transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:02] On this episode of The Resetter Podcast, I am bringing you a very dear friend. Her name is Dr. Melissa Sonners. And I have to tell you that Melissa is one of my friends that seems to handle a large amount of work, family activities with so much grace. And I've always wondered why, and with such a great attitude. And in this episode, she's going to share her secret. So let me give you a little bit of a background on her, and let me talk about what you're going to hear, because so many of you are going to benefit from this conversation. For starters, Dr. Melissa and her husband are both chiropractors. They have been in practice as long as I was in practice over 20 years, and they are really rooted in functional medicine. Both of them are deeply invested in through the root cause medicine, which is becoming so popular now. And Melissa's special skill set is that she helps burn out women get out of stress mode. How many, like raise your hand if that is you, because that has been me multiple times. And she now has a new book out called The Connection Code, which is phenomenal. I highly recommend that you get it. And what she's teaching us is a different version of self-care that you have never heard before. At least I haven't heard this before. And so in this episode, we talk about why self-care, when people are like, you need more self-care, you need to stop stressing. How many of you are tired of that conversation? Like, how am I going to fit that in to my busy day? Melissa offers us a totally different solution, and it's all built off of our brainwaves. And how to use our brainwaves that we operate from in a day, how to look at them as like gears. So you're going to hear in this conversation, what are those gears? And how do we switch out of like a high beta brainwave state, which so many of us are in every single day? Well, Melissa has some very simple, they're all free, they're easy to do, they're fun little hacks for moving you out of anxiety, moving you out of overwhelm, and specifically moving you out of burnout. This was such an enjoyable conversation. I can't wait for you all to hear it. And most importantly, I can't wait for you to apply it. I can tell you, I walked away from this conversation. I was like, okay, I learned a few things that I'll be implementing in my daily routine. And you'll hear in the podcast, she has a checklist for you all of these activities we can use to switch out of that overwhelmed brain and get ourselves rooted back into a different state. And so we will leave that checklist in the notes for those of you that are interested. But most of all, this is a really fun conversation that I think will give you a lot of tools for those of you that are overwhelmed, burnout, anxious, trouble sleeping, not sure how to handle everything that's on your plate. This is the conversation for you. And if you love it, please share it out into the world. I left this conversation thinking, God, if we could get every person out of that anxious state, I think we could have better connections with each other. So Dr. Melissa Sonners, her book is called The Connection Code. And I really hope you enjoy this conversation. Don't give me one more thing to do. I am exhausted with the long list of things that I need to do. I need to eat more protein. I need to sauna. I need to cold plunge. I can't have alcohol. I need to get out into nature. Like the list of things that women need to do is, I actually think, causing women to go completely in the opposite direction. And so my question to you is, I feel like where does self-care fit into this? Because we can't have a conversation on self-care that creates a whole other laundry list of things for women to do. Does self-care need a rebrand?

Speaker 2:
[04:38] Yes, self-care 100% needs a rebrand. You know, when we feel the feelings that are so common in today's women, overstimulated, anxious, high cortisol, high stress, 100 tabs open, we have been conditioned to believe that the solution to that is something external, something outside of us. When in reality, all that's doing is adding more to-dos on our already full plate. True self-care isn't external, it's an inside job, it's connection and having the ability to actually downshift the system that we're operating from. And the cool thing about that is there's no appointment required. You can do it anywhere at any time. And it's free. It's free 99.

Speaker 1:
[05:29] Free 99. Here's what's interesting. I think that the nervous system, I think everybody would agree, is completely overstimulated because I've even caught myself in this, that in between Zoom calls or appointments, I go to my phone and I'm like, hey, what's going on over on Instagram? Let me see what's happening in the world. And I start to realize that when I do that in between a day of a lot of work, that I actually start to get more agitated and I'm more exhausted at the end of the day as opposed to if I just put my phone away and I stay present. And when there's a down moment, I go out into nature or I do something different. It's a very different nervous system experience. So talk a little bit about your ideas around micro moments of self-care throughout the day and what downshifting would look like.

Speaker 2:
[06:32] Yeah. So the kind of zoomed out answer to that is I love to see self-care under this new lens. You know, Mindy, you've done such an incredible job of educating your audience, right? And so I think like when we can see the body through a holistic landscape and understand that these signals we're sending out aren't the problem, right? But actually getting to the root system. And so in the case of the nervous system, it's addressing the internal system, our master controller of everything. And we haven't yet from what I've known as a woman in the self-care sphere, and women in the biohacking sphere for the last 20 years, I haven't yet had someone empower me with the information of how to address my nervous system from the inside in real time. And so what's really, really cool about that is there is a system, there is a code, and it's these gears of a car. They're the brain waves. And it's so simple, right? And so like just to kind of touch on it and then we can go into whatever detail you want, is there's basically like five main gears. And we want to run through each gear throughout the day, just like an engine of a car, right? And so we want to start our car in gear zero. We want to warm up in gear one and two, and then hit gear three. Gear three is beta brainwaves, and that's the gear that most of us are living in. That is our go-go gear. That is our highway speed, where we're getting stuff done, but we're not noticing all of the beauty around us, right? We're not present. We can't actually take things in. And so, you know, the biggest work, the simplest work for the woman of today is having the ability to gear switch and task switch in any moment, because this is what we're being asked to do all throughout our day, right? Get the work done, have our, for lack of a better word, like masculine roles that we've taken on. I love to work really, really hard, right? I tend to go pretty doer very easily. And that's what I mean when I say masculine, right? We're all feminine and masculine. And like the do parts of us tends to be like very masculine. And so we as women, we need to have the ability to flip masculine to feminine, head to heart in any moment. And that's what we can teach through this lens of just understanding, how do I get in gear one? How do I know when I'm over running gear three? And how can I drop down into gear two?

Speaker 1:
[09:09] Yeah, you know, I had this moment when I was in my mid forties, where I came home at took a lunch break from work. And there was a long list of things I need to do for the kids before they came home for school. And I went back to this the second half of my workday. And I had this picture of Rosie the Riveter in my kitchen. And I remember looking at it and going, no, Rosie, I don't think we can do it all. I don't think we were meant to do it all. And I think one of the challenges that I really found back in those days is I didn't know this gear switching. And I still am trying to figure out this gear switching. So talk to me a little bit about how to... I know we are asleep in a delta brainwave state. I know that we come through theta and alpha and we go into beta. I know that entry into the day happens. And I know when we go to sleep at night, there is an exit out that's like you go from beta to alpha to theta, and then you go to sleep. But what you're recommending is that we're downshifting even into like an alpha brainwave state to just kind of take us out of that high intense beta brainwave state, which by the way, and if you could talk about this, anxiety lives in a high beta brainwave state.

Speaker 2:
[10:36] Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that's a really great question. And so just to restate and make sure I'm answering correctly, what you're saying is it's very clear that we know we need a morning routine and an evening wind down.

Speaker 1:
[10:47] Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[10:47] I think we all understand that. But what a lot of people haven't really, or at least what we want to make clear in this conversation is having the ability to be in go mode in beta and actually fluctuate between that and alpha. The ability to go from work mode to being present with our loved ones, or to go from the overstimulation that we get throughout our day when challenges present. And then we want to actually answer an email or solve a problem from a different place. Right? Where we're not spinning out as we address it. And so that, those I say are the most important flexes and regulation reps that we can do.

Speaker 1:
[11:27] Yeah. Explain what that looks like. Because I definitely have it in the morning, I definitely have it in the evening, where I slow my way in, which is in accordance with this gear shifting you're talking about. And then I slow my way out. And I have mastered that. What I haven't mastered is the in-between.

Speaker 2:
[11:45] So there's two answers to that. I'm going to start with the... One is through consistency and frequency. And so the more that we train, the more that we play with this, I'm in high cortisol, I'm in go mode, and I'm going to drop down into alpha, the more that we do those regulation reps, the easier it becomes to do this naturally without having to think about it much. Because as mammals, that is our default state. Our default neurological state is alpha. Our body is in our heart.

Speaker 1:
[12:18] My dog is my dog in alpha?

Speaker 2:
[12:20] I would assume, right? There's a stressful stimulus. Our body does what it magically does to make sure that we fight, freeze, flee, and then we're supposed to regulate back into alpha. So simple, makes so much sense when you really think about it. That is our default state. But we have trained the system to stay in beta. And so because the nervous system, because our hardwiring, you know this Mindy is a chiropractor, nervous system experts, a lot of people don't know that about us. Because our hardwiring, which we inherit from our mother's, father's, teachers, and preachers. That's why sometimes you'll catch yourself and be like, whoa, that was my mom coming out of my mouth. So we inherit our hardwiring, our nervous system from them. Our nervous system is very malleable. It changes all the time. And how does it do so? Through frequency and consistency. And so remember, its default state is alpha, but we have trained it to stay in this do, do, do, go, go, go beta. And so what's really cool is when we learn, which we can talk about, how to give it this microdoses, we love microdosing connection of alpha, you're getting a state change in real time, which is actually, I think, what we're seeking out when we, when we think of self-care. But it doesn't do it, because it's not adjusting the root cause. So you're fixing things in that moment. And remember, you're doing regulation reps. And so over time, your nervous system learns how to drop down to its default state as nature intended.

Speaker 1:
[13:56] How does that, what does that look like? So I just want to be really clear and make this very applicable for people. And I just want to reiterate, what you're saying is that because that we are staying in a state of a high beta brain wave all day long, and we're never going to our natural state, which is alpha. And one of the things when we look at self care, self care is as simple as microdosing alpha. And what does that look like?

Speaker 2:
[14:26] Yeah, so what's really cool is that it's actually so much of the stuff that we crave. We as women especially, and I would say men, are naturally drawn to these things, but we have become disempowered. Uh-uh-uh, that's not your self care. Your self care is scheduled. It's outside of you, right? So like think about, if you're on Zooms all day, you're on emails all day, for instance, what do you naturally crave? You crave a brain break. You crave like, let me get away from my screen. You might even have headaches. You might get eye strain. And so we take these little two minute breaks, and that's what we need to fill with dropping down into alpha. Sometimes, I don't know if the people listening do this, but because we think those two minutes aren't enough to move the needle, we might think, okay, I have two minutes, but I can't actually, whatever. So let me push through so I can relax at the end of the day. But what you're doing is you're re-running the system.

Speaker 1:
[15:23] That's classic me. That's classic me.

Speaker 2:
[15:25] Okay, so when we do that, which is really common, that's classic old me, you are teaching your nervous system to stay in beta. So when you get to the end of the day, when you get to the end of the week, when we do work first and push playoff till the end, we go to relax and our nervous system doesn't know how to, and we think something's wrong with us.

Speaker 1:
[15:46] Bingo.

Speaker 2:
[15:47] So here's the beauty. Here's the beauty. It's taking those two minutes and understanding how much you can actually accomplish in them. And so the ways that we can drop down into alpha are so simple that it's really easy to overlook them. But I want to make sure people understand the science behind these is so strong. I've spent a decade on them. This does everything that a one-hour massage would do or a 30-minute grounding mat session. One, one of my favorites is something called expanded gaze. All you have to do for expanded gaze is turn off your, like, close your screens, look up and out for at least two minutes, something 10 feet beyond your viewpoint. So I call this my lizard walks. A lot of people on social media are calling me the lizard lady because I go and I look at the iguanas, and I share this every day. Like, this is my self-care. In between the emails when I would normally be like, okay, let me push through, I walk around my house. You've been in my house. I walk around to that little golf course. I look at all the lizards doing their thing. I look at the horizon and I drop my brain out of survival. Our eyes are the remote control to our nervous system. And so even if on the inside, we feel overstimulated, jacked up, all those feelings of high cortisol, we can use our eyes to harmonize our nervous system just by expanding our gaze.

Speaker 1:
[17:21] You know, I intuitively did this during the pandemic. I'll never forget because I had so many people in my house. You know, it's like I had like a whole, like Paxton and his friends were sitting at my dining room table doing high school senior year. You know, Sequoia was working in another room. I was, and then I would get off my Zoom. And I would be like, it's not relaxing in my house right now because everybody is on their own Zoom call. And so I would go out of my house. We live across from a beautiful rose garden. I would go out of my house and I would walk around the rose garden one time and I would come back in. And the minute that I did that, I could feel like I had had like a 20 minute nap is really what it felt like to me.

Speaker 2:
[18:11] Yeah, that's a really important take home message for everybody here. We naturally are drawn to these things. We've just been conditioned out of believing or understanding how much they work. This is self care. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[18:24] Right.

Speaker 2:
[18:24] Another one to get.

Speaker 1:
[18:25] That's self care. Like, I just want to point out, like you might not have the money or the time to schedule a massage, but everybody has the time to go, look, go out in their neighborhood and just do a loop and come back.

Speaker 2:
[18:40] Or even if you're inside, say the weather's horrible and you don't want to put on a bunch of layers, like even close your computers and do expanded gaze in your home. This isn't about noticing the clutter in the counters. This is big picture. So look at where the walls meet the ceiling, scan the periphery of the room, try not to focus on the little details. This is more big picture, it's expansive. Something I wanted to say too, Mindy, just when we talk about massage or a pedicure, I love a pedicure as our self-care. Those things are important. I love those things. I still do those things. Those are the macro. But I just want to walk women through this visual of, so many times for me, I lay on that massage table and I'm there, but I'm making my life.

Speaker 1:
[19:29] Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:
[19:30] I'm in beta. So then I walk out of the massage, I spent money, I got done with work, I left my family, I laid on a table, and I'm still feeling the same way I felt. So now I walk in the door, I've been gone, they extra need me, I don't feel that different, and now I feel guilt and shame because it didn't work, and I left. Yeah. So where this isn't either or, this is a both and, but what I really want people to understand is it's not just those things. We have access. I want to teach one more alpha tool.

Speaker 1:
[20:03] Yeah, please. I was going to say, I'm a huge fan of creating a checklist, and I know all of this is in your book, and I just want to point out if those of you are listening or loving this, go get her book, The Connection Code. But this is really revolutionary because I feel like people have told me for years, find a hobby, do something that relaxes you, and I'm like, I don't know how to relax, and you're actually giving some really insightful tips. So let's create a checklist. So expand a gaze.

Speaker 2:
[20:33] Expanding a gaze. I actually have a checklist, so we can put that link in the description too if people want it. Because you want to do, for your checklist, you want to do two, three, four. Two minutes of any one of these, and you can build your own adventure as well, I'll suggest a few. Three times a day, and the four is just for you. So this becomes your new self-care routine. Two minutes.

Speaker 1:
[20:56] Oh, that's two, three, four.

Speaker 2:
[20:58] Three times a day for you, isn't that cute? I know you love a checklist, so I wanted to have that for you.

Speaker 1:
[21:02] I like things that were, oh, did I do, so the way I would use that is like, did I do my two, three, four today?

Speaker 2:
[21:09] Right. Right. And like some people, you know, setting a timer is helpful. Our brain needs a break every 90 minutes. So every 90 minutes, do one of your two minute breaks. So another great one that we're so naturally drawn to is music. And there's this new concept. Have you heard this? It's neural nostalgia. It's like popping up everywhere. A lot of therapists are using this. And it's this concept that when you hear music from, like for me, it's the 90s. I'm a millennial. When you hear the music that you grew up on, it actually does something to your nervous system. And so a lot of my content I'm showing in my car blasting, you know, like salt and pepper. That was like the first CD I got.

Speaker 1:
[21:51] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[21:52] And you know, meatloaf. And when you listen to-

Speaker 1:
[21:55] Meatloaf, I love meatloaf.

Speaker 2:
[21:57] I love meatloaf.

Speaker 1:
[21:58] Two out of three ain't bad.

Speaker 2:
[22:00] Yeah, and I love Anything for Love. It's so good when the girl comes in and she's like-

Speaker 1:
[22:04] Yeah, or Paradise by the Dashboard.

Speaker 2:
[22:05] That's it.

Speaker 1:
[22:08] You got me going on meatloaf now.

Speaker 2:
[22:10] Aerosmith, Guns N Roses. So, okay, I'm going to go a little neural nerdy here. But when you listen to a song that you love, for how long is the song? Two minutes, three minutes, maybe four. You deactivate your amygdala, your fear center that's looking around and asking at any time subconsciously, am I safe here? You're creating predictability. You're creating familiarity. You feel good, right? You're boosting oxytocin, you're boosting dopamine, serotonin. All the things that if you think about, like when we're seeking out this external appointment of self-care, like those are the things that we're wanting to create. No appointment required. Blast a song and you think about like, we all know this feels good. But do we realize that this is an item on our checklist? We did our self-care in that two-minute car ride.

Speaker 1:
[23:03] You know, it's so funny, again, like many of the things you're saying, I've like, oh, I've been doing that. I have a good friend that we've been sending music back and forth, and we call it for your dance break. And it's for the days when the days are long, put this song on and you can dance to it. And it's funny because the thing about dancing, I get that like not everybody likes to dance. But if you look at like trauma response, like TRE, like where the shaking, I've started doing that where I just listen to this music and I just kind of get my body shaking to kind of shake off the stress of whatever the moment was before that, which is so much better done to music. So then you're stacking that. You're doing the, what did you call it? The neuronal nostalgia, which is friggin amazing.

Speaker 2:
[23:54] Neural nostalgia. And what you just said about the shaking, again, we're mammals. And so if your dogs had a stressful event, a lot of mammals shake to clear that stress when the stimulus has cleared. And so the shaking and the movement to your point is really good. I love in this alpha conversation to make it really tangible and describe how you know when you're in alpha. So you know that feeling that you have after a great workout or after you surf. And so that post-workout bliss is alpha. And so when you're in alpha, you're very alert, you're very focused. You can get stuff done in alpha, but different from beta, it is a grounded state. It is a very present place. And when you're in alpha, you will notice you can task switch very smoothly.

Speaker 1:
[24:50] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[24:51] So like for me as a mom, if I work out and then I come home to the kids, and there's maybe the pop-up email notification and then dinner's burning, like you feel it, it's a lot at once, but it's very easy to task switch to cognitive switch. That is alpha.

Speaker 1:
[25:09] When you're in alpha.

Speaker 2:
[25:11] When you're in alpha. Alpha is flow state. Have you ever heard someone say flow state? That is alpha. Then I have one more on the checklist that people love this one.

Speaker 1:
[25:22] Let me ask one question on the alpha flow state that I think a lot of people could resonate with is some days, I feel like I can task switch better than others. When that happens and I feel like I can't task switch, would that be an indication of, okay, I'm struggling task switching today, I need to go into the two, three, four habit that Melissa taught me? That's how we can have some self-inquiry around it.

Speaker 2:
[25:59] Absolutely. Yeah. You're needing to be able to stay in a focused alert state, but to switch tasks more easily, I would say get a dose of alpha. So either the big doses, clear out your schedule for an hour, go surfing, you're going to do so much better for those afternoon appointments or whatever it is. Fix your state and everything else will come through that. If you don't have time for the macro, then this is where the micro checklist fits in really well.

Speaker 1:
[26:29] Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Give us another one that everybody loves. This is fun. This is like a party trick. It's like, what else can I do?

Speaker 2:
[26:35] Right. So the last one, I feel like this is really good for morning and evening, but it's also great for midday. So looking at a flickering flame will put you into alpha. Again, think about this. Think about if you've been to a bonfire, or you're sitting at a fire like that zone that you get in, that you're just relaxed, right? Looking at a flickering flame activates mirror neurons in your brain. I feel like your people probably know what mirror neurons are because they're very educated audience. But in case anyone's listening and they don't know, mirror neurons are the things in our brain that make us mimic what we're seeing, right? So if someone's folding their arms across their chest and you're talking to them, you'll probably very soon do the same thing. Or you smile at a baby, the baby smiles back, that's a result of our mirror neurons. So if you are in a beta overstimulated state and you don't feel like you can access alpha on your own, you can light a candle and look at it. And whether you like it or not, you will end up in alpha.

Speaker 1:
[27:38] Wow. For how long? That's really cool.

Speaker 2:
[27:41] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[27:41] For how long?

Speaker 2:
[27:42] Isn't that cool? Two minutes. Two minutes. Obviously more is better. And it's like if you tell someone that wants to start being more active, okay, go out and walk for five minutes. Just five minutes. Because the barrier of entry is usually just getting them walking. If you're looking at a candle, you're probably going to then maybe you look at the candle for two minutes, and then maybe you're like, well, I'm going to stretch for a minute before I go back to my computer. I'm going to walk around the neighborhood now.

Speaker 1:
[28:11] Yeah, it's the classic that I always say is that you don't need motivation, you need momentum. And so if you look at a candle for two minutes, then you might feel like going walking if you have the time after that. I'm also thinking, what if you listen to music while you're looking at the candle? Now you've stacked both of those habits. And I started laughing my own head because I was like, what if I carry the candle and I listen to music and I walk? Am I going to be like, have I mastered Alpha?

Speaker 2:
[28:50] This is classic, like can I do it the best and can I do it right? So much can I do it. Very familiar as the seven on the Enneagram and okay give me the checklist and I'm going to do all of them at once. You know, the goal here is really to get our system comfortable with doing less because you mentioned this at the beginning, what's gotten us in this nervous system dysregulation is so much of living the lifestyles that we've all taken on because it's a result of the environment that we're living in and that we've co-created for ourselves. And so one of the biggest questions I get when I'm talking about like nervous system states and theta and alpha is like, okay, what do I do? What's my action step? And for theta gear one, we can go into it or not, but that's like a gear of nothingness. And so really the action step there is listen, which is one of the hardest things for us to do as recovering doers. It can get very uncomfortable and this is where some of like the deeper work around, you know, the inner voice and the ego versus amygdala can come into play. Because so often we're doing things, we're undoing things. We're finally returning to who we came here to be by doing less. And it can feel really uncomfortable. And you know this, a nervous system will crave predictability and familiarity. And so it will keep us in a known hell. It will keep us in a lifestyle addicted to stress and chaos. This is very familiar to me. I'm very much have lived a life addicted to stress. And I didn't realize until I really started to look at my patterns. And so when you start to try to unwind some of this, the voices can get really loud. And so like understanding and creating an awareness around them can be a really powerful first step for unwinding the nervous system, getting into regulation, and then most importantly rewiring or hardwiring so that this becomes more of our default familiar state. Which you're living right now actually with like how you said, now you're craving nature, you're craving surfing. And so your body is being pulled to what used to be something that you had to remind it to do. So your hardwiring has changed. Where you more crave this default heart state. And you've always been very open with everybody. And so people know this about you that are listening. Like I think you used to be addicted to the beta. Or you used to be very comfortable in the beta. Whereas now when you go in beta, you're like, I don't like this anymore. That's the goal. That's the hardwiring. That's the upgrade of the operating system.

Speaker 1:
[31:38] So is it a little bit like metabolic switching? And what I've been teaching is like, we got to go sugar burner, fat burner, sugar burner, fat burner. That's how the metabolism works. So what I'm hearing is how the brain works is that we have these four gears. Now, you know, we're not going into Delta necessarily all the time unless we're going to take a nap. So we would need to like think about our day. Just like I taught people fasting window, eating window, then we would think about our day of like, wow, I've been in Beta all day, I need to dip in to Alpha. And is that kind of how you personally use it?

Speaker 2:
[32:19] That is, yeah, I'm always, you know, when I don't like how I'm feeling, or if there's a situation out of my control that can be really stressful, I live in Miami, there's a lot of traffic. And sometimes I can go with it and sometimes I can't, right? Sometimes I'm the person freaking out on the road. And well, the way I've learned to look at that now is, okay, I'm in beta. And so I'll even talk this out with my kids in the carpool, like, okay, I had too much coffee. I was trying to do too much on Slack this morning. Like, I'm basically in my head and not my heart. And so to answer your question on the metabolic switching lens, like the flip that I think of is you can look at it a few different ways. Head to heart, we're either in our head or in our heart. We're either in survival or connection, right? Disconnection or connection. Or we're in beta or we're in alpha.

Speaker 1:
[33:17] So when we think of something like anxiety or even insomnia, you know, my personal experience with both of those is like my nervous system tipped into a high beta state. And I don't, it's stuck there like a record skipping. And I just am curious as people are listening to this, if they've had that same experience of like, I can't get my mind to calm down. And then from there, we go to social media, which in full transparency, I sometimes go to social media because I think I need a brain break. And it's like, I can just doom scroll. And my brain isn't actually engaged in anything. I don't even know sometimes what I'm looking at. So which I think I've recently come to the conclusion, like that's still keeping me in a beta brainwave state. Sometimes, depending on what I see on socials, it's keeping me in a high beta, even though it feels different. So can we use anxiety as a road map? And that's a really common thing for menopausal women. And I feel like we have given, we've blamed progesterone on that. But we also have to look at the rhythm of our 24 hour cycle and ask ourselves, are we staying in this high beta state all the time?

Speaker 2:
[34:52] Yeah, 100%. I'm so glad you brought that up because a really common thing I hear is a lot of women will say things like, even though in my head, I know that there's nothing going on around me and I'm like trying to make calm happen, my body can't get there.

Speaker 1:
[35:06] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[35:07] It's like I'm living in two different operating systems. And that 100%, when I hear that, I'm like, oh my God, this is gonna be your jam. Because again, let's go back. Our hardwiring learns through frequency and consistency. And so it's been trained to stay in this beta system. So even though in our head, we know we're safe, our system has learned to essentially like stay in this for our survival. And so it's not gonna let go unless we start to teach it it's safe. And the way that we do that is through downshifting from head to heart or from beta to alpha. The other thing I would love to touch on the doom scrolling because we all do it. So let's talk about it. I do it too and I know this. Like I know that being on a screen keeps you in beta. And there are times I definitely go there for the same reason, a brain break. What's really important to understand is that it's not a brain break. And so just having this awareness so that you can make a choice. I'm going here for a brain break. I'm gonna choose to like waste some time and just brain dump, brain suck, whatever you want, brain rot. That's the word I use for my head. It's probably not a great word, but I'm like, I'm gonna choose to brain rot right now because I'm carrying all the pieces and like, I just need a break. It's not necessarily gonna do that. And so when you don't feel like better or like you've shifted your state after, you're just not like wondering why. Some of my favorite mornings, like to be fully honest, around my luteal cycle, this is when I send you a lot of those funny reels actually, I will find myself being very drawn to that in my morning time, in my sacred theta alpha time. And so what I do is I put red light on, I light a candle, I'm in my sit spot, and I'm doing everything that I can to create some theta and alpha in that space. Because just like, you know, there's food that we know is not good for us, but sometimes it's soul food and it's so nurturing. That's how I look at this. But I'm very intentional. I'm like, it's my luteal phase, and Jason knows when it's happening. I'm literally like shaking, and he doesn't know if I'm crying or laughing. I'm rotating between reels on like, army soldiers coming home and surprising their kids, and the crazy funny stuff I send you. And it does feel good, you know? But I'm not doom scrolling on who's doing better than me, who's, you know, I'm not spending time there. So I say all that to say, I think the awareness is the most important piece when we choose to do that. And I know that's what you do when you go in there as well. It's like, I know this isn't great. It still feels kind of good. It's going to be my soul food. And I'll set a timer, right? I'll duck out where I'll at least filter what I'm putting into my brain when I'm spending time on here.

Speaker 1:
[38:00] Yeah. I'm thinking about people with like really busy schedules. They, you know, they may be like, this whole sounds great, but how am I going to remember? And I'm wondering, speaking of timers, have you ever just set timers throughout the day as like, this is your alpha break? Time to go into alpha.

Speaker 2:
[38:17] Yeah. I schedule it now. I schedule it now. So like when I see on my calendar, if I've got, you know, half hour like my assistant, she's great. I'm like, I need to get in flow for like 20 minutes before I get on that call. So it's just a language now in the culture of my company with staff and they understand that I'm not good if I'm not getting those breaks. But originally, yes, our brain operates on, it's a 90 minutes called an ultradion rhythm. And so what this means is it cannot stay in beta effectively or efficiently for more than 90 minutes. So again, we know this if we tap into how we're feeling. If you're working on a task for an hour and a half, you're going to start to fidget. You're going to maybe get up and get more caffeine because your brain's not working, right? Or we'll get a snack when really if all we did was hop out and have our lizard walk or our expanded gaze, we could come back to that project with clarity, with insight, with focus and a renewed attention span.

Speaker 1:
[39:17] Yeah. So you mean you shouldn't put somebody in the interview chair for three and a half hours like Stephen Bartlett did to me and talk to me with the lights on? That was quite an experience, but as you were talking, I was like, well, I need to make sure that the Zoom calls I'm on are 90 minutes only at the max.

Speaker 2:
[39:40] You know how these things feel, right? So we're sitting here teaching this. Meanwhile, I'm under massive lights. And so this is a perfect example. I literally go from here. I mean, this is an alpha conversation. We had some tech stuff, so it got a little beta.

Speaker 1:
[39:55] We had some intro plums, yes.

Speaker 2:
[39:57] Yeah. We had many opportunities to downshift in real time into alpha. But I literally leave from here and I get three hungry kids who are mad at me for God knows what, right? Like I made the wrong dinner, I was five minutes late. And so I literally had to figure out these systems because I needed them in my busy life for me as a mama. But these are great for everybody. And so I will use that time to blast a music, get my heart and go grab them.

Speaker 1:
[40:23] That's what I was thinking. So being aware that you just left a high beta state brainwave activity, you're about to pick up the kids, which is another high beta brainwave activity. So in that little interim, you need to go listen to music to go back into that.

Speaker 2:
[40:41] Yeah, I also want to be an alpha when they get in the car. Yeah, right. Think about like when you're in beta brain and your kids have a need or like someone spills something or like someone just has human normal behavior, it's like, oh my God. When in reality, like if I can be in a task switch mode, I'm like, okay, we're in Miami traffic, we're late for lacrosse, you spilled a drink, it's okay. It's fine, we're good. But if I did what I would normally do and like grab my phone, check all my emails, I've got two minutes, let me catch up before I get them. That is I feel like the behavior that a lot of us have taken on. How much can I squeeze in this two-minute break? Oh, yeah. When that is our self-care time slot, that is so important to work in this microdosing connection in those reps.

Speaker 1:
[41:30] There's so many reasons I love this, but I'm just reflecting on my own habits, and I'm thinking that one of the things I do in between Zoom calls is I'll answer texts, I'll answer voxers, I'll answer emails, I use it. I'm like, oh good, I have an hour of productivity time. What I hear you saying is, this is how we start to create these high anxiety patterns, and I even want to point out because so many of my audience struggles with sleep, that I've noticed in my own nervous system that if I don't take these alpha breaks, which I'm going to very intentionally take now, by the time I get to the end of the day, I'm almost like a little kid whose two is wired and tired. I remember when our kids were little and if you missed the initial bedtime, they went from tired to totally zoomy. That's me. And if I don't, at the end of the day, I'm zoomy in my head, in my like, I don't know how to calm myself down. Is it possible that if we don't take the alpha breaks, we actually tip over into a hyper beta state brainwave state that's really hard to come back from?

Speaker 2:
[42:46] Yeah, 100%. I feel it every time when I don't stick to these things, because life happens and there's some days that are just harder than others. That's exactly what happens. And then, you know, we're snapping at our loved ones. We're, like you said, we want to relax. We finally got a moment to relax. We can't. We're missing crucial moments of connection with them and with us. And then we're trying to sleep and we can't. And so it's like, what's wrong with my hormones? What peptide do I need to take? What supplements?

Speaker 1:
[43:16] Right.

Speaker 2:
[43:17] All things have a place.

Speaker 1:
[43:19] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[43:20] But, you know, from the chiropractic lens especially, and from a holistic standpoint, when it comes to our health, can we not put duct tape on the check engine light and actually address what is going on in our nervous system? And I think, of course, we haven't for so long because there's not a lot of information out there, on this, for whatever reason. I couldn't find this, and I hope that it becomes more popular because it really is so simple. It's so basic.

Speaker 1:
[43:52] It's so basic.

Speaker 2:
[43:54] Yeah. But yeah, so you will stay in that state. And just to go back real quick, the reality of our lives is often we do need to fill that one hour, right? Like, I've got the emails, I've got the messages, I do want to have dinner with my family tonight. I want to be done with work. So again, I'll say this isn't either or, it's both and, right? So in that situation, what I would do is I would take a two to five minute walk. I'd probably take my phone with me because what I would actually do is I love to like verbal process with my friends or with Mindy. But try to not be looking at the screen and then come back and hit them, right? Like, we can do both. But just taking that little break is what trains our nervous system to have the ability to flex through these two states throughout the day.

Speaker 1:
[44:38] Yeah, and two minutes, I just want to point out to everybody is very doable. Like, and I interviewed a brain expert one time. This is like three or four years ago on this podcast who said, when he gets off a podcast interview, he lived down in San Diego, he would go stare out at the ocean for five minutes to reboot his brain. And I always thought, oh, that's a really interesting thought, is you leave one task, then what's the activity that you're going to do to almost to nourish the brain and to reset it so it can be ready for the next activity, and two minutes is not a lot of time. So I love the simplicity of this. Talk to me a little bit about theta. You said there are some things we can do in theta.

Speaker 2:
[45:25] Yes, just to touch on that last thing, if in your expanded gaze time, you have an opportunity to look at a horizon, that's like triple duty. So in ocean, I look at a golf course, right? So you've got a bit of a clean horizon. It works really, really, really well, but you don't have to have it.

Speaker 1:
[45:40] On that one, I want to say I saw something that came through Instagram that said the neurological benefits of looking out a window, if just looking out your window, whether it's at, you don't have to have a phenomenal view. And the article went on to say it's not like, a friend would call it the end of the day, and say, what did you do today? And you're like, well, I looked out my window 10 times today. But it's such a powerful tool. And this is what I hear you really emphasizing, is that it's this simplicity. And I think, just for people listening, one of the things that Melissa and I have talked about over the years is how the biohacking world started to make all of this self-care so expensive. And you may not need a red light. You might need to just light a candle.

Speaker 2:
[46:36] Going sun.

Speaker 1:
[46:37] Exactly. You might not need some strap around your head that helps you meditate. You might just need to listen to some music that excites you. So I love this because it reminds me of fasting, where you are hacking in some way into your own natural rhythm, but you're not spending money on it.

Speaker 2:
[47:00] Right. And going back to, yes, I was laughing because we've sent each other those images on Instagram of like, can this person have more going on on their face? And they're calling this self-care. Please, let's get back to the basics here. But when you're saying, it's not like you would say to your friend, I looked out a window 10 times today. But what is really beautiful is this woman Megan says it like this to me and it's so beautiful. Just like sometimes throughout the day, I just look out the window and watch the tree sway. Yeah. Yeah. And isn't that beautiful?

Speaker 1:
[47:33] It's really cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[47:34] So like let's go a level deeper in all of our aspects of our conversations.

Speaker 1:
[47:38] Yeah. You know, there was a study that just came out recently that was around bird noises. And it was like 10 minutes of bird listening to bird noises like brings cortisol levels down. I don't know the exact statistic on it, but I was like, well, that makes sense because anything that's nature-oriented is going to start to move you out of beta. So I really just want to emphasize that if you live in a place that you don't have access to nature, I don't recommend necessarily looking at it on your screens. But what if you just walk around your house listening to some rain noise or bird noise, or there's so many interesting musical artists now that have integrated nature into the way that they create as artists, and that can be really powerful as well. So talk about theta. Tell me how do I access theta?

Speaker 2:
[48:31] Theta is actually my favorite. So theta is where our intuition lives. If you've ever said or you've ever heard someone say, I get my best ideas in the shower, you're in theta. And so theta is, we've lost touch with theta because our world has just gotten really loud, right? Our environment has gotten really loud, but we're also constantly surrounding ourself with everyone else's voices and not leaving space for our own. So whether it's those two minute pockets throughout our day, or whether it's our car rides, or whether it's our walks in nature, you know, a lot of us are plugging in and listening to podcasts and YouTubes. I'm really thankful. I think we're all really thankful because we're living in the age of information and knowledge and we can get so much information without having to go to a practitioner and all these things, it's like super empowering. So again, this isn't either or, but it's both and. Make space to listen to everyone else, but we need to carve out specific time to hear our own voice. And so theta is the natural state that we wake up in, and theta is a natural state that we get in when we daydream. And so you think about like when you're little and you're riding in the backseat of a car and you're just like looking out the window. And you know, your thoughts are just kind of like coming and going. And you know, take the woman, I think this is many of us, this is definitely me, that has a hundred tabs open. And so when we create this daydream space throughout our day for theta, which can be a nature walk as well, it's also activated with expanded gaze, not as much with listening to music. We're giving the opportunity for some of those tabs to close. And so what I like to envision is before I go to bed at night, I wanna have given myself, maybe this is a checklist item, enough opportunities to close as many of those tabs as possible so that tomorrow I wake up with a fresh slate. And the way that we do that is space for just listening to us. I love walking. I love moving with this, for anyone who's kind of like a busy body, a busy mind, by nature a doer. Movement I think helps. Things like doing puzzles, meditation in motion is really good, knitting, keeping your hands busy.

Speaker 1:
[50:53] Drawing.

Speaker 2:
[50:55] Drawing, all the things that you've done, you did a lot of that neural drawing with some of your gashes I think you brought on here.

Speaker 1:
[51:01] Yeah, the neurographic art. I've started getting into doodling because I find the repetition of the different symbols is actually, and then I listen to chanting music in a red light room before I go to bed, on the days that are the highest, where I can't seem to calm myself. It's like I actually have a routine now.

Speaker 2:
[51:24] That's great unwinding because the repetition of doodling creates predictability. It's why kids love hearing the same story, and the same song, and the same movie over and over, because it creates predictability. A lot of times, under the radar subconscious question, our nervous system is asking is, am I safe here? When we have predictability, why everyone loves their routine, we answer that question with yes, you are safe here and so our alerts can calm down. So anything that's repetitive is a great way to downshift at the end of the day. Anything that allows your mind and your vision to have a break while your hands are busy, so you can occupy that part of your brain that's the ruminator, that's the checklist queen, she's going to be busy with the activity, and then the right can unwind and become embodied and regulated again.

Speaker 1:
[52:23] Is this why, and this is going to sound really crazy, but is this why I'm not joking sometimes at the end of the day, doing the dishes after dinner actually is relaxing. It's like warm water on my hands, like sometimes if I'm not talking, I'm just sort of thinking about the day. Is there science behind this same kind of thing?

Speaker 2:
[52:44] A lot of these things are meditation in motion. Also, the state that you're in when you're doing the dishes. There's times when I'm doing the dishes when I'm like, why am I doing the dishes again? That one doesn't feel good. But when it's the peaceful, using this moment to just unwind and maybe even work to be in the present moment, let me look at the soap running down, let me feel the warm water like you just said and really being present, that's a really healthy activity to downshift the nervous system into safety.

Speaker 1:
[53:16] So when we talk about I'm operating from my head versus I'm operating from my heart, would we say beta is more head and alpha and theta is more heart?

Speaker 2:
[53:29] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[53:29] Yeah. Because that's the way I try, and this is something that I would love for even my audience to experience. I've really tried before like a podcast interview or before I'm being interviewed, like just to ground myself and go, okay, get out of your head and get into your heart so that I'm creating a heart connection with the human. Like I already in this conversation feel better than where we started. And I'm like wondering if there is something along that when we can go heart to heart with somebody, it really does pull us out of that brainwave state. And a lot of us have those friends that are our heart-based friends, and I also have some friends that when I leave their presence, I feel a little agitated and I'm starting to wonder if maybe they're keeping me in a beta state as opposed to moving me into the alpha state.

Speaker 2:
[54:27] Yeah, well, when we're with someone who's 100% present, we've been with those people, that they're just time stops, right? Present time consciousness is alpha. And so I think no matter what, my husband, to me, Jason is alpha, right? He is my grounder.

Speaker 1:
[54:46] Yeah, he has an alpha energy, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[54:48] So as much as he's got a busy brain, but the world stops when you're in front of him and he is completely with you. And so those people do downshift you 100% into alpha. And then our nervous system is our intuition. I really feel that. And I think she, I know that she speaks to us in signals and symptoms. And so for better or worse, I don't, physiology doesn't lie when we're around people that aren't good for us. And sometimes those people are our family, and sometimes those are people that we need to figure out how to be around. But I really do keen into that. And, you know, I tend to, after I have those sensations around certain people, if I'm trying to figure out what it was, that's where I'll use my morning space to kind of ask those questions of myself. That's what I like to do when I journal. Like, why did this feel this way to me? Let me tap into my own voice and get some clarity. I didn't want to go out with them, but I went out and she always makes me feel bad. That's theta. This is how we get reconnected to who we are. This is really powerful stuff and it doesn't take a lot of time.

Speaker 1:
[55:55] Yeah. I love what you've created here in the sense that you've given us a tool set that's actually achievable. I, for so many years, would be frustrated when people would say, you just need to not stress as much. I'd even bring people on my podcast that would say, well, stress is killing everybody and just don't stress. Well, some of us, that's easier said than done. You've taught me something today and I'm going to do the two, three, four, and I'm going to catch myself when the brain is running out of control and remind myself, you know, music, what am I looking at? Movement, the candle, these are things that are so simple. So I just thank you so much because even my, I feel like my brain needed this. Talk a little bit about your book and it's just beautiful. I love it. Just talk a little bit about what's in it, where people can find it because I think this is definitely a concept that the world needs right now.

Speaker 2:
[57:05] Thank you. Yes. So the book, I made it sparkly and fun on purpose because this is self-care, it's connection and it's way easier than we've made it. Through this conversation, you guys have gotten a taste of that. One of my favorite chapters in there is called Befriend Your Ego, and I like to say Amigo Your Ego, and that's my favorite chapter because when we talk about Theta, and we talk about hearing our own voice again, I think a lot of times we pull ourselves from that quiet space because it's scary. We don't want to hear what it's saying. We're too wound up. Mindy, you've seen the drastic difference in my life in the last five years even from just situations I was in, villages I was around, tables I was sitting at. What happens when we can actually tap back into that inner voice again is joy, freedom, clarity, fun, lightness. It's a return to who we came here to be. Life is still lifey, and I'm not going to say that I don't have stress in my life, but I've gotten to a place of gymnastics at 44, all the fun things again. That chapter, I think, is one of the most important chapters in the book, because it teaches you how to recognize the different tones of the voice, and when you're trying to sit and relax, and you're getting mad that you should be doing the dishes, or you should be doing emails, all these stories that we play out that actually stop us from reconnection, and so how to unwind that aspect of our nervous system, the ego versus the amygdala, the two voices that we hear. They can find it on my website, drmelissasonners.com. It's called The Connection Code. It's on Amazon. It's Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, Hay House's website, all the places. And yeah, I've also got a checklist we can link below that's got the expanded pages and some other fun things.

Speaker 1:
[59:02] Yeah. Yeah. We will definitely leave that link. And so everybody listening, please go check that out because I will even print that out just as a reminder. I might put it on my refrigerator just as a reminder because I do think when you get into the high beta wave brain waves, you forget, you get spun up. And so I'm going to start doing the timer. I'm going to do the reminder. And this is just brilliant. And I appreciate you so much. Everyone go get the book because we need people out of beta. People are kinder when they're in alpha and theta. And I really think if we can get the whole world out of beta right now, it would really be beautiful. So thank you, Melissa. I love you.

Speaker 2:
[59:45] Yes. Love you too. Thank you for having me. Look forward to seeing and hearing from you all.

Speaker 1:
[59:51] Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.