Body Aware Living Podcast
Welcome to the Body Aware Living podcast hosted by Margo Rose author of: Body Aware Grieving, A Fitness Trainer's Guide To Caring For Your Health During Sad Times. Margo interviews wise and kind guests from around the world who offer practical ways we can get through difficult challenges and celebrate our accomplishments.
Body Aware Living Podcast
Body Aware Living: We Can Get Better At Being Ourselves!
Switching from my usual role as host of the Body Aware Living Podcast, in this interview I join Jill Hart as a guest on her You World Order Showcase podcast. Together we explore how our individual preferences aren't just fun – they're a celebration of freedom and a powerful tool to improve our self-care.
Our talk includes:
- Discovering what helps you feel like your favorite self
- Creating long-term wellness by minimizing set backs
- A fall reduction technique for caregivers and seniors called, 3 Steps to Success
- What is “Concierge Coaching”? How mix-and-match services improves care for clients
- Why our bodies are an accurate and useful source of information
Please share this with your loved ones.
00:00 Body Aware Living and Wellness Strategies
08:45 Caring for the Caregiver
09:47 Concierge Coaching
16:09 Being a Multi-Home Nomad
17:59 Supportive Concierge Coaching for Life Changes
26:07 Support Through Life's Challenges
31:00 Giving support to people during and after difficult times.
41:00 Margo’s Book - Body Aware Grieving; A Fitness Trainer's Guide To Caring For Your Health During Sad Times.
41:41 Exploring Body Awareness and Self-Care
Host Bio/contact:
Jill Hart
The Coach's Alchemist & Host of the You World Order Showcase Podcast
Founder of The You World Order Community & Podcast (Podcasting - Attracting Clients & Building Authority)
Website: https://www.thecoachsalchemist.com/
Facebook Group: Podcasting-Attracting Clients & Brand Authority
https://www.facebook.com/groups/theyouworldorder
Guest Bio/contact info: Margo Rose
Margo Rose has been a personal trainer for over 20 years specializing in functional fitness. She has also written a book called
Body Aware Grieving; A Fitness Trainer's Guide To Caring For Your Health During Sad Times.
Body Aware Living is a new blend of these two systems of healing and self-care. On this website you will find: the Body Aware Living podcast, articles and videos about wellness in Margo Media section and description of her coaching services
Website:
https://www.BodyAwareLiving.com
Body Aware Grieving has been created to help you, or someone you care about, adjust to a loss or big life change. This link is one way to get the book quickly:
https://www.amazon.com/Body-Aware-Grieving-Fitness-Trainers/dp/0692459189
Also available from other vendors including this independent Bookshop organization:
https://bookshop.org/books/body-aware-grieving-a-fitness-trainer-s-guide-to-caring-for-your-health-during-sad-times/9780692459188
Follow Body Aware Living on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BodyAwareLiving
Hello and welcome to the Body Aware Living Podcast, where we look for practical ways to get through difficult times and celebrate our accomplishments. I'm Margo Rose. I'm usually the host of this show, but today I want to share an interview where I was lucky enough to be the guest. Jill Hart, the host of you World Order Showcase Podcast, and I discussed a few important topics like discovering what makes you feel like your favorite self, creating long-term wellness by minimizing setbacks. We talked about a fall reduction technique that Jill can share with her 88-year-old father, and I was explaining a little bit about mix and match, customized concierge coaching and what that might mean. We also look at why our bodies are our best source of accurate information and how that can help us make nicer choices for ourselves. So hope you like this interview. Best wishes.
Speaker 2:Take care trainer's guide to caring for your health during sad times, and she's the host of Body Aware Living podcast. Body Aware Living is a blend of two systems healing and self-care, which encompasses body aware grieving, functional fitness and caring for caregivers. Welcome to the show, margo. It's really our pleasure to have you here with us.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, jill. I've been watching the amazing interviews you do and I'm really honored to be connecting here with us. Thank you so much, jill. I've been watching the amazing interviews you do and I'm really honored to be connecting with you today. That's terrific.
Speaker 2:And my fellow sister in overalls. I just had to put that.
Speaker 3:Usually, yeah, today I didn't Rare day Rare day that I'm not doing overalls, but I love being able to discover what makes you feel like your favorite self and just going with that. And, yeah, usually I know we've seen each other in overalls a lot and we've been like it's a sisterhood, you know. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:Totally a sisterhood of overalls.
Speaker 3:It's a vibe, it's a whole vibe. Overalls is its own thing. You've got everything you need in all your pockets. It's just like boom ready. It's like it's a sort of exciting feeling. Is that kind of what you like about overalls?
Speaker 2:It totally is. I don't have to carry a purse anymore. I keep all my stuff in my phone and it fits in my pocket and my keys fit in the other pocket and I'm ready to go. And it's had great health impact on me in that my shoulders don't hurt anymore. I used to have shoulder and neck problems from carrying a purse for all those years and it was just like you know, and it's not cinching around my waist, which I hate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I double that. It changes how you live and move in the world.
Speaker 2:So I anyhow, fun, fun, fun to discover those little tiny things that improve our quality of life. That much, just totally all about body aware living Exactly. Yeah, yeah, being aware of your body. So tell us your story, margo.
Speaker 3:My story. Well, I started doing fitness training and group fitness instruction like 25 years ago a really long time ago and when I was teaching a group fitness, I was always like the most intrigued by the people at the back of the room who were having a little bit of a struggle keeping up and I thought I don't want to play to the front of the room and help them get even better. They'll find that somewhere else. I really want to help the people who are dealing with an injury, a setback, maybe a body how do you say this? A body self-image issue. You know someone who might not be proud or comfortable in their body.
Speaker 3:So I ended up working with the people who needed really nice specialties whether they were dealing with the injuries, some body stuff and then it ended up being dealing with super, super, super seniors. I've ended up spending the past many of the past 25 years working with people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and over 100 years old and I sort of reverse, engineer that back to a client of any age and say, okay, if we want to be this at 100, how do we take great care of ourselves and what changes might we need to make gently now so that we can be like having the best quality of life for the longest period of time. So that's a little bit having the best quality of life for the longest period of time. So that's a little bit of the journey from the fitness perspective.
Speaker 2:That is very cool, and so how did you get into the whole, blending the grieving and caregiver aspects into it?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, you really discover that it becomes harder and harder to function when you have very strong emotions, times of big challenges, romantically, when they had super big, sad, scary events in their lives on top of all the responsibilities that they were always juggling, that's when the biggest accidents and injuries and setbacks could occur. And stress-related setbacks, stress-related setbacks, can be something like you know, you're not functioning at your best because you've had a problem at work and you don't have enough tools to deal with how to do a transition. And then you go straight to home, for example, and you start being inappropriate or not as kind as you wish with the people at home. Well, now you just took a work problem and you turned it into a home problem, and that's what I would call stress-related setbacks a work problem and you turned it into a home problem, and that's what I would call stress related setbacks.
Speaker 3:Things can really the um, things can really escalate when people aren't uh, when people are dealing with too many things at once to deal with all of them well enough. And that's why, when they can come back to like, okay, in as little as one minute, I know how to focus again on my body and how I'm doing and how to make transitions between these important phases of my day so that I can get through even the biggest challenging times safely for one. Not, we can't start getting better until we stop getting worse. Uh, is you know so how to, not how to make sure you're well enough to drive and with concentration when you're driving, things like that? Um, so it's just a little bit of, it's just sort of evolved by long-term wellness coming more easily when we don't have setbacks that are as big during the challenging times of life, if that makes sense makes total sense.
Speaker 2:And I have an example that I'll share with you where I can see what you're doing really does work, and it's my father.
Speaker 2:My father's 88 and he's he has health challenges but he's always cooked his own food and he's he's a really amazing cook, just just putting that out there. But he, um, he still lives on his own and he lives in a community and he lives in his own house, um, and he's always, he does Tai Chi every day and he's he's pretty active. But, uh, he injured his foot and he's been falling down a couple of times. But he, he recognizes, because he's always been a kind of a systems guy, that he needs to address these things and he needs to be hyper vigilant, at least for a while. Well, he overcomes the injury to his. He snapped a tendon in his ankle, so his foot drops and you can, he's. I've seen other people that have had other problems where tendons don't connect anymore but other muscles take over for that and that you you become, you strengthen the other muscles so that it's not such a safety hazard for you. But being aware and knowing that you have to address this thing helps make it a safer process for healing.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely Well, you sound like an incredibly sweet daughter. The way you talk about your father is very touching and, yeah, you know, we want the best for them and and he sounds like he's willing to realize. Ok, I need to make challenges, especially things like falls. They're just, they're hard to ignore. Some of these little things that start getting glitchy can go well Nobody saw it. Or falls and setbacks like that. They do draw attention. So you know, that's why caring for the caregiver is important, because you're being this incredibly supportive daughter and having this whole new to-do list of how to help take care of your father as he changes, while you're running your own life and business and whatnot. So that's part of why the caring for the caregiver part comes in.
Speaker 3:Regarding your dad, can I show you one super fast thing that you could share with him around safety and movement safety, especially for someone with a dropped foot who's had a fall. I would love it, would you? Okay? So I'm going to move back a little bit. Tell me if this is going to work still and if the audio is still all right. This is something I call three steps to success. If the audio is still all right, this is something I call three steps to success and it's a fall reduction.
Speaker 1:It sounds like your father is mentally pretty functional.
Speaker 3:We're not dealing with, like memory loss. Thank God for that, because then the caregiving gets even harder when the person is dealing with dementia and stuff like that. So so three steps to success is a matter, especially when you're having lower body issues and neuropathy. Neuropathy or drop foot. You want to as you're sitting, you want to just start by just warming up a little bit. You can do it with me if you want. You sort of just warm up, make sure your feet, your ankles I'm not showing my ankles, but I'm warming up my ankles, I'm warming up my feet, I'm lifting my heels, you can sort of yawn, and the longer you've been sitting the longer you've been sitting, the more you want to make sure.
Speaker 3:Has my foot fallen asleep? Is my knee glitchy? You can sort of slowly lengthen one leg, slowly lengthen one leg and sort of see how much movement do I have in that foot. And so that's. Step number one is is warming up your whole body before you stand up. Step number two is you stand up, holding on to something still. So in this case, for example, the back of my legs is still touching the chair I was on. If I had a wall or if I needed a cane or a walker, something like that, I would grab that right now and stand up with stability on something. If it was the bed, a sofa, something you're still connected to, something that helps you stand all the way up to nice and tall your full height. Ask yourself am I dizzy or am I ready to walk? And then you start walking. Then you start walking. It's the last of.
Speaker 3:The third step is walking safely. You know, walk like a king, walk like a queen. You walk with a nice elegant calmness that sort of has all the like good posture, food groups sort of built in. You know, daddy, let's walk like a King. You know it's like oh, you know, you don't suck this in, move that back. All the like individual things that go into good posture can feel overwhelming. But if somebody just sort of walks regal and relaxed like a King, um, that can really help minimize falls a lot. Does that make sense? That that could be helpful?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh yeah, and he does some of those things, but he was a commander in the Navy, so just remind him of the posture of a commander.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yes, you can, even what was his. I mean not to make this all about this. Stuff is fun for me. Like to make any little improvement. Not to make this all about this stuff is fun for me. Like to make any little improvement, like if there's even a chance that part of this helps you, him, have a better experience, and if he can reduce even one fall and in the meanwhile you feel like, hey, I can do this to stay safer. It's like in the face of um declining, uh, feeling like you have less control over more and more things in your life, the feeling like, wow, I can do this for myself can build optimism and it can build a sense of empowerment. So I hope that's something little that you can share. Your dad, you know just the number three. Remember the number three things before you're walking. And what was his, even if you have a nickname for him, commander or whatever what was his rank in the military?
Speaker 2:He was a commander.
Speaker 3:Commander. All right, commander, I see you reminding him. You know, commander, blah blah blah, you know whatever his, you know boom, and get him feeling like that. It'll help with posture and, hopefully, mood. And also people as they're older can feel like they've lost track of who they used to be at these other phases of their life that they might've felt more excited about, and they don't feel seen as that still. So you see, if any of that I don't want to take us on a whole caregiving challenge but tangent but see if any of that is useful in your relationship with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate that. It actually is. It's very helpful, not just for me, but other people are out there. They're dealing with older parents and and kids, you know, with the sandwich generation, because people are living longer and you know the quality of life isn't always that great for people on the other end, they live longer but it's not as great of a life quality. So anything you can share that can help people feel more empowered in those stages of their lives, I think is is wonderful. And you know I totally expect my dad to live to be close to a hundred, if not over a hundred. He's just as like you. You do help people and how do you help them? I mean, is it like a group coaching? Is it one-on-one? Is it in live in person? Is it on the internet? How does all that look?
Speaker 3:It's. It's turning into something that's a combination of all those things. It's. It's something I'm calling at this point. I'm calling this concierge coaching, where I want to have a maximum number of 10 clients, but I want to have all the flexibility to be available to them in a very customized way so it can be functional fitness, bodywear, grieving, where we actually learn well, how do we reduce, how do we get what is skillful? Grieving, how do we get through a loss in a way that helps us feel more empowered and more at peace, and then the caring for the caregiver part. So it's any of those things that a person needs in the ratio that they need it. That ratio might change Suddenly. One thing becomes a bigger challenge. We put more attention into that and then in 2020, when everything went online, I started being able to do everything through Zoom and video chat, phone calls, voice messages. All those things can be really powerful. So we can also mix and match all of those tools depending on what suits somebody the best.
Speaker 3:And then I'm now what I call a multi-home nomad. I live part of the time in California, part of the time in New Mexico, and I love road trips, I love going to places, and I can also customize visits based on where that person is what they need. We could also make a personalized retreat. We could meet at a retreat center somewhere and say, okay, let's take three days, five days, seven days, and really dig deep.
Speaker 3:People go on these healing tours, but I'd like to help people make the exact thing they need. I could even go to someone's guest house and be available on their own property. When people make changes to their life and they're off on a vacation somewhere, it sometimes doesn't translate to their own home. But when we can make changes in their own home, new rituals, new exercise routines in their own home, it can tend to last a lot longer. So that's part of this concierge kind of way of doing things that I'm experimenting with is how to really follow what a person needs, as they need it and where they need it and how they find it easiest to communicate. So hopefully some of that makes sense. It's a little bit like because I'm not stuck how I serve somebody isn't stuck, and I'd like to experiment a lot with that.
Speaker 2:So let's look at who would be like your ideal client in terms of what. What might they be experiencing where they would say, hey, I got to get ahold of Margo and get hooked up with her?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, like one of my clients, that's been a really a lot of my clients are long term. They don't have to be, but a lot of the clients turn in to be really long term clients. And one client first contacted me because her mother in law, who she was extremely close with, and her sister passed away very, at a very similar time frame to each other, so she was going through a lot of grief. When we got together with the body, aware grieving, coaching first, which is, you know, avoiding those accidents and injuries or reducing the chances of those accidents and injuries that question what is skillful grieving and how do I personalize, how do I understand this loss I'm going through and which things feel most healing to me, how to experiment with that and help guide somebody as they learn. You know what's going to feel right to them. The other part of body where grieving is that next phase of wisdom, renewal and celebration. How do you know when you're coming out of like the hardest phase and now you're like, wow, things are different. You're coming out of like the hardest phase and now you're like, wow, things are different. And how do you maximize the wisdom and the gratitude and the like sort of postponed joy that you want in this next phase of your life. So she, she hired me to do all those things with her and then we also started doing fitness training on top of that and that combination has been really going well for a bunch of years. So, someone who has a lot of life changes, potentially with a lot of responsibilities, and they just want that extra support. That's not only in one category. Usually we have a lot of practitioners but they're very separate. We're going to go to a physical therapist for this, we're going to go to the gym for that, a therapist for this. We're not having one person know enough about everything that's happening in all those categories so that when something happens quickly, the advice is accurate because one person knows enough about everything that's going on and is in touch with, or even communication with, all the different practitioners that a person might be needing and having in their life. Like it's like an umbrella that makes sure that they're always covered.
Speaker 3:Um and and can I mention just one thing that happened really suddenly with her. That sort of got me thinking I was on the right track. So, as happens in life, you get these really big shocks that can come up sometimes and some losses, and her recent loss was pretty traumatic it was a week or so ago where she actually was helping discover that one of her best friends had passed away, was helping discover that one of her best friends had passed away. So not only had this long-term friend passed away, she was instrumental in the discovery that that had happened, so just a trauma level, you know, high, very high, and we'd already had our appointment scheduled that day. She was already in the best place. We could have been Like, okay, here's a fresh trauma. But I know who this person is. She's already mentioned them. I knew she was important, I knew what kind of losses had, what kind of healing had already worked for her in these previous losses. So, like that day that that happened, we were already right there with the self-care for that moment. And and then this concierge kind of mobility part I'm currently right.
Speaker 3:At the time this happened this this month, this past weeks, I was in, I'm in New Mexico, she's back in California and I was like, hey, do you want me to come to California to be at this memorial with you? Do you want me? Cause she's both in charge of running the memorial as a close friend and she's like a primary griever and she's like, yeah, I would. So I'm like, all right, let's go to California. I want to walk through this with you. I want to be with you during this before, during and after I can be at that event and make that event safe and effective and healing for you. And so it's kind of a long story, but that's an example of how one person got some benefit because the knowledge was already in place, the intimacy between us was already pretty well developed after a couple of years that hopefully this new trauma doesn't feel as scary and won't take as long to heal from. If that seems like it could be possible with that story, you know it does.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of talk about my dad again. My dad has a doctor like that. He's a concierge doctor and he is. My dad pays him a retainer so that he is always available, but the doctor knows everything about my dad's health and when something catastrophic happens, that doctor is like you need to go see this specialist, this specialist and that specialist and we're going to get y'all taken care of and and it's smooth. It's not like my dad's like trying to figure out who he needs to call and make an appointment. He's, he's already plugged in because this, this one individual, is like overseeing and managing it's. It's another reason why I know he's going to live so long, because he's got. He's got support and when you go through life, you will. There will always be little and big traumas that you go through and having somebody that's a concierge coach, it makes perfectly good sense to me.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm glad that your father has all that extra care with a concierge medical doctor, because that's how I got inspired by this one. Well, there's two things that are inspiring about this to me. So one is my brother is has been a. He left his medical practice with you know, some very, very esteemed hospitals where he was a partner and he's like that's just not enough. I can't. I have too many. I have too many patients. I can't give good quality care to 1200 or 1500 patients. So he started his own concierge medical practice many years ago now where he said I'm going to have a maximum of 300 patients but I'm going to know everything about them. I could come to the hospitals. I can be there at the minute's notice. I can not just deliver bad news or challenging news about a health problem, but I can sit there with the family and work with them about how they're going to make it through that as a community of, as the little tribe of the primary person who's ill. So he's anyhow. That really inspired me. So I'm sort of modeling it exactly after that, the feeling of that and and the other thing that was really inspiring to me, you know, when you mentioned the grieving I've had.
Speaker 3:You know, both my parents have passed away. I was in hospice. You know part of the hospice experience with both of them. I've had two people I care about a lot in my life die by suicide. My, my, my little sister died by suicide. A romantic partner I was with died of suicide and he died of suicide when my mom already had the cancer that was going to take her life eventually, and the week we were moving to go be caregivers for my mom, this person I was dating took their life. I mean, it can be a lot. It can be really, really, really a lot. It can be really, really, really a lot. So what I was picturing with those circumstances, especially with the hospice with my mother and father, is that it was so hard when they were sick and getting worse and worse and worse. It was so stressful. But then, as soon as the hospice care came in, it was this whole tribe of people who were amazing. Have you ever experienced the?
Speaker 2:hospice care.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:In this room.
Speaker 2:As a matter of fact, my father-in-law passed in this room and he went quickly, but hospice kicked in on Friday in terms of we're sending him home from the hospital and we had to like we changed this from my office to a bedroom and they showed up when they said they were going to show up and all the people came and after he passed, the people were there and just the whole process went from being like oh my god, what am I going to do now? To we got your back. These are just one step at a time.
Speaker 3:Yes, I mean, that's exactly my experience both times, when I was a primary caregiver and then the hospice people showed up and they made everything so much better and they were also taking care of everybody. They looked at the whole situation and said what is the person who's sick need? But what do all the people who are potentially losing this person need? They just made everything better. And so my curiosity and that's what I'm exploring in my own career now is what if the people came earlier? We were so miserable by the time hospice got called in, my mom had been sick for two years already, right. So it's like what if those people that were so helpful and they had so much experience with this all these topics what if they came earlier? And then what if they stayed later? Cause, like hospice often follows the patient, this primary person who's then going to pass away, and sometimes you know, there's aftercare, sometimes there's grief groups and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:But I thought what if the people, that hospice mentality, started earlier? So you know, maybe families aren't getting along. You know, maybe one person's been doing 90% of the caregiving and everybody else wants an opinion that's equal, and then the person's resentful. I mean there's complications that become highlighted when everybody's stressed at the same time. So what if somebody came earlier before it was quite as stressful and knew all the dynamics of who's who and what's each person's personality and what are they already doing to cooperate? Or what are the stressors already in those family relationships a lot of the time? And then what if those same people and that's what I'm trying to do right now, I'm trying to come in earlier, before things that are at a crescendo of suffering? Let's start, let's make it easier here, right? Why wait till here?
Speaker 2:I, I loved your, your whole idea that. I just think it's I, I can see the purpose I. It's just like yeah I appreciate that, that's onto something calling it.
Speaker 3:This whole concierge thing is kind of new, but I've been doing this actually for a while like one of my clients. Uh, I was originally a fitness trainer for their parent, who is already really ailing, and then I became a support to them as caring for the caregiver. But there's this honesty because it's like I already know the situation. I know the parent, I know the siblings, you know you can say anything you want. Sometimes as a child you're like, oh, but I shouldn't say this or I shouldn't feel, feel this, or I shouldn't want this. It's like the honesty to be like say, want, need anything. That's real and true. You, just because you're a daughter, doesn't mean you can't say or feel this or that. I know your person, I know your situation. Say anything you want to me. I've already got an opinion and an affection for the people involved. I know you care about them.
Speaker 3:So that's an example where someone prepaid a retainer of hours and we were going through it pretty slowly. The hours were being used relatively slowly, but now that parent has joined hospice, so now there's this big push and I already know the situation. So now they're like they're saying can I schedule, can I schedule, can I schedule. Can I schedule? And I'm like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, we can schedule how you want, when you want, where you want phone, email, voicemail in person yes, so it's just an interesting way to set it up. It's really based on the actual life flow that people go through when they go through harder times and easier times. So I've just based my coaching practice on what's actually true for people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what you're doing you're bang on. It's a service whose time has come, and I really think you're onto something. Thank you.
Speaker 3:It's. It's just, it's all based on what people really need and how their lives really work. And, um, sometimes people need more support during the really really hard emergency times, like with both of these clients right now. I'm like right there more, more time. And sometimes you need more support when the emergency is passed and now you can deal with some of the what just happened just what just happened, you know, and and sometimes things can be so stressful that you need to postpone, you know, you need to postpone certain ways of thinking. You need to postpone certain things you might do for yourself temporarily, but then, when you have a little bit of less emergency, that might be the time that someone says, oh, I finally have time to deal with the emotions of what happened.
Speaker 3:I was so busy with the getting through it of the emergency, or the logistics or the bureaucracy or the fighting or whatever was happening. I was so busy with all that. Now I want to spend more time with my coach. Now I want to spend more time getting the care that I need, um, just the psychological. I don't want to say I'm a therapist, I'm not but the psychology of like what just happened, how did it change me and and how is my life different now? Just these, the sort of innocence of these questions that are perfectly natural.
Speaker 2:And having a coach sitting in the wings helps helps you recognize that there's going to be a time for this down the road, so that you don't end up letting your body run run the show. And I have an experience. When my mom passed, I was super busy. I went to Arizona, I dealt with all the stuff and I came home and I got pneumonia. It, it, it. The process was a long process and then we all went down there and then then she was getting better and then she, then she wasn't Um and so there was a lot of emotions all the way along and had I had somebody who was standing in the background saying hey, I know this is, this is a lot going on and you're dealing with family stuff and family dynamics, but at the end you're going to reach a point where you're going to need somebody who can just like let you decompress, or pneumonia is is a lung thing and it's totally. Your lungs are involved in grieving.
Speaker 2:I ended up in the hospital. I was out for a month and a half. It was. It was a big deal and it was just because I didn't have anybody who could help me process what I was feeling about all of it, and relationships are complicated, no matter, no matter how they are. I mean you, you love somebody, you fight with them. It's like it's life and and having somebody in the wings that you can just say you're not connected to this in any way. No matter what happens, it's it's going to be okay To express whatever you're feeling. To me that's like priceless.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you, I'm sorry. Yeah, to have the caregiver's bodies. Caregivers are often pre-deceased by the person. That is so stressful and there's such a tendency to postpone one's own wellness care that at times the caregiver predeceases the person who was ailing and definitely there's these sort of breakdowns of health that can happen afterwards. And you know that's this sort of umbrella thing of like.
Speaker 3:I'm like, I'm like all jazz not jazz. But I'm like, when you're saying that, I'm like, okay, she's six weeks, she's in bed, she has pneumonia, I'm like we can work out in bed. I mean, I wouldn't be in bed with you but we'd be clients as old as 103. Who one of my clients, mildred, was 103. She was. I worked out with her two days a week from when she was 97. So when she was 103, she was bedridden and blind and we would work out like that. So I'm like, okay, she's in bed, but six weeks is a really long time to get deconditioned and it's a very. It takes only a day or two to start getting, you know, uncomfortable when you can't move around like that. So I would be doing and I have done my, you know my shoulder froze up actually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, use it or lose it. So yeah, I would. I've had workouts with you know, my clients have all had COVID and I mean eventually everybody so far has had COVID. But it's like none of that stops us. We just do different things in our workouts If someone needs to be on the sofa or someone needs to be reclining in their bed or someone needs to be sitting in a chair.
Speaker 3:I've had clients who were in a wheelchair. For six years we worked out in a wheelchair. So it's like sitting, standing, lying down, walking, high energy, low energy. Then they feel better and we're ready to do harder stuff. Great.
Speaker 3:But I think part of what has I'd have to ask them, and maybe I will. But I think part of what my clients really appreciate is that they're not as scared during those setbacks because they know we're always going to find something they can do safely, always. And that's the concierge part too. And my client who had she didn't have COVID for like four years and it finally caught up with her right. So we would do the workouts in a chair and I would just be watching what was going on and then, 30 minutes in, I'm like should we call it for today and maybe have the other half an hour tomorrow instead of a one hour session. We we, we end when the person's tired and they're showing signs that that's enough for the day, and then we add in another workout the next day. That's the right length of time for them. So that's sort of that customization of concierge stuff that I'm looking forward to offering, offering people. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I like that, yeah, Instead of feeling like you're I pay for an hour, I need the whole hour you can. You can have like a clump of time and you can just Pick off the the amounts that you need when you need them exactly yeah, just watching, it's all.
Speaker 3:That's the whole body, aware, living body, where, grieving, it's just that person's experience of the moment is going to tell us what. What we need next, what we need now, um, when to pull back, when to rest, when, when to just leave someone at a nap. You know, like in the middle of a session. If they end up getting soothed into a nap, we're like, all right, I'll, we'll add something in tomorrow or the next day, but this appears to be a perfect time for a nap because that's just, you know, um, part of part part. For a long time I didn't want to have this like super elite. It's a more elite thing. I need a flexible. I need a flexible schedule or I can't offer to change my locations or add somebody in the next day for half an hour. I need a flexible schedule. That's why I only want to have a maximum of a small number of people, and for a long time I wasn't wanting to do that because I thought, well, this healing information and some of these tools are so useful, I want to share it with more people. I'm like I didn't have all this wisdom just to share with a few people who can afford this kind of more elite kind of care that I'm offering, and so that's finally felt really good because now I have tons of free information for anybody who wants.
Speaker 3:I have the Body Aware Living podcast. I have the Body Aware Living Facebook page, youtube. I've got videos and advice and articles on my website. So I've got lots of I'm doing. I've done live events.
Speaker 3:I was interviewed by AARP recently for their family. Aarp has a family caregivers group on Facebook with 18,000 people in it, and I just was interviewed there for an hour about like what are these little one minute wonders? You know these little fast things that can help people, you know, take control of how they're feeling that moment? And so I've got a lot. I love having a lot of very, very free content for as many people as want and need it, because I didn't want to sort of hoard all my wisdom for just a few higher paying clients. I wanted to have that. I want the goodness and the value available, and so now I have that balance. I've got lots of and I will continue to put out lots and lots and lots of free content just to share anything that's useful and anything that could help someone's day, and then this kind of like sort of fancy new experiment about a few clients where I can go into lots and lots of depth, like you're talking about with your dad and his practitioners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love all all the things you've got going on there. It's just like so amazing. So how do people get in touch with you if they're interested in exploring the concierge service more or if they just want the free information?
Speaker 3:well, the the bodyawarelivingcom is the main website and, uh, you know margo at bodyawarelivingcom is an email address and people who want to have like a just a private little 20 20 minute conversation on phone or Zoom, they could write me an email at Margo.
Speaker 3:There's also a contact you know contact section on the Body Aware Living website. You know contact Margo and they can just write me a few words about what their goals and challenges are and I can get back. We can set up like a 20 to 30 minute, just a free way to connect and see if I can be of help to them, what they need right now. And then for all the free content, there's tons of free content on the Body Aware Living website. There's the book Body Aware Grieving, available at Amazon and through independent booksellers bookshoporg there's links to that on the website and social, but the book itself is low cost. But I can certainly customize any of that and that's a way to get a lot of the wisdom. And then, like I said, there's the YouTube, linkedin and Facebook that I'm always trying to share as much as I can with people, and this is a guest on being a guest on other people's websites and broadcasts.
Speaker 2:I guess, perfect. So what's the one thing that you hope the audience takes away from our conversation?
Speaker 3:I know we've gone like to so many places, but places, but the one thing I hope people get excited about is that that that they're they're the boss of their own body. It can not feel like that a lot. It can feel like, oh, the medical community is telling me this, or the magazines are telling me I'm supposed to be like that, or once you really get that, that you, this is your domain, and no one's going to know it as well as you do, and you can always, always, always do something that's going to help you feel better, more comfortable, more effective. You know how you're feeling and that's a. Our bodies are going to give us the most accurate information about what we want, need and who we are, and no one's going to know that better than ourselves. So that, hopefully, is an uplifting realization, and that's what I help people get better and better at, better and better at being themselves and using the information that they're getting effectively.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for joining me. You're very, very welcome, jill. Take good care, thank you.