Latest / Heal Yourself Podcast / Episode 62: Taxes, Tigers, And Why Your Nervous System Can't Tell the Difference

Transcript

Episode 62: Taxes, Tigers, And Why Your Nervous System Can't Tell the Difference · Heal Yourself Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Heal Yourself Podcast, where we dive deep into all things healing.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: I'm Denise, a speech and language pathologist and a self-love coach for adults and teens.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: And I'm Kira, a traditional naturopath and functional nutritionist, and we're here to guide you through the transformative process of healing your body, mind and soul From the latest in functional medicine, of healing your body, mind and soul, from the latest in functional medicine to nurturing your relationship with yourself, healing trauma and even transforming your money story.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: we're here to empower you with the knowledge and tools to create lasting change.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: So, whether you're looking to heal physically, emotionally or spiritually, join us as we explore the many paths to wholeness and wellness.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Heal Yourself Podcast.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: It is Kira today, and I am joined by special guest Atara, who I'm going to introduce, yeah, hey.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: So let me introduce her her formally and then I'll let her tell you guys a little more about herself.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So Tara is a licensed marriage and family therapist and has been practicing in the field of mental health for 14 years.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: She's continued her education by becoming a certified integrative practitioner and her current passions include holistic healing, supporting postpartum mamas, brain spotting which we've talked about before on here therapeutic intensives and educating on the role of minerals for brain health and nervous system regulation, and revitalizing and rebalancing clients our core goals in Atara's work, so welcome.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Yay, thank you.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: I'm so happy to be here this morning.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I always start by asking people how did you get to this space?
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Because we all have some interesting journeys.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, and I feel like most people in this space are here because of their journey and I am not the exception to that rule.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: So my health side journey really began around 2013.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: And at this point I had finished my graduate program, was finishing up my graduate work, and I had really, really pushed my body and I was, you know, taking classes, doing 20 hours of practicum with emancipated foster youth, which was not a light population.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: A lot of trauma there to foster youth, which was not a light population.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: A lot of trauma there.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: And I was working a full time job as a case manager for men who had been released from prison from a life sentence, so also not a light population.
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah yeah Right, lots of stuff in there.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Let's see, I was training for marathons, so a lot of intense.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Kira's already laughing.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: She knows where this is going and, of course, I was in my 20 something, so I was trying to be as slim and trim as possible in eating like a chicken breast a day and maybe like a Slurpee and sunflower seeds, right, like that.
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Those are my meals, so you can imagine.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Um, my body finally was like no, we're not doing this anymore.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: And I always like to preface and say there was some other stuff.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Right, it wasn't like a year or two of stress in my life.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: I had, you know, some childhood with domestic violence in the home for a while.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Um, you know, my parents are divorced.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: Um, I am naturally a feeler, um, a very intense person, so there's some other stuff that had kind of been lifelong.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: That also, I think, contributed to this.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: I like to look at things holistically and work with people holistically, so I think all of that's important.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: But essentially what happened is my body crashed and what I mean by that was I would get up and get going for the day and go about my business and get and get ready, be up for an hour and a half, two hours, and be so exhausted, um, I would have to lay back down and go back to sleep and I went to my functional medicine doc, or sorry, I went to my allopathic doctor and, oh great, we're going to run some labs, awesome.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Come back a few weeks later, excited to have some answers, only for him to kind of basically shrug his shoulders and say everything looks good, yep, everything looks good.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to sigh at that.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, and you know he also went well.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Maybe eat more greens, and at this point I had tried so many things.
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: I was on a raw vegan diet, so that was not the issue and it was not helping.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: So then I found a wonderful you know, functional medicine doctor and she ran my neurotransmitters and what we saw was that my fight or flight neurotransmitters were off the charts they were so high you could not even see where they ended, and my calming ones were bottomed out, non existent.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: They were tired and they had stopped producing or working.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: So that is that's what really happened that set me on this trajectory for really some of the foundational things getting processed foods out of my diet, focused on nutrient dense food, right, really switching around and getting some good nutrition back in my body, which helped immensely.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Fast forward, three years later, it's 2016.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: And I have my first kiddo, and what happens here is postpartum anxiety and now what we kind of label as postpartum rage, which is a subset right of the anxiety.
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: The anxiety it's caused, if you will, by those anxious moments, and this was another really alarming experience for me.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: I had never been an angry person, I had never been an anxious person.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: Pretty easy going go with the flow my whole life, and also very energetic, I will say.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: And so this was very, you know, startling for me, and that's when I came across minerals and I had all of the you know foundational health stuff.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: But then when I added in minerals, it just it rocked my world and it brought me back to life, is kind of what I say.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: So that is how I got here, why I do what I do and why I love helping people in this way out here why I do what I do and why I love helping people in this way.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Awesome, I'm going to do like a snippet in here.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: We're not going to go down the mineral road, guys, but I love talking minerals and I will just say it's so easy to become depleted postpartum.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: Nobody shares that with you, like.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Even if you're going to a midwife, they're just saying, take a prenatal, which is great, take a prenatal.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: But when I, like, had my son, you know I finished out the prenatal bottle.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: I'm like I guess I'm okay.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: No one told me that postpartum was five years, like, and that I would get super depleted.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Just throwing that out there for listeners that maybe did not know that.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: Yes, totally true.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: Right, they say 10% in pregnancy alone, but we don't know what we're losing in the postpartum, in birth, breastfeeding, right?
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: We have no information, really, that I've seen yet.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: And if hey, if you've seen it, please email me.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: I'd love to read it, cause everyone's so different.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well, let's go into the nervous system, because I feel like when I get on Instagram now, everyone and their mother's go into the nervous system.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Because I feel like when I get on Instagram now, everyone and their mother's talking about the nervous system and I'll own it.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: I do the same thing because there's the role.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: My focus is on digestive issues, but I think people don't even know.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: They're like okay, nervous system dysregulation.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Like, is that just stress?
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Like, do I do some meditation?
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Does that fix it?
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Like, what can you tell us about the nervous system Meditation?
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Does that fix it?
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Like, what can you tell us about the nervous system?
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah well, first, like the term nervous system dysregulation, I think, is not maybe not been appropriately labeled, and we dramatize it a little bit.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: We're really high, we're actually dropping to, you know, kind of what I call this yellow zone, fight or flight a little bit all the time really, and the example that I love using with people is like, have you ever woken up late for something or was in a rush, guess what?
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: Your nervous system is dysregulated in that moment.
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: Now, not in an extreme way, but you're dropping down into a state that is, you know, a little frantic, frazzled, right, your energy has to pick up and you have to get a little bit more focused in those moments and I always laugh because, like right, my example is also four kids in tow and so I'm yelling at my kids as well.
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: And in these rushed moments, like there's some really obvious examples, but there's this like seesaw action that happens all day with a healthy nervous system and likely with most of our nervous systems, is I'm just, I'm kind of in this dysregulated state where I feel panic, but then ideally I'm coming back up out of that, back into what we would call the green zone, which is like connected, comfortable, the way you and I are talking right now right, and so this action happens all day.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: Where people start to run into issues is where they drop down into that yellow.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: They're not doing anything necessarily about it.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: They don't maybe take a deep breath intuitively, they kind of stay.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: It's harder to get out of that mode.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: Maybe they avoid right or ignore, push down a lot of emotions.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: Hey, sometimes we know that, that.
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: So we're in a situation where that kind of has to happen.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: But also it's really important to come back right.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Maybe you're at work and you, like, can't burst into tears in that moment I got you right but come back to that.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: It's not able to process all the way through.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: So I think that's a really important thing for people to understand is do I notice when I kind of drop out of my regulated state?
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: And also, do I know how to get myself back?
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: And am I allowing myself, maybe making a daily habit of connecting right, Connecting with myself, checking, making a daily habit of connecting right, Connecting with myself, checking in with myself, Perhaps just even if you did that at the end of the day, and it doesn't have to be anything fancy, I think people, they have all these great tools out there, right, and I love them, I use them with my clients, but also it can just be like sitting on the edge of your bed when kids are asleep and going hey, how am I feeling Right, how am I doing?
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: Let me check in.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Do I feel okay?
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: Do I notice my body needs anything right now?
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: And not.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: I think we've really disconnected.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: We've drawn this line across our neck right.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: That disconnects our mind and our brain from what we are feeling in the body and it really does a disservice to us.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: If we can pay attention to our body and the messages our body is sending us, it, um, I think would produce a lot more health for us as a society.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, and you're right.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: So many are disconnected and sometimes I'll be having a conversation with the client and say like okay, well, this is where I want you to listen to your body.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: And they're like I don't, I don't know how the client and say like okay, well, this is where I want you to listen to your body.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: And they're like I don't, I don't know how.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Like people have forgotten and honestly, I tell them you should be having a conversation with yourself every day, not like a crazy person out loud where people are like are you okay?
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: But in your head, just like you would check in with a partner, a friend, a child hey, how are you doing to get today?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Do you need anything from me?
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: And we don't do that because in that moment you might be like, oh, my gosh, I do need to take some deep breaths.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Or you know what?
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: I need to lock myself in the bathroom for two minutes just to you know like, get away for a minute.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: Or maybe I need some water.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: I think it's been like six hours since I had a sip Little things like that.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: If we would just have conversations throughout the day.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: I love that so much.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I want to point out what you're saying about when people don't even know how to do that.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: That's a good sign.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: Find a great somatic therapist because, um, yeah, we can become so disconnected.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: It's our normal state and that you know.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: So we talked briefly about this yellow zone, this fight or flight, but what happens over time is if we stay in that, stay in that, stay in that we drop further down.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: I want you to almost imagine like a scale and we're further down on that ladder and wouldn't you know it, there's another space under that yellow zone, which we reference as the red zone.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: And if yellow is kind of like anxiety symptoms, you imagine like revved up energy, like focus, you know jittery the red zone is going to be what we would refer to as depressive symptoms and that is like a shutdown, a numb disconnected.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: We use a fancy term in therapy land dissociative right.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: And not knowing what's happening in our body is a type of dissociated state right.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: And not to pathologize it, we all do it to some degree.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: But knowing and recognizing how often am I in that state?
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: And also that the body is doing this for a reason, there's protection, an attempt of protection.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: And so not to you know, bash the body, not to make the body the enemy, but to understand our body is having an attempt to support and protect us in this way.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: And I laugh at the nervous system because up here in our cortical brain, right, our thinking logic brain, we can kind of distinguish a different stressors, right, I can talk myself down of okay, it's okay, we're just late, you know we're going to be okay, but the nervous system does not do that.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: The nervous system does not have that language and I kind of say it as the nervous system doesn't know the difference between taxes and tigers.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: And I saw someone online she said it as the nervous system doesn't know the difference between my fire alarm and my screaming toddler.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: And that gave me a good so true right, our nervous system is going to respond the same way, and so that's important to recognize as well is that that's the job of our different part of our brain, if you will, to kind of talk us logically out.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: But sometimes people can't do that right.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we have kind of been in this state for so long we don't know how to do that anymore, and that's kind of a sign or indicator you might want some more support with how to do that.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: The other thing I'll say is gosh, our brains are so amazing.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: In a single second we, our brains, are able to take in 11 million pieces of information, and that's a low ball right.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Some say 30 to 40 million right.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: So a lot of stimuli all at one time, but we cognitively think about only between seven and 40 pieces of that.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: So sometime the nervous system is responding to something that we have not cognitively registered, but it's files in there and the brain has filed it.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: But so sometimes people go well, I don't even know what I'm responding to, and that's okay, Like we don't have to necessarily figure that out.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: It's filed back in there somewhere deep and we can't pull it out.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: But what we can do is work with the body to become more regulated and give tools to support when we are having those moments.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, gosh, I think it's so important to everything that you said.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: But even looking at people that do stay either in the yellow zone or the red zone and they're stuck in there, it's not just from overdoing stuff, right, it's not just from the toddlers that are screaming.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: It's usually a buildup of things that sometimes we're not thinking of.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: It's usually a buildup of things that sometimes we're not thinking of and this was a powerful one for me in my own journey is like realizing that I'm a doer, like I don't know how to sit down.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: It's hard for me to relax.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: I'm always finding more stuff to do, and that was putting me in that yellow zone, you know.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: So I want people to pay attention to that too.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Of like, are you allowing yourself to slow down and rest like you need to, because we all need that?
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, so true.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: So true, and I talk a lot about with my mamas that I work with is the difference between masculine and feminine energies.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: And let's be clear, I'm not talking about a man versus a woman right.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: But we're talking about the masculine, feminine energy and those exist in all of us, right, and you're pointing out that those can kind of have this push and pull, depending on where we're in life, what we're focused on, and often I see women with this.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: Really we'll call it an overactive right, or this masculine energy overdrive, and it's not.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: There's like all of this other stuff, right, that gets us there.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: And if you own a business, if you're an entrepreneur, you are constantly drawn.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: And most, actually, most women, any woman actually working outside of the home, when you're working somewhere else, you are called to produce.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Right, you're called to do, you're called to have those actions.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: Right, we live in this society that is focused, right, it's a masculine energy society, if we're honest, and so it's do produce, do, do, do.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: And this, this constantly pulls us in that, in that direction.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: So, learning to balance that with the feminine, which is being the feminine, is all about being, and part of that is being present, right, if the do is like, forward focused, what am I going to produce?
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: That's a, a future tense, why the feminine is a present tense.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: Kids, man, if you're not, if you're like I don't know how to do that at all.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Go look at your kiddo, or go look at a kid and watch how they interact with the world, and that is the essence of being right, and I'm talking like five and under, and they will show you.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: You know, take them on a walk.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: They're like oh, look at this.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: They're not worried about where they're going, how long this is going to take any.
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: Like you know, I got to get my steps and nothing.
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: They are solely focused on being present in this world and that really is such a gift.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: And how do we get ourselves back to that?
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Some great examples that women I've talked about with women over the years are different types of movement or exercise.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: So, like yoga is a great one, horseback riding.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: I hear that from a lot of clients, yep.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Never would have thought that.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, art is another one.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing right, we have to be focused on what our body is doing in this, these moments, because if we're not, if we get too stuck in, like what it's for lunch, what am I gonna do?
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: We gotta get, we gotta pick the kids up.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: We're not paying attention to our bodies and then we get injured, right, because we're not in the present.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: And so these are great ways to just naturally pull yourself back into that feminine energy, and I find, too, these are what women typically crave.
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: They're like oh, I want that time to connect with my body again.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: I really, oh my gosh, I love creating, just for the sake of creating something like artwork, right, and this is why because it connects you again with that feminine energy that needs to be in balance.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I was laughing as you were talking about why.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Because it connects you again with that feminine energy that needs to be in balance.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I I was laughing as you were talking about that, because one of the first people I worked with, like when I was hiring mentors, coaches um, he was like you are all in masculine energy.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: He was so right though, cause it's like oh, I want to do art but I don't have time.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: I've got to make these social media posts and I would love to do puzzles and I would love to take a walk, but I can't.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: I got to do an email and yeah, so, kira, where did that leave you?
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Oh well, I know where it led me.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Why do you think this podcast exists?
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: I?
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: love it, yep Perfect.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, um.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, so I do have a question.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: This is just kind of a random one.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Can someone fluctuate between the yellow and the red zone?
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, great question.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: And yes, so when I work with clients that are down deep in that red, I'm thinking of one in particular, and she's really whole shit, poor thing.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: Right, years and years, lots of childhood trauma was really deep in that red, very, very disconnected, disassociated, so much so that she wasn't even, you know, going into the social world.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: She basically like locks herself in her room almost 24 seven.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's a very obvious blame example it doesn't always look like that.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: That's like the most extreme, and so what started to happen as we worked together is we started to bring her up out of that red, and wouldn't you know it?
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Well, well, when we come out of the red, what's above that?
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: The yellow, and people that have been in the red for so long.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: When they come into the yellow, they're like this is awful.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: Wait, what, what are we?
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going back to red exactly exactly why.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: why would we do this?
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: So I have to, really, we warn them right.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: We really talk about, okay, this is what might start to happen as you reconnect with yourself, as you reconnect with your emotions and maybe some of the childhood stuff we're going to work through, and it might be uncomfortable and also I promise that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we will start to see, you know, glimmers of that green zone calling to us and so, yeah, it can be really uncomfortable, but absolutely, and you never move.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: I think I want to speak to this point in another way, where you never move straight from green to red.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: I want to be very clear.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: We're always moving down that scale first, and every person I talk to who is in red, I will go let's talk about yellow.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: Like when were you in yellow?
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: And they're like oh yeah, totally the three years before I was in red.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: I was in yellow, or even more than that, and so there's always a yellow zone happening before you reach that red.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: So also vice versa, as we move out of that space, you're going to have to connect with that yellow sun to get to the green.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: I wanted to point that out because sometimes people think, OK, no, I can't be ping ponging back and forth between you know, yellow and red.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: And yeah, you can.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: Let's go somewhere else with this, briefly, or however long it takes us, I guess.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Um, but I want to talk about when we're in the yellow and the red and it's becoming a chronic issue, presenting as physical health challenges, because I see this a lot, so many clients and it's a hard one.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: It's a hard one for me because I'm not a therapist, but I can see like, oh, I can tell you've been in the yellow or the red for a long period of time and this is a huge piece of why you've got chronic symptoms at this point.
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: So the way that I kind of succinctly say this is the body is always speaking.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Succinctly say this is the body is always speaking right, and so the body is designed first and foremost to stay alive, right, and so it will do everything it can, including shutting down hormone production, certain types of hormones, you know, diverting the energy to the central organs to stay alive, you know, I think about to, naturally, minerals.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: What do we postpartum mamas when they're complaining their hair is falling out, their nails are brittle, bad skin?
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, your minerals are being diverted when you're deficient, to the essential places to stay alive, and so you'll start to see it there.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Same thing with nervous system and energy.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: And the body is the body will divert to, you know, emergency mode, essentially, and I need to focus here so totally connected, and that is why I'm so privileged.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: We are practicing at a time like this, when this is becoming more mainstream, this is becoming kind of the more the exception than, or the rule than the exception.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: Work with the whole body, work with the whole body.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: Do not just work on your mental health, right, because then we're going to miss those pieces of what is happening in, maybe, with our mineral status.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: Support our mental health, or vice versa.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: If you're seeing a functional practitioner amazing, please keep doing that.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: It is supporting your mental health, or vice versa.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: If you're seeing a functional practitioner amazing, please keep doing that.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: It is supporting your mental health.
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: And also, there might potentially be tools that you need to learn to connect with your emotions better that then are going to have an impact on your physical health as well.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's key and that's the thing I've talked about this on the podcast and just you know, over the years, when I first started out, it was just the functional medicine.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about labs and supplements and create protocols and we'll change your diet.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: But then, when clients weren't getting better, I'm like, well, do I have them on the wrong protocol?
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Was there a better supplement?
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: And it took me a while, you know, to get to the point of like, oh, maybe we need to look at what else is going on in their life.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: Like, wait, you hate your job, you're divorced, you have three kids.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Like, oh, maybe that's a piece of this.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, being um, I work with a lot of women that are um driven, like you're saying, but in some of that there's this natural tendency to go well, I don't then have space.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: I think you said it really clearly right?
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: I don't have space for this.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Or it's lazy.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: It's lazy of me.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: I can't do that.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: I'm not supposed to take time for myself.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely Absolutely.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Making it.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah, pathologizing it is what I'll say, right, yeah, and that it is so important to recognize that.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: No, these can live together.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: And how would I help a lot of clients with this?
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: How do I create my life to reflect what I want to be in alignment with what I want to commit to?
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: And then you have another client.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: She has a really really high up job, fast paced environment, and, just like you said, she goes.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: She's looking at it and goes.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: This is what I've imagined for the last five to 10 years of my life that I wanted.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: And here I am going.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: I hate this.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: I'm hating this because it actually is not.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: I thought this money, this amount of money, this title would be so great, but actually it's not in alignment with who I want to be.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: And so what we've been doing is reconnecting her, and it's been so cool to see the universe and God just respond to as she's focusing on that provision, just falling in her lap, like, and it's amazing to see that.
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: And so, as you pursue that, as you reconnect with really, you know, you heard the term ikigai.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: No, oh, my gosh, okay, so this is such a fun word.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: Ikigai is a Japanese word that means your purpose for getting up in the morning, and essentially it has three questions or components to it that you answer to get the answer of Ikigai, which is what do I love, what am I good at, what are my strengths and what does this world need?
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: And when those three come together in alignment, that is the guy.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: We all need purpose, even my, my elderly clients that are like I want to.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: She's 75 years old and she'd yes, and her problem is she didn't have any guys.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: She didn't have a purpose anymore of what was her reason for being there.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: She knew what she loved, she knew what she was good at, but she didn't know how do I do those things, and so that is so essential and again can contribute to physical health symptoms.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: So a hundred percent I.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: That's actually one of the key things I talk about with clients Like are you living in your purpose?
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Like we weren't just dropped off on this planet for nothing.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: We're here for something and you've got to figure that out.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, yeah, oh, okay, I've loved this conversation.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: I know we could probably talk for hours and hours, but I want to kind of finish things off with is there anything else that you feel like listeners need to hear?
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: Anything else that you want to say that I didn't ask to hear?
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: anything else that you want to say that I didn't ask.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: I think people get really caught in I am broken or I this isn't fixable, I'm too far gone.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Almost is the attitude, the belief, I'll call it.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: That I see frequently and I just want to remind people out there that you are not and, in my opinion, as long as you are above the ground and have breath in your lungs.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: There is always possibility, there is always opportunity to start creating a new life for yourself.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Literally Right, and this very second we decide something else and we start to move.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that then it's going to be an easy journey, but if we are committed to something and that's what we want to see in our life, then there's possibility for that to happen.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: And yeah, just to seek someone out, to seek support, like Kira or I, and how do I start this?
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: And that I think people also feel overwhelmed often.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: I know I did when I started.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, where do I even start with this?
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: And so that it doesn't have to be an overnight.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: You know, overhaul.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: That is not how I work.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: I'm sure that's not how you work.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: No, it's never gonna work out that way.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: I'm not gonna tell you to throw out all of this food.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: No, we're going to start making small little tweaks and changes, and the same thing with connecting right back to the, to our nervous system and to who we are, is we do that as comfortably as you are able.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: And if this week you come in and you're like, oh, I just can't do heavy lifting today, all right, let's talk about something else.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: Right, and let's talk about, maybe, some joy in your life.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: And so, although change can be scary, a good practitioner is going to know where to meet you on the different steps of that journey.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Um, I put everything in the show notes, but I always like to ask if someone wants to come find you on social.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Where's the best place to look?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Where are you most?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: so I um instagram just feels easier for me, so I love um connecting there.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: I'm at atara a t a r a dot perkinson, p a r k I m sN.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: I love pointing people there as well, because there's a lot of free information right.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of good stuff that you can just start filling and making easy changes in your life.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: I also have a website, so it's a Tara Parkinsoncom.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: So if you're interested in learning a little bit more about your like Ooh, brain spawning right, or you've heard another episode, you can check out my page on that.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: I also work with a lot of what I call globally minded individuals, so I was raised partially overseas and you know balancing between two cultures.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: That's a focus in my practice, and then also the integrative work that I do.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Awesome.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Of course, Kira.
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: This was so fun.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, guys.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Well, we'd love to hear from you.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: Come find us on instagram, shoot us a message, let us know what you want to hear about and we will see you on the next episode.