How Nervous System Regulation Can End Chronic Suffering with Beth Winkler

Welcome back, rockstars. If you've ever felt overwhelmed, anxious, stuck in stress mode, or battling headaches, burnout, or brain fog, this conversation will be a game changer for you. Beth Winkler breaks down how the brain and the body work together and how chronic stress rewires your system. We're going to talk about simple tools that completely regulate, reset, and calm, even on our busiest days. I would tell you from personal experience, this is going to be an important conversation. If you know anyone who struggles with chronic stress and just can't seem to kick it. When it comes to leadership rock stars, we have to start by leading ourselves, and that starts with leading our health. So if you want to show up stronger for your clients and take better care of yourself, this episode is for you. Let's dive in. Beth, thank you so much for being on Willpower. Why don't you set the table a little bit and explain to the audience who you are, what you do, and why you do it. And before you begin, I just want the audience to know this is one of my favorite people on the planet right here. So, Beth, please let them know who you are.

Thank you so much, Will. And ditto. So I'm Beth. I've been a PT for over 30 years. That feels really weird to say. And I've been a practice owner for 20 years, a physical therapy practice owner. And I initially got into PT really on a whim, so I won't get into it. Wasn't this really great story, like I had a major accident or something that really, you know, strung at my heartstrings for the PT field. I just missed my sister, and physical therapy looked like a great major. So I went to Northeastern.

Nice. I got the full picture just from that. That's cool.

And then started my private practice back in 2005, one month before I came, Katrina, because the. The owners that I worked for two to, you know, one and then left them for another company just weren't listening to what I had to say. And I felt like I had some really good ideas. So I said, I'm just gonna do it myself, and if they can do it, I can do it. I had a great partner. And, you know, along the way, along that journey, obviously lots of up and downs, ups and downs with Katrina and with COVID But in the midst of all that, I got a concussion while my son was in the bathtub. So he was one year old, one years old. And I came up and hit my head really hard, and I had an injury that was lasted 12 years of chronic Headaches and chronic pain. And I really. Physical therapy was wonderful. I mean, I had helped so many people doing physical therapy, treating them with physical therapy, but for whatever reason, it wasn't sticking with me. And I knew there was more to learn. And so I dove deep into the research. I started diving into the neuroscience of pain. And, you know, within. You know, within about six months to a year, totally reversed my symptoms using this. I mean, really, honestly, reading one, one particular book, the Way out, by Alan Gordon on a vacation, and my symptoms were 80% less by the time I got back. And I was like, there is really something here. And so I started calling, you know, patients back in, saying, let me. Let me try this with you. And so I kind of dove into more of the brain science and working with the brain and nervous system regulation. And that's really where my passion is now, is working with people with chronic persistent symptoms. So training my therapist to use this to help with their treatment plans, but also training students. I teach at the PT schools here in Louisiana and just want to get the word out about this because this is an emerging science. And Lorima Mosley and David Butler were kind of the pioneers in our field with this. But it's expanded so much, and I think both sides are missing the boat. There's the physical therapy side that we're still working with the body and some with the brain, right. Like pain neuroscience. How is pain produced? And then there's the psychology and the psychotherapists and the mental health professionals doing a lot with the brain and trauma repair and all of these things, but no one's really integrating the two together. And I had the body piece, but I was missing the brain that. The brain piece. And same thing with the, you know, the psychotherapists and the mental health professionals. A lot of them aren't working with the body. And the body is where, like, the body is where everything is held, like all the stored trauma and all of the. So our, you know, our prefrontal cortex, which is our thinking brain and our fear center of the brain, they don't speak the same language. So we can't. We can't think our way to healing trauma or to safety. We have to work through the body to do it. That's the translator.

Okay, so let me dig, you know, double. Double click on that a little bit, because I understand a lot of what you're talking about. I'm very familiar with elements, but this is the way that you're talking about it is very new and different, and I'm Honestly, surprised, I don't know your, your, your superhero background story because I didn't know you had that concussion. You had mentioned you'd had some chronic pain, that this resolved and that's how you got into it. But does this treatment help more than like physical pain? Because I know people who've had severe concussions who struggle with depression, anxiety, different, like more emotional symptoms. Does this assist that or is that.

It can. It can definitely help. At the root of it is nervous system regulation. And so when we get into chronic fight or flight, you know, our stress, think of it like a bucket in go stress injuries, overdue bill, past traumas. So when that bucket starts to overfill, we get stuck in this fight or flight mode. And when we're stuck there, the nervous system has a really hard time coming back down. So it starts to get, it starts to get overprotective and oversensitive.

So like stimulus to create an over physiological response which creates pain or whatever.

Exactly. So the bucket is the same whether it's a traumatic, you know, a physical injury or an emotional injury. The bucket's the same. They're not separate. So when it starts to overflow, like you could start with panic attacks or it could be back pain. It really, it just, it depends. So at the core root of it is nervous system regulation. And when we regulate the nervous system and get out of that fight or flight, we start creating more joy, less stress, less fear, less pain, more mobility, more perform, you know, higher performance. Not just fat physically, but, you know, prefrontal thinking and executive functioning. It's just it, it really is at the core. You know, just like exercise is so good for your muscles and your heart, these nervous system regulation activities, I, I think are, are to, to the nerves, what exercises to the heart.

Okay, this is really big audience. Just bear with me because this is hitting more of a personal cord. So we're going to keep double clicking on this. But I'm sure people who are listening, any one of you who are listening, rock stars that have any physical pain, especially if you've had concussions, anything brain related. This is really big emerging science. And for some background, I have a son who's suffered from a very severe concussion who that was in the sixth grade and he's still struggling with symptoms. And I don't know if you knew that, Beth, were you aware of that? Yeah. So this is. And so I didn't recognize the connection between what you do and what he's done. But we have put tons of money and time into him because you know, at first we didn't even know he had an injury. He had this really bad concussion. And it was at school. It wasn't until we got the school notes years later that we learned he was knocked out for, like, for a few minutes, like three to six minutes. And then they did an mri, everything was fine. And then he just. All of a sudden, he was a straight A student, started failing at school. And then later we had a functional MRI when he was 21 and found out that he had these parts of his brain that showed up. They were so concussed. It showed up like a. Like he had had a stroke. And so he's been doing this has been my whole world around, like, helping him in the brain world. And so chronic pain is one thing he's never had. Very common with concussions is like, severe headaches and those types of elements. In his case, his physiology. Physiology has been fine. It's more like. But. But you talk about the fight or flight regulation, that sympathetic response. That's him in social groups, his social. He's so sensitive to being in a social environment that, like, it just becomes this physiological panic thing for him and.

Oh, wow.

So, yeah, well, the.

The beauty about the nervous system is because of neuroplasticity, like medical experts call it the science of hope. Because with neuroplasticity, we can unlearn a lot of these patterns. There was a study done by this engineer. Well, it was an experiment, really. He took a bike and he made the handlebars so that when you turn the handlebars around, instead of the bike going right, it actually went left. So whenever you tried to turn the handlebars right, the bike went left. It took him eight months of daily practice to try to learn how to ride a bike this way. Like, that's how strong the neural patterns of riding a bike are in us. And he would take it to all these different schools and different, you know, and no one could do it except for his son, who was like six. Right. When our brains aren't really forming. Exactly. But, you know, and that. That's a long time. But the beauty of that, though, is if we can unlearn how to ride a bike, we can unlearn pain patterns too. And we can unlearn nervous system dysregulation patterns too. So it's not just like, okay, let me do a breathwork exercise, just for an example, to help me feel better in this moment. Right. Like, you can. That's. That's important too. But you're teaching your nervous system and your brain that safety is the default. And when you can do that enough times, we call it microdosing safety. So you don't want to do like an hour once a week, you want to do five minutes, three, three to five times a day or so that we can constantly sprinkle it in so that the, our, our threat meter, you know, goes from threat to safety. And when safety is the default like that there's. The brain doesn't need to do anything, there's nothing to protect.

So there's no like immediate panic attacks or those types of things. So yeah, crazy. So how does, if someone's who's listening is struggling with these types of symptoms, how do they get help for this type of thing?

Yeah, so I mean there, there's some really good books out there, you know, for pain particularly. The one that helped me the most was the Way out by Alan Gordon. But also, I mean I do one on one sessions now. I'm looking at creating some courses, some entry level courses that people can learn this information because I think there's so much misinformation out there. There's a lot of new terms and new kind of techniques in this nervous system world. I mean people are, you know, you go on TikTok and it's like the best vagus nerve exercise and you know, it's just, there's so many people trying to get in on it. Which is great because it helps, but it does create a lot of confusion because I mean just for the type of, type of pain I'm talking about or symptom, we call it a neuroplastic symptom. It's basically that the nerve, the central nervous system is driving this symptom. Right. As opposed to nociceptive, which is like, okay, I cut my finger, I sprained my ankle. The tissues have damage, sends a signal up to the brain. Yeah, neuroplasticity, neuroplastic pain is different. It's pain that persists for longer periods of time. And it's actually. They did functional MRIs and chronic persistent pain lights up in a different part of the brain. And acute pain does. It lights up in the interior singular cortex, which is guess where we process emotions. So there's definitely something going on there. But I lost my train of thought. I was on a good, a good roll there.

I'm so blown away by this whole thing. I, I think, you know, we talked about a little direction for this beforehand. I'm blowing it out of the water because this is so important. You know, when we Talk about. So. Because, like, our. Our main focus on this show is leadership. But you can't lead when you're not healthy.

No.

And. And by the way, it's hard to lead when people you love aren't healthy, too. So. So people who are listening to this, who are experiencing the pain or drag of suffering through this or having someone in their world suffer through this, this is very helpful because most people who just need a physical therapist or, like, a simple solution, that's not hard. As a physical therapist, I used to see people with chronic pain, and I felt. I felt useless.

Yep.

Are those patients that. Are those patients that you're starting to help now?

Yes, they're getting better.

Wow.

They're getting better. It's amazing. Yeah. I mean, this is part of my. My talk a couple weeks ago, but, like, so Howard Stern.

You heard TED Talk, by the way, guys, like, it was you talking to your mom. This is a TED Talk. So Beth is the authority on these things. So. Yeah, keep going.

So Howard Stern had debilitating back pain. And it wasn't until he read Dr. Sarno's book, who was the very original, like, doctor in the 80s who got made fun of, basically when he said, you know, people who have chronic back pain, they're not processing their emotions. They're not. So he. He read that book, he came across it in a public library, and he credit. Credits that to his full recovery.

Wow.

Same thing with Michael Porter Jr. Depicted as the number one draft pick in the NPNBA. Had three surgeries before the age of 23. Like, and the surgeries did not change his pain at all. He had. He. It wasn't until he learned, like, how to move in a safe way, but also had done a lot of emotional processing. And it's easy to.

Are you doing emotional processing, or does that go to somebody else?

I'm doing it. I'm teaching people how to do it. So if someone has a significant, you know, trauma experience or history, that's out of my wheelhouse. But the thing that most people don't understand is, I mean, I remember even just a year ago when people would say, well, you have to learn how to process your emotions. You're not processing. I'm like, what does that even mean?

That's what I said.

What does process and emotion look like? And it's like, it looks like just feeling it. Like, instead of shoving it down or pushing it away, if fear comes in, instead of ignoring it because it's going to go. It's going to go somewhere. You feel it, that's why they're called feelings. You feel them in your body. Where do you feel the pain? Where do you feel the fear? Where's the sadness? Oh, it's in my chest. Okay. Notice that? And it just 60 to 90 seconds and then it dissipates. And that's what it looks like. It looks like journaling, writing things down. It looks like, you know, EMDR or parts work, you know, all of those types of therapy, types of therapy for the, for the mind. You know, this is like the top down approach along with the bottom up approach. Working through the body to help release some of those patterns is the one doesn't work without the other. You know, they're so intertwined. And here's what I love the most about this work is it puts the person in the driver's seat. They don't have to continue to come see me once a week to dry needle their suboccipital muscle to get rid of their headache. It's. I have the tools, and when I have a flare up, here's my toolbox, and I know what to do. I can breathe. I have all these meditations, specifically pain reprocessing therapy, guided meditations, which is a very powerful tool. A lot of vagus nerve exercises to get the amygdala to calm down. It puts them back in the driver's seat. And once their pain is gone, they're like, I just feel better. I mean, I had a patient, she. Six sessions, she had hip surgery, Seven years of chronic hip pain. Had hip surgery to repair a torn labrum. Even though I was like, come see me first, please. And she was like, no, I'm going to go have the surgery, but everyone, you know, go do it at their own time. And finally she's like, I give up. I did the surgery. My pain is still here. I'm so angry. I'm so mad. Six sessions. We call it brain retraining, you know, nervous system retraining, whatever. There's like a million names you could call it, but. So six sessions of that and she was walking, biking and swimming, pain free after seven years. And her. So the kicker was, she goes back. My wine allergy went away. Every time she drink, every time she drank red wine, she would get a rash almost all over her whole body. She's like, I still stop drinking. And so her, she was preparing for her son's bar mitzvah. Bat mitzvah, I get him confused. Preparing for his son's party. And I said, okay. At the end of the party, I Want you to have a full glass of wine and don't care about what happens. Just do it. And she's like, I did it. And then she's like, I've continued to do it and have no symptoms at all.

Amazing how the mind really creates these physiological experiences, and we think they're unconnected. You know, you mentioned EMDR therapy earlier. I've done a whole series of that. I did that in an effort to, like, be a guinea pig before I introduced a family member to it, and I had all this unhealed trauma I didn't know I had. And it all just started with, like, all right, so let's just get you calm and relaxed, and then, like, let's think about what do you want to work on? And. Okay, what do you. Where do you feel that? How do you feel when you think about it? Where is it in your body? And then you start chasing down those physical symptoms. It's. I almost feel like a hundred years from now, they're gonna look back at where we are now. Like, man, they were just beginning to understand this very powerful under. Like, to them, it's gonna be like, how could you not see that?

Right? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And I. I just think that there's. Yeah, there's. There's a whole bunch of reasons why people don't want this therapy out there, because it's. It's cheap. It empowers people to get off medication and to not have surgery. And.

Yeah, Big Farm's got to be really.

Upset about this, right? Exactly.

So, okay, so you've been doing this now for a long time. And just as a side note, this wasn't the main focus here, but I know there's people listening going, how do I learn more? So we'll put Beth's information in the show notes, but can you just usually do this at the end? But could you just share with them how to reach out to you if they need to learn more about this?

Yeah, so I do have a YouTube channel that has. I created that for my patients, really, because I was educating the same concepts over and over again, and it was just a tool for them to go back and review. So there's a lot of educational tools on there. I have a few guided meditations as well that are free, but if you want to reach out to me, you can email me@bethwagnoliatherapyla.com so, Beth, you know.

I'm grateful that we dove into that as we're looking back at your evolution as a leader. You know, there's this Thing that I feel like you're chasing, it's, you know, progressing. It's motivation. People would call it lots of different things. Right. But in your mind, one of the things that you mentioned earlier was your. Your ability to start hyper focusing on what you call your superpower. So what is. Define a superpower? When you said that, what did you mean?

So when I think of my superpower, I think of the thing that makes me jump out of bed in the morning. You know, like, this is the thing that I. Not that I. I don't only love doing it, but, like, I'm good at it. Right. And I think the two. The two go hand in hand.

Yeah, you're really good, but you're passionate. So it's something like a topic or a skill that you're just naturally gifted at, but you're also, like, super excited about.

Yes. And I think, I mean, you know, not to get too spiritual, but, you know, I think we were all put on this planet with certain gifts and abilities, and I think when we're really on target with that ability, it's like things just start to flow and happen and come to you. Right. And when you start to get off path from that, that's when, you know, stress starts to come and, you know, things don't seem as fun anymore. And that's. That's kind of where I started to feel. Right. Like, I knew I had all this information. I knew that I recovered using this information and I wanted to share it with as many people as I could. Right. But I still had to, you know, check people's time cards and, you know, go check the, you know, make sure. I had to do social media posts for Magnolia and things like that.

The thing that paid the bills was there. And you have passion for that too. It's not that you don't. It's just that your pat. Your. Your superpower is evolving. So it used to be quantified within the realms and the walls of Magnolia, but you started kind of bleeding outside of that a little bit in terms of, like, going above and beyond that.

Yeah, exactly. Like, I. I've never. I love physical therapy and this is definitely a part. A part of it, but I just have such a. There's almost this sense of urgency and. And I like it. And I don't. Like, I always feel like, like, oh, someone beat me to it or whatever, but I think the sense of urgency is that there are so many people suffering and they don't have to. Right, right. Like, I mean, with, with, you know, physical therapy. Like, you know, we all have, you know, the 80% of patients that do great and do wonderful and there's amazing physical therapists everywhere and you know, but you know, that 10 to 20% that we all know those 10 to 20% of people that we couldn't really fix. Yeah, air quotes, fix. Right. You know, I can improve their mobility, increase their strength, but to change their pain. You were like, that was never a goal, like pain free. If someone's had pain for 20 years and, and to be able to see that shift. And I truthfully will, I'll tell you this, like, I would pray for it every night. I was like, just help me figure out how to heal myself and I promise I'll help others. I promise if I, you know, I will, I will share this information. So it's almost like this contract I had.

I love it because I think for a lot of people, they can relate to this idea of going through suffering and overcoming it and being kind of really good at at least empathizing with others. If we go through loss of a loved one, we become really good at helping console others who've lost loved ones. We have the. We develop a power, a capability when we, when we have to endure something that's painful. So I love that you and please bring God all into this discussion. I think it's great that you were praying for it and you got this like, hey, help me. And then, and then how long after that prayer did you get? Or prayers how, you know, did you get your, your answer?

And I mean, it took a little while. It took a couple years. It took about two to three years. And I think it was also to teach me patience and also to, you know, I look back at it, it's like if that would have happened at that time, I wouldn't have had. Had that time to, to. To grow my leaders at Magnolia or to be able to have the infrastructure for Magnolia to be able to pursue this, this new thing, you know, so it just happened when it was supposed to happen. It gave me sprinkles at a time here and there, but.

And now that the. Because and it's like all kind of converged altogether. We talked about that earlier. Magnolia is one of the biggest, most important companies in your area. Now you're. There's some space for you to extend beyond that and start building that brand and that messaging around this body and brain connection thing. So for you, if you had to quantify your superpower in language, how would you describe it?

I would say it's taking concepts that are already out there and putting them together in a very digestible package, if you will, because there are so many aspects to healing. Right. Like, we talked about the body, we talked about the brain. Then there's this whole thing about belief. You know, belief is it, and hope is a huge piece of it. So kind of putting all of those things together in a package that's very digestible and understandable for patients. You know, there's so many. They've heard, especially people who have been in persistent chronic pain. I mean, they've heard so many. How many diagnoses do you think someone has had if they've had pain for 20 years? I mean, probably over five or six, you know, and it's like, what do those even mean? You know, so it's like to be able to. When I talk with patients about this, and it's. It's. It's so understandable. They can relate so much they can't relate to. Okay, degenerative disc disease. Well, I have a disease. What do you mean? Like, no, everyone has degenerative disc disease over the age. You know what I mean? Like, so it's just about debunking some of these myths and taking some maybe complicated, like neuroscience principles and putting them into an easy, workable format that they could do and see results and feel better.

Yeah. If you reach out with what you're doing here. And I think this is true for anyone who's trying to discover what their superpower is like. In your case, the application is easier to see than the defining of it with language. The application is that you're helping a very select group of human beings, a small percentage of people who suffer from a disconnection between their. Their brain and their body. And that's what it looks like, is hope. It looks like a miracle. In some cases, the output looks like those elements. And I'm sure your TED Talk will go greatly into those details. In terms of what makes Beth unique in this journey, I think that's an interesting question to explore, just because there might be others, like you've said, who are in this space. There's very few others, but there are others like the people who've written these books that you read and you taught some of these elements. But everyone in this case, I'm sure, has a different flavor, a different unique capability around it. And I think that, you know, the greater point of me bringing this up, rock stars, is because, you know, Beth talking about her superpower. I want to ask you, as you're listening to this, what's yours. Like what have you suffered through or are suffering through that has given you a unique capability to help other people? And that's what we mean by superpower. Because superpower you could define as like, I make money. You know, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a unique capability in helping others. Usually learned through trials that we go through. I'm sure some people just have some innate talents. But it's amazing how the refiners fire is really what sharpens these powers that we have. And I think they can look like a lot of things. You know, I know there's a power. I've seen people that I've worked with, Beth, who have the power to empathize like no other. I've had people who are just really great listeners to a life changing degree. Great listeners I've had. So there's no small superpower. Right? We always can. We always think of them. But what do you. What are some other examples of superpowers that come to mind that you've seen in other people?

I mean, you know, some. Well, well, to back up a second, you know, when I would, I would start to compare myself to, you know, the Alan Gordon's of the world who wrote the book the Way Out. Like, you know, the scientists and the people who did all the research to be able to validate these treatments. You know, that that's not me. I'm not a scientist. You know, I'm way too impatient. Like I don't want to wait two years for a study to come out. Like I want the answers now. Right. So I think, you know, don't discredit your superpower. You know, there's no superpower. I love how you said it. There's no superpower that's too small. Because I'm not coming up with any life changing device or I'm just taking information that people have already researched and studied. I applied it to myself, it worked. And then I applied it to my patients, it worked. So it's just a framework that I created. I'm not inventing these exercises. They've already been invented.

It feels like a superpower is really the product of individual talents combined around the uniqueness of that person's passion. Because when you said that, what I heard was research learning, right? You suffered yourself like experience. So there was an understanding and then you were humble and like learned from others. And then you had, you took action, you organized. Like those are all talents. You know, one of those things we call executive functioning. Right. That's That's. That's a very great capability. It's a combination of those things that does actually change the worlds of the people you work with. Right. So, yeah, everyone who's listening can do that. I. I have a virtual assistant that works with me who. Who. Her super talents, her super power is a combination of high attention to detail, organization, knows how to, like, tell me when I'm crossing lines. So all of those things individually describe, like, an experience, but the output is my life has been amplified, what I would call a miraculous degree, because I don't know how else to explain it. So I think there's something really special about understanding what a superpower is, the way that you've experienced yours, because you are. You are touching the lives of others. It just came from this thing called leveraging talents and hard work. I think that's the other thing is you. You have worked hard, even though it's been easy for you in a sense, but in other ways it has been hard, hasn't it?

Yeah.

At least.

Yeah, it's. You know, and especially when you're coming. Coming out with concepts that most people don't really understand. You know, I had a. I had a patient. She came to see me. She's like, I was so excited to come see you. Someone referred me, and I was feeling so much hope. And then I went to see my. My surgeon, and he was like, that. That doesn't make any sense. And then she just. She goes, I was so deflated the rest of the day. You know what I mean? Like, no, no one really gets this yet. So, like, no, no one gets me yet. You get me, Will. But when you're talking about. When you're talking about this, it can feel a little lonely because people don't really understand yet. They're like, what do you mean? You do a couple of meditations, and the patient's pain went away after 20 years. You know, I mean, it does sound too good to be true, but when you understand the science behind it, it makes so much sense.

Yeah. It's so funny. It's like, science is so mathematical, and it's like things. But things that we understand with science now used to seem like miracles and impossibilities. 20 look at 200 years ago, we're gonna talk about these things that you can climb into that will go into the air and fly you around the world. They're like, what kind of crazy madman? You know, you're just in your head. It's like, no, it's science. Like, there's A science to the brain and the body. Which is why you, language wise, you're very particular about mind. Body, which is something you said is like, typically more in that Eastern world of, like, more describing an emotional experience where this is actual science of brain and body. And so it's going to take the rest of the medical community to catch up to it. I had a good friend of mine who's a orthopedic surgeon, Beth, tell me that he thought I was stupid. He's like. He was really nice about it, kind of. He was like, he's a good friend of mine. He wasn't mean. He was just like. I was talking about how I was trying to create value was the words that I used. He goes, create value. You guys are just always out there. You business owners are out there creating value. He's like, so, so small, so stupid. And I said, hey, buddy, the reason. The reason you don't understand that and you think it's small is because he was an orthopedic surgeon. I'm sorry, he's a brain surgeon. I said, you go to work and he's a traumatic brain surgeon. You go to work. There's no questioning what you do in terms of value.

Right.

But someone who makes cakes can easily lose their way in the making of cakes and understanding the value they create. But, you know, a really good cake designer can create the feeling of a wedding. Like, they can actually. Like, there's an emotional experience. So we. And so when it comes to the brain and the body connection, the science is there. It's just going to take years, I think. Right. It's so frustrating because it's so obvious. I know you see it every day with your patients.

Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully people will catch on sooner than later. They're slowly. They're slowly catching on. I actually listened to a podcast this morning. It was the Lewis Hose. He was interviewing that Dr. Amen. You know, he's the. The guy who does all the functional MRIs. He just wrote a book about the brain in pain.

Yes.

And he talks a lot about this stuff where Sanjay Gupta just did one. And he doesn't talk about safety at all in his book. And I'm like, you're missing the point. So, you know, slowly the mainstream is coming around.

Very, very much so. Well, Beth, this has been such a phenomenal conversation. Thank you for sharing your talents with the world. I am so excited to see you living in this space. And just personally, there's an energy about you that was immediate. It's not. It's not Just because you were on TV this morning and you got especially dressed up like this. Just your tonality, you've always had this higher tone, but there's something extra lifted. It's, it's. It's someone who's living their purpose right now. It's really inspiring. So thank you so much for doing all that.

Thanks, Will. It feels that I feel that. Appreciate you.

Okay, let's do some rapid fire and wrap this thing up. So. So let's talk about one of the best books you've read in the last year. Just any book that you've read that's been impactful for you on any topic.

Oh, my gosh. In the last year. Okay. Okay. So I am a big fan of Martha Beck, and she is like, she's a life coach, Oprah's life coach. But she has some really great. I just love. She brings a lot of comedy into her. I'm nonfiction. I am like a nonfiction, like, self help junkie. But it's called the Way to Integrity. And it's really one of my. One of my favorite books. And I probably read it four times already, so I probably have read it twice in the past year.

My gosh, that's impressive. Okay, what's a podcast that you like?

I like listening to my ambiox podcast the Breakdown, because she has such a science, a sciency brain, but she brings on a lot of. A lot of people with, like, near death experiences. And so it really does kind of bridge the gap and, and questions a lot of. Is this science? Is this, you know, spirituality? And it's just. It's just really. It's really creative.

Okay, awesome. Well, if there is one person, a living or dead that you could have lunch with in the world in who's ever existed fictional, or who would you have lunch with?

Oh, my gosh. Well, this might sound sad, but it's not. But it would be with my brother David, who passed when he was much younger, in his late teens. I would love to have lunch with him again because he was just super. He was wild, let me tell you. He was wild. But I could only imagine the adult that he would have turned into. But yeah, that's who my person would be.

Oh, I love that piece of it. Okay, very cool. Well, I think that's it for today. Beth, thank you so much for much for being on the show. Once again, guys, look to the show notes. If you're wanting to learn more about chronic pain, especially if there's concussions or any of those types of elements that come in this is the person you're going to want to talk to. So, Beth, thank you again for being on the show.

Thanks, Will. Appreciate you.

All right, rockstars, that's it for today. Thank you again for tuning in. As always, this is Will Humphreys reminding you to live with purpose, lead with love, and most importantly, never give up. Until next time.