Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / Always On Edge? This Ancient Nervous System Wisdom Might Be the Fix | Debra Joy

Transcript

Always On Edge? This Ancient Nervous System Wisdom Might Be the Fix | Debra Joy · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral, where we reconnect modern life to an ancient wisdom
• 0:06
  through health, healing, and human connection.
• 0:09
  So do you ever feel overstimulated, disconnected, or out of sync?
• 0:15
  In this episode of Everyday Ancestral, I'm joined by Deborah Joy for a powerful conversation
• 0:21
  about nervous system regulation, spiritual alignment, and the importance of honoring natural rhythms.
• 0:29
  We explore how media and modern noise disrupt our sense of safety, and how small, intentional
• 0:35
  shifts can help us reconnect, calm the body, and move through the world with more presence
• 0:41
  and peace.
• 0:43
  If your nervous system is craving a reset, this one's for you.
• 0:48
  Deb, you actually had a personal experience with kind of modern life, your lifestyle
• 0:56
  taking over, and then your biological system saying, nope, this isn't working.
• 1:02
  So can you share that story and just your experience with people?
• 1:08
  I was always very driven to make a difference in the world, and I wanted to have a big impact.
• 1:15
  And I knew it came a lot from love for the planet, love for animals, love for places.
• 1:21
  Love for people, but they were probably third on my list.
• 1:23
  It was really animals and habitat that came first.
• 1:27
  So I did a lot of work with different businesses trying to make the world a better place,
• 1:31
  started a nonprofit with some friends to try to help business move towards a more socially
• 1:35
  and environmentally responsible way of operating.
• 1:39
  What I was conscious of was my love for things, my love to make a difference, and my energy.
• 1:45
  I had this real passion and energy.
• 1:47
  I was working with an AIDS organization, I just wanted to help everywhere.
• 1:50
  But I was less aware of it at the time was how much of that was driven by trauma.
• 1:54
  Trauma from my childhood, feeling not enough that it actually had to earn my place to exist
• 2:00
  in the world.
• 2:01
  So I didn't know that at the time, but what happened was I kept working and working, working.
• 2:07
  The very short version is I got really ill.
• 2:10
  I got so ill that I was told I might never work again.
• 2:15
  I had investments and I had enough to support myself for a while, but I was only my 30s.
• 2:20
  I wasn't really prepared to retire nor did I want to.
• 2:23
  But I kept trying every kind of modality to get well and nothing was working.
• 2:27
  So I finally gave up everything I knew and love, gave up my work, moved away from my friends
• 2:32
  and my favorite city in the world and I moved to a tiny village in Mexico.
• 2:37
  And there was nothing for me to do, really meditate, do yoga.
• 2:41
  I lived in the house in the jungle and I learned to live at the pace of nature.
• 2:47
  And I can't say, oh, and then I was healed and everything was well, you know.
• 2:50
  I had to go through a long process of healing from old toxicity and, you know, it's been
• 2:54
  a journey, but living at the pace of nature changed me.
• 2:59
  And when I was there, I met a man, fell in love, moved to LA to be with him.
• 3:03
  I'm still married to him 22 years later.
• 3:05
  But I remember being in LA thinking, oh, I want to move back to Mexico.
• 3:09
  I want to be back there and I realized, oh no, I want that version of me to exist here.
• 3:16
  Oh, that's interesting.
• 3:18
  So how did you go about bringing out that version of you in LA?
• 3:24
  There were different things.
• 3:25
  One was the pace that I was living at.
• 3:30
  So I walked everywhere.
• 3:33
  We had one car, but I walked everywhere.
• 3:35
  And it was consciously feeling the ground beneath my feet.
• 3:39
  I switched to barefoot shoes, feeling the grass.
• 3:43
  Even as I say it now, I can kind of feel that feeling goes up my legs, goes into my pelvis.
• 3:49
  You know, I remember walking with those shoes and thinking, I feel walking in my pelvis,
• 3:54
  I feel it in my jaw.
• 3:57
  So I became present to who I was and where I was through my whole body by operating at
• 4:02
  a different pace.
• 4:04
  What I noticed in Mexico was eating fruit that was actually fresh, you know, it had
• 4:11
  ripened on the mind.
• 4:12
  So you can have a bite, just go, oh, a fruit called a guanabana was so fresh and sweet
• 4:18
  and I'd never had it.
• 4:19
  So you just, oh, wow, what is this taste?
• 4:23
  So having the first bite of food that way, close your eyes, put it in my mouth and just
• 4:29
  taste it.
• 4:30
  Like, oh, my God, a peach in August, you know, presence can be so pleasurable.
• 4:36
  It doesn't have to be sitting and being mindful.
• 4:38
  So that version of me in Mexico was very present to the pleasures of life.
• 4:45
  Now, that's an interesting distinction as presence and mindfulness being two different
• 4:50
  things because I think a lot of people think of them as the same thing.
• 4:54
  I would love to better understand what is mindfulness to you.
• 5:00
  Well, it is presence to me.
• 5:01
  I just think when I hear about mindfulness, they're often thinking of a routine.
• 5:06
  They're thinking of, I have to start meditating.
• 5:09
  I have to have a practice of mindfulness.
• 5:13
  And I'll say mindfulness can be the way you do everything.
• 5:17
  To mean mindfulness, it's funny that the word is mine because I think it's a feeling.
• 5:23
  I'm feeling myself in this moment, in this velvet chair.
• 5:27
  I'm feeling myself look at you and the expression on your face.
• 5:31
  I'm feeling what that does for me, even though we're virtual to make eye contact with
• 5:36
  you, someone I know, I can feel that in my face, what it does.
• 5:41
  You know, that's a word that is getting thrown around a lot.
• 5:45
  And I actually share it a lot when I'm on podcasts, you know, when I talk about, if
• 5:51
  I were to create a food pyramid, I say the top my pyramid would be foods that have
• 5:56
  flavors that are found in nature, so not natural flavors, not artificial flavors, not
• 6:00
  added flavors, but foods that have flavor that is found in nature.
• 6:04
  The middle of the pyramid would be foods that are nutrient rich.
• 6:08
  And then the bottom of the pyramid is then mindfully eat the above.
• 6:14
  But I realize that a lot of people struggle with mindfulness and that it's easy to talk
• 6:19
  about it, but much harder to do it.
• 6:22
  Did you have any tips on how someone might start being more mindful or how mindfulness
• 6:29
  can start showing up in someone's life?
• 6:32
  It often shows up in people's lives because of some kind of event like I had where you're
• 6:39
  actually forced to face how you're not being mindful, how you're not being present in
• 6:43
  your own life.
• 6:45
  And so I will get to your answer of what to do, but so much of our life is pulling us
• 6:50
  out of the present moment.
• 6:52
  And that's actually creating a dysregulated nervous system.
• 6:56
  Just coming back to this for a minute, so people understand not just what to do, but why?
• 7:02
  So when we think about our ancestors, when we talk about their nervous systems and how
• 7:06
  it's the same nervous system we have, we exist today because those people who are on
• 7:13
  our ancestral line were incredibly resilient.
• 7:16
  They lived in very hard times, but they were resilient.
• 7:19
  And what that means is their nervous systems could go from calm and peaceful to on alert
• 7:25
  and ready back to peaceful very easily.
• 7:28
  That's what resilient means.
• 7:30
  It also means not only could they act towards a danger appropriately, they could respond
• 7:36
  to pleasure appropriately.
• 7:39
  And so a regulated nervous system, we talk about regulate your nervous system, nervous system
• 7:43
  has to be regulated.
• 7:45
  Your nervous system knows how to regulate.
• 7:48
  And regulated just means it goes, ooh, I should be activated, I should be calm.
• 7:53
  Ooh, something exciting is happening.
• 7:56
  Nothing is needed of me.
• 7:57
  It's time to sleep.
• 7:58
  It's just that flow up and down like waves in an ocean that's a regulated nervous system.
• 8:04
  And it's important to know that it's mammals we co-regulate.
• 8:08
  So the state of my being right now is having an effect on you.
• 8:13
  The state of your being is having an effect on me.
• 8:16
  A moment ago when there was a technical difficulty, you very calmly said, hey, I think there's
• 8:21
  a problem.
• 8:22
  Can we do this?
• 8:23
  You weren't like, oh, my God, I'll be out of existence, which would have made me okay,
• 8:25
  let's do that.
• 8:26
  I was able to stay very calm and connected to you because you were super calm and connected.
• 8:30
  So that's an example of co-regulation.
• 8:34
  That topic comes up a lot actually with parenting, particularly more modern day parenting, where
• 8:40
  they talk about if your child gets hurt, you know, don't go to extreme craziness around
• 8:45
  it, but try to like model, it's all going to be okay and use gentler language and expression.
• 8:52
  Now here's the interesting thing with that.
• 8:54
  You can only do that if that's in you, because I could use really calm language with you,
• 8:59
  but you and I are both made of energy.
• 9:01
  Everything is energy, right?
• 9:03
  Everyone listening this podcast, you are energy.
• 9:06
  No matter how someone's voice sounds or what the words they're saying, you are feeling
• 9:12
  their energy, you are feeling their nervous system, and you're going to respond to it.
• 9:17
  So you could have someone say all the right things, your body goes, I don't trust them.
• 9:23
  I don't know why.
• 9:24
  You're picking up on energy.
• 9:25
  So as a parent, if you're overwhelmed, so we're kind of getting back now to being present,
• 9:32
  if you're overwhelmed, and you're trying to be a good parent, but you've got a dead
• 9:36
  lying to me, and your money's in the stock market, it's going up and down, and you have
• 9:41
  no control over it, and you've just had a car accident, and your phone is pinging like
• 9:45
  crazy, you're already at overwhelmed.
• 9:49
  Your nervous system is responding to each one of those things the way your ancestors would
• 9:53
  have responded to a lion in the bushes.
• 9:55
  Oh my God, I'm going to deal with that, I can deal with that.
• 9:58
  Now your kid falls and you're like, okay, be calm to them, become honey, you're okay,
• 10:02
  you're fine.
• 10:03
  It's all right, but really your nervous system wants to go.
• 10:06
  This is too much.
• 10:07
  Oh, I'm sure so many people listening are watching this can identify right now.
• 10:11
  I know I can.
• 10:12
  So what do we do with that?
• 10:14
  We don't have to regulate our nervous systems.
• 10:16
  Our nervous systems know what to do beautifully.
• 10:20
  What our nervous system is looking for is, are you safe or am I safe?
• 10:26
  It's always looking for that.
• 10:27
  So the more you can consciously feel it in this moment, you are safe, the more you will
• 10:34
  interrupt that sympathetic drive.
• 10:38
  Just a little interruptions, so you think of the way our nervous systems behave is based
• 10:43
  on our childhood, it's based on our ancestors, it's patterning that's been developed, we're
• 10:48
  not aware of it.
• 10:49
  But you think of it as like a super highway in our brain and body of the way we respond
• 10:53
  to things.
• 10:54
  95% of it is unconscious, you don't have to be consciously aware of it.
• 11:00
  But if you can, throughout the day, notice that you're safe, you'll interrupt that super
• 11:06
  highway.
• 11:07
  It's like putting a little tiny detour to safety and you'll start changing your neural pathways
• 11:12
  over time.
• 11:14
  So what are some ways that you can make yourself feel safe?
• 11:17
  Okay.
• 11:18
  One thing I teach my clients, I call it fab.
• 11:21
  I'll take you through it now and anyone listening can do it along with me.
• 11:24
  So right now, James, I want you to just feel your feet.
• 11:27
  No matter where they are.
• 11:29
  Just feel them.
• 11:30
  And sometimes some people have trouble feeling their feet, so just wiggle your toes for
• 11:34
  a second.
• 11:35
  I know, stop.
• 11:37
  And just notice sensations in your feet.
• 11:41
  So you're not thinking about it, you're feeling you might feel warm or tingly or numb or
• 11:45
  heavy.
• 11:46
  If they're on the floor, you might feel, oh, they're touching the floor.
• 11:50
  And now I want you to feel your ass.
• 11:52
  Your ass is in a chair.
• 11:54
  I want you to just feel your ass.
• 11:57
  And as you do, I want you to notice the support of the chair holding you.
• 12:01
  And I don't know if you even noticed like you're breathing deep into bit when you felt
• 12:05
  that chair.
• 12:07
  Now I just want you to notice your next couple of exhales as you breathe.
• 12:12
  And with those exhales, just allow yourself to settle into that support that's right there.
• 12:18
  So I call that fab.
• 12:20
  F is for feet.
• 12:21
  A is for ass.
• 12:22
  I knew there had to be something for the ass because you don't normally say ass necessary
• 12:26
  because like, why did you say ass right now?
• 12:29
  But it fits back.
• 12:31
  Yeah.
• 12:32
  And B is for breath.
• 12:33
  Okay.
• 12:34
  Right.
• 12:35
  And so you're not doing a breather routine, you're just noticing your next couple of exhales.
• 12:40
  And I started doing that with clients about 15 or so years ago because when I would try
• 12:44
  to teach people to just be present, most people had a breathing technique they used.
• 12:50
  When I would get into what that gives them, some people say, well, sometimes it works
• 12:53
  but sometimes I get really anxious.
• 12:54
  I don't think I'm doing it right now.
• 12:56
  Take a big breath and I don't feel any calmer.
• 12:59
  Well when you're trying to override your breathing, there can be a bit of a performance aspect
• 13:04
  to it.
• 13:05
  Also when you take a big breath, your heart rate naturally speeds up.
• 13:10
  So if you're already anxious and you're paying attention to an inhale and you notice your
• 13:15
  heart's beating faster, oh my God, I really am anxious.
• 13:17
  I better breathe deeper.
• 13:19
  That's like a bigger breath, my heart's beating faster.
• 13:22
  But when you first start by feeling, I'm safe right now.
• 13:26
  I'm supported.
• 13:28
  You already became present.
• 13:30
  Like until I mentioned, you might not even have noticed that you're sitting in a chair.
• 13:34
  You couldn't feel it.
• 13:35
  But when I got you to think about your ass, you could feel it.
• 13:38
  As soon as you brought your attention down and you became present that way, your breathing
• 13:44
  naturally slowed down and deepened.
• 13:46
  I could see it happen.
• 13:48
  Then I asked you to pay attention to your exhale because when you exhale, your heart rate
• 13:52
  naturally slows down.
• 13:54
  I saw that too.
• 13:56
  Yeah.
• 13:57
  If you were feeling anxious, then you had a moment of like, oh, I noticed my heart slower
• 14:01
  than I thought.
• 14:03
  Part of me though was immediately like, well, this is all well and good.
• 14:07
  But in the moment, just using your child, let's say like your child gets injured or falls
• 14:13
  or something, you're not necessarily going to take the time to do this before you react
• 14:18
  to your child.
• 14:19
  But then I realized, wait a second, fab.
• 14:21
  So feet, ass, breath, you can do that instantaneous.
• 14:26
  It really can be because I'm even imagining, let's say you go to kneel down to meet your
• 14:32
  child where they are.
• 14:33
  Let's just assume they're on the ground somewhere because they fell.
• 14:36
  Even in that process of going from upright to bending down, you could do that.
• 14:42
  You can't use this in an emergency is actually accurate because it'd be like saying, James,
• 14:45
  I'm going to teach you to swim.
• 14:47
  I'm going to throw you off a boat.
• 14:48
  I should have learned how to swim first.
• 14:50
  So you got to do it before.
• 14:52
  Yeah.
• 14:53
  So I always tell my clients the quality of your habits determines the quality of your
• 14:57
  life.
• 14:58
  And they'll say, well, not quality, my relationships, yes, is the quality of your habits within
• 15:03
  those relationships that determines the quality of those relationships, which determines
• 15:07
  quality of your life.
• 15:09
  So our habits are always guiding us either towards the life we want and who we want to be
• 15:15
  or away from it.
• 15:17
  And what's tricky is habits are habits because they're automatic.
• 15:21
  And your brain uses a lot of energy and it likes to be efficient.
• 15:26
  So it will turn anything into a habit to make it more efficient, you know, and some
• 15:30
  things to habit.
• 15:31
  We don't think about what foot we step with first or how we put our pants on.
• 15:35
  It's just a habit or where we start brushing our teeth.
• 15:38
  Your brain has made all of that automatic.
• 15:41
  So you can consciously change your habits.
• 15:44
  So if you make fab a habit and you do it every time you take a sip of water before you
• 15:50
  check your phone, every time you sit down, if you're constantly doing it, if you do it dozens
• 15:55
  of times a day, that's dozens of times you've interrupted that pattern of stress in your
• 16:01
  nervous system in your brain and you've interrupted just a moment of presence, a moment
• 16:06
  of peace because most of the time we are completely safe.
• 16:12
  No matter what's happening in this stock market, no matter what's happening with a deadline
• 16:15
  or, you know, in politics, in this moment, most of us are completely safe, but we're not
• 16:21
  aware of it physically.
• 16:23
  Well, and it kind of takes us back to media news because we're also made to feel in
• 16:32
  many ways or we're directed towards feeling and thinking that we're not safe because
• 16:37
  most of at least legacy media is mostly about traumatic events, really.
• 16:44
  Social media, even more.
• 16:46
  It's not even necessarily trauma, but it's not just stealing our time.
• 16:51
  It's stealing our dopamine, it's stealing our motivation.
• 16:54
  So if we go back to our ancestors and they way they lived as hunter-gatherers, a really
• 17:00
  important part of keeping them going was dopamine.
• 17:04
  So dopamine, we think of it as the pleasure model, the old it is, it makes us enjoy things,
• 17:10
  but it also was responsible for our attention, our sleep, our hormone balance and our motivation.
• 17:17
  So if you think if you're out hunting or gathering, even the anticipation of getting food
• 17:23
  raises your dopamine a bit and your dopamine enables you to keep paying attention.
• 17:27
  Is that something I hear?
• 17:28
  Am I tracking an animal?
• 17:29
  What am I doing?
• 17:30
  I've got the motivation to keep going even when it's hard.
• 17:34
  And then if I find berries or I actually, you know, capture dinner, I capture an animal
• 17:39
  and I have dinner, dopamine is part of that reward system.
• 17:44
  And the hard work has had the dopamine build stably, I have this exciting event and eventually
• 17:50
  it comes down, but it's a very sustainable process.
• 17:54
  What happens and we're designed that same way so we can do hard work, we can go to the gym
• 17:58
  when we come work out and it feels good and we see our muscles are building, we're getting
• 18:01
  more tone, keeps us motivated to keep going or writing a book, whatever it is, dopamine
• 18:06
  is a big part of that.
• 18:09
  What happens with social media or any kind of media we're consuming in a big way is it
• 18:14
  robs our dopamine by spiking it.
• 18:17
  Feel good social media, it's very colorful, it's very fast.
• 18:22
  You'll see some videos say like, wait till you see how this ends or really see what happens
• 18:25
  really, the anticipation, what am I going to see?
• 18:28
  And then you see it, it was usually fairly disappointing.
• 18:31
  And then the next thing might happen that would be very enjoyable on its own, but because
• 18:35
  your dopamine has spiked, you don't get as much pleasure from it.
• 18:40
  So you want to see the next thing because maybe the next thing will do it and it's okay,
• 18:44
  but it's not as good and we keep going for it.
• 18:47
  Now we'll have a baseline of dopamine.
• 18:52
  And our body likes to keep everything within a certain range of health for us, it's called
• 18:56
  homeostasis.
• 18:58
  So it's like when you go outside and you're really cold, your body starts to shiver and
• 19:03
  you get goosebumps and just the raising of the goosebumps and the shivering warms you
• 19:08
  up a little bit.
• 19:09
  And the other thing that happens is your blood leaves your extremities and goes to protect
• 19:13
  all of your important organs, right?
• 19:16
  Your body wants to keep you safe.
• 19:19
  Well, it's the same with dopamine, everyone has a baseline and our baselines are all different.
• 19:24
  But when I get a really big spike, it has to go down below the baseline back to find normal.
• 19:32
  So what people will often find is if they're on social media too much, is afterwards they
• 19:37
  feel kind of flat, kind of draggy, their motivation is down, they become a lot more passive.
• 19:43
  You'll even find they're more anxious or depressed and nobody wants to feel that way.
• 19:49
  We will do a lot to avoid feeling uncomfortable, so we'll pick up our phone and do it again.
• 19:56
  Because we want that dopamine, we might get the spike and then we get a crash afterwards.
• 20:01
  So it takes us out of presence, but more than that, it's actually really disregulating
• 20:06
  our nervous system and our dopamine balance.
• 20:09
  I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts, then how does someone get out of that rat race,
• 20:15
  but also still be a part of modern society, not feel completely disconnected or different from
• 20:22
  everyone else. I qualify this with the idea that back in the day, when there was water cooler
• 20:27
  meetings, when people were meeting in person, them talking about the current show, whether
• 20:32
  was Seinfeld or whatever it was, was a part of socialization. That was a connection point for
• 20:37
  people, and so I would argue that was an important piece of them feeling as part of their community.
• 20:43
  So I think the fear that many people have with disconnecting from any kind of media is that
• 20:50
  they won't be a part of that community anymore, and if they don't have that community,
• 20:55
  then what community do they have?
• 20:57
  Right. And that's really important, and even thinking about what is community.
• 21:01
  The way we're designed is to live with a small group of people who we actually rely on for our
• 21:08
  survival, right? That they know us well, we know that maybe 15 to 50 people, you know, that
• 21:13
  what a tribe would be like. Our mirror neurons that we all have means that when I see an expression
• 21:19
  in your face, I have that feeling within me. When I watch you do something, I can imagine what it
• 21:24
  takes to do it so I can learn that way. So we're meant to co-create, to collaborate, it's part of our
• 21:29
  survival. So you're right, we need to feel that sense of belonging. It's an absolute human
• 21:34
  need. And feeling like if we get off social media, it will be out of the loop is terrifying.
• 21:40
  Yeah, I don't want to underestimate that for people because I think it's a real thing.
• 21:44
  It's a very real thing. And even one of my clients said she didn't social media detox with her
• 21:49
  boys. And then one of her boys went to hang the friends and they were all talking about a meme
• 21:53
  going around. He didn't know about it and he felt stupid. So it it is very real. I think one of
• 21:59
  the things is getting more face to face time separate from social media, like we do have to make
• 22:05
  a move away from our addiction to it. And what they're finding in schools now that have banned it
• 22:10
  is the kids are way better focused. They're much happier and they're connecting in other ways.
• 22:15
  They're actually more social with each other. They're connecting out of class times. So even
• 22:21
  letting go of the belief that we have to connect and vote or around what's happening on social
• 22:26
  media is a first step. I think social media detox can be effective, but we need to develop
• 22:33
  other habits. We don't just break habits. We have to replace habits with other habits
• 22:39
  because there's always something that's triggering a habit. And when I said habits are
• 22:43
  sure what will get you either to the life you want or the life you don't want, think of a habit
• 22:47
  as a car. It's another acronym, C-A-R. There's always a queue. Something is queuing you to do that
• 22:55
  habit. The habit itself is the action and R stands for reward. You're going to do that habit again
• 23:02
  only if you feel a reward for it. So that first spike of dopamine gave you a reward.
• 23:08
  The action is watching social media. You're going to want to do it again because you got that
• 23:14
  feeling. If you want to move away from social media in some way and with your kids, you need to
• 23:19
  get other habits. It's not just telling them, don't do this. What are you going to give them? It gives
• 23:24
  the sense of connection that they actually need that sense of belonging. If they can get more face
• 23:29
  to face time with kids, that's great. Or we're looking for connection in social media, but you
• 23:37
  would appreciate this as a chef. I think of that kind of connection is the equivalent of what
• 23:42
  junk food is to food. In connection, we want to be seen. We want to be known. We want to relate
• 23:49
  to people. We want our mirror neurons to reflect back. We get all that and it co-regulates our
• 23:57
  nervous system settles. We don't get that from looking at a phone. Now, we might see something
• 24:02
  there that we can use to talk about that creates that real-life connection. But can we find other
• 24:09
  things to connect around? You're making me think about the love languages. I should probably
• 24:15
  mention them here. If you know, I'm correct me if I miss anything, but one is gifts, people that
• 24:22
  like getting gifts. One is words of praise. One is acts of service. One is touch. Quality time.
• 24:33
  Quality time. Thank you. You're making me think of that, though, because I know with our oldest
• 24:39
  daughter, when we focus on removing the phone, what we did was we focus on what are her level
• 24:45
  languages. One is quality time and one is gifts. We focus on quality time. What we did was we pulled
• 24:53
  out a deck of cards and we left them on the dinner tables. That way, after dinner, anytime we're
• 25:00
  sitting there, we immediately say, hey, you want to play a game. Then it's quality time. It's
• 25:05
  nothing else that's happening. We're just together. Of course, conversations come out of that,
• 25:10
  or it's walking the dog together. Hey, do you want to go for a walk with me? You know, and it's
• 25:14
  really juxtaposing. You can be alone, or you can be connecting. I know that she wants to connect,
• 25:22
  but sometimes she gets in the habit of isolating. It's easy. There's a little bit of effort to
• 25:28
  playing cards, like we've overcome that effort. I got to think. I got to do something. I don't
• 25:34
  just sit on my phone and just do this, but you're right. She's wanting that connection. If you guys
• 25:38
  weren't offering that, which is so lovely, it'd be really easy to go to her phone. Right. We can
• 25:44
  do things like lock her phone in a box, which we do. We have a lock box for everyone's tech,
• 25:49
  which is what people do with food. It's all or nothing. I don't know if that's instilling
• 25:56
  that new habit or that new muscle of really thinking about what is it that we need as individuals,
• 26:04
  but what is it we need? The other people in our household, what do they need?
• 26:09
  You know what I mean? I feel like the extreme, the black or white situation is really not addressing
• 26:15
  the gray area of human connection. Well, I like the idea of walking the phone and offering an
• 26:21
  alternative. So you think of the phone. Think of it as like as a chef. It's a tool. It's a really
• 26:27
  sharp knife. So super effective. You don't want to do without it completely because it has
• 26:32
  it used, but you don't have your kids going to bed with a super sharp knife. You don't let them
• 26:37
  walk around with them all the time. It's super dangerous, but used in the right way. It's a very
• 26:41
  effective tool. I don't know if you know this, but when we were both in LA, I abstain from media
• 26:50
  for an entire year. And it was a really fascinating experiment. So I didn't let myself read
• 26:58
  any newspapers, magazines, any online news. I didn't do any social media. And then this was over
• 27:05
  10 years ago. So there was a lot less than, of course, too. But what was so fascinating was the
• 27:12
  people's responses. Like there were a couple people when they heard I was doing that they saw it
• 27:17
  as selfish. They were like, how could you? You don't know what's going on in the world that,
• 27:21
  you know, politically, you need to know what's going on. And there's a lot of people that think
• 27:24
  of like that right now. So I know that this mindset has not changed. And then the other thing that
• 27:31
  was surprising was how much I did know what was going on without watching any media. And that's
• 27:38
  because other people filtered it for me because it would come up in conversations. And so I learned
• 27:44
  things just because people were doing it themselves. And they started just sharing what they
• 27:50
  believed or thought of. And then you could, if you were interested, I know you were banning it
• 27:55
  completely. But if you were interested, if you wanted to live that way, you could go research
• 27:58
  for yourself in the way that's comfortable for you. What you want to find out because also
• 28:03
  that there's so much misinformation going around right now on social media. If you hear something,
• 28:08
  what paths do you know to go research what the truth might be?
• 28:12
  Yeah. So very fascinating. Well, I'm really enjoying this conversation. And I'm curious
• 28:18
  when you got sick, something that comes up a lot on this show is the four pillars of health. So
• 28:25
  we have our sleep, we have what we eat, we have how we move our body, and then we have how we
• 28:30
  do a stress. If you were to kind of like number what you had to focus on first to help
• 28:38
  get out of that desperation of sickness, because I know it kind of has waves, right? Obviously
• 28:43
  when it happened, it was at an extreme, you had to do something kind of extreme to get out of it.
• 28:49
  Like if you were to number it in terms of importance, in terms of supporting people with
• 28:55
  their natural rhythms, with finding kind of like a nervous system homeostasis, where should they
• 29:00
  start is kind of where I'm going. I don't think I had that much of conscious choice.
• 29:08
  Sleep was my number one. I was bedridden for quite a long time, and I had chronic fatigue and was
• 29:15
  sleeping a lot. I had denied myself sleep for decades. I was always on the go. So you know,
• 29:22
  body seeking homeostasis, girlfriend, we're going to bring you back and you're going to sleep
• 29:26
  for years. So sleep was my number one. I can't say I know what everyone's number one is, but I
• 29:33
  know that unless you're well rested, unless you've slept, nothing else is going to perform well.
• 29:38
  I'll talk to clients sometimes who are so ready to leave their spouse. They have had it. They're
• 29:43
  done. It's over. I talked to them the next time they go, oh no, I slept well and it's fine.
• 29:48
  Clearly it wasn't never a marriage, you know? I'm ready to kill my kids. We'll talk about
• 29:54
  their kids for an hour. And the next day, I check and they're like, oh no, I got a good sleep.
• 29:57
  The kids are fine. Did the kids change? For me, sleeps a foundation for everything. You know,
• 30:05
  you would have looked at my diet and go, it's pretty good. I was moving a lot, but I wasn't sleeping.
• 30:10
  So I don't know if that's it for everybody, but for me, a lot of my experience with clients is
• 30:14
  sleep. And even if not sleep, rest. Like we think of resilience as being ready. I'm ready for
• 30:21
  the next thing. I'm strong. I think of resilience as a combination of rested and ready because
• 30:28
  you're not rested. You actually can't be fully ready. If you go to the gym over and over again
• 30:33
  and you're tired, you're going to not going to see gains. But if you're rested and go to the gym,
• 30:39
  you're going to see the gains you want to see. So I think rest is critical. A lot of people think
• 30:44
  that going to their tech is restful. I just need the chill and just grab my phone. Well,
• 30:50
  you're not doing anything, but your nervous system is having a response to all of it and you're
• 30:56
  just sitting there. Energy is getting kind of built up in your kids interrupt and you're like,
• 31:01
  what? That nervous system energy wants to move. That is such a good point because I know that my
• 31:08
  brother and I both, I think he's, he still historically does this. I do it a little less so, but
• 31:15
  we were definitely trained to do that with TV or movies or something like where
• 31:21
  I need to decompress. So I'm going to go watch TV and now it's of course watching some show
• 31:27
  on your phone. But back in the day, it was like, I'm going to go do TV and my parents, we want,
• 31:31
  you know, they modeled it back in the day. So I see what you mean, though, because on a certain
• 31:37
  level, I think my brain is telling me, oh, yeah, this is like rest, but nervous system wise,
• 31:41
  it's not because if you're watching, let's say a movie that has a lot of violence or is aggressive
• 31:46
  in any way, your brain doesn't know that it's not real, right? Right. Can you talk a little bit
• 31:52
  about that? Just how our brains connect with what it sees and how that plays out in our bodies?
• 31:58
  Well, when I talked about, you know, as tribes, we had mirror neurons that would,
• 32:03
  I can watch someone do something and I must feel it in my body like it's pre-learning.
• 32:07
  Like kids see you walking. They learn how to walk. It's the mirror neurons that would say,
• 32:12
  oh, I think I could do that. I can almost feel it in my body. Or if I see you smile like you smile
• 32:18
  at a baby and a baby smiles back, like that's the mirror neurons responding. But when we watch a show,
• 32:24
  our nervous system doesn't know it's not real. So we see someone being attacked, being killed,
• 32:30
  being really sad. We kind of go through a part of that ourselves. So we've gone through this
• 32:35
  whole emotional rollercoaster that we probably never should experience and we go, okay,
• 32:40
  I'm going to go to bed now. You've just put yourself through hell, you know, and I'm not
• 32:46
  opposed to TV or movies or social media. It probably sounds like I am. I'm really not. There can be
• 32:52
  great joy from it. There can be learning from it. There can be just entertainment. It can be
• 32:57
  really fun. But again, think of it like a really sharp knife in your kitchen. You don't want to
• 33:03
  overuse it. You don't want your kids to have it all the time. It's really useful. And it's also
• 33:07
  potentially really dangerous. It makes me think because I have been through periods in my life where I
• 33:14
  actually, I don't remember how long I did this. I don't think it was that long, but I do remember
• 33:19
  there was a period where I had to go to sleep listening to the TV in the background or something.
• 33:25
  Like I needed something and I don't know how long I did that. But I remember it really helped me
• 33:32
  at the time. It's making me think that a lot of people might be doing a habit right now
• 33:39
  that they think they need. And that maybe there is some mindfulness that can come with what we're
• 33:45
  talking about around that habit. Meaning that maybe there is a need in the moment. But if it becomes
• 33:51
  kind of a point of no return and now this is becoming a crutch, taxing my nervousness in words,
• 33:56
  it's doing more harm than good. Is there any kind of like tool that we can use to assess that?
• 34:02
  I think it's hard to know in the moment honestly. I'm the same. If I'm on my phone,
• 34:06
  it's hard to know in the moment I'm full. Unless you back off it enough and you're paying
• 34:12
  attention enough to your body. So I used to drink a lot more than I do. I would drink like
• 34:18
  beyond probably what my body wanted. I barely drink at all now. But when I drink, I drink slowly
• 34:24
  and I really enjoy it. So I had a margarita with friends the other night and at the halfway
• 34:28
  point or something, I thought, I'm done. I don't need to finish it. But it was going slow and
• 34:33
  paying attention to how I feel. Now often when we go to something like watching TV, social media,
• 34:41
  listening to something, what we're actually doing is avoiding feeling some feelings we don't want to
• 34:47
  feel. And we may not even be aware of what those feelings are. So it could even be, I'm really tired.
• 34:56
  But I don't want to feel tired. I don't want to go to sleep. I don't want to go to sleep.
• 34:59
  It's a waste of time. So you might watch a show. You're really tired, but you're watching the show
• 35:05
  because you don't want to just feel the sleepiness and it's keeping you awake. Or you might not
• 35:09
  want to feel lonely. And so you go on social media and you feel this junk food version of connection.
• 35:15
  So sometimes it's letting yourself be with the uncomfortable feelings, but not so much so that
• 35:24
  you go into a spiral and that that's a really fine dance. So I actually have created a guided
• 35:31
  meditation called deep rest reset. And if people want to go to my website, I can send it out to
• 35:37
  anyone who connects to me, but you could even start with like little meditations instead of social
• 35:43
  media or instead of a TV show. And what the meditation I do, it takes you through feeling your
• 35:50
  body in very safe ways. And I even say stop at any time because if you have a lot of trauma and
• 35:57
  Peter Lewin who I studied with says everybody has trauma and society is pretty disregulating,
• 36:04
  can be traumatizing. Sometimes it doesn't feel safe to feel your body. Like sometimes actually
• 36:11
  taking a big breath and feeling what's in there is so uncomfortable. You'd rather be looking at
• 36:16
  social media or watching a show because you don't have to feel what's going on. But when we don't
• 36:22
  let ourselves feel negative feelings, we cut ourselves off from feeling really positive feelings too
• 36:27
  of tenderness and touch and ecstatic feelings. So we want ease into befriending our body and
• 36:36
  befriending our emotions. It can be a bit uncomfortable, but going into it really gently.
• 36:42
  This is all so good. And I'm finding my brain going to place of
• 36:48
  can we quantify it? Because I just know that these are practices of being more mindful of your state.
• 36:55
  There are so many people that don't know how to do it. They don't do it. They can't do it.
• 37:00
  They're just it's not in their lexicon. It's not in their experiences. I'm right now in real time
• 37:06
  trying to process like how to help those people. Like okay, if you find yourself when you're in
• 37:12
  those intense feelings of whatever might be coming up, something's hot for you. And you find yourself
• 37:18
  going to some crush or social media, let's say by the third time you have to then do something
• 37:26
  different. But then as I said that in my mind, I'm like, wait a second, that could potentially add
• 37:32
  even more stress and then make people continue to default to their norm. So I wonder if it's more
• 37:38
  just about you know you're ready when this message resonates with you and you're ready to just
• 37:45
  try something different. And it's that simple. How would you kind of support someone with
• 37:51
  recognizing and taking that first step towards change? When I look at change, I always think we have
• 37:59
  to know why we want it. It's not just the what to do, but why do we want it. So I think the first step
• 38:04
  is actually figuring out why would you want to change it? Like maybe social media isn't bothering you.
• 38:11
  Maybe you think it's good enough. Maybe you think that sounds like too much work. So if something in
• 38:17
  this chat sparked an interest, I would ask, what do you want your life to be different and why?
• 38:26
  I'm just going to make something up, but I might say I'm always feeling kind of look after social media.
• 38:31
  I don't want to feel that way anymore. I want to feel excited about life. I want to feel happy.
• 38:34
  Okay, that's my thing. I want to feel happy and excited about life. Anytime you have a goal,
• 38:39
  it's because you want to feel different than the way you feel now. Whether that goal is I want to
• 38:43
  go get lunch because I'm hungry or I want to 10 times my business because I want financial freedom.
• 38:49
  There is a feeling. It's not just financial freedom. If I think I have financial freedom, I feel
• 38:55
  safe. I feel secure. I feel generous. There's feelings that go with it. So take a moment to figure out
• 39:02
  why you'd want to put any work into your life being different. How do you want to feel this
• 39:07
  different from how you feel now? So if you often feel anxious, I would say fab lots throughout
• 39:14
  the day. Feel your feet. Feel your asthma chair. Feel your exhale, which is your breathing.
• 39:20
  Right? That's going to interrupt the stress patterns. When we talk about mindfulness, I want to have
• 39:25
  more pleasure in my life, but I don't even know what to do. Great. Just like close your eyes and
• 39:31
  smell your food. And when you take the first bite, just let it linger in your mouth and taste the
• 39:36
  flavors. One bite. One bite of every meal. You don't have to do it the whole time, but that's
• 39:41
  going to give you a moment of pleasure. It's going to slow you down. Slowing down does bring more
• 39:48
  pleasure. If you find, okay, I'm going to my phone because I feel stressed or I don't like the way
• 39:54
  I feel, what if you just took a moment before you get on your phone? Maybe you even fab before
• 40:01
  you get on your phone, and then you notice how you feel. Do you still need it? Okay, do it.
• 40:06
  If you still want it, you do it. And then after maybe you fab again. So you're giving yourself a
• 40:12
  book end of regulating your nervous system on either end of it. And maybe over time, when you fab
• 40:18
  before you pick up your phone, you go, no, I don't need it. I'm actually hungry instead.
• 40:23
  Or I'm lonely and I want to call somebody. That was fantastic. That is so lovely and so helpful.
• 40:30
  Deb, are you seeing clients or like are you booked out? I'm seeing clients. Yeah. Do you have
• 40:38
  openings? Like if someone's listening to this and they're like, I love her voice. I love what
• 40:43
  she's about. I want to work with her as a coach. Are you taking in new clients? I will be shortly.
• 40:49
  I don't have any openings right now, but by October, I will. Because I'm confident that someone's
• 40:55
  going to resonate with this because I know I have where can people find you? We'll definitely
• 41:00
  put in the show notes, but let's let people know via audio. Are you on socials? We're talking
• 41:07
  about socials. But gosh, this is just part of like being on a podcast, right? It's letting the
• 41:12
  guests share what their socials are. My website is Deborah joy.me. And if people go to it, you can
• 41:19
  sign up. And I send out a newsletter with like tips like this, you know ideas. But also if you want
• 41:24
  to email me through there, I'm happy to send you some guided meditations for eating. Also,
• 41:28
  the deep rest reset. I'll happily email those to people. I'm not really on socials. I mean,
• 41:34
  I kind of have been and don't go. It's just old embarrassing stuff. So mostly it's my website
• 41:42
  and my newsletter that I send out. Well, Deb, I thought of you for this topic and I'm so glad I
• 41:47
  did it. It's so good to talk with you and just get, you know, this time to chitchat because it's
• 41:53
  been a while. You know, I will dispose. You've been working with Margaret for a long time now.
• 41:58
  I know you guys were friends, but you also she worked with you and I know she gets so much out of it.
• 42:04
  And I witnessed it. I experienced it. I've gotten so much out of our connection and friendship over
• 42:09
  the years. I just cherish you and I appreciate all that you did to help transform and nourish
• 42:16
  yourself so that you could be here to provide all this gold. So thank you.
• 42:21
  Oh, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure and you're such a generous kind host.
• 42:26
  It's been lovely. Well, thank you. Thank you, everyone. Look at lots of things going on,
• 42:33
  but thank you all for participating in today's podcast. It really does mean so much to get comments,
• 42:40
  to just see all the people that are listening and watching the podcast. That is our communication
• 42:46
  of like, hey, you like what we're doing. So thank you for that and encourage more. But most of all,
• 42:52
  I hope that you got something from this podcast today that you can carry into your life,
• 42:57
  to make it a little bit better. And most of all, please stay curious because we need curious people
• 43:05
  in this life. Take care. Thank you so much for joining me on everyday ancestral. If you enjoyed
• 43:13
  this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You could find the show notes, links
• 43:19
  and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's EATPLUCK.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd
• 43:30
  get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.