Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #247| Less Bubble Baths, More Biology—Why You Need Real Rest

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#247| Less Bubble Baths, More Biology—Why You Need Real Rest · Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing

0:00
Speaker: Your nervous system cannot stay in a hyper go mode.
0:04
Speaker: It has to have downtime.
0:10
Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
0:18
Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
0:23
Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's Working Woman experiences.
0:28
Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
0:35
Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
0:38
Michelle Gauthier: I have a great guest for you today.
0:40
Michelle Gauthier: Today we are joined by another Michelle, Michelle Bloyd Fink.
0:43
Michelle Gauthier: She is the owner and the founder of Bloom Mind and Body Co., and she's also a massage therapist and a rest and recovery expert.
0:52
Michelle Gauthier: When you listen today, you're going to learn that anxiety isn't just a mindset problem, that it's a body state.
0:59
Michelle Gauthier: You're going to learn a simple breathing technique that you can use anywhere to reset your nervous system in under a minute.
1:04
Michelle Gauthier: Michelle will also teach you some five-minute daily practices that, if done consistently, can transform your life.
1:11
Michelle Gauthier: And she's going to give us some great real life examples of that as well.
1:14
Michelle Gauthier: So thank you so much, Michelle, for being here.
1:16
Michelle Gauthier: I'm really excited to have you on.
1:18
Michelle Gauthier: Start off by telling us a little bit about your own backstory and how you got so interested in this area of rest and recovery.
1:25
Speaker: Yeah, so I have been a massage therapist for a little over 20 years.
1:29
Speaker: I'm going on 21.
1:31
Speaker: And I've done that work in a variety of settings in a million different ways.
1:35
Speaker: I also left the field and was doing nonprofit and government victim advocacy work.
1:41
Speaker: And in doing that, I burned myself out pretty bad and noticed just how much of a toll that work was taking on me, especially as I became a mother and all of the things that life just started stacking on top of me.
1:53
Speaker: So I started my massage practice back up about three years ago.
1:57
Speaker: And I was so excited to get back into this work, but then realized very quickly that it felt like Groundhog's Day.
2:04
Speaker: So what was happening, it would be like you come in for your monthly massage, you feel better for 24 to 72 hours.
2:10
Speaker: And then within a week, you're back to the same patterns, the same habits, and the same things that brought you in to get a massage in the first place.
2:18
Speaker: And I felt like, how can I actually help people live differently, feel differently in their bodies so that, yeah, get the massage, but we're stacking on top of other tools and we're actually shifting and changing people's experience with pain, stress, tension, and all of that.
2:32
Michelle Gauthier: Yes, I love it.
2:33
Michelle Gauthier: And I feel like self-care has been having a moment, which is awesome, especially for women who have not traditionally been great at that.
2:40
Michelle Gauthier: But even when I say the word self-care, it makes me picture like getting a pedicure.
2:45
Michelle Gauthier: Or I know an example that you use a lot is like taking a bubble bath.
2:49
Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
2:49
Michelle Gauthier: So how do you define it in terms of the way that you see true self-care?
2:56
Speaker: One of the phrases that I always say is less bubble baths and more biology.
3:00
Speaker: And it's because really it's in the same way.
3:03
Speaker: It's almost become cringe.
3:04
Speaker: Like you hear self-care and it feels like this fluffy little, oh, I'm gonna go take care of myself.
3:08
Speaker: I'm gonna go do this thing for myself.
3:10
Speaker: I've earned it.
3:10
Speaker: I'm at that brink, I'm at that point.
3:12
Speaker: And it's always one of two things: either super cliche, like go take a bubble bath or get a pedicure or put a candle on, something like that, or we're outsourcing it completely to a massage therapist or to another professional, which there's nothing wrong with outsourcing it.
3:27
Speaker: But again, you're in that same pattern.
3:29
Speaker: What we're doing is we're waiting until we're at the brink of burnout or past it before we're addressing it.
3:35
Speaker: And we're using these things as a reward system for I've worked really hard, I've pushed myself so far that now I deserve self-care.
3:43
Speaker: But really, and that's why I really avoid that term because for me, this is about rest and recovery.
3:49
Speaker: Rest and recovery are just a biological requirement.
3:52
Speaker: We have to rest.
3:53
Speaker: We have to allow our bodies to recover.
3:56
Speaker: And when you think about the nervous system, and we don't have time obviously to get into the full thing, but it's a really simple kind of thought is that your nervous system cannot stay in a hyper go mode.
4:08
Speaker: It has to have downtime.
4:09
Speaker: You have to downregulate.
4:11
Speaker: Otherwise, your body is going to break.
4:12
Speaker: And we see that, we feel it, we're all experiencing it all the time.
4:16
Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
4:16
Michelle Gauthier: And is that when you hear about people having too much of a stress hormone and that their body is essentially in fight or flight for like weeks and months on end?
4:26
Michelle Gauthier: Is that the same thing that you're talking about?
4:29
Speaker: Yes.
4:29
Speaker: So the nervous system functions automatically.
4:32
Speaker: There are some parts of us that are just automatically going in the background.
4:36
Speaker: You already mentioned one, your hormones, your breathing, your circulation.
4:40
Speaker: There's a lot of functioning that's happening in behind the scenes.
4:43
Speaker: And what's happening is that your body's constantly determining based on these inputs, where do we divert energy?
4:49
Speaker: Are we gonna divert it towards like digestion and recovery time and allowing our muscles to recover from the things that we've done to them?
4:58
Speaker: Or are we like, I gotta go, I gotta survive, I gotta fix this, I gotta da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
5:03
Speaker: And if you're living constantly in a state where you're like, have these messages coming in that you have to go, do, be all these things, and never shifting your body to allow for time and rest, all of your resources are going towards types of things like heart rate goes up.
5:18
Speaker: Your muscles are being like the number one thing.
5:21
Speaker: Like we've got to go.
5:22
Speaker: And that's when you'll see hypertonicity in the muscle tissue.
5:24
Speaker: So the rest and digest state is where we actually see our body getting time for recovery purposes.
5:32
Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
5:33
Michelle Gauthier: And in your opinion, why don't we rest?
5:36
Michelle Gauthier: Like we get tired.
5:38
Speaker: Oh, yeah, we get tired.
5:39
Speaker: And first of all, sleep is a very different thing than the type of rest I'm talking about.
5:43
Speaker: So that's a topic for another day and probably a different expert.
5:46
Speaker: What I like to focus on is time, not sleeping in rest and recovery.
5:52
Speaker: And it is just something we have to do.
5:54
Speaker: Our bodies need it.
5:56
Michelle Gauthier: If it's not sleep, but it is intentional rest.
5:59
Michelle Gauthier: So if for this conversation, we're just talking about rest as you're awake and you're purposefully doing something to allow your body and your mind to rest.
6:07
Michelle Gauthier: Why don't we do that?
6:09
Michelle Gauthier: Like, why is it our nature to just not do that, in your opinion?
6:13
Speaker: I don't know if it's as much as our nature as it is our culture.
6:17
Speaker: And think so much about the guilds that we're all experiencing, the to-do list that is way too long.
6:24
Speaker: I've been really sitting and thinking about, especially as a modern woman in today's society, not only are we, a lot of us working full-time, but then we're managing a household on top of it.
6:34
Speaker: It might include kids, one or more with school, the demands of which have become increasingly more and more.
6:41
Speaker: I have a kindergartner and I think about the types of things she's learning.
6:45
Speaker: It's very different than it was 20 years ago.
6:47
Speaker: The expectations that she's experiencing is different than it was 20 years ago.
6:51
Speaker: Kids' sports, youth sports, it's insanity.
6:53
Speaker: Not to mention, then we have our parents in the sandwich generation.
6:57
Speaker: Parents are aging, we're caring for them.
6:59
Speaker: And you have to also get enough protein and exercise every day.
7:02
Michelle Gauthier: There's this just like that though.
7:04
Michelle Gauthier: Just rest away.
7:06
Speaker: Yeah, and then add to your to-do list to rest with intention.
7:09
Speaker: And it just feels like impossible.
7:11
Speaker: And it feels like the bottom of the list, right?
7:13
Speaker: All these other things have to get done.
7:15
Speaker: Whereas rest and recovery, we tend to put it off as yeah, I'll sleep later.
7:19
Speaker: It counts.
7:20
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, and that's really all I need to do.
7:22
Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
7:23
Michelle Gauthier: I feel like we understand the problem being there's too much to do.
7:26
Michelle Gauthier: We're not conditioned to make this a priority.
7:30
Michelle Gauthier: So, what are some of the solutions?
7:32
Michelle Gauthier: What are some of the things that you teach or offer that can help us get this?
7:37
Michelle Gauthier: What was the term you just taught me the other day?
7:39
Michelle Gauthier: Like non-sleeping deep rest.
7:42
Speaker: Non-sleep, deep rest.
7:43
Speaker: Yeah.
7:44
Michelle Gauthier: So that's the yeah.
7:46
Speaker: It's actually Andrew Huberman.
7:47
Speaker: That's his kind of coined term.
7:49
Speaker: He has a health and wellness podcast.
7:51
Speaker: But the idea is like the benefits of spending time in non-sleep, and they have powerful benefits cognitively and as well as like for your muscles and recovery and your body.
8:00
Speaker: Anyway, the way to do it and the number one way, and this is just like easy answer, your breath.
8:06
Speaker: Now, it gets complicated from there, but the number one most important thing that you have that is with you 24-7 is your breath.
8:14
Michelle Gauthier: Okay.
8:14
Michelle Gauthier: So I want you to give us an example of something that people could do, like right now, even if they're driving to settle their nervous system.
8:22
Michelle Gauthier: And then I'm going to tell a story about how you helped me with this.
8:25
Michelle Gauthier: What can people do breathwise?
8:27
Speaker: The first thing is what they call the physiological sigh.
8:30
Speaker: And it's just the easiest you can use anytime, anywhere, particularly when you're ticking up in stress or anxiety.
8:36
Speaker: And it looks and sounds like this.
8:38
Speaker: You're going to take a nice full inhale, so a full capacity inhale, and then what I call a sip at the top.
8:44
Speaker: So you're going to just tap it off a little bit, breathe pause, and then uh sigh it out.
8:49
Speaker: And you can do that three or four times, but that is gonna reset and get your breath back.
8:54
Speaker: So because we tend to over breathe or breathe too much, breathe too quickly when we're stressed or anxious or things like that.
9:00
Speaker: So that physiological size is the number one tool.
9:03
Speaker: That's a great reset.
9:04
Speaker: The next thing to do from there is to just begin to slow your rate of breath.
9:08
Speaker: So thinking through, like instead of thinking deep breath, because that's a heavy focus on the inhale, usually, what we want to actually do is think about lengthening the breath.
9:17
Speaker: And that's gonna be much more helpful when we're stressed or anxious.
9:20
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay, that is great.
9:22
Michelle Gauthier: I just want to share with everybody, first of all, if you're in St.
9:25
Michelle Gauthier: Louis, which is where Michelle and I both live, and you want to get a massage, there's no better massage than Michelle Boyd Blink.
9:31
Michelle Gauthier: I'm telling you for sure, I've gotten lots of massages.
9:34
Speaker: Thank you.
9:35
Michelle Gauthier: My mom agrees.
9:36
Michelle Gauthier: They're both religious massage receivers.
9:38
Michelle Gauthier: So I went to go get my massage with Michelle, like I do every month.
9:41
Michelle Gauthier: And at this point, I feel like you absolutely know me.
9:44
Michelle Gauthier: And at the end of a massage, she said, You just felt it felt like all your muscles were clenched today.
9:51
Michelle Gauthier: And I was feeling super stressed at a deeper level that I didn't even realize.
9:56
Michelle Gauthier: And what she said to me was, let me just teach you some breath work so that you can try this and reduce your stress.
10:02
Michelle Gauthier: And so she shows me where I should be feeling the breath and gives me some simple instructions to essentially exhale longer than I inhale.
10:10
Michelle Gauthier: Yep.
10:10
Michelle Gauthier: I know that sounds so simple.
10:12
Michelle Gauthier: And I really felt like my first go-to is always mindset work.
10:16
Michelle Gauthier: What am I thinking?
10:16
Michelle Gauthier: Why am I stressed?
10:17
Michelle Gauthier: Whatever.
10:18
Michelle Gauthier: That works.
10:18
Michelle Gauthier: Got the massage check.
10:20
Michelle Gauthier: Worked on this breath work, and I felt better immediately.
10:23
Michelle Gauthier: But after five days, I wear this aura ring and I took a screenshot of my status for the day and texted it to Michelle.
10:30
Michelle Gauthier: I'm like, this is amazing.
10:32
Michelle Gauthier: My rest and recovery score went way up, and my daily stress and overwhelm went way down.
10:37
Michelle Gauthier: They literally flipped places.
10:39
Michelle Gauthier: And the only thing I did differently was that breathing.
10:42
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
10:43
Michelle Gauthier: So I'm just sharing that to say if you're like, yeah, breathing, whatever we all breathe.
10:47
Michelle Gauthier: But the simplest thing that you can do can also have a big impact.
10:52
Speaker: 100%.
10:53
Speaker: And what you actually just said is something I really did want to touch on this idea that stress and anxiety live in our brains.
11:00
Speaker: And there's nothing wrong with mindset work.
11:02
Speaker: I work with you.
11:03
Speaker: I value the mindset work that we do together.
11:06
Speaker: I have a therapist that I see.
11:07
Speaker: But we have, as a society, as a culture, we have put stress and anxiety in a mental health category.
11:13
Speaker: And we try to outthink it.
11:15
Speaker: We try to outwork it or outfix it or come around at another angle.
11:19
Speaker: If I see it a different way or if I can look at it a different way, then I'll stop being anxious.
11:23
Speaker: But the reality is that life will continue to throw stressors and anxiety pieces at you.
11:28
Speaker: But anxiety is actually a physiological state.
11:32
Speaker: It's a body state.
11:34
Speaker: And what we try to do is, okay, if I fix the anxiety, I can fix my breathing and I won't be breathing so much.
11:38
Speaker: But if you just fix the breathing, because you have complete and full control over the breathing, guess what?
11:44
Speaker: It's going to change the anxiety.
11:47
Speaker: That doesn't mean that thing that existed that caused you anxiety isn't still there, but it does change the way that you experience it and feel it in your body.
11:55
Michelle Gauthier: What I see so often in my coaching is because most of my clients are feeling stressed and overwhelmed when they first start, is when you're in overwhelm, true overwhelm, you literally cannot have a clear thought.
12:05
Michelle Gauthier: You can't solve a problem from overwhelm.
12:07
Michelle Gauthier: It just doesn't work.
12:08
Michelle Gauthier: And so to say, oh, I'm feeling overwhelmed because of this and this requires a lot of clear thinking.
12:13
Michelle Gauthier: Where if you can just calm your body enough to get into a state where you're stressed instead of overwhelmed, stress is an improvement over overwhelm.
12:22
Michelle Gauthier: Then you can really start doing the mindset work.
12:25
Michelle Gauthier: But I think the mindset work has to be accessible by calming our body down first.
12:30
Speaker: Yes.
12:30
Speaker: That's that's right.
12:32
Speaker: And you know what?
12:33
Speaker: We don't have to overthink this.
12:34
Speaker: It doesn't have to be complicated.
12:36
Speaker: Small stacks, simple practices done repeatedly that will change your life in the moment and over time.
12:43
Speaker: So it's simple also.
12:45
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yes, exactly.
12:46
Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
12:47
Michelle Gauthier: It doesn't have to be hard.
12:48
Michelle Gauthier: We can just do it.
12:49
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, what are some other things that you feel like are good go-tos for anyone to use for rest and recovery?
12:58
Speaker: I think a couple of things.
12:59
Speaker: Two of the things that we also teach here at Bloom Mind and Body Co.
13:03
Speaker: are what I call DIY body work because I'm a massage therapist.
13:08
Speaker: So we have to be able to know how to use our own hands and use tools to shift and change the tension in our bodies.
13:15
Speaker: And then stretching.
13:16
Speaker: We kind of overdo stretching.
13:18
Speaker: I hate seeing people like force a stretch, press into it, try to fix this tight muscle.
13:23
Speaker: That's not the goal of the stuff that we're doing.
13:26
Speaker: We're doing things very slow, very intentional.
13:28
Speaker: But actually, one of the things that I often say, you don't have to force a stretch.
13:32
Speaker: Just let gravity do it.
13:33
Speaker: So lay on the floor.
13:35
Speaker: Just lay flat on the floor.
13:37
Speaker: Not on your bed, not on a couch.
13:38
Speaker: Get a bolster if you need it to support your knees or areas that you may need a little bit of support, but lay flat on your back on the floor and let gravity do some work.
13:47
Speaker: Something as simple as like a hand to your chest, and I call it like zero entry pool, resting your hand here.
13:54
Speaker: You don't have to dig into a bunch of knots, right?
13:56
Speaker: But rest your hand here and then slowly increase the pressure, almost like a zero gravity pool that you're diving into.
14:02
Speaker: And just feel it.
14:04
Speaker: Feel every layer of tissue and the way that it shifts under your hand.
14:08
Speaker: Let gravity drop your shoulders back and down as you lay flat on the floor.
14:12
Speaker: We don't have to do these crazy stretching routines.
14:15
Speaker: We don't have to do a 20-minute rollout session with a foam roller only to find bruising on our A T bands, you know?
14:22
Michelle Gauthier: I have 100% done that.
14:25
Speaker: Totally given myself a bruise.
14:27
Speaker: Yep.
14:28
Michelle Gauthier: I won't again.
14:28
Michelle Gauthier: I promise, Michelle.
14:29
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I promise I won't do it anymore.
14:31
Michelle Gauthier: There's a better way.
14:32
Speaker: There's a better way.
14:33
Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
14:33
Michelle Gauthier: I often do lay on the floor in my office.
14:36
Michelle Gauthier: I have a wood floor, and I will often lay on the floor in my office in the afternoon when the sun's coming in the window.
14:42
Michelle Gauthier: And it is so interesting and cool to just feel the way that your body like settles in.
14:47
Michelle Gauthier: Because at first it can feel like, oh, this is uncomfortable.
14:48
Michelle Gauthier: I'm lying on a wood floor.
14:50
Michelle Gauthier: But then it's I wouldn't have said it as let gravity do the work.
14:53
Michelle Gauthier: But when I heard you say that, I was like, yes, that is exactly it.
14:56
Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
14:57
Michelle Gauthier: I love what you teach and what you offer is just let it be simple, let it be slow.
15:04
Michelle Gauthier: Everything is like, what the heck?
15:06
Michelle Gauthier: How quick can we get this done?
15:08
Michelle Gauthier: How can we do this?
15:09
Michelle Gauthier: And you I feel like what you teach is the opposite.
15:11
Michelle Gauthier: I also love that you really value community and women in community.
15:16
Michelle Gauthier: And I love that you were giving massages and realized this isn't enough.
15:21
Michelle Gauthier: And I'm gonna create the solution for this.
15:23
Michelle Gauthier: I'm gonna create an option for people to be able to do this.
15:26
Michelle Gauthier: So tell us about what you offer.
15:29
Michelle Gauthier: So you gave us some great tips about breathing and lying and using gravity with our bodies.
15:34
Michelle Gauthier: But if people want more than that, what do you offer?
15:37
Speaker: Yeah, so I created a membership called the Slowdown Society.
15:42
Speaker: And it is those kind of two things that we've been talking about.
15:45
Speaker: You mentioned community.
15:46
Speaker: One of the things that also was coming up while I was experiencing this groundhog day moment of it's the same thing.
15:52
Speaker: I'm hearing the same things from all my clients.
15:56
Speaker: They're saying the same kinds of things to me about their stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and what's happening.
16:01
Speaker: But what I was noticing is that they think they're alone or they're feeling alone.
16:05
Speaker: And so while I'm hearing these conversations on repeat every day about the overwhelm and the stress that people are bumping into and how they're struggling to manage it and they're struggling to feel good in their bodies while they're handling life, they think they're alone.
16:18
Speaker: They're telling me like it's this isolated thing.
16:20
Speaker: And then I'm like, wait a second, I can connect you to a whole lot of other people who are feeling the same way and we can do this together.
16:26
Speaker: You are not alone.
16:28
Speaker: You are not alone in feeling like you're hitting a brick wall.
16:31
Speaker: And there's this expectation on women specifically to have it all, to be it all.
16:36
Speaker: Like we, I feel like sometimes I feel like I was lied to.
16:39
Michelle Gauthier: You can't contract did not specify.
16:42
Speaker: But wait a second, right?
16:44
Speaker: I grew up like seeing these like amazing representations of women shattering glass ceilings, but then I was feeling like I feel like I'm failing because I can't do that and be the mom I want to be and be the wife that I want to be, and I don't know, have a hobby.
16:58
Speaker: So part of the slowdown society membership is really about you're not alone.
17:02
Speaker: We're gonna do this together, we're gonna change the way we live and we're gonna do it in community.
17:06
Speaker: The other piece is here's the tools, practice them, practice them over and over again, and I'll help you, right?
17:11
Speaker: I will, I'll count the breathing.
17:13
Speaker: Here's the tool, I'll count it for you.
17:15
Speaker: Just sit down and turn your airpods on.
17:17
Speaker: Part of the slowdown society includes on-demand content, most of which is 20 minutes or less.
17:23
Speaker: And it's designed to be able to just stack into everyday life.
17:25
Speaker: A lot of our stuff is five to seven minutes.
17:28
Speaker: So it's like you need to breathe for five minutes, press play.
17:31
Speaker: So not only do we have an on-demand library, but the real thing that people that the members are loving is our private podcast link because it's right there where you're already listening to Michelle Gothier's overwhelmed working woman podcast, and you just press play and then breathe, and then you're done and you fit it into your day.
17:48
Speaker: And so the goal of the Slowdown Society membership is to A, bring community and B, bring tools that are actually going to change your life when you use them regularly.
17:58
Michelle Gauthier: I think that's so great because to say, when am I gonna do that breathing?
18:02
Michelle Gauthier: When am I gonna schedule that in?
18:04
Michelle Gauthier: And you're like, here it is, here it is, right here, right now.
18:07
Speaker: We have five core breath patterns that we teach in the slowdown society.
18:10
Speaker: There is a time and a place for box breathing, and I love it.
18:13
Speaker: It's huge, it's powerful and impactful, but we need to know when we use it.
18:16
Speaker: What time is it most appropriate?
18:18
Speaker: Because it's not for panic.
18:19
Speaker: We talked about what to do when you're panicking.
18:21
Speaker: This is not for panic, but also just don't want to count sometimes.
18:25
Speaker: Like I don't wanna, I already have enough on my plate.
18:28
Speaker: So that one of the cool things we do is just you just press play and I'll count it for you.
18:31
Speaker: I'll guide you right through it, and you can just listen and breathe with me.
18:35
Michelle Gauthier: And you have such a calming voice.
18:37
Michelle Gauthier: I want to listen and breathe with you.
18:38
Michelle Gauthier: Well, I have.
18:39
Michelle Gauthier: It works, it definitely works.
18:42
Speaker: I am just gonna share my husband's story.
18:44
Speaker: He's not technically a client, but he isn't my little guinea pig sometimes.
18:48
Speaker: And this story was so powerful for both of us.
18:52
Speaker: I've been really building this membership and these tools.
18:54
Speaker: And I created a challenge this fall, what I call 75 Nope.
18:58
Speaker: And you can just let your brain take that for what it is.
19:01
Speaker: But it's basically like we just need to stop going hard all the time and maybe just do something a little different.
19:08
Speaker: There's all these very performative challenges out there.
19:11
Speaker: Make sure you do it.
19:12
Speaker: And if you don't do it, you better start over at the beginning.
19:14
Speaker: The idea of 75 Nope was like, let's just start practicing this breathing.
19:18
Speaker: Let's do it every day.
19:18
Speaker: Let's do it every day together.
19:19
Speaker: Let's hold each other accountable.
19:20
Speaker: Let's just do it.
19:21
Speaker: And you know what?
19:22
Speaker: If you forget a day, it's okay, just keep going.
19:23
Speaker: And so, because my husband has been out of work and he lost his job, which is a whole huge stressor in his life.
19:29
Speaker: He's battled anxiety his entire life.
19:32
Speaker: And so I was like, I'm making you do this challenge.
19:34
Speaker: And so he literally he hashtags it like my wife made me do it.
19:37
Speaker: Some of you, my wife made me do it.
19:39
Speaker: But he's been doing it.
19:41
Speaker: He's using the podcast and he's got a handful of other tools that he'll use, but he's just making sure that he's breathing every single day.
19:46
Speaker: And recently had an interview, and we had this really amazing moment where he's been practicing his breath work for at the time of the interview.
19:56
Speaker: I want to say he was on day like 35 or like between 35 and 40.
20:00
Speaker: And he kept saying, I'm not really noticing anything yet.
20:02
Speaker: It feels good while I do it, but I haven't really noticed, quote unquote, noticed any big changes yet.
20:06
Speaker: So he goes to this interview.
20:08
Speaker: We bought him a suit, he looks sharp, he looks good.
20:10
Speaker: He goes to this interview.
20:12
Speaker: I was like, make sure you're breathing on your way.
20:13
Speaker: Yeah, I will.
20:15
Speaker: So afterwards, he calls me and he's like, I just knocked it out of the park.
20:19
Speaker: That was the best interview I've ever had.
20:20
Speaker: He tells me this like whole thing about I walk in and instead of it being a one-on-one interview, it's a four-person panel interview that he has to do.
20:29
Michelle Gauthier: And for somebody who battles anxiety, it was like oh, like a completely different expectation than you had for this situation.
20:36
Speaker: And so he was like in that moment, ready for what would come, the panic that would normally come.
20:42
Speaker: And instead, he used his breath.
20:44
Speaker: And the cool thing is when he told me about it later, he's like, You know what was really interesting?
20:47
Speaker: Even though I was in a three-piece suit, I didn't even sweat.
20:50
Speaker: He's usually, even when I'm just wearing like a polo or whatever, I'm sweating through it.
20:54
Speaker: I'm drenched.
20:55
Speaker: And I was like, that's huge.
20:57
Speaker: Do you know why?
20:58
Speaker: And then I like nerded out over the physiology behind that.
21:01
Speaker: But he was able to control his breath because he's been practicing it.
21:04
Speaker: And I was like, What breathing did you do?
21:06
Speaker: And he was like, on the way there, I listened to one of your breath work things.
21:09
Speaker: But when I got there, I didn't do any breath work.
21:11
Speaker: I just did inhale, pause, exhale.
21:14
Speaker: That's like one of our poor breathing patterns.
21:16
Speaker: And I was like, back's triangle breathing, sir.
21:18
Speaker: You defaulted to it in the moment.
21:22
Speaker: So because he practiced it every day or a version of it every day, not only did he feel better in those five minutes, which that's great.
21:28
Speaker: That's a wonderful thing, but he also trained his body to use it when the time came necessary without thinking.
21:35
Speaker: And he defaulted to it and it changed everything.
21:39
Speaker: It changed everything.
21:40
Speaker: That's that bottom up technique.
21:42
Speaker: He was able to organize his thoughts differently because his body was calm.
21:46
Michelle Gauthier: It's so amazing.
21:47
Michelle Gauthier: And I feel the same thing when I work with people where they don't feel the change, they don't feel the change, and then all of a sudden they're like, something big just happened and I didn't freak out, and I don't know what happened.
21:57
Michelle Gauthier: I'm like, we do know what happened.
21:59
Michelle Gauthier: You're like, I know.
22:00
Speaker: What happened?
22:00
Michelle Gauthier: Hold on.
22:01
Michelle Gauthier: I love that it's your husband, so you can call him out and be like, that is the breathing.
22:07
Michelle Gauthier: Yes.
22:07
Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh.
22:08
Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
22:09
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, thank you for sharing that.
22:10
Michelle Gauthier: Now I want to ask you the two questions that I ask every guest.
22:14
Michelle Gauthier: And the first one is what is a rule that you have made for yourself that you very rarely break?
22:18
Michelle Gauthier: I can't say never because I feel like that's impossible, but rarely.
22:23
Speaker: Yeah.
22:23
Speaker: So funnily enough, my goal every day is to be a little bit of a rebel and to break some sort of expectation every day.
22:32
Speaker: We kind of listed all these things that are stacked against us, particularly as women, right?
22:35
Speaker: All of the shoulds and the to-dos and all of that.
22:38
Speaker: And every day I try to at least almost like a little rebel.
22:42
Speaker: No, I'm actually not going to do the dishes.
22:44
Speaker: I'm going to just sit for a while instead.
22:46
Speaker: I think about all these things that we're told to do to optimize your life or whatever it is to or get organized and be ahead of things and make your bed every morning and get up at 5 a.m.
22:56
Speaker: and make sure the dishes are at least in the dishwasher before you go to bed at night and that you picked up or wiped the couch.
23:02
Speaker: Sometimes I just say no.
23:04
Speaker: And I just think, what's one thing that I should do that I'm going to not do?
23:09
Speaker: Or what's one thing I'm rushing through or just checking off a box that I can just pull back and slow down on?
23:15
Speaker: It's very countercultural to just I'm not.
23:19
Speaker: And not justify it and not feel like I have to have a reason or I'm doing it because of this.
23:24
Speaker: And I'm actually optimizing my rest and recovery by saying no, like just a full no.
23:29
Michelle Gauthier: No, yes.
23:30
Michelle Gauthier: And when you do that, what results do you get?
23:34
Speaker: Honestly, like the first word that comes up when you say it is just peace.
23:37
Speaker: But there's also these moments in these times where I try to make myself like, did I do enough today to warrant me sitting?
23:44
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
23:45
Speaker: I'm gonna sit.
23:46
Speaker: I'm gonna, I'm just gonna.
23:48
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yes, exactly.
23:49
Michelle Gauthier: And then the second question I have for you is what is something that you're just loving right now that has nothing to do with work?
23:55
Speaker: I have one thing that is just mine that is utterly unrelated to any work that I do.
24:02
Speaker: And it's my piece and my thing.
24:04
Speaker: And about two years ago, I picked up some dragon smut, whatever, Fort Wing, and I haven't stopped reading since.
24:11
Speaker: And so that is the one thing my Kindle and my whatever romantasy, smutty dragon, fairy, whatever that is the thing I'm loving.
24:22
Speaker: It's the only thing that it has no relationship to the work I do.
24:25
Speaker: It doesn't make me think about work, and it allows my brain to just shut off and be and exist.
24:30
Speaker: So that it's not a lately thing, it's been a two-year journey of rediscovering my love for reading and rediscovering that I can read whatever the hell I want, right?
24:38
Speaker: Like it doesn't, there's no rules about literature or reading for pleasure.
24:41
Speaker: And so I get to read whatever I want.
24:43
Speaker: And it's dragons and vampires and all sorts of smut.
24:46
Michelle Gauthier: That is so funny.
24:47
Michelle Gauthier: I've had more than one friend tell me that they got into reading from that genre.
24:52
Michelle Gauthier: There's something about it that pulls in, and the two people I'm thinking of specifically were only readers of like self-help books.
25:00
Michelle Gauthier: And then they started reading that, and they're like, now that's all I read.
25:03
Michelle Gauthier: I'm like, that's so great.
25:04
Michelle Gauthier: If it's just fun and easy and interesting, like, what more can we ask for?
25:09
Michelle Gauthier: I love it.
25:09
Michelle Gauthier: That's exactly right.
25:10
Michelle Gauthier: That's great.
25:11
Michelle Gauthier: Yeah.
25:11
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, wonderful.
25:13
Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much.
25:14
Michelle Gauthier: It's been so great having you.
25:15
Michelle Gauthier: Tell us where people can find you.
25:17
Michelle Gauthier: Thank you.
25:17
Speaker: So if you go to our website, bloommindbody.co /ballwin, you'll find some links to the grow and to my newsletter.
25:26
Speaker: And the grove is just a little place where we have a few free resources.
25:30
Speaker: I have one of my recorded breath work sessions that's helpful for downshifting into a balanced state.
25:35
Speaker: I have my free uh guide called Beyond the Bubble Bath, very practical ways to weave rest and recovery into everyday moments and a handful of other free resources there.
25:46
Speaker: That's also where you'll find our slowdown society membership if you're interested in diving a little bit deeper and getting a little bit more uh breath work and rest and recovery practices.
25:56
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, amazing.
25:57
Michelle Gauthier: Okay, perfect, perfect.
25:58
Michelle Gauthier: And if you're lucky enough to be in St.
26:00
Michelle Gauthier: Louis, you should also get a massage.
26:02
Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
26:10
Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at MichelleGauthier.com.
26:16
Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.