath.

There's some really unique exercises you have in the book, too. The next letter is L. This one's unique. It says, let in love and let stress go. I mean, that's easy in theory, Right. So share with us kind of more about this. Let in love, let stress go. Peace.

Yeah. Yeah. So this is such a great aspect to shifting the brain from stressed out hormones into more beneficial hormones that actually provide balance to the body and to start to change those. Those hardwired neural patterns that we all can get locked into when we're stressed. Right? We. I love the analogy. I believe actually you interviewed somebody recently on the podcast that talked about the path walking. It's like walking a path all the time. If we're thinking in a certain way or doing a behavior that's not good for us, it gets well grooved.

Sure.

And. And so the letting in love, letting stress go is. Is a way that we can shift our thinking. It just without even trying hard. Like if, when. When you're. When your audience hears that let in love, you know what comes to mind that's going to be unique to each person. So I start to. When I do pleasure meditation or when I'm prompting a client to go through pleasure meditation, I might give a few examples of what that can look like. You know, when you think of letting in love, where is it coming from? Is it coming from a memory that you had that was just. You felt so loved in that moment? Is it coming from, you know, a recent interaction or petting? You know, if you have a pet cat or a dog, you know, did. Did you feel love in that moment? And to start to just tap into those parts of your life where you. You really experience the feeling of love. And then the second part, letting stress go, it just. When you let in love, that second part happens automatically. It just melts. It melts right away.

I just had a call. It's funny, serendipitously, about 10 minutes ago, I had a call with a client. She knows who she is. Bk, that's the initials. And we were talking about this exact point that you've written about so eloquently in your book. And pleasure meditation, we're gonna link that in the show. Notes by the way. And it's gonna be@wellnessforce.com pleasuremeditation. You can learn more about Rebecca there. You can get information about this book, your guide to joyful stress reduction. The next one is O Open up with Gratitude. I love this one because gratitude's something we all get to practice more. But why did you choose to make this part of the O in flow?

I thought along and hard about, you know, what things really break me out of stress and also what common threads a lot of meditative practices share and that I. That have worked well for me in the past. And when we experience gratitude, it's impossible to be upset in that exact moment. It's impossible to feel stressed. And so letting in love is great. It's really important. And each person's gonna have their own unique spin on that. But then that additional layer, because feeling love won't automatically lend itself to feelings of gratitude. So it's that double that two punch, that combo that really brings the body into, you know, that. That state of experiencing pleasure and joy.

And we all have this feeling that we would like to be more grateful. In your book, you do give some nice strategies about how we can actually execute on that. The last piece is W. This is cool. Wake up your pleasure aware. What is pleasure awareness?

Pleasure awareness is how you see the world differently from doing this practice. And so I've gotten some great feedback from. From people who have read it and then also my own journey, which is that when you start to go through these practices where you're letting in love, you're experiencing gratitude, you actually start to notice things in your everyday life that you might not have been before, you know? So as I'm talking with you outside my office, I'm noticing just how gorgeous these hydrangeas are and how there's a butterfly. Right. And I'm. I'm present with you and speaking with you, and I'm so excited to be sharing this information. But I'm also really tapped in to the pleasure that I can get literally by looking out of my window, because I've grooved that path in my mind.

So it's really being attuned to where you are, but also feeling the other feelings you're feeling. Right. Like being two feet on the ground and kind of head in the clouds and exploration. Would you say that's in alignment with pleasure meditation?

Yeah. That's beautiful. I love how you put that feet.

On the ground and head in the clouds. Right? Because we don't want to be just like, you know, always dreamy. We still Want to have some groundedness to us. And I feel like meditation is something that's so hot. Everybody's trying to say, oh, in business, it's a big theme right now for meditation and mindfulness. And we've discovered from many guests on the show, Rebecca, from authority figures like you, who help clients on a daily basis, the power of how we actually can use meditation to allow people to let go. I think this is something we're seeing over and over and over again. You know, you're a certified heartmath coach. Just unpack. For people who might not know about what heartmath is and its relationship to coaching people on how to let go.

Yeah. So this journey of writing pleasure meditation was such a. It was a big part of my deciding to become a heartmath coach. I just got so much benefit from this. And I had actually learned about heartmath in college, so it's been a while. And HeartMath is a nonprofit organization that studies the relationship of the heart and the rhythm. So you've probably heard, and I'm sure everybody listens to your show, knows about heart rate variability.

Josh, for sure. Absolutely.

And the relationship of. They've actually studied how heart rate variability is linked to emotion and how that translates to how stressed we feel and to help people to change their baseline resilience. And I know that I'm putting out some terms that people are not going to be real familiar with.

Tell us about that. Tell us. Baseline resilience.

Yeah. So a great way of explaining baseline resilience is if you hook someone up to a biofeedback device, like, for example, the Inner Balance, which is the one that I use. I just hook it up to my iPhone and it's going to show me my heart rate variability and tell me, am I feeling a great deal of stress? Is my heart rate variability reflecting that my body is stressed out essentially, Right. Or not? And someone's baseline resilience is what's going to determine how they're experiencing experience, experiencing stress in their lives. So if someone has a low threshold or low baseline resilience, they're going to be more easily affected when something happens. And we are all going to have challenges and stress in our lives. It is unavoidable. So it's unrealistic to say I'm never going to have stress. Yeah, right.

That's impossible.

It's impossible. And so what really, where the power is, the empowerment is, is when we are able to take our perception of stress and raise it up a whole lot of notches. So that we're not as affected by the little stuff that happens day to day. We've raised our threshold, we've raised our baseline to a new capacity where we can bounce back more easily.

I love your wording on that so much. And I want to ask you a few questions so that the audience who hasn't heard from you yet, I mean, I know you're all over the web, but I have some questions that I prepared for you. And it's. As a mom, you know, a lot of people that email me are moms and tell us, Rebecca, you know, you're a fitness professional, you're a health coach, you're a heartmath coach. You're also a caring mom and an author. I mean, what's the balance been for you? Has there been a time in your life where you realized that you were out of balance mentally, financially, physically, spiritually, whatever it might be? And how did you correct that? How did you course correct.

Yes, all of the above. I have definitely felt that it's. Any parent knows that it's. It's quite a learning curve, and I. I definitely came up against my wall being a working mom and having such a passion for what I do and also having a passion for being a great parent. So pleasure meditation also certainly arose from my own struggles to maintain the proverbial balance that some is supposed to exist somewhere. But, you know, you want to show up in your life and be the best person possible and, you know, do the things that you love to do. And when you're feeling overwhelmed and resentful, you know, which can happen when you're exhausted and putting out a lot of energy, you know, nobody wins in that situation. And so I found that when I've practiced pleasure meditation, I'm able to have that opened up pleasure awareness. Right. I can look at my daughter, and she might be doing something I'm not so happy with in that moment, but I can tap into that gratitude that she is somebody I want in my life and that I, you know, I'm so grateful to have her. I'm also so grateful for my career and the people that I help. Right. So it's a matter of making you feel empowered with the choices to get you to where you are in your life. I've certainly felt that way. I've chosen this life, and as you said, there's all of these different elements, Right. A lot of energy that goes out, but I've chosen this. And through practicing pleasure meditation and also heartmath, which dives very deeply into some of these principles, as well as some unique ones of gratitude and love and baseline resilience, we're able to be the best versions of ourselves. I'm able to definitely be the best version of myself because it reminds me every day that I'm so grateful and I've chosen these things.

I'm seeing the correlation between what you've created with pleasure, meditation, and learning, kind of on your own journey to release stress in your own life as a busy professional in health and a mom. But I'm curious about, like, a moment. We all have these moments. For me, it was when I was drinking at a party when I was 21. I slammed the beer down, I ran home drunk, and I started learning, how am I gonna take care of my body? You know, that was my moment. Kind of like an oh, crap moment. Have you ever had one of those where you were like, listen, things got to change, and they get to change right now. How did you overcome that?

Oh, such a good question. I feel like there's been a lot of those moments, Jo. Yes. Just, you know, through. Through these last six years. Definitely one of them that comes to mind is when my daughter, she was really young, and she was exploring gravity, and she was doing this by throwing. I think it was frozen peas, because she was teething. Throwing frozen peas up in the air, and they went everywhere, all over the floor. Right. And I was patient the first time that she did that, and I put them back in the bowl, and she did it again, and by the third time, because I really didn't think she was going to keep doing it. But then she did, and by the third time, I. I just. I felt myself about to freak out. Just. Oh, my gosh. Like, I. I don't have any more patients left. Like, this is just really frustrating, and I want to, like, scream and cry and yell and have a temp temper tantrum myself. And I just made a different choice in that moment. It was very interesting. It just. It came to me all of a sudden, like, I was literally mid yell and. Or about, you know, opening my mouth to yell. And it occurred to me that while this really sucked right now, that I was having to clean this up for the third time, she was going to be all growing up someday, and that it was an honor to do that. It was an honor to pick up those frozen peas and put them back in her bowl, because I have this beautiful child in my life.

Wow. I just got, like, a really full chest from hearing that. That was beautiful. I mean, what I want to ask you next Is how did you cultivate that in that moment? What do you think led to you being that source in that moment?

Yeah, that. That is a good question. And I don't actually know the answer to that. I feel like. Well, I've studied stress and the stress response for 20 years because it was what I studied in college, did a lot of research on that. And I know how hard stress is on the body. I also know that sometimes just taking a deep breath, like we talked about earlier, can make all the difference. And so I think it just came back to me from deep within that I did actually have this tool within me to come. And I think many of us do. We are so much stronger and more powerful than we realize. And it's tools like pleasure meditation that give us a go to. That's easy. Like, for me, it just. It came from deep within, and that doesn't always happen. I wanted to have a more reliable format for being able to cultivate that kind of response and to have it be genuine, right? Not just be like, I'm breathing, I'm fine and not fine, but to have it be that I'm really okay and this is gonna pass and I don't need to get worked up about it. I could, but I'm gonna choose not to, and I'm gonna just. I'm gonna choose an alternative. And so I lucked upon it in that moment, but I wanted it to be a repeatable process for me, and that's part of why this book came out.

What would you say to people that are curious about the difference between many different kinds of meditation? There's guided meditation, there's visualizations, there's meditations that you might use with an app or with a headband. But when we look at this term, actually understanding what is pleasure meditation, what's the main differentiation between pleasure meditation and the other forms of practice?

Well, that's a good question. There's a lot of different forms of meditation, and I think they all have merit. The best meditation is the one that you're going to do.

You could just drop the mic. That was the whole show right there. That's so true. It's so incredibly true.

It is. And it's like that with exercise, right? You know, the best form of exercise is the one that you're going to do to really be honest with what we like. And from my experience, people like to feel good. They want to feel joy, they want to feel pleasure. I know that I do. And so I want to do something that I know if I give three minutes of my day, I'm going to boost those feelings that I most want. And that is why this, this is different. They all have their own spin. Some people, it's about being really present and feeling whatever feelings come up for them. Right. Just, you know, accepting it and, you know, letting go or just being in that moment or being in their bodies, being in their minds. I wanted to really pursue the types of feelings that I. That I mentioned and to have a practice that would capture those and that I knew when I finished. And it could be three minutes or it could be much longer than that, but oftentimes it's shorter in my day to day and that I could show up and be present in those three minutes. I could do it with my eyes open or my eyes closed. I could be in my car doing it and I would experience that shift I was needing.

In your book, you talk about kind of unpacking what the definition of pleasure meditation is. It's this daily practice that guides the user to focus on pleasurable thoughts, memories, images, mantras, stories or intentions. I think that's the main thing that comes up for me when looking at your work. You know, I'm seeing all these different meditation modalities that cause people to just sit in the thoughts and kind of watch the thoughts go by like a leaf blowing in the wind. Right. But yours is a little bit different because you're actually attuning your focus to what brings someone joy. Am I getting that right?

Absolutely.

I think this is the big take home for today. Let's get more joy in our lives. Make sure that you go to wellnessforce.com pleasuremeditation, your guide to stress reduction, Joyful Stress reduction. And it's coming out this week, so this episode will publish on Friday. It'll be out. You guys will have the Amazon link. You can get it, you can pick it up. You can read on your phone, correct?

Absolutely. Yeah. It's going to be. It's actually launching on Wednesday, July 6, and it's going to be on sale for only 99 cents all week. And so that's a great thing for your listeners. If they're tuning in on Friday, they can grab it. They can download the free Kindle Reader if they don't have a Kindle, so that they can view it on any device that they have, computer, phone, whatever.

I love so much where our conversation went today. This is like actually going longer than I thought. But I'm okay with it because it was so fun to learn about what's really made the difference for you, you know, someone who's a mom, but also someone who's helping other people. And thank you so much for your work and what you're doing for this wellness community.

My pleasure, Josh. And for you as well.

Now, we did talk so much about meditation. Is there anything we left out of the conversation that you feel will be most important for people to understand why pleasure meditation can be so powerful?

Well, I think that we covered a lot of great information, and the people who really need this the most are those people who are just. They're stressed and they might feel like they don't. They don't even know where to begin with their journey, but that it can. Their journey can start very simply, and that this is part of a greater work that I do, which is to really help people with their self care, with, you know, nutrition and fitness. But that self care begins here with learning how to manage your stress. And not only manage your stress, but actually bring forth those things in your life that you. You want to experience, like pleasure.

Rebecca, thanks so much for coming on the show.

It was wonderful talking to you, Josh. Thank you so much.

All right, you made it to the end of the show, and this is where I promised you five minutes of Rebecca and I talking off the air. I wanted to piece this in. I think you're gonna connect with it on many different levels. Especially when we look at this wellness journey not having a finish line, sometimes we take a right and left turn. But in the end, as long as we have the right environment and people like Rebecca and like the people in your life that you care about, that care about your journey, we're always gonna move in the right direction. Check out this five minute talk with Rebecca and I. I'm just this curious wellness coach who's, like, trying to get as well as he can be and then sharing that with other people. And I think as long as I'm always coming from that place, then people will receive that message. And that's my goal, is to just get. Not that I'm not healthy, but there's some certain things that I'm working through in my life right now that I'm literally in my own way about. I don't know if you can relate to this. Like, I'm literally in my own way, and so I'm in the process of letting those go, and that's my journey this year, is to figure out, like, how am I gonna let go of this, like, ten pounds that I'm carrying from a place of joy, abundance, and trust and not, like, Tension and anger and fear, like, that's my goal this year. So I know that's gonna make me a better coach, but I'm, like, literally in the trenches of the lesson that I most need to learn right now.

That was very articulate, what you just said. I am in the trenches of what I most need to learn right now.

That's so true. Yeah, so that's.

It is true. But your message comes across as very authentic, very genuine, and as we would put it in Heartmath, very coherent. And people are attracted to that energy. You can tell when somebody is coherent or not. And people want to be around that kind of energy. Where the. All of the. When I was in school for Heartmath, they have a big boat with a lot of rowers in it, and that is an image of when everybody is rowing in sync. That's coherence, and that's how it relates to human beings, is when our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual domains all align. Right. And so you're. You have a very coherent message that I'm hearing that the one rower that's not quite in alignment for you is something like you said, something with. With the physical realm.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so it's learning, like, hey, instead of beating up the rower, maybe just having a conversation with that rower and saying, hey, buddy, what's going on? Like, tell me about yourself. Like, why are you not rowing like everyone else? But, like, that's. That's the difference. I think most people, they get angry because they're not losing weight. They get upset because they're not getting the progress they want. And then they say, well, screw it. I'm just gonna go back to eating grilled cheese sandwich sandwiches, you know? And, like, that's. That's where a lot of people go. And the anger can only motivate us for so long. Right. At some point, we get to let go and have health from this trusting, loving place. And I think that's not what the fitness industry preaches. So I really want to use, like, behavior change as a model and then using digital health as a model to give people the permission to just say, you know what? I'm going to have a real conversation with myself based on the data my body's creating and based on real knowledge that's actually happening. I think. I think people get caught up in numbers and tracking, but if we can. If we can use these numbers and these tracking pieces as little mirrors for us, then we can just be honest with ourselves. Isn't that what we're all trying to figure out is like, hey, if I'm being honest with myself, like, why am I either getting to my goal or not getting to it?

Exactly. Yeah. Well, you seem to have a really clear understanding of what to do and also the trust to let that process unfold for you.

Yeah. Every day is a lesson. Yeah, that's the lesson, Rebecca. Cool.

I'm curious, too, and I would love to hear how that goes for you, because I think that it's a really. What's the best word here? It's a really admirable intention. And I think that if we're going to be telling our clients to honor their bodies and honor their process, it starts with us being able to do the same.

I was at an event, and the doctor. Amen. He's like a brain specialist.

Of course.

He talked about, if you're not living your message, then you're a bad messenger. And it was just such a simple. This simple metaphor where I was just like, wow, that's incredibly nonjudgmental, but also truthful at the same time. You know, like, really. It starts. It starts with, like, how someone's being and that. That people are always figuring out, like, okay, what's the action that I have to do? But it's like, well, like you had said, like, energy doesn't lie. So someone's energy is. Is being a certain way, and people are either going to trust them or not based on their energy. So it rings pretty clear to me, too. So I think. I think it's been beautiful to have this talk with you. You know, looking back, like, six years ago, all the things that I've learned up to this point, and then seeing you progress into heart math and writing this book about pleasure meditation, it's awesome. So great work, and cheers to what you're doing.

Thank you so much. And I look forward to touching base before another six years.

Cool.

Yeah. That's awesome. All right, Rebecca, such a joy to talk to you.

That wraps number 65, my favorite friend. If you made it this far, then we know each other a lot more. If anything we talked about on the show or if anything Rebecca said resonates with you, reach out to me. Joshellnessforce.com if you enjoyed today's show. Leave me a quick review on itunes@wellnessforce.com review also, sharing it with a friend is the most powerful thing you could ever do to help drive this message of empowering greater wellness in lives through technology. Now all you get to do is go create an amazing day with every tool and all the inspiration you've learned today from Rebecca and every other guest that's been on the show. Until I see you again next week, real soon, I'm wishing you love and wellness.

Sat.