Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / Understanding Anxiety: Symptoms and Tips to Overcome It with Psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora

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Understanding Anxiety: Symptoms and Tips to Overcome It with Psychiatrist Dr. Ellen Vora · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:04
Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
0:08
Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe and each week my guests
0:12
Speaker 1: and I have conversations that put a new spin on
0:15
Speaker 1: pretty This is pretty smart. Collectively, we've spent the last
0:21
Speaker 1: two years hearing about how anxious and depressed we all are.
0:26
Speaker 1: The stats are there to back it up. Researchers at
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Speaker 1: the Kaiser Family Foundation say that the number of people
0:34
Speaker 1: reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression skyrocketed by two hundred
0:39
Speaker 1: and seventy percent when comparing twenty nineteen to twenty twenty one.
0:44
Speaker 1: But you all know I'm a glass half full type
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Speaker 1: of gal. So what if instead of viewing anxiety as
0:50
Speaker 1: a toxic response, we saw it as an opportunity. My
0:55
Speaker 1: guest today is doctor Ellen Bora. She's a holistic psychiatrist,
0:59
Speaker 1: accup uncturist, and yoga teacher who takes a functional medicine
1:03
Speaker 1: approach to mental health. Her book, The Anatomy of Anxiety
1:07
Speaker 1: is a fascinating look at how anxiety impacts our body
1:11
Speaker 1: and our mind. Doctor Vora is challenging the traditional response
1:15
Speaker 1: to anxiety as a strictly mental disorder. Instead, she says,
1:19
Speaker 1: look at it as an invitation to explore what might
1:23
Speaker 1: be out of balance in your body and life. Before
1:28
Speaker 1: you became an expert in anxiety, you had an entire life.
1:33
Speaker 1: So I was wondering if you could tell us a
1:36
Speaker 1: little bit about your background.
1:37
Speaker 2: I was somebody who was weird in high school, nerdy,
1:42
Speaker 2: and you're really into the brain and really into poetry.
1:47
Speaker 2: Someone could have saved me a lot of trouble and
1:49
Speaker 2: just told me early on I was going to end
1:51
Speaker 2: up as a psychiatrist, you know, with that combination of interest,
1:54
Speaker 2: because I went through angst in med school deciding my specialty,
1:57
Speaker 2: and like an English major who wants to floor the
2:00
Speaker 2: human condition, passionate about neuroscience, you're going to be a psychiatrist.
2:05
Speaker 2: So you could just skip the steps of being like
2:07
Speaker 2: is it emergency medicine? Is it orthopedics? Like it's not.
2:11
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I feel like I'm really lucky in
2:14
Speaker 2: that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. And it's
2:16
Speaker 2: not to say I wasn't tortured along the way throughout
2:19
Speaker 2: the path wondering, questioning, resisting reality. But I know now
2:24
Speaker 2: that I'm right where I need to be, offering up
2:27
Speaker 2: the contribution I have to make and so it feels
2:30
Speaker 2: pretty pretty great. It's not without challenges and stress, but
2:33
Speaker 2: it's very fulfilling.
2:34
Speaker 1: So at the very beginning of your book, you say
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Speaker 1: that we're all on the cusp of a significant shift
2:41
Speaker 1: in how we view and treat mental health. I agree
2:44
Speaker 1: with you. I was so excited to read those words
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Speaker 1: because sometimes you can feel things in the ether. To
2:50
Speaker 1: hear from you that we really are on the cusp
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Speaker 1: of this shift made me feel good. What is the
2:55
Speaker 1: big shift that you're witnessing and what do you think
2:58
Speaker 1: sparked it?
3:00
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, isn't it incredible? Revolution is in the
3:03
Speaker 2: air right now. We're living through that, and we're coming on.
3:07
Speaker 2: We ride on the backs of a few earlier revolutions
3:10
Speaker 2: with mental health, and I think that you know, there
3:13
Speaker 2: was a time when it was a moral stigma, when
3:15
Speaker 2: it was like moral inferiority was how we would whisper
3:19
Speaker 2: about mental health, and thank goodness, we've basically canceled that idea.
3:24
Speaker 2: And for a long time we had the disease model
3:26
Speaker 2: of mental health, this idea that our mental health issues
3:29
Speaker 2: are a genetically determined chemical imbalance, and that really comes
3:33
Speaker 2: from a well meaning place of trying to make this
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Speaker 2: objective and measurable and treatable and not a judgment on
3:40
Speaker 2: someone's character. And so that really came as quite a relief,
3:43
Speaker 2: and I feel like it served us. And we're at
3:46
Speaker 2: a new cusp now where that's not the whole story
3:49
Speaker 2: and it's gotten us only so far. So where we're
3:52
Speaker 2: at now is we've been thinking about mental health from
3:55
Speaker 2: the neck up. We think about it in terms of
3:57
Speaker 2: brain chemistry, and brain chemistry is valid. Genes absolutely do
4:03
Speaker 2: play a role at our mental health. But in functional medicine,
4:07
Speaker 2: we would say, gene fload the gun and environment pulls
4:10
Speaker 2: the trigger. And that's the piece we've been missing. We
4:13
Speaker 2: haven't been acknowledging the fact that what we eat, how
4:18
Speaker 2: our digestion is functioning, how well we're sleeping, whether or
4:22
Speaker 2: not we're inflamed, whether or not we have connection to
4:25
Speaker 2: community or purposeful work, or a connection to meaning in
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Speaker 2: our lives. These are also determinants of our mental health.
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Speaker 2: And in many ways, these are the things we can control.
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Speaker 2: Our genes, that's the part we can't really control. And
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Speaker 2: so I find this to be very empowering and hopeful,
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Speaker 2: and to be honest, just more accurate that when we're
4:47
Speaker 2: talking about mental health, it's not a fixed destiny. It's
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Speaker 2: when I meet someone they're struggling, I think, where is
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Speaker 2: this person out of balance in their physical health or
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Speaker 2: in their psycho spiritual health. How can we nudge them
5:01
Speaker 2: gently back into balance so that they can feel well.
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Speaker 1: I've never heard of the word psycho spiritual. I like
5:08
Speaker 1: that so much. What do you mean by that?
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Speaker 2: What do I mean by that something that? I think
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Speaker 2: it encompasses our connection to spirituality. It encompasses our connection
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Speaker 2: to meaning and purpose, even our fundamental human needs for community,
5:24
Speaker 2: for connection, for feeling loved and heard and witnessed and understood.
5:28
Speaker 2: I think it when I think about a psycho spiritual
5:30
Speaker 2: blockage in the body, for example, I think about how
5:33
Speaker 2: there are pockets of our body where we might be
5:35
Speaker 2: holding trauma or that might hold a significance to us.
5:38
Speaker 2: And that can sometimes be where we get injured or
5:41
Speaker 2: where we have pathology. And it's not purely material, it's
5:47
Speaker 2: not purely physical. There's sometimes a psycho spiritual route to
5:51
Speaker 2: why something falls apart where it does.
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Speaker 1: In January of December of twenty twenty or January, I
6:01
Speaker 1: had a back injury and it lasted for eight months.
6:06
Speaker 1: I would say it was one of the hardest things
6:08
Speaker 1: that I had to work through, like on a physical level.
6:11
Speaker 1: And I went to breakfast with a good friend of mine.
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Speaker 1: His name's Alex Benay, and he wrote a book called
6:15
Speaker 1: The Third Door that's really great and he's very wise,
6:18
Speaker 1: and he was asking me how I was, and I
6:20
Speaker 1: told him, you know, I'm dealing with this back thing,
6:22
Speaker 1: and he was like, back injuries don't last eight months, Danielle, Like,
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Speaker 1: that's it. That's something more. It's psycho spiritual. I wouldn't
6:31
Speaker 1: have the word for it, but I think that that's
6:33
Speaker 1: so spot on. It was the first time I'd ever
6:34
Speaker 1: experienced anything like that.
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Speaker 2: I love the friends that call us on our bullshit,
6:38
Speaker 2: you know. And So there's a man named I forget
6:41
Speaker 2: his first name. His last name is Sarno. He wrote
6:43
Speaker 2: a great book about the kind of psycho spiritual underpinnings
6:46
Speaker 2: really of back pain. But that's just it, right, We've
6:49
Speaker 2: all come of age in this emotion phobic culture where
6:53
Speaker 2: we're expected to be and celebrated for being emotionally even
6:58
Speaker 2: or stoic or chill.
7:00
Speaker 1: You know.
7:01
Speaker 2: Don't even get me started on that. Concept that pressure
7:04
Speaker 2: on us and if we're vulnerable, if we're messy, if
7:07
Speaker 2: we're sensitive emotionally all over the place, that's bad. If
7:11
Speaker 2: we cry, we apologize, and we think that we're a
7:15
Speaker 2: burden on people. So a lot of us have internalized
7:19
Speaker 2: this messaging of suppress our emotions, hold them inside, and emotions.
7:24
Speaker 2: Not to sound too hippy dippy about it, but it's energy.
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Speaker 2: It doesn't go away like there's conservation of mass here.
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Speaker 2: So no human emotion has ever been successfully pushed under
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Speaker 2: the rug. It just transmutes. It becomes chronic headaches and
7:39
Speaker 2: chronic back pain and digestive issues. It doesn't go away,
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Speaker 2: And I think it behooves us to feel them in
7:45
Speaker 2: the moment. Feel our feelings dive in. Let it be
7:48
Speaker 2: big and messy. That's how it's metabolized. That's how it
7:52
Speaker 2: comes to a state of resolution and we can move forward.
7:55
Speaker 2: What ended up being the trick for you with the
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Speaker 2: back pain.
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Speaker 1: I don't know which is what's so interesting because I
8:01
Speaker 1: was moving through it like with physical therapy and trying
8:04
Speaker 1: to work out and being good to my body. But
8:07
Speaker 1: I think one day it just melted away. And in hindsight,
8:10
Speaker 1: Alex was so right, It definitely it had to because
8:15
Speaker 1: eight months is just too long.
8:17
Speaker 2: I mean, the thing is taking sure of time is
8:19
Speaker 2: also a wonderful medicine, and so much of what gets
8:22
Speaker 2: broken in the body, it's always a little bit of both.
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Speaker 2: It's a little bit physical and material and a little
8:27
Speaker 2: bit psycho spiritual. And in a way, I don't even
8:30
Speaker 2: have a bias towards which place we start. You know,
8:33
Speaker 2: you can you can do acupuncture and physical therapy, you
8:36
Speaker 2: can let yourself cry and fill your feelings like it's
8:39
Speaker 2: all an effective strategy to letting our body come back
8:42
Speaker 2: into alignment. And sometimes it's necessary to take all of
8:46
Speaker 2: those approaches, and sometimes it's not. Actually even just creating
8:49
Speaker 2: alignment with one allows for the other.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, very much. So thanks for teaching me that word.
8:56
Speaker 2: That got spiritual.
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Speaker 1: So we hear anxiety in I think cultural discourse nowadays
9:02
Speaker 1: more than we ever have. How do you define anxiety?
9:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, so back when I decided to write a book
9:09
Speaker 2: about anxiety, probably someone should have mentioned to me that
9:12
Speaker 2: would mean that in every podcast I'd be asked to
9:14
Speaker 2: define anxiety, and I probably would have like rethought the
9:16
Speaker 2: whole It's not something I find is easy to define.
9:22
Speaker 2: We have our DSM. I've burned my copy at this point,
9:25
Speaker 2: Like our Bible of mental health, it shows up really
9:27
Speaker 2: differently in all of us. And for some people, they
9:29
Speaker 2: might have generalized anxiety disorder. They might be constantly in
9:32
Speaker 2: a state of worry, muscle tension, can't unwind or relax
9:36
Speaker 2: frequently with a ruminuative spiral and racing thoughts. Other people
9:40
Speaker 2: might have a pretty calm baseline but might be hit
9:42
Speaker 2: with a panic attack out of the blue, or might
9:46
Speaker 2: experience really intense social anxiety. OCD and PTSD are also
9:50
Speaker 2: variants of anxiety. So it's really different for all of us.
9:53
Speaker 2: And I think that what I'm interested in is we
9:56
Speaker 2: don't really have to keep the diagnosis. If if there's
10:00
Speaker 2: ever a reason a gate keep something, it's if your
10:02
Speaker 2: interventions have a potential to do harm. But where I'm
10:06
Speaker 2: coming to anxiety from, it's these holistic diet and lifestyle strategies.
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Speaker 2: They're not dangerous. If anything, they have side benefits, and
10:14
Speaker 2: so there's nothing to gatekeep. And so somebody says, like
10:17
Speaker 2: I'm subjectively identifying with a feeling of anxiety, I'm like
10:21
Speaker 2: Colm on over, let's talk. It doesn't really matter whether
10:24
Speaker 2: or not they meet criteria for clinical anxiety. It doesn't
10:27
Speaker 2: matter if we've diluted the term and it has some
10:30
Speaker 2: overlap with stress. It's the pH of our age. We
10:33
Speaker 2: are experiencing what's out of balance about living existing in
10:37
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two as a feeling of anxiety. I think
10:40
Speaker 2: that's meaningful and it's a starting point for how we
10:43
Speaker 2: explore how do we start feeling well, living fulfilling lives
10:48
Speaker 2: and transmuting some of that anxiety into purposeful action.
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Speaker 1: One of the things that I've found helped me is
10:55
Speaker 1: noticing it, and so my therapist helped me realize that
10:58
Speaker 1: for me, a manifestor to my chest. So it's always like, okay,
11:02
Speaker 1: what like your feeling before the why? It's like where
11:05
Speaker 1: is it in your body? If you don't mind getting personal,
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Speaker 1: do you know where it manifests in your body? Yes?
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Speaker 2: And it is so personal for me, it's sweating in
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Speaker 2: my armpits and that like I like when I feel
11:20
Speaker 2: anxious or stressed, it just turns on these faucets and
11:23
Speaker 2: that's how I know when I'm feeling that way. Yeah,
11:25
Speaker 2: but I love the sort of somatic approach and really
11:28
Speaker 2: checking in and tuning in where do we feel something,
11:31
Speaker 2: How is our body explaining to us what's going on
11:34
Speaker 2: under the surface.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes I think the word is thrown around so much
11:39
Speaker 1: that it's hard to recognize what is anxiety from maybe
11:43
Speaker 1: another feeling that we're having. And so for me personally
11:46
Speaker 1: recognizing it in my body was the first helpful step.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, And I think in general, like if
11:53
Speaker 2: we could miss one afternoon of fractions in the third
11:56
Speaker 2: or fourth grade and have a day on emotional literacy
11:59
Speaker 2: and banning our vocabulary, wouldn't that serve humanity?
12:03
Speaker 1: You mentioned false anxiety and true anxiety. What is the
12:06
Speaker 1: difference between the two?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is the main way that I've departed
12:11
Speaker 2: from how I was trained to think about anxiety. You know,
12:13
Speaker 2: I was trained to classify according to what we just
12:15
Speaker 2: talked about, you know, OCD or panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder.
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Speaker 2: It wasn't actually steering treatment in my practice meaningfully, because
12:24
Speaker 2: it's it's designed to indicate is it that you should
12:27
Speaker 2: use a medication, should use cognitive behavioral therapy. But I
12:30
Speaker 2: didn't find these to be my most useful first line tools.
12:33
Speaker 2: So what God's my treatment much more meaningfully is to
12:36
Speaker 2: divide anxiety into these two categories, false anxiety and true anxiety.
12:40
Speaker 2: False anxiety is physical anxiety. It's avoidable anxiety. It's the
12:45
Speaker 2: anxiety that starts in the physical body, and it's usually
12:48
Speaker 2: a stress response that feels identical to anxiety or even panic,
12:53
Speaker 2: and it's usually triggered by seemingly benign aspects of modern life.
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Speaker 2: A blood sugar crash, stronger coffee than usual, a hangover,
13:02
Speaker 2: sleep deprivation, inflammation, gut dysfunction, too much phone. These put
13:08
Speaker 2: our body in a stress response tracks up to the brain.
13:10
Speaker 2: Our brain feels those stress hormones, we feel anxious. Our
13:14
Speaker 2: brain is all too happy to swoop in with an explanation.
13:17
Speaker 2: That's what brains do, right. They tell us the story
13:19
Speaker 2: to explain our physical sensations. But if we could really
13:22
Speaker 2: omniscientally know what was happening in that moment, it wasn't
13:25
Speaker 2: our stress about that email we got from our boss.
13:27
Speaker 2: It wasn't the story, the narrative that we tell ourselves.
13:30
Speaker 2: It was a stress response, plain and simple, in the body.
13:33
Speaker 2: And it's a really important clarification. I don't call that
13:35
Speaker 2: false anxiety to invalidate the very real suffering that this
13:39
Speaker 2: causes like I was in a state of false depression
13:41
Speaker 2: for so many years. That was life altering suffering, but
13:45
Speaker 2: it had a physical basis and a straightforward path out.
13:49
Speaker 2: True anxiety, on the other hand, is purposeful anxiety. It's
13:55
Speaker 2: not something that we should be pathologizing. It's not something
13:59
Speaker 2: that we can gluten free or decaf coffee our way
14:02
Speaker 2: out of. It's an inner compass here to tell us
14:07
Speaker 2: slow down, pay attention. You know that there's some truth
14:12
Speaker 2: here that you're overlooking, And there's often a call to
14:15
Speaker 2: action baked in. It's basically saying, transmute this feeling of
14:20
Speaker 2: being mired in, this helpless feeling of anxiety into some
14:23
Speaker 2: kind of purposeful action takes steps according to this truth.
14:27
Speaker 2: And once we do transmute that, it feels like purpose.
14:31
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel so uncomfortable anymore. This is not something
14:34
Speaker 2: that we benefit from thinking is a problem with us.
14:37
Speaker 2: This gets overused these days, but I do think of
14:40
Speaker 2: it as a superpower. Like those of us that have
14:42
Speaker 2: really strong signals of true anxiety, I think we're here
14:45
Speaker 2: in a prophetic capacity. We're here to viscerally connect to
14:49
Speaker 2: the suffering in the world, to the things that aren't
14:51
Speaker 2: right in our personal lives or our communities or the
14:53
Speaker 2: world at large, and I think we need to listen
14:56
Speaker 2: to it and honor it. And I think rather than
14:59
Speaker 2: telling this people like, don't be so sensitive, we should
15:02
Speaker 2: really be slowing down and being like, tell me what
15:04
Speaker 2: you know, because it might just wake us all up
15:07
Speaker 2: just in time.
15:09
Speaker 1: It seems like everybody has the ability to tap into
15:12
Speaker 1: that if if they sort of connect to themselves.
15:17
Speaker 2: I think we do all have that ability. But I'm
15:20
Speaker 2: not really here to say that someone should go searching
15:23
Speaker 2: for their true anxiety if it's not already tapping them
15:25
Speaker 2: on the shoulder.
15:26
Speaker 1: Right.
15:26
Speaker 2: It's like, I think we need all types of people, right,
15:28
Speaker 2: we need some people in a life phase where they're
15:31
Speaker 2: just things are chill, they're copaseticy. Then we need that
15:36
Speaker 2: person to be our surgeon or our pilot. And it's great,
15:39
Speaker 2: like we need folks like that. It's just that we
15:41
Speaker 2: also need to value sensitive folks who are kind of
15:45
Speaker 2: like too sensitive to function, Like we pathologize that and
15:51
Speaker 2: tell them that there's something wrong with them. And I
15:52
Speaker 2: think we actually need to be accommodating that and valuing
15:56
Speaker 2: it and saying, this is someone who is really tapped in.
16:00
Speaker 2: They're attuned to what's not right and we need to
16:03
Speaker 2: listen to it. And so if someone's crippled by their
16:06
Speaker 2: true anxiety, I want them to not feel it as pathology.
16:10
Speaker 2: I want them to sort of translate that anxiety into action.
16:14
Speaker 2: But I don't think we need to make the pilot
16:16
Speaker 2: and the surgeon who's just emotionally even like go digging
16:19
Speaker 2: around for it. If they're up for that, I'm game
16:22
Speaker 2: for it. But some people are more connected and some
16:24
Speaker 2: people are less.
16:25
Speaker 1: That's okay, Okay, I think I misunderstood what you're saying.
16:28
Speaker 1: So if you feel sort of the really crippling anxiety,
16:32
Speaker 1: you're just a more sensitive person, is what you're saying.
16:35
Speaker 1: And the false anxiety is maybe something that I'm talking
16:38
Speaker 1: about with like I feel it in my chest and
16:40
Speaker 1: I can breathe through it.
16:41
Speaker 2: Great question. Thanks for clarifying that. So here's how I
16:44
Speaker 2: go about it with patients. If someone comes in and
16:46
Speaker 2: they're just like, I have debilitating anxiety, help me, We'll
16:49
Speaker 2: usually start with false anxiety. It's the low hanging fruit.
16:52
Speaker 2: We're kind of going to go through the false anxiety
16:54
Speaker 2: inventory and be like, how you know is your blood
16:56
Speaker 2: sugar stable or all over the place? Are you inflamed?
16:59
Speaker 2: How's your digestion, how was your sleeper quality and quantity.
17:01
Speaker 2: We're going to go through that and identify any sources
17:06
Speaker 2: of imbalance and address them, and then once we've made
17:10
Speaker 2: good progress there, it kind of clears the air and
17:13
Speaker 2: we can reassess is that person no longer anxious at all?
17:16
Speaker 2: Or now do they have this clarion call from their
17:20
Speaker 2: true anxiety. That's like, you're not inflamed anymore, You're not
17:23
Speaker 2: panicking from blood sugar crashes, but I'm still here to
17:27
Speaker 2: tap you on your shoulder and be like, you know
17:29
Speaker 2: that you want to be an activist for this cause,
17:32
Speaker 2: or you know that you're in the wrong relationship, or
17:34
Speaker 2: you know that you should call your grandma more often.
17:37
Speaker 2: It can really range. It doesn't have to be lofty
17:39
Speaker 2: or grand. It can be very small and local and
17:43
Speaker 2: part of your own personal life. It's just a truth
17:45
Speaker 2: that you've been steamrolling over.
17:47
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay, thank you for elaborating on that.
17:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
17:51
Speaker 1: So you talk a little bit about the power of nature,
17:53
Speaker 1: which as human beings in twenty twenty two, we do
17:56
Speaker 1: not tap into enough. Myself included, So I do find
18:01
Speaker 1: nature to be such a helpful tool with your clients.
18:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's partly that it's just hardwired into
18:07
Speaker 2: our DNA that was our home and that's where we
18:11
Speaker 2: feel safe. But I think that it's I was listening
18:13
Speaker 2: to one of your earlier episodes and it was a
18:16
Speaker 2: psychologist who focused on parenting instead of like how to
18:19
Speaker 2: raise good humans. Amazing, incredible episode, and you know she
18:26
Speaker 2: brought up this idea of coregulation, and as children, we
18:30
Speaker 2: co regulate with our parents. If our parents can show
18:32
Speaker 2: a way to self soothe and ground, it can help
18:36
Speaker 2: model that, it can help kind of sync up in
18:38
Speaker 2: a tune for the child, and the child kind arrive
18:40
Speaker 2: back at a place of comp And I think that
18:43
Speaker 2: the Earth is sort of this co regulating parental figure
18:48
Speaker 2: there for the taking for all of us. Like if
18:51
Speaker 2: we're really overwhelmed, if we're stuck, if we are if
18:54
Speaker 2: things are too busy in our thoughts, if you can
18:57
Speaker 2: go stand at the edge of the ocean and tap
19:01
Speaker 2: into the way the waves are breathing in and out
19:03
Speaker 2: with that cadence, you know, our own breathing and heart
19:07
Speaker 2: rate sinks up with us and it relaxes us, and
19:09
Speaker 2: it grounds us when we see green, when we forest, breathe, baith.
19:12
Speaker 2: We know that it decreases our stress hormone. It improves
19:15
Speaker 2: functioning and sort of our executive function and these parts
19:18
Speaker 2: of our cerebral cortex that are involved with resilience. So
19:22
Speaker 2: we can improve all of this resilience and calm and
19:25
Speaker 2: functioning just by syncing up with nature. So it's there
19:28
Speaker 2: as this courregulating parent.
19:31
Speaker 1: Okay, I have a hard question for you because I
19:34
Speaker 1: feel I grew up in Chicago. Where did you.
19:36
Speaker 2: Grow up in the suburbs of New York City?
19:39
Speaker 1: Okay, so somewhat similar, though I do think that the
19:43
Speaker 1: atmosphere is similar. There's probably some trees, but everything is cold.
19:50
Speaker 2: Oh cool.
19:51
Speaker 1: And then when I moved to Los Angeles, the ability
19:53
Speaker 1: to connect with nature is just a so much easier
19:57
Speaker 1: and be way more abundant for people that don't live
20:02
Speaker 1: in LA or in a place where they can do
20:04
Speaker 1: that pretty easily. What are your recommendations.
20:08
Speaker 2: I live the struggle. I think it is really difficult,
20:13
Speaker 2: and I think modern life, in this world, it's hard
20:17
Speaker 2: to get all of our needs met and the need
20:19
Speaker 2: for nature is very real. A lot of us also
20:21
Speaker 2: have a very real need for community, and sometimes those
20:24
Speaker 2: can be at odds. Not always, some people have really
20:27
Speaker 2: struck the perfect balance and they live in close proximity
20:31
Speaker 2: to nature and with community. In my own personal life,
20:34
Speaker 2: just the nature of how I've gone through this life,
20:36
Speaker 2: I have social density in the jungle, the concrete jungle
20:40
Speaker 2: of New York City, and so I meet that need
20:43
Speaker 2: and I work really hard to try to connect to nature.
20:46
Speaker 2: But I do think we can all lower our standards
20:48
Speaker 2: a bit. It's amazing if you can be fully immersed,
20:51
Speaker 2: but if you can't be parks, any patch of grass,
20:54
Speaker 2: I go to the Hudson River. There's often some way
20:57
Speaker 2: to taste nature, even in very urbane but it's not
21:01
Speaker 2: the same. And I try to spend time every summer
21:04
Speaker 2: going macro dosing on nature to kind of make up
21:07
Speaker 2: for my loss of it the rest of the year.
21:09
Speaker 1: Got it? Is there a checklist that we can use
21:12
Speaker 1: to check in when we're feeling anxious, sort of like
21:15
Speaker 1: a step by step to figure out what am I
21:18
Speaker 1: feeling and where am I feeling it?
21:20
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, I like the way you put that. That's
21:22
Speaker 2: better than what I did in the book, But the
21:24
Speaker 2: way I did it in the book was something called
21:25
Speaker 2: the false mood inventory, And I even intended for people
21:29
Speaker 2: to like take a scissor to their book and cut
21:30
Speaker 2: this out put it on the right.
21:32
Speaker 1: I love that.
21:32
Speaker 2: Because we need that because in the moment of peak anxiety,
21:36
Speaker 2: we don't have the presence of mind to be like,
21:37
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I went to a different coffee shop this
21:40
Speaker 2: morning and the coffee was stronger. We need something to
21:42
Speaker 2: cue us. So the false mood inventory, it's really just
21:45
Speaker 2: about the false anxieties. It's there to guide you through.
21:48
Speaker 2: Is your bloodchiger crushing right now? Are you hungry, have
21:50
Speaker 2: a snap? Are you dehydrated? Did you not get good
21:53
Speaker 2: sleep last night? Are you over caffeinated? Are you hungover?
21:56
Speaker 2: Are you due for a dose of a psychiatric medication
21:59
Speaker 2: that can rate a false anxiety because we're at our
22:01
Speaker 2: pharmacologic mater or lowest point, and our body is like
22:06
Speaker 2: pick waiting for its dose, even just too much phone
22:09
Speaker 2: coming out of any internet rabbit hole. If our gut
22:12
Speaker 2: is off, if our digestion is off, we also that's
22:14
Speaker 2: helpful to check in with. We think that it's all
22:18
Speaker 2: top down communication, like when we're stressed or anxious, that's
22:21
Speaker 2: giving us ibs or diarrhea. But it's a two way
22:24
Speaker 2: street of communication. And that's absolutely true that our stress
22:28
Speaker 2: impacts our digestion, but also modern life impacts our digestion.
22:33
Speaker 2: So if we ate something funny that we don't tolerate
22:35
Speaker 2: something inflammatory, if we took a course of antibiotics, things
22:39
Speaker 2: can be off in our gut, and that's tracking a
22:41
Speaker 2: message up to our brain saying feel uneasy, go rest,
22:45
Speaker 2: make different choices. So sometimes when I'm anxious, I check in.
22:48
Speaker 2: I'm like, is my gut all off right now?
22:50
Speaker 1: Oh?
22:51
Speaker 2: It is, that's probably the source of my anxiety. So
22:54
Speaker 2: basically we go through this list and this will cue
22:58
Speaker 2: us and remind us it could be this, And it
23:01
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily solve the problem in the moment. But some
23:04
Speaker 2: of them are you know, like go have a snack,
23:06
Speaker 2: that solves the problem. Some of them steer future decisions,
23:09
Speaker 2: like maybe be more conscious about your relationship to alcohol
23:12
Speaker 2: or to screens. But what they can do is take
23:15
Speaker 2: some of the charge out of it in that moment
23:17
Speaker 2: that we're not anxious because everything is doomed, but we're
23:20
Speaker 2: anxious in that moment because our body is in a
23:22
Speaker 2: stress response.
23:23
Speaker 1: Alcohols are really interesting one. I can only speak to
23:26
Speaker 1: my personal experience. Like I didn't really drink in college.
23:29
Speaker 1: I was never like, I never drank very much. And
23:35
Speaker 1: in my adult life, like twenty eight to now I'm
23:38
Speaker 1: thirty one, I have a drink every so often, and
23:41
Speaker 1: I notice that the next day I feel Really it's
23:44
Speaker 1: almost a huge deterrent because I feel anxious the next day.
23:48
Speaker 1: And I don't think that happens. It didn't really happen
23:51
Speaker 1: when I was younger. Do our bodies Does that shift
23:54
Speaker 1: as we grow up?
23:55
Speaker 2: It does? It shifts as we grow up. We also
23:57
Speaker 2: become more aware, but I think it really does shift.
24:00
Speaker 2: And the alcohol connection to anxiety, I think is underappreciated.
24:04
Speaker 2: Here's the way I think about it. Yes, it causes
24:07
Speaker 2: a blood sugar crash, and yes, it disrupts sleep architecture,
24:10
Speaker 2: so we're not going to sleep as well any night
24:12
Speaker 2: that we've been drinking. And those reasons alone they're contributing
24:16
Speaker 2: to anxiety. But there's this other way that it's impacting anxiety,
24:20
Speaker 2: and it's via a neurotransmitter called gabba, which is not
24:23
Speaker 2: really one we're talking about. Like we talk a lot
24:25
Speaker 2: about serotonin, but gabba is kind of still in the shadows.
24:28
Speaker 2: What we need to talk about Gabba, and.
24:31
Speaker 1: It's maybe you should become like the Gaba mascot.
24:36
Speaker 2: I am Gabis spokesperson. I don't know if gabas spokesperson
24:39
Speaker 2: would be a sweating in their armpits, though, I feel
24:41
Speaker 2: like it's not on brand. But so, Gabba is our
24:44
Speaker 2: primary inhibitory neurotransmitter of our central nervous system. Translation, it's
24:49
Speaker 2: basically the one that's like, everything is okay, you can relax.
24:53
Speaker 2: And that rustle that you just heard in the leaves,
24:56
Speaker 2: it's just a rustle. It's the wind, it's not a leopard.
25:00
Speaker 2: And alcohol and the benzodiazepines, things like xanax conipin, they
25:05
Speaker 2: rush our brain in Gaba, and we like that. That
25:07
Speaker 2: feels relaxing. We're like, Okay, everything I was so wound
25:11
Speaker 2: up about now I don't care about it, and that
25:14
Speaker 2: feels great. But our brain is not really wired for
25:17
Speaker 2: feeling relaxed. It's wired for survival. So when it sees
25:21
Speaker 2: that much Gaba, it wants to restore homeostasis or that
25:24
Speaker 2: original state of balance, because it thinks if a leopard
25:27
Speaker 2: did come out of the bushes, we'd be too buzzed
25:29
Speaker 2: to care and so that gets dicey. So basically what
25:34
Speaker 2: it does with benzos it starts to pull our GABA receptors.
25:39
Speaker 2: So then once the conopin or the xanax is no
25:41
Speaker 2: longer in our system, it's like we have normal GABA levels,
25:44
Speaker 2: but a lower number of GABA receptors. So it's like
25:48
Speaker 2: you can't hear the gabba. With alcohol, something different happens. Basically,
25:52
Speaker 2: it converts the GABA to a different neurotransmitter called glutamate,
25:57
Speaker 2: which is an excitatory neurotransmitter. And that's why we wake
26:00
Speaker 2: up at three in the morning racing thoughts, feeling uneasy,
26:03
Speaker 2: and we feel anxious and irritable and on edge the
26:05
Speaker 2: next day and we think, I just can't wait to
26:08
Speaker 2: get to the end of the day and I can
26:09
Speaker 2: have a glass of wine. And that's the gluten mate effect.
26:12
Speaker 2: And so alcohol is a very potent contributor to our
26:15
Speaker 2: anxiety levels. And it's an inconvenient conversation, but I do
26:20
Speaker 2: want us to all be having it, just be exploring
26:23
Speaker 2: this for ourselves and thinking, how do I make a
26:25
Speaker 2: choice that's an active, radical self love than any given moment.
26:28
Speaker 2: It's not to say it's never the glass of wine,
26:30
Speaker 2: but probably less often alcohol aside.
26:33
Speaker 1: Are there any modern influences that you think aren't being
26:36
Speaker 1: talked about enough that are impacting our anxiety or things
26:40
Speaker 1: that we should try and avoid.
26:42
Speaker 2: This one is a little bit underpenetrated, but basically the
26:45
Speaker 2: vegetable oils like canola oil, because we've at this point,
26:49
Speaker 2: like if you're in the wellness space, you've talked about gluten,
26:52
Speaker 2: you've talked about dairy, you know about sugar, but we're
26:55
Speaker 2: still like the vegetaboils are still flying under the radar.
26:58
Speaker 2: They're super inflammatory, they get our gut out of balance.
27:01
Speaker 2: They impact the quality of our membranes, like in our neurons,
27:05
Speaker 2: and so they do impact how our mood is and
27:08
Speaker 2: how we feel in general. And they're in everything because
27:10
Speaker 2: they're cheap and shelf stable and have a high smoke point.
27:13
Speaker 2: So if you had a restaurant, you would cook with
27:15
Speaker 2: them too. And so the way we empower ourselves to
27:18
Speaker 2: feed ourselves more nourishing food is basically cooking for ourselves
27:21
Speaker 2: and using different cooking fats, whether that's beef tallow or
27:25
Speaker 2: lard or ghee or avocado oil. And these are some
27:27
Speaker 2: of the higher smoke point cooking options. All of oil
27:30
Speaker 2: is great for if you're not using high heat cooking.
27:32
Speaker 2: And then basically to start putting some demand on restaurants,
27:38
Speaker 2: like I know at least I mean I am extreme
27:41
Speaker 2: and a little extra in this way, but I will
27:43
Speaker 2: call restaurants and be like, what cooking fats do you use?
27:46
Speaker 1: And like so good.
27:47
Speaker 2: Some of them will hang up on me, and some
27:49
Speaker 2: of them will be like, so glad you asked, we
27:51
Speaker 2: use like whatever, and then that's where I give my business.
27:55
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. I'm a personal gee fan. Y you good?
27:59
Speaker 1: Hope I like it because it sort of tastes like butter,
28:02
Speaker 1: and I love butter.
28:03
Speaker 2: I mean also I'm a butter fan. Both I think
28:05
Speaker 2: have their place.
28:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. What are some of the most common
28:09
Speaker 1: vitamin or mineral deficiencies that can trigger anxiety?
28:13
Speaker 2: Yes, so we're all deficient and magnesium basically because our
28:18
Speaker 2: food is deficient, because our soil is deficient. So unless
28:21
Speaker 2: you are eating tomatoes grown in the soil in the
28:25
Speaker 2: shadow of an active volcano in sicily like, you're probably
28:28
Speaker 2: deficient in magnesium. And most of us benefit from a
28:31
Speaker 2: little supplementation if you don't want to swallow a pill.
28:34
Speaker 2: You could take an upsom cell bath, But for most
28:36
Speaker 2: of us, a little magnesium glasonate in the evening is
28:39
Speaker 2: a nice supplement. I see a lot of vitamin B
28:42
Speaker 2: twelve deficiency contributing to anxiety. It's a tricky it's a
28:46
Speaker 2: whole tricky issue. It's one of the various kind of
28:48
Speaker 2: controversial sacred cows. I do my best gently, with a
28:52
Speaker 2: lot of nuance examined. But like vegeterianism and veganism, are
28:56
Speaker 2: these beautiful choices. They're often made with an eye towards ethics,
29:00
Speaker 2: or it's sort of not wanting to reduce the suffering
29:02
Speaker 2: of animals, and it's often a choice made about environmental
29:06
Speaker 2: considerations and health considerations. And the one it is a
29:11
Speaker 2: beautiful choice. And the one issue is that I certainly
29:14
Speaker 2: experienced in my own health and with many of my patients,
29:17
Speaker 2: that it is hard to get an adequately nutrient dense diet,
29:22
Speaker 2: like on a vegan diet, for example. And I was
29:25
Speaker 2: vegetarian for so long, and then I was a vegan,
29:28
Speaker 2: and you know, it's just like I'm getting healthier and
29:31
Speaker 2: healthy and healthier. But little did I realize I was
29:33
Speaker 2: really like the machine with all the springs popping out.
29:36
Speaker 2: My health was falling apart during that time, and I
29:40
Speaker 2: thought I was doing a decent job of it, sort
29:41
Speaker 2: of being aware of how to get a complete protein
29:44
Speaker 2: from rice and beans and how to supplement with B twelve,
29:47
Speaker 2: and you know, it wasn't a carapetarian by the end.
29:49
Speaker 2: I was being really mindful about it, but I was
29:51
Speaker 2: still nutrient deficient. So it's some people do it. We
29:55
Speaker 2: all have different constitutions. Some people thrive, but a lot
29:58
Speaker 2: of my patients, especially women of reproductive age, where vegetarian
30:02
Speaker 2: or vegan with anxiety. That is a group of patients
30:06
Speaker 2: I've seen where if they're comfortable with it, when they
30:09
Speaker 2: bring animal products, in particular things like red meat and
30:13
Speaker 2: bone broth, when they reintroduce that into their diet, they
30:16
Speaker 2: actually really improve their anxiety quite a bit.
30:19
Speaker 1: So B twelve fascinating.
30:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an inconvenient truth that.
30:24
Speaker 1: I mean, most of our audience is that age, So
30:27
Speaker 1: I think that's really interesting to note. I tried to
30:30
Speaker 1: be vegetarian during COVID at one point, and I kind
30:34
Speaker 1: of thought my anxiety increased because of COVID, But looking
30:37
Speaker 1: back and hearing what you're saying. I think that probably
30:39
Speaker 1: played a role.
30:41
Speaker 2: I mean, COVID itself, it all played a role. But
30:43
Speaker 2: I think that, yeah, I mean it's tricky because we
30:46
Speaker 2: think we're doing it for health, and we're taught this
30:50
Speaker 2: messaging around clean eating and that face. Yeah, what we
30:55
Speaker 2: picture when we hear that arugula and Macha lattes with
30:59
Speaker 2: oatmeal and she has you puddings, And you know, none
31:02
Speaker 2: of that is inherently none of us inherently unhealthy. It's
31:07
Speaker 2: just not actually everything that we need. We could be
31:09
Speaker 2: eating perfectly clean and be starving and malnourished. And so
31:14
Speaker 2: I think that some of us actually need to reframe
31:17
Speaker 2: and come back to an understanding of what's a nutrient dense,
31:20
Speaker 2: balanced diet. And it looks more like less like what
31:23
Speaker 2: somebody puts on Instagram and more like how our great
31:25
Speaker 2: great great great great grandmothers were trying to eat. And
31:29
Speaker 2: so it's balanced, It has substantial foods, it has healthy fats,
31:32
Speaker 2: it sometimes has red meat. It's not always like what
31:35
Speaker 2: we think of as when we think of clean eating.
31:38
Speaker 1: I almost hesitate to ask this next question because it
31:41
Speaker 1: seems cliche, But you've had such direct, specific answers that
31:46
Speaker 1: I'm excited to learn from you. In terms of our smartphones,
31:50
Speaker 1: I am so aware of all of the science behind
31:54
Speaker 1: the blue light and how our smartphones are making us
31:57
Speaker 1: more anxious. And at the same time, I think my
32:00
Speaker 1: story is similar to so many other peoples, and that
32:04
Speaker 1: I basically work all day from my computer and my
32:07
Speaker 1: phone is sort of like my lifeline. Especially my parents
32:10
Speaker 1: live in Chicago, so we're facetiming, like almost every element
32:14
Speaker 1: of my life is contingent upon that in some way.
32:18
Speaker 1: What can we do in a pragmatic way, in a
32:22
Speaker 1: realistic way that can help us decrease our usage or
32:26
Speaker 1: manage that? So get we.
32:31
Speaker 2: Need a prop for this conversation.
32:32
Speaker 1: Okay, you look amazing. Everybody listening, can you describe what
32:37
Speaker 1: you just put on?
32:38
Speaker 2: I put on what have to be the world's most
32:41
Speaker 2: ridiculous looking orange plastic glasses that make me look like
32:44
Speaker 2: I'm about to go do metallurgy or like fly fishing.
32:47
Speaker 2: I don't know what the use case is for these.
32:49
Speaker 2: I don't know.
32:49
Speaker 1: I've seen one of the Kardashians wearing these. I think
32:52
Speaker 1: they're sort of in style. Blenciaga makes something similar.
32:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are cuter versions. I go with the metallurgy,
33:00
Speaker 2: but so basically there are harm reduction reduction strategies with
33:04
Speaker 2: our phone. Use the two things that I recommend to
33:07
Speaker 2: most of my patients. One is just get some pair
33:10
Speaker 2: of blue blocking glasses and put them on around sunset
33:13
Speaker 2: and wear them until bedtime. And they don't have to
33:17
Speaker 2: be like the full hardcore model. You can get the
33:19
Speaker 2: ones that look kind of normal, but you basically want
33:22
Speaker 2: to just protect your eyes from seeing blue spectrum light
33:25
Speaker 2: after sunset, which will prevent your melatonin from being suppressed.
33:29
Speaker 2: It'll protect your circadian rhythm. All of that translates to
33:32
Speaker 2: you'll get sleepy at nighttime and you will sleep well,
33:35
Speaker 2: and that makes all things possible.
33:38
Speaker 1: And those of us who don't know, Socrateian rhythm is
33:41
Speaker 1: just sort of like the our regulatory system of when
33:44
Speaker 1: we wake up and when we go to sleep.
33:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, our sleep wake cycle. And you know, it's
33:48
Speaker 2: all there's this master clock in the brain called the
33:50
Speaker 2: super chismatic nucleus, and it's constantly scanning the landscape looking
33:54
Speaker 2: for light cues to know what time of day it is.
33:56
Speaker 2: It doesn't have any other way, it doesn't have an
33:58
Speaker 2: iPhone it's just like, what of day is it based
34:01
Speaker 2: on light? And that worked. That system was fool proof.
34:04
Speaker 2: On the proverbial savannah of evolution, it was by definition
34:08
Speaker 2: daytime if it was light out, and if it was nighttime,
34:10
Speaker 2: it was by definition dark. And these days were indoors
34:15
Speaker 2: in a fluorescent lit cubicle maybe during the day and
34:18
Speaker 2: then after sunset. It's a psychedelic light show of overhead lighting.
34:22
Speaker 2: Sharing the couch with a laptop, a TV, a phone
34:26
Speaker 2: clutched to our hearts while we sleep. The other intervention
34:29
Speaker 2: that I think is really impactful but realistic is you
34:33
Speaker 2: can use your phone, you can use your computer, but
34:36
Speaker 2: at bedtime, you just don't bring your phone into the
34:39
Speaker 2: bed with you. In fact, you don't keep it on
34:41
Speaker 2: a charger on your boat side table. You set up
34:44
Speaker 2: your charger somewhere else in your home. Adjust your setting
34:47
Speaker 2: so that if you had an emergency double call come through,
34:50
Speaker 2: or a call from favorites come through, you would still
34:52
Speaker 2: hear it, but it's not in arms reach because then
34:56
Speaker 2: we're doom scrolling right before bed, which is impacting our
34:58
Speaker 2: circadian rhythm, but it's also seeding our unconscious with everything
35:03
Speaker 2: that's wrong in the world, and we need to feel
35:05
Speaker 2: safe to surrender into sleep, so it's making it really
35:07
Speaker 2: hard to fall asleep. And of course everything on the
35:10
Speaker 2: phone is ingeniously designed to not have any natural stopping point,
35:14
Speaker 2: so we scroll endlessly. No one has ever said, oh, look,
35:18
Speaker 2: I got to the end of TikTok, let me put
35:20
Speaker 2: my phone to the side and go.
35:21
Speaker 1: To sleep at this wholesome hour, and so TikTok, that's funny.
35:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, yeah. So those are two really realistic harm
35:28
Speaker 2: reduction strategies that can make a big difference.
35:31
Speaker 1: I like those, Thank you for sharing that. So when
35:34
Speaker 1: I was preparing for this interview, I was struck by
35:37
Speaker 1: a lot of your quotes. You have this way of
35:40
Speaker 1: making difficult information really digestible, and this one hit me,
35:45
Speaker 1: I think the hardest of all. You say that anxiety
35:49
Speaker 1: is a verb, it's the vibe, the pH of our age.
35:52
Speaker 1: And you add that underappreciated factor of that is corporate
35:55
Speaker 1: America selling us fear. I mean, we don't have time
36:00
Speaker 1: for me to tell you how much I connected to that,
36:01
Speaker 1: but can you tell me what you mean by that?
36:05
Speaker 2: So I think I call that section like the banality
36:07
Speaker 2: of fear, because it's not like intended to be malicious,
36:10
Speaker 2: but it effectively is causing a lot of unnecessary suffering.
36:14
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. We're living in the attention economy. Our
36:17
Speaker 2: attention is the commodity that varies of our companies are
36:21
Speaker 2: competing for. They've done their homework, they know neuroscience, they
36:24
Speaker 2: know behavioral psychology, they know that if they prey on
36:27
Speaker 2: our fear response or instill uncertainty or doubt insecurity controversy,
36:33
Speaker 2: we will rubber neck and we will give over an
36:36
Speaker 2: increasingly large share of our attention. They'll get more clicks,
36:39
Speaker 2: more eyeballs, more ad revenue, and our mental health is
36:44
Speaker 2: the collateral damage. So unfortunately, the onus is on us
36:48
Speaker 2: to just navigate this information landscape eyes wide open, consciously,
36:53
Speaker 2: and if that means that we are batching our news
36:56
Speaker 2: check ins, if we I think it's really helpful. It's
37:00
Speaker 2: a force field around us to just notice when someone
37:03
Speaker 2: is trying to sell you a product with fear and
37:07
Speaker 2: because like that's what it's doing, right, It's curating our
37:10
Speaker 2: insecurities and like presenting them back to us and being
37:12
Speaker 2: like you're broken, You're not enough, you won't be enough,
37:15
Speaker 2: You're going to have a problem by our crap and
37:19
Speaker 2: what it not only makes us consumers and then broke
37:22
Speaker 2: and living in cluttered spaces, but it also makes us
37:26
Speaker 2: constantly feel really broken, not good enough, uneasy, and it's
37:32
Speaker 2: so not nice, it's not fair, and so it's hard
37:36
Speaker 2: to live completely protected or shielded from all of this
37:40
Speaker 2: fear messaging. But just put onto like glasses that give
37:45
Speaker 2: you X ray vision and see through advertising and just
37:47
Speaker 2: know that that's what's happening, and then you can be
37:50
Speaker 2: a little bit more like I got you, I see
37:52
Speaker 2: what you're doing, and it's not going to work with me.
37:55
Speaker 1: I went to a talk last week. I think they're
37:57
Speaker 1: called like La Live talks. It was Simon Sinnek and
38:00
Speaker 1: doctor Arthur Brooks, and it was about happiness, and Simon
38:03
Speaker 1: Sinek said, the self health industry has grown it basically
38:07
Speaker 1: started in the nineteen seventies, has grown exponentially and is
38:11
Speaker 1: more popular than ever, meaning that it hasn't really helped anybody,
38:15
Speaker 1: Like if it was really helping people, it should like
38:18
Speaker 1: the industry should decrease, which I thought was such a
38:20
Speaker 1: funny take on it, but is so in line with
38:23
Speaker 1: what you just said, Like so much of it is
38:26
Speaker 1: based on telling people you're not doing this right, this
38:29
Speaker 1: is broken, you're wrong, and here's how to fix it.
38:32
Speaker 1: So thank you for bringing that to our attention. In
38:34
Speaker 1: terms of anxiety, well.
38:35
Speaker 2: The same could be said of the mental health industry,
38:38
Speaker 2: which is a really uncomfortable truth. There's an incredible book
38:40
Speaker 2: called The Anatomy of an Epidemic that talks about how
38:43
Speaker 2: as we've had more access to mental health care, more treatment,
38:47
Speaker 2: more medications, we've just become even more and more disabled
38:50
Speaker 2: by mental health issues. And you could say it's confounded
38:53
Speaker 2: by the fact that the world has become more conducive
38:55
Speaker 2: to mental health issues. But sometimes these industries create the
38:58
Speaker 2: need for themselves certain ways, and that's a whole touchy
39:02
Speaker 2: subject we could go into. But yeah, I think that
39:04
Speaker 2: wellness I mean I'm part of it and I'm really careful,
39:09
Speaker 2: like it's I think it's a little bit of both.
39:12
Speaker 2: It's a little bit that the wellness entry industry with
39:15
Speaker 2: one hand says you're broken, and with the other hands like,
39:17
Speaker 2: I've got the solutions, sign up for my course, whatever
39:20
Speaker 2: it is. But I do think most of the wellness
39:22
Speaker 2: industry is people that struggled, who felt unwell at some
39:26
Speaker 2: point figured out a path to getting themselves better and
39:30
Speaker 2: then from a place of altruism. It's a little ego
39:32
Speaker 2: but mostly altruism. It's like I want to shout this
39:35
Speaker 2: from the rooftops, like you can be well. So I
39:38
Speaker 2: think there's really a well meaning spirit to much of it.
39:41
Speaker 2: Tricky thing is that not the same strategies don't work
39:45
Speaker 2: for everyone and our world really, at the same time
39:48
Speaker 2: that we have more and more self help and more
39:50
Speaker 2: and more strategies to promote our wellness, we have fewer
39:53
Speaker 2: and fewer of our fundamental human needs met, Like we're
39:56
Speaker 2: increasingly isolated. We're not getting our need for community met.
40:00
Speaker 2: We need rest, we need nature, community, sunshine, fresh air, play, laughter,
40:04
Speaker 2: good sex, creativity. I might already said that one and
40:07
Speaker 2: to feel loved her and understood, and that's too much
40:10
Speaker 2: to ask, And so we're just getting less and less
40:12
Speaker 2: of that and have even a bigger hole. That wellness
40:15
Speaker 2: industry is all too happy to sweep in and say
40:17
Speaker 2: like we'll help you, but we probably need to be
40:20
Speaker 2: doing more of handing the power back to the individual
40:22
Speaker 2: saying you know best how to heal yourself, and less
40:26
Speaker 2: of like you need me and my products that I'm selling.
40:30
Speaker 1: And back to basics. You know, I had a psychologist
40:33
Speaker 1: on here, doctor Renee Engelm. She wrote a book called
40:35
Speaker 1: Beauty Sick, and the name of the podcast is inspired
40:39
Speaker 1: by her book and her whole philosophy too, is that
40:43
Speaker 1: all these products that are like we're spending money and
40:46
Speaker 1: time on trying to improve ourselves when really we should
40:49
Speaker 1: just be dialing back to basics. And everything you just
40:52
Speaker 1: said are so fundamental to being a human being, and
40:56
Speaker 1: so instead of buying another skincare product or a CBD
40:59
Speaker 1: cream or all this stuff, we really should just dial
41:01
Speaker 1: it back.
41:02
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more. It's really like we almost because
41:06
Speaker 2: the fundamentals feel a little bit like harder work or
41:09
Speaker 2: out of reach. We get so in the weeds about like, well,
41:12
Speaker 2: what kind of skincare routine should I be doing and
41:14
Speaker 2: what kind of elaborate supplement routine should I be taking?
41:17
Speaker 2: And it's like, no, throw all that to the side.
41:20
Speaker 2: That's for like rare instances. Basically, it's you need to
41:25
Speaker 2: sleep well, you need to nourish your body, but not
41:28
Speaker 2: from a place of obsession or fixation or self negation
41:32
Speaker 2: or deprivation or patriarchal ideals. Of body, like, we need
41:36
Speaker 2: to nourish ourselves from a place of radical self love
41:39
Speaker 2: and that's difficult. We can talk about that. We need
41:41
Speaker 2: some amount of movement and we need rest relaxation. The
41:45
Speaker 2: rest is gravy. We need community to Actually.
41:50
Speaker 1: We might have to do a part two because I
41:51
Speaker 1: have so many questions for you, but we only have
41:53
Speaker 1: three minutes left, so I want to do the rapid
41:55
Speaker 1: fire with you.
41:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.
41:57
Speaker 1: So what is a yoga pose that we can do
41:59
Speaker 1: absolutely anywhere that's a game changer?
42:02
Speaker 2: Oh? One yoga pos that I like to do. I
42:04
Speaker 2: mean you have to be comfortable looking just a little
42:06
Speaker 2: bit funny, but I will do this like some people
42:09
Speaker 2: call it like a halfmon pose, But basically you're bringing
42:12
Speaker 2: your hands together up over your head kind of inhaling
42:16
Speaker 2: and expanding upward and then coming up and over, almost
42:20
Speaker 2: like you're kind of letting your body curve over a
42:22
Speaker 2: big ball to the right and then to the left.
42:25
Speaker 2: And what it does is it helps open up our
42:27
Speaker 2: side body, which is a mystical term for anybody who's like,
42:30
Speaker 2: what your what, but basically your rib cage and it
42:33
Speaker 2: opens up, it stretches your ribs. It allows you to
42:37
Speaker 2: take a deeper breath in that moment, I find that
42:39
Speaker 2: like new fresh oxygen rushes in. So it's a really
42:43
Speaker 2: nice reset on the nervous system. And you can do
42:45
Speaker 2: it just about anywhere, maybe not driving.
42:48
Speaker 1: That's a great one your go to move when you
42:51
Speaker 1: need to boost your mood.
42:52
Speaker 2: If I have access to moving outside, like being in
42:55
Speaker 2: nature and moving my body a plus. But if I
42:58
Speaker 2: don't beyond say in my living room dancing.
43:02
Speaker 1: A book that changed your life that everybody should read.
43:04
Speaker 2: I really got a lot out of Untethered Soul by
43:07
Speaker 2: Michael Singer, And it's a little bit of a cliche
43:10
Speaker 2: right now, but I mean, you just have to read
43:12
Speaker 2: all your Brene Brown and then I'm going to throw
43:14
Speaker 2: it Untamed by Glennon Doyle as well.
43:17
Speaker 1: So we do a pretty smart question every week, and
43:21
Speaker 1: because we're virtual, just tell me when you'd like me
43:23
Speaker 1: to stop. When have you felt the closest to magic
43:27
Speaker 1: in your life?
43:29
Speaker 2: That's the right question for me. So I feel close
43:32
Speaker 2: to magic constantly, and that was a whole journey in
43:34
Speaker 2: my life. Like I came of age really suppressing my
43:38
Speaker 2: connection to my intuition. Magic felt irrational. I wanted to
43:41
Speaker 2: be accepted in the boys club, so I suppressed this.
43:43
Speaker 2: I had a lot of internalized misogyny around this. But
43:47
Speaker 2: when I did my yoga teacher training in Bali, I
43:50
Speaker 2: got a big dose of Hey, the world is magical
43:53
Speaker 2: and I have never let go. And it's just become
43:55
Speaker 2: more and more robust in my life ever since. I
43:57
Speaker 2: feel constantly surrounded by magic. The other day, I had, like,
44:02
Speaker 2: it's too many details to explain, but I was getting
44:05
Speaker 2: a croissant, which is not my lifestyle. I'm like extremely
44:08
Speaker 2: gluten free and about a couple times a year I'll
44:11
Speaker 2: break all my own rules. And I was going for
44:12
Speaker 2: a croissant, and my mom, who passed away in twenty fifteen,
44:16
Speaker 2: was totally there in form of these you know people
44:20
Speaker 2: that I was talking to online waiting for the cuissant,
44:22
Speaker 2: the fact that they came right out of the oven,
44:24
Speaker 2: right as I got up to the front of the line,
44:26
Speaker 2: and there are like magics reflecting rainbows reflecting off of
44:29
Speaker 2: the glass, and I just I felt my mom's presence.
44:32
Speaker 2: I felt magic in this universe. It gives me a
44:35
Speaker 2: lot of comfort and fulfillment.
44:37
Speaker 1: Thank you for that. What is the smartest decision you've
44:41
Speaker 1: ever made?
44:42
Speaker 2: I'm bad at keeping it to one. I mean getting
44:45
Speaker 2: with my partner. And this is nothing negative about people
44:49
Speaker 2: that I dated before my husband. I had really wonderful
44:52
Speaker 2: relationships with incredible people before that. But my husband has
44:56
Speaker 2: really unlocked access to the infinite from He teaches me
45:01
Speaker 2: how to be a better person, and he really makes
45:05
Speaker 2: like I just never feel limited. There's a feeling of
45:08
Speaker 2: abundant possibilities with him. Also, just stepping out of conventional
45:12
Speaker 2: medicine was good. I needed to. That was my true anxiety,
45:16
Speaker 2: like I could not keep going. It was out of
45:18
Speaker 2: alignment with my soul to practice in that way, but
45:21
Speaker 2: it was very scary to step out. But it's been
45:24
Speaker 2: nothing but right ever since.
45:26
Speaker 1: Doctor Vora. I I have to tell you, this has
45:29
Speaker 1: been one of my favorite episodes to date. I am
45:30
Speaker 1: so grateful like you brought such presence.
45:35
Speaker 2: Thank you, Danielle. I am so honored to be talking
45:38
Speaker 2: to you. I love what you're doing. I think your
45:40
Speaker 2: podcast is stellar and this has been a delightful conversation.
45:45
Speaker 1: I hope you will come back soon once you've booked
45:48
Speaker 1: to it. Once it kind of like resets. Maybe we
45:50
Speaker 1: could do a part two.
45:51
Speaker 2: I would love it.
46:18
Speaker 1: All right, Today is a good day to have a
46:20
Speaker 1: good day. I'll see you next week.