Happy brain chemicals with Charlotte Ingham Ellery

PASSION: Harnessing our brain chemicals (think oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine and cortisol) to be our very best selves and thrive!
PURPOSE: Teaching everyone how to tap into these happy chemicals - including people in prison - for our wellbeing, emotional intelligence and to live our best lives. 

Charlotte Ingham Ellery runs her own business called Well Built Mind and she is a woman of many talents. She’s a mother, a yoga instructor, a wellbeing and psychological safety expert, and she teaches corporate wellbeing, emotional intelligence and psycho-social hazard management.  She’s amazing!

This conversation is one of the best professional development sessions you could have! Charlotte also works extensively doing PD teachers for their own wellbeing and also with students helping everyone understand their brain chemicals and thrive!

Warm thanks to:
Sponsor: Females Over Forty-five Fitness in Victoria Park
Sound Engineering: Damon Sutton
Music: William A Spence
... and all our generous and inspiring guests around the warm table this season!

Transcript

Sonia Nolan: 0:00

Welcome to My Warm Table. I'm Sonia Nolan and season two of this podcast about passion and purpose is brought to you by Females Over 45 Fitness or FOFF in Victoria Park. When you're in a sticky situation is your natural response, fight, flight or freeze? And do you know why you do this? My guests around the Warm Table today is Charlotte Ingham Ellery. She's a woman of many talents. She's a mother, a yoga instructor, a well being and psychological safety expert. And she runs her own business called Well Built Mind, which teaches corporate well being emotional intelligence and psychosocial hazard management. She's amazing. She was a teacher and a deputy principal, which then led her to explore neuro chemistry in her Master's of Educational Research, learning about how the brain and how we can harness our chemical responses, changed her trajectory and unlocked a new purpose in sharing this information to many different audiences, including to help people in prison. She's passionate about how understanding our brain chemicals can help us thrive and become our best selves. So today, we're going to learn about tapping into our serotonin and dopamine for a natural hit, which will improve our emotional intelligence, well being and help us form positive new habits. Welcome, Charlotte to My Warm Table.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 1:52

Thank you, Sonia. And as soon as you say My Warm Table, I immediately think oxytocin. Yeah, this chemical of connection of warmth and safety and this chemical that mammals release when we share food together. So it's so lovely that you honed in on that energy or that chemical, that instinct that we all have to connect and to tell stories and be heard.

Sonia Nolan: 2:16

Oh well, I think I've already found my favourite brain chemial then. It's oxytocin.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 2:20

Yeah, that's mine too.

Sonia Nolan: 2:22

So tell us about some of the other brain chemicals, we'll go straight into that. But then, of course, I want to hear all of your story. But while we're talking about brain chemicals, so oxytocin is one of them. What's- What are the others?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 2:35

Well, there's actually loads, but the four most important ones for well being that we focus on, oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, and cortisol.

Sonia Nolan: 2:46

And so what do each of those do?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 2:48

So lets start with the one that's not necessarily so great. So cortisol, yes, we need it to survive, yes, it's actually important to our health. But if our cortisol levels are too high, or if we have big peaks of cortisol, we go into this fight, flight freeze response, which has lots of physiological symptoms attached to it. So when we're feeling stressed, our heart rate goes up, our breathing changes, some of us get tension in our shoulders, and in our jaw, our digestive system changes and our blood kind of flows away from those internal organs, and starts going into the big muscle groups. So we can, you know, run away or we can fight the monster.

Sonia Nolan: 3:27

Ah. That's the fight - the fight hormone.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 3:29

The fight hormone. Yeah. So it's, it's not good to be digesting food, when we're in that state. And how we digest food is quite different when we're in that short term survival. As you can imagine, if we're just trying to survive today, or if we're just trying to survive the next five minutes, what's our body going to take from our food, it's going to take the short term survival things like sugar, like fat. If we want to digest for long term well being, we need to be in that parasympathetic nervous system. When our cortisol is low, we feel really calm, safe, we have that sense of gratitude and abundance, like there's nothing to worry about. And then we start digesting food, looking for protein, minerals, vitamins, things that are going to keep us long things that are going to keep us healthy in the long term, like the next kind of three months, our body is thinking about that type of survival. So it's interesting how the state that we're in when we eat the burger changes what nutrients we actually take out of the burger.

Sonia Nolan: 4:33

So don't eat a burger when you're angry.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 4:35

No. Or stressed. Yeah. And our cortisol actually does drop a little just by sitting down. So this idea that we just sit down and take a moment, take a few deep breaths and maybe practice gratitude. We get that shift, and then we're going to digest food much better in that state.

Sonia Nolan: 4:51

Oh that's so interesting. So coming back to the Warm Table if we actually sit around the Warm Table, and we take a moment to be grateful for what has happened in our day, that actually helps us digest better.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 5:02

Yes, yes.

Sonia Nolan: 5:03

That is amazing. Okay. All right. So that's cortisol.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 5:06

I'll talk a bit how it impacts personality, like we talked about fight and flight. So we all have fight and flight. And then underneath that we have freeze. But some people will lean more towards fight and some people lean more towards flight. So this one, I was learning about this when my son was two years old. And we were walking down a road, and it was a curved road with a big wall. And it was very quiet and there wasn't much room for pedestrians, and I was holding his little hand and we're walking along. And then all of a sudden, a car comes flying around the corner. So in that moment, my instinct is to go, hold my breath, freeze, and then try and get away, step back, and there was a wall. So I just froze against the wall. And my two year old son, his response to that situation was, he leaned forward, and he punched the car, as the car when flying past us.

Sonia Nolan: 6:05

My goodness.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 6:06

I looked down, I was like, what was that like, that was not learned behaviour, that was an instinct. And you can see - I mean he's 13 now and he's a fantastic kid, but his instinct when there's threat or conflict is to move towards it with assertive/aggressive style behaviours. So it really - it's really interesting when we do corporate leadership skills, because if a leader has more of this fight response, they're going to go in guns blazing. And they often you know, they might be really comfortable raising their voice and using dominant body language and their instinct is to be powerful in that situation where that's not necessarily ideal, but then other people have the flight response so they're going to try and get away from conflict and not engage in difficult conversations and it can cause different types of problems.

Sonia Nolan: 6:54

It's so interesting thats sort of what it unlocks in that moment of experience because you just made me remember a time when we just moved into this house and it's an upstairs and the downstairs and put the alarm on. The alarm went off in the middle of the night downstairs. And and we'd been, backstory, we'd been renovating, we were changing the windows and the fly wires we've gone from the windows and the windows were actually open to let the fresh air in. And we didn't know at the time that a cat had actually wandered through, the neighbor's cat, wandered through the window gone down and set the alarm off downstairs, now we didn't know this - immediate thing is oh my gosh, someone's breaking into the house. And I just leaped out of bed edge grabbed I don't even know what I grabbed next to- next to my bed, something to hit someone with. Turned on all the lights. And I went marching down the stairs, completely in this mode of I was gonna fight, I was gonna fight, and my husband, Paul was just saying, get back to bed, sit and stop turning all the lights on. So my instinct was fight. And I think as a mama bear, you know, that's the other instinct that I would also have if anyone you know, sort of, you know, comes and sort of, there's danger to your children or what you assume is. So I'm the fight. That's me. How interesting. Whereas my husband's not. Well, not like me anyway. Thank God, thank goodness, there's somebody to actually calm the cortisol.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 8:28

Yeah. Because there's some interesting research around the connection with gender and conflict resolution styles. And on average, men usually are more aggressive. But by that we mean, if you randomly took a man and a woman out of the population, and if you said the man is more aggressive than the woman, you don't know anything about them. 70% of the time, you'd be correct. Right, but so 30% of time you wouldn't. So there is this, there's definitely a huge overlap. But there's also the mama bear thing is, I didn't think I was aggressive until I became a mother. And then my cortisol would start rising if I felt my kids were being bullied or in danger, and it was right there with like, something switched on.

Sonia Nolan: 9:11

Well, I wonder whether there's also another cultural overlay there, you know feisty Italian sitting over here at the Warm Table with you. So I wonder whether there's you know, there's a cultural element.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 9:20

Polite British person.

Sonia Nolan: 9:24

Maybe there's a cultural part of that too.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 9:27

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. And what level of assertiveness is appropriate in restaurants, in the workplace, in schools, changes in different communities and in different countries.

Sonia Nolan: 9:37

Yes of course. It does. Yeah. Well, look, I'm pleased to say that I don't go into fight mode often. But you know, if a cat is going to set off my alarm in the middle of the night, and I think it's a burglar, look out. So alright, so that's cortisol and trying to actually understand whether we're a fight or a flight is a really important self learning.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 9:59

Yes. and understanding that we all have freeze. So there was one amazing corporate leader I was working with, right at the top of one of the towers in CBD in Perth. And I was watching her work, and I was coaching and she was sitting at her laptop, and she would work like this she'd go. *Inhale, typing, exhaling.* She was actually holding her breath throughout the day. So this sense of urgency that she perceived in the completion of her tasks was triggering this stress response, and to her it was coming out as freeze. So if you've ever had the feeling of holding your breath, or feeling like you can't speak, but you want to express something, but you can't, that's your limbic system, essentially trying to keep you safe in that moment. And if you survive that stress, then your limbic system goes great, it worked. So then it'll rewire that you'll do it again. So this experience a lot of women have, a lot of people have a feeling they can't speak. That's actually a survival instinct that we have instinctively, but then also can be reinforced by our upbringing.

Sonia Nolan: 11:10

Something I did hear fairly recently. And I'd love you to unpick it for me, Charlotte, is that so we've got fight and flight. And that's pretty much all I used to hear about fight/flight, fight or flight. You know, we didn't hear, well I didn't hear growing up a lot about the freeze, which we've just explained. But is there a link between freeze and depression or anxiety or in our modern day, like fight or flight was really, really helpful for us when we were running away from danger in the, you know, the caveman days and in evolutionary times, but and freeze was obviously also really important. But how does it manifest today, when we're not running away from that sort of danger?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 11:55

Yes, really good question. Because so many of us are living with a chronically raised cortisol level. So we can think of cortisol like a thermometer, and it going from one to 10. And ideally, you know, right now, I would hope that our cortisol levels are maybe between three and five, let's say so we're alert and we're awake. But we're not, hopefully we don't have tension in our shoulders. We're trying to breathe in a calm way, our heart rate should be pretty good. And that's a fairly healthy state to be in. Now, if we were constantly at say, a five or a six, possibly going into freeze and not realising it, because it's quite a hidden one. Like it's obvious when someone's going into fight, freeze - people don't- people don't see it. So yes, a lot of people are living in a chronic state of freeze. And yes, that is linked to depression, because it's going to impact other chemicals like dopamine, our desire to move and move towards goals and serotonin, feelings of accomplishment and empowerment. So yes, that's why the foundational skill in the Well Built Mind framework is becoming self aware of our cortisol levels first, so we can get those stress levels down, we can come out of that sympathetic nervous system when we need to, and then the other chemicals can start to build back up again.

Sonia Nolan: 13:12

And do their magic.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 13:13

Yes. And do their magic and that sense of "what is life to the full?" What is that? What does it mean to thrive and to flourish? Like, what's our brain chemistry doing when we're in that state? We can't, we can't access that if we're constantly stressed out.

Sonia Nolan: 13:28

And that's something that you're really specialising in, isn't it? Charlotte, is that, you know, we talk a lot in society about depression. And we do know about cortisol, we've heard about cortisol. But you know, you're all about hacking into the happy chemicals. And actually, you know, harnessing all the chemicals that are there and that are going to be working for us. And you're making them work harder for us in the right way. So that we are happier, and we're more emotionally intelligent. So tell me about that.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 13:56

Yes, a lot of research has been done on anxiety and depression and mental health conditions. And you know, genuinely thank god for those people who have done that, because that's such a rich body of knowledge. My curiosity, and my question, though, has always been what about the people who are absolutely thriving? What about the people who haven't necessarily had easy lives, but yet, they're able to be peaceful, be resilient, be empowered, be assertive, and create the sense of joy and wonder around them? And just be a blessing to the people in their lives? What's going on in their brains? What's their brain chemistry doing? What thinking patterns do they have? What habits do they have? So my, the focus of my curiosity has always been on, we kind of know what depression is. What's the opposite of depression? We kind of know what anxiety is, what's the opposite of that? And if we start sending our gaze there as well, then what do we discover?

Sonia Nolan: 14:51

And that's so fantastic, because I know I've read so many articles about people who've lived for more than 100 years, and they always look at what's their diet. What are they eating and you know, it's often fish and lots of good protein and omega three, you know that's- they're rich in that in their diet. So we talk and we hear a lot about people who've lived a long life and are in good health at the end of their life and they've got relationships connections and they eat fish, right? That's all we know, but I love your take on it, this idea of well, how do we tap into the knowledge of thriving?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 15:27

Yes, yeah. And what are people doing? I totally understand that. So you meet some people, and they're so motivated, they're so passionate, they're so visionary and able to send themselves in good directions. And I'm just going what's going on in their dopamine system, that they're able to maintain that level of energy and focus. And it's quite fascinating. So dopamine is all about having clear goals, moving towards our goals, feeling a sense of brightness, feeling alive, feeling like we love what we're doing. And the opposite, of course of that is we feel flat, sluggish, can't be bothered. We just want to like lie down, posture goes really bad. And are thinking along the lines of oh, this is boring. Why do I have to do this, what's the point? And and I just really hate that. If I have to clean the house, doing it with low dopamine, it sucks. so what can we do then? So for example, I, you know, kids have gone to school, I've got the day off work. And my job is to clean the house. And let's say the house is trashed, right? So every rooms a mess.

Sonia Nolan: 16:36

I think we can all relate to that.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 16:38

And I look at the house and go, "Oh, my gosh, like do I have to? And what's the point, they're just going to come home and mess it up again anyway," and so I'm trying to do this work, but it's-

Sonia Nolan: 16:47

Speaking my language, go on.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 16:49

So I don't want to do that. So okay, so what can I do to get my dopamine levels up so that I can do this task that's required with a sense of joy and fun and motivation? So there's a few things I can do. One is to have a drink of water, really hard to make dopamine when we're dehydrated. Hopefully, I've had a good night's sleep. But you can still get some dopamine going tegardless, I'm going to make sure I've eaten something healthy, something that has tyrosine in it, so maybe a banana to get my tyrosine levels up. And then I'm going to go for a walk. A fast paced, straight back, marching walk clear goal in the future, so maybe a tree that's 200 metres away, and I'm going to walk briskly in a straight line towards that tree. And as I'm walking, I'm just gonna start visualising my goal being completed. So how great is the kitchen gonna look and also I'm going to break it down. Our dopamine won't release, if the task feels overwhelming. Cleaning the whole house, it's almost too much.

Sonia Nolan: 17:46

Too big, too big.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 17:48

To imagine. So go right, kitchen. I'm gonna imagine clean, sparkly kitchen, everything in the right place its gonna be great. So I'm marching. Dopamine is picking up and visualising my goal, I might put positive music on, singing and dancing. And then I get home room, I can see my goal and I'm ready to go, my postures great, I'm washing the dishes and putting them away. I'm opening the cupboard. And then after however long my goal is achieved. At that point, I'm going to pause. I'm going to look at my glorious, fabulous, sparkling clean kitchen. And I'm gonna go yes.

Sonia Nolan: 18:21

Gonna celebrate.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 18:22

I'm gonna celebrate, and in that moment, my serotonin levels are going to come up. So that feeling of accomplishment and pride. And then we're going to take a break, alright, have a rest. We can't have high dopamine levels all day. They will naturally undulate and about 90 minute waves. So I'm gonna let the dopamine come down I might close my eyes, put my five minute timer, focus on my breathing, have a cup of tea, right do something completely different. And then I'm going to think about how awesome it was achieving that last task and I'm gonna go to the next thing on my to do list which might be the laundry, and I'm going to repeat the same process.

Sonia Nolan: 18:57

Oh, so you'll go for a walk again?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 18:58

I would probably do some physical activity, I probably do go for three short walks a day. Yeah, so if I can go for a walk again. Yes. I mean if you're at work, how will your boss feel if you go for a walk every 90 minutes, to be honest I do at work because their water fountain is a good 100 metres away, so I get up every hour walk to the water fountain. The fact that I go to the water fountain every hour means I need also need to go the toilet which is 50 metres in other direction. So I do manage to incorporate physical activity even if I'm at work. One of the worst things we can do for our dopamine levels is to sit hour after hour really do not want to be sitting still for, I say an hour for me personally but the wave they say can go up to 90 minutes. So making sure you're getting up and walking around at least every 90 minutes.

Sonia Nolan: 19:46

So dopamine is the motivated focused chemical for our brain. It's getting a bad rap lately because I'm hearing so much about you know dopamine hits and dopamine highs and you know the constant attraction and stimulation that's caused by devices and young people wanting a dopamine hit and the whole mess. You know, that's the that's where I'm hearing the word dopamine. So can you help me understand that?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 20:15

Yeah. Okay. So, computer game designers were probably on the forefront of understanding dopamine about 10 years ago, they had more knowledge than just about everybody else. And they've designed these games so that, I'll say the kids, the kids get a dopamine hit about every six seconds. And also with dopamine, it's actually really important that you don't succeed every single time, there needs to be some error. So if you're certain you're going to get the reward you actually have less dopamine, its when you're not sure if you're gonna- You need the challenge so they make

Sonia Nolan: 20:49

You need the challenge. these, you know, how they're levelled at different stages. So they're getting a good amount of dopamine, but still challenging. That's the perfect combo. Now, what happens is that the real world isn't going to give us dopamine hits every six seconds. So when they come off the computer game, they're going to have this dopamine crash, and the real world is going to seem boring, and dull, we actually, the colour receptors in our eyes don't work as well when our dopamine is low. So the world actually looks grayer. We just know other goal seems motivating after somebody has been having these rapid hits of dopamine. So it is, you can think of it, you think of it like a wave in a wave pool. So ideally the pool is contained. And then there's waves of dopamine flowing up and down, we're going to have highs and lows that's inevitable throughout the day. But we want the baseline amount of dopamine to be fairly constant. What happens with a computer game, they're playing the computer game and the dopamine is going up and up and up. And these massive waves are coming through. And it's like the waves splashing out over the sides of the pool. So the baseline levels drop. And that's when people start to feel depressed or angry or their brain chemistry isn't balanced anymore. So what to do? Yeah, the big question?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 22:11

Yeah, well, there's a few things. One is, of course, limiting the amount of time that our kids play computer games, and another one is having dopamine fasts. So this idea that perhaps in the school holidays, you say right, we're going to have a dopamine fast for three days, we're going to do activities that don't involve screens, or eating fast food, or other high dopamine activity. So we kind of let those dopamine levels go back down, essentially allowing ourselves to feel bored, right?

Sonia Nolan: 22:40

It's the magic word.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 22:41

The magic word. As this is kind of what meditation does, as well, it just let the dopamine levels go back down. And so after you've been meditating for a while, or after you've been in, you know, without screens for a couple of days, you see a little ant walking across the grass, and you're like, "oh, my gosh, that's so interesting." And you follow it and you spend 10 minutes just watching this one little ant, if you had been playing computer games, that wouldn't seem interesting anymore. That would seem...

Sonia Nolan: 23:10

You wouldn't have seen it.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 23:11

You would have seen it. Yeah. So it's understanding and helping kids to understand how to rejuvenate and replenish their dopamine levels. And I mean, all addiction is essentially a narrowing of what brings us joy. So trying to have these conversations going, okay, you can have computer games, but what are all the other things in your life that bring you joy? What are all the other things that you're excited about? And you're looking forward to, and if those things are no longer bringing you joy, okay, we have a problem that we need to talk about.

Sonia Nolan: 23:43

And you've just reassured me Charlotte because I know when my kids were much younger, and we'd have school holidays, and I would always declare that there'd be a day of school holidays, which was a technology free day, and I'd give them warnings saying like Wednesday of the first week is going to be technology free day. And so you know, they would work up to it. They know they'd know that that was that was going to happen. And that meant no television. No, no devices of any description, no games, video games, nothing. And I would also ask them at the beginning of the school holidays to write a list of all the things they love to do and would like to do, friends they wanted to see, if there was a movie they wanted to go and watch or you know, whatever it was that they wanted to do, so they had this big long list so that every time they said, "I'm bored or I've got nothing to do" or whatever I'd say go back to your list, what else was on there that you know that did bring you joy? I didn't use those words but that's what I meant. So yeah, fantastic. It's a good approach

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 24:42

Yes. Love it, love the list. Whenever you think lists, think dopamine because that's why we write lists. So my kids are away at the moment camping or hiking for four days. And so I said you know, their off with their dad, and I said "so don't take your phone" and my son said, "oh but I'm on a snap streak."

Sonia Nolan: 24:59

Oh gosh yeah the snap streak.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 25:01

And we're up to like 98 days, he goes "I can't break my snap streak." And I was like "What is a snap streak?" And he kind of explained you send a photo to other person every day and we haven't...And I was like, "well, that's really lovely from an oxytocin perspective that you have this continuous connection with another person. However, the danger there is that they can never break free." So I said, "Okay, you need to explain to your friends, you're going away having a dopamine fast, you're going to break the snap streak. But you can communicate that you still want to be friends with this kid. And you can pick it back up again when you get back if you want to." So it's helping them be conscious of the impact that the technologies are having. And you mentioned drugs as well.

Sonia Nolan: 25:44

Yes, because that's again, the headlines are all about meth and dopamine hits and how your dopamine can't ever be the same again, I don't understand that. Help me understand.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 25:55

Okay so meth uses both dopamine and serotonin receptors in our brain. And essentially, whenever our brain starts releasing huge amounts of dopamine or serotonin, say from natural ways, it then kind of goes, "Oh, here's quite a lot of let's say, serotonin. Let's dial back serotonin production so we can come back to equilibrium."

Sonia Nolan: 26:17

Just quickly jumping in there. Serotonin is all about confidence and empowerment.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 26:21

Yes. So when serotonin levels are high, we feel capable, and like a healthy pride. When our serotonin levels are down we have low self esteem, we don't like who we are, we feel shaky, those types of things. So if somebody and of course, this is what I teach in the prisons, if somebody has used, let's say, meth, for a period of time become addicted to it, they'll be producing almost no serotonin naturally. So often, they will come into prison, and they have this awful kind of down as they come off it, and then they kind of plateau out, but they plateau at a really, really low level. So their self esteem feels awful. They don't like who they are, they feel deeply ashamed about multiple aspects of their life. And they're essentially suffering, like low serotonin feels awful. So about 80% of our serotonin receptors in our guts. And when we don't have enough serotonin in our guts, we feel shaky, we feel this, it's just a really - there's feelings of shame and embarrassment and just super low self esteem, right? Often connected to anxiety as well. So of course, they don't like feeling like that, none of us like feeling like that. And they know they've got it hardwired into their brain, the way you stop feeling like that is to take the drug again. But what I'm saying to them is, it will pass. So with no intervention, their serotonin levels will pick back up in about five years.

Sonia Nolan: 27:54

Five years.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 27:55

Five years. But there are multiple things that we can all do, that will increase our serotonin levels. So for example, exercise increases serotonin levels, particularly strength building exercises. Again, drinking water helps us to make this - its a really interesting chemical, all serotonin is, is melatonin, and tryptophan, right? So it's just two molecules. And they come together in our pineal gland. And then we wake up in the morning, and the back of our eyeballs, right, the light hits the back of our eyeballs. Then there's a superhighway from the back of our eyeballs to our pineal gland. And it starts making this chemical serotonin that gives us all these feelings, right. And if we go outside in the morning and get some natural light, it assists in that process. If we go outside in the morning, and stretch, make ourselves big, take up more of an alpha posture as opposed to like a prey posture, we get more serotonin levels. If we exercise, right, there's all these things that we can do that are going to assist in more of that synthesis of the tryptophan in the melatonin. So we go through all these strategies, and also thinking there's this superhighway from our thinking centre, which is over on the left of our brain to our pineal gland. And if we say things like, for example, as I was walking here this morning, Sonia, if I was saying to myself, "Oh my gosh, this, I'm so worried this is going to be terrible. Like, I'll probably say something stupid, and the listeners will probably think I'm an idiot. And Sonia, she's just, you know, she's just so amazing. She's gonna think I'm stupid." Right? If I was thinking those thoughts, you can imagine what my pineal gland is going to do to serotonin production. It's gonna go boop, boop, boop, go down. So as I'm walking in to a place like today, or when I'm training or maybe public speaking, I try and think thoughts like, "Charlotte, you're ready for this. You're prepared. You know what you're talking about. Sonia is going to be lovely. And the people listening are probably going to learn something really helpful. It's going to help them in their life." Right. So when I think those thoughts, my serotonin goes, "Ah, okay."

Sonia Nolan: 30:03

It's gonna be okay.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 30:04

It's gonna be okay and it comes back up. And then I can come into a space with this sense of clarity and a sense, like a gentle confidence that it will be okay. And I don't have this kind of anxious cloud surrounding me that's going to kind of mask what I'm trying to say. So all of us can do things to improve serotonin levels. The posture one's really interesting. So this is Jordan Peterson's research and he talks about lobsters. So lobsters, have serotonin. So some lobsters their life plan, they go into a little hole, and they make their nippers really small and put their nippers in front of them. And they try and hide and they just kind of like grab little tiny bits of floating food as it floats past their little hidey hole. And then the higher serotonin lobsters, their life plan, is they spread out, they make themselves really big. They put their nippers up high, and they walk around the ocean floor, like they own the place. And nothing eats them because they look so big and scary, right? And so they've actually given serotonin to low serotonin lobsters. And guess what they do?

Sonia Nolan: 31:08

They become the big ones.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 31:09

They come out and put their nippers up high.

Sonia Nolan: 31:12

There you go. Who knew? Lobsters.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 31:14

So this is probably why I love yoga, because a warrior pose, make yourself big and take up space. And open chest, shoulders back, chin up, right? It's like our body listens to our brain, but our brain also listens to our body. So when we improve our posture, our serotonin levels go up, and only takes about two minutes for this effect to happen. So cortisol levels come down. serotonin levels go up with good posture. And likewise, imagine we're sitting at a bus stop on our phone, we make ourselves hunched and really small, within two minutes, our serotonin levels start to come down. So postures a quite important one.

Sonia Nolan: 31:49

That's huge. It's interesting, because I know I

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 31:49

You know, often before if I'm doing worked with a leader years ago, who would do the superhero pose in the lift. Before she went into a big meeting, she'd sort of, you know, find a quiet space or if she was in the elevator alone she'd be just doing these superpowers, you know, superhero poses just to an obviously to build that serotonin and that confidence, going into a big meeting. a keynote, I'll go into a toilet and close the door. I'll stand up, put my hands up in the air. And then I'll start saying things to myself like"Charlotte, you're amazing. You're going to nail this?"

Sonia Nolan: 32:25

Do you say this out loud?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 32:26

Well, depending on the security of the toilet, right? You're a confident, intelligent woman. Right. And I try and really own that, put my agency behind it, so that I can come out without feeling anxious.

Sonia Nolan: 32:39

Fantastic. You do the big lobster.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 32:41

I become the big lobster. Yeah.

Sonia Nolan: 32:43

So we've talked about oxytocin. We've talked about serotonin and how we can actually increase that. We've talked about dopamine and... dopamine. Yes, I said that right. Dopamine, and we talked about cortisol. So they're the four main brain chemicals that we can harness. And you've, you've given us some ideas about how we can harness them for good. And I'd like to pick up on that a little bit later again. But I want to go back to you, Charlotte, and your curiosity and how it's sort of unlocked over the years. And obviously, you studied the masters of educational research in neuro chemistry. But that wasn't the first time you started thinking about brain chemicals, was it?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 33:25

Yeah. I had a experience Sonia when I was 12. That was kind of traumatic, there was a girl I knew who was 18 years old. And to me, she was so cool, right? She was a drum player. She was beautiful. She had this long

Sonia Nolan: 33:41

Please, I would love to hear. black hair, and I just used to look up to him think she was awesome. And she disappeared. And we found out a couple of weeks later that she had actually taken her own life. And I had never, as a 12 year old come across that as a concept. So it was really troubling. I was like, "how on earth do somebody not want to be alive?" Like I just didn't understand

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 34:06

Ive been telling, teaching this it. And it was a Sunday afternoon that we all found out. So we met in the church, it wasn't a funeral, it was just kind of like a meeting where everyone had found out and I went up to the minister and I said, "Why did she do this?" And the minister looked at me and said "she had a chemical stuff. I started teaching it to kids in school when my kids were imbalance in her brain." And I just remember looking into her eyes and thinking, "What on earth is that? Like, what are these chemicals and how can they be so powerful?" And just a million questions came up for me like, "do I have these chemicals? Does my mum have these chemicals like, what's going on here? And how can they be that powerful that they could at school. So just go and say,"Hey, can I do a presentation on lead somebody to think those thoughts and then decide they don't actually even want to be here?" So I kind of had to shelve it really, because nobody really had any of those answers at that point. But then, when I was doing my masters of education about 20 years later, and I started, I actually this" started in kindy. Right, so my son has been using, he started looking at kids with ADHD and their brain chemistry, and their dopamine and different chemicals and kind of went "Hang on a second. These are those brain chemicals. And yes, we all have them. And yes, they have a profound impact on our thinking and our behaviours and how we live our life. And yeah, things can go really wrong. But also things can be really amazing in terms of brain chemistry. And what about those people that are living life to the full? What does that even mean?" That quote, "I've come that you can have life to the full?" What is that? So how, what happens if we start exploring people who seem to be able to live life to the full? What's going on in their thinking and their behaviours and their brain chemistry? What can we learn from them? Can we replicate that somewhat in our own life? What's the opposite of depression? What's the opposite of anxiety? And what does it mean to be deeply in love with life and creation? And how can we hack into these brain chemicals, map them out, and use that knowledge to help us be at uses the phrase "serotonin junkie." If somebody is really our natural best for ourselves, for our loved ones, for our competitive and hates losing, he's like "you're a serotonin friends, for our family? So that was where it started for me. And junkie." Anyway. So my daughter in year one, pretty good at can I tell you a story about my daughter, actually. swimming, she passed stage four swimming lesson.

Sonia Nolan: 36:59

Oh, very impressive. Very impressive.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 37:01

Year two, goes for Stage Five, fails. No worries. Year three goes for Stage Five, fails. No worries. Year four goes for Stage Five, fails. I'm like, okay. Year five. I enrolled, you know how they do it for two weeks and you go every day. The back swim. Yes, so I'll go and speak to the teacher and I'll say, "Look, just letting know she's failed this now, three times, like just wondering, is there anything I can do to help her pass?" And the swimming teacher said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. We're actually only supposed to fail them three times. And then on the third time, they actually automatically pass." So I was kind of like...

Sonia Nolan: 37:40

That's interesting.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 37:41

That's weird. Like, the teacher in me was not super impressed. But anyway, I was like, okay, but still tell me what she needs to do because I want her to learn the skill. So the swimming teacher said, "get her to sit on a chair and get her feet like this, and practice the frog kick, and go around like this and watch these videos of other people doing it." And I was like, okay, so every night, my daughter would come home from school, and I'd sit her on the chair, and I'd hold her feet and we'd practice a frog kick, and I'd be saying to her, "you're doing really well, I think you're gonna get it this time," right? And I know she's gonna get it because she's automatically gonna get it. But I didn't want to tell her that I wanted her to feel a sense of achievement. And I want her to be motivated to learn the skills. So we're practising, practising, practising. And then the Thursday she does the test, and then it's Friday morning, and I take her into school. And I'm about to run off to the prison actually, to work. So I'm about to drop her off. But I thought I'll just come into the classroom and I'll just have a look at the certificate because I know I'll get serotonin from that.

Sonia Nolan: 38:35

Seratonin junkie.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 38:36

Yeah! Yeah it's really tempting to get it from kids achievements but anyway. So the kids are milling about, and there's this stool at the front of the classroom and all the swimming certificates are sitting on the stool ready to be handed out. So, you know, Lily, her friend has passed stage seven, and Billy has passed stage 10 And someone else's pass stage nine and I'm like, you know, great, going through, and then she's standing next to me. And we get to the very last certificate. And it says Dani Ellery, stage five, failed. And she looks at me and I look at her and I just feel like this led weight in my guts. And she says to me, "mummy, my serotonin is dropping." And I said, "I know love, I can feel it." And everything in me Sonia just wanted to pick her up and take her home and sit on the couch and eat chocolate muffins and watch movies right, oxytocin, I just...

Sonia Nolan: 39:37

Look that's my natural default.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 39:40

Yeah and that's- and that is how we heal from dropping serotonin. Oxytocin is the healer, right

Sonia Nolan: 39:45

And chocolate. That's a brain chemical too, right?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 39:48

Yeah. But I was going okay. I think she can actually handle this. I was looking at her going, she's got other competencies, and she's got a good knowledge of her own brain chemistry and also I'm supposed to be going to work. So I looked at her and I said, "Okay, love, you're gonna have a low serotonin day today. But you've still got dopamine, and you've still got oxytocin." And I said, "How are you gonna get your oxytocin today." And she said, "I'm gonna go tell my teacher, Mrs. Blake, and I think Mrs. Blake will give me a hug."

Sonia Nolan: 40:19

Oh, beautiful, Mrs. Blake.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 40:21

Yeah. And then she said, I'm going to play with my best friend Lily at recess. Yep, I say good. I said,"alright, you still got dopamine, how you gonna get your dopamine today?" And she said,"I'm really looking forward to reading my book in silent reading. And there's a science experiment that we're doing after lunch. I'm really curious as to what's going to happen in the science experiment."

Sonia Nolan: 40:41

Excellent.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 40:42

And I said, right. And I turned, and I walked away. And I left her to deal with that feeling of low serotonin. But knowing that she knew what it was. And I share this story because she didn't in that moment, when her, you know, her guts and my guts were dropping down, she didn't say"I'm a loser. I'm an idiot. I'm useless. I'm no good." She said,"My serotonin is dropping." Right.

Sonia Nolan: 41:11

Charlotte, I want to give you a certificate for motherhood here. This is just incredible learning. Like, this is amazing. This connection that you're helping your children and others make with, "Yes, I'm feeling I'm feeling like a loser. But I'm not going to name it that I'm going to name it serotonin because I don't feel confident. I've lost confidence. But gosh, I've got all these other chemicals that I can activate." Amazing, I'm learning so much. I love this.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 41:37

Yeah, it certainly helped me understand myself a whole lot more and be a lot more compassionate, I think as well. So when, when we see other people, maybe ego tripping, you're like, oh they're just trying to get serotonin, it's like, we all need serotonin. It's just- for bullying, for example, really, all bullying is, it's someone overly dependent on being dominant to get serotonin. It's like, we all need serotonin, but a bully has lost touch with all the other ways we can get it. So like healthy pride, or being in the sunlight, or exercising, or all these other things, and they've become overly dependent on that one way. So it's definitely helped me be more compassionate to other people, when I think they're doing things that I think are wrong or whatever, but also myself, my mistakes, it's like, oh, my gosh, my cortisol was just through the roof, right then. Or jeez, my oxytocin was low, or whatever was going on. Having that map, helps me kind of navigate myself, and then also, hopefully, is helping me to parent, helping my kids to be self aware.

Sonia Nolan: 42:47

Charlotte, tell me about your work in the prisons, because I'm assuming you're working with people who don't understand their brain chemistry, and have potentially channelled some of those chemicals for less positive pursuits. So what sort of things do you teach them? And why - why prisons? What led you there?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 43:14

I don't know why I ended up teaching - I probably needed a job. I've been there 10 years absolutely love it and I just kind of can't leave now. So at the moment, I'm in women's pre release, meaning that its... the people that come to the prison, now generally have done fairly well in the other prisons and have showed some kind of commitment to wanting to improve, but I have worked in maximum security, and I've worked in men's prisons, teaching anger management.

Sonia Nolan: 43:41

Well tell us a bit about that.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 43:43

Well, anger management is mostly self awareness around cortisol. So understanding those early warning signs that we mentioned earlier, so heart rate breathing tension, some people get flushed red, some people get goosebumps. So just helping them to become aware that they're going into this altered state, and helping them to have skills and strategies to pull back from that. Because as we move from that kind of limbic system, which is that instant, more survival, immediate gratification, space, as our cortisol comes up, we lose contact with prefrontal cortex. So our prefrontal cortex is pretty amazing because it can think not just about my experience, so right now, I'm Charlotte, and I'm here in this body, and I'm kind of looking out at the room. But because of my prefrontal cortex, I can see you and I can see your facial expressions and your body language. And I have a sense of what this experience might be like for you, Sonia. And so because of that, I can act in certain ways that probably will bring you joy. And when we connected your joy actually brings me joy. So being kind to us actually great for me, and we're in this really positive loop of connection where we're going to act in the best interests of the team. And then the other thing that's really fascinating if you think, you know, back before civilization, so there's a group of blokes and they're out hunting. And this is they think why humans have done so well, one of the reasons why we did so well compared to other animals. So imagine, say, there's eight blokes, and they've spread out. And that's some big, hairy, mammoth type of thing in the middle, and one guy is over there behind a rock, and one guy's over there behind a tree and one guy is hiding, and this guy's got a rock to throw, and this guy's got a spear, right. And they're not just assessing the situation from their own perspective, they actually learn how to assess the situation from their teammates perspective. And they learned how to all work together in a team. So that was quite possibly the beginnings of empathy, and seeing situations from other people's perspective, which is really advanced and tricky to do. So when we're in our prefrontal cortex, we're able to do that. So of course, our actions are going to be in the best interest of the group, as opposed to just selfish actions. Now, as cortisol level comes up, we lose access to our prefrontal cortex. And all the blood and electricity is coming down the back into those more survival parts of the brain and our survival brain doesn't care about our social reputation. Our survival brain doesn't care about the future, it can't even see the future.

Sonia Nolan: 46:18

It's in the present moment.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 46:19

It's in the present moment. And when it's really active, it can only see about five seconds into the future. So if you've ever like yelled something at a loved one, and later you go, "oh, my gosh, like, Why did I say that?" It's this part of your brain that was just in this attack, defend state. So it doesn't certainly doesn't care about things like code of conduct and how it looks and all of that, like, it's no, it's all about...

Sonia Nolan: 46:44

Laws, for example.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 46:45

Yeah. Yeah, yes, it's all about keeping us alive right now. Right. So it's really protective, trying to look after us. It's just not necessarily the part of the brain that we want to be in the driving seat most of the time. So helping these guys who've had anger management issues, to become self aware of when it's their And what's the response been from the people in prisons that limbic system running the show. And when it's their prefrontal cortex running the show, and what that kind of means and feeling the shift between those two. So a lot of it is actually just sitting in silence and focusing on our breathing and going right, can you feel your breath? Can you feel your heart rate? And getting them to be more present with their physical sensations. So I mean, once your cortisol is up at eight out of ten, you've basically lost control, and you're running on this primal survival autopilot. So we're trying to get them to notice their cortisol levels more like a five or a six, when they still have some prefrontal cortex here to steer them back you're working with? in the direction that they want to go. They like the language, so it's not fluffy. It's not hippie, which is hilarious, because I'm a bit of a hippie. But they're like - it's like we get it. It's like a chemical that we can conceptualise. It's not just this, you're afraid or, you're anxious. It's no, your cortisol levels this or that your serotonin levels this or that.

Sonia Nolan: 48:08

They like the science behind it. They don't want to get into the emotion of it.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 48:11

Yeah, yes.

Sonia Nolan: 48:14

Tell me some other experiences of teaching people how to thrive in their next step.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 48:23

Yes. So I speak to a lot of mums in prison, in one of the prisons I'm in their kids can be there from age zero to four. And they can sleep over age four to 12 on the weekend. Lots of grandmas. So I'll often be in a room with 10 women, and we're talking about emotional intelligence and evitabely we're talking about parenting and how to be good mums. And this chemical of oxytocin, which is you know, when you see a little kid and you just want to look after it, right, yeah, it's like, oh, that's oxytocin. You feel it almost straightaway in your heart. So over 50% of oxytocin receptors are in our heart, in our physical heart.

Sonia Nolan: 49:01

Is that right?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 49:01

Yeah. And that's why we feel that energy and that warmth in our hearts. Yeah. And likewise, heartbreak when we don't have the oxytocin coming into those receptors yep. So from my experience, the, I want to say There are times when, you know, when you're talking Charlotte only, the number one, a really powerful way that seems to be able to change the trajectory of somebody's life. If they've had experiences with meth and addiction, and they, they have been bad mums in inverted commas. And then you put them in touch with this chemical of oxytocin and you talk about how much they love their kid, how much they want to be a good mom how much they want the best for their kid, and you start to link their dopamine up with their heart, with the oxytocin. That is a powerful combination. And that seems to be the thing that actually gets the deep inner shift in women, in mothers, in grandmothers that gives them strength to get away from some of those destructive habits. And it's, it's linking all of those chemicals up, connected, anchored in their heart, and the power of oxytocin to heal from serotonin deficiencies and all the rest of the traumas that have happened is... that's the thing that keeps me going to be honest, is seeing that happen again and again. that actually get quite teary just thinking about all of the possibility and the emotion of being your best version. What are they - what are the tears about? What's their chemical? Well, when a... Well, for example, if serotonin drops, yeah, so we've done something we're ashamed of, and everyone's about to find out, and we just want to cry, right? It's actually really healthy to cry in that situation. Also, if oxytocin either goes up or down, then we'll cry. And our tears have slightly different chemical composition, depending on what their brain chemistry is doing.

Sonia Nolan: 51:05

So would those chemicals come out in our tears?

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 51:07

Yeah, not exactly. But our tears change in relationship to the chemicals. And one thing that's really important, actually, for anger management is letting ourselves cry when we need to cry. So you know, that feeling when like, the tears are coming, and but you're like, I can't cry now. So you kind of stuff them back down. And I do that sometimes, in the prison, you know, it's not appropriate for me to cry in certain contexts. But it's really important that whenever we can we do let those tears come out. Because if we suppress that energy in our nervous system, it's going to come out in our fight, flight, freeze response, so often as fight in anger. So it's a huge relationship, particularly for men, men who suppress tears are more likely to lose their temper more often. So it's really important for us, as women as well, that if we have a man or a boy in our in our life, that when they do become emotional, and want to cry, that we don't shame them for it, that we just, we include the healthy expression of tears as healthy masculinity, and that we don't somehow make them feel bad for that. Because children know how to self regulate their emotions. You know, when you see little kids cry, and they just completely allow themselves to go through that wave. And then, at the end of it, I remember when my kids were little, you think they're better and you kind of give them a hug, and then they do this funny breathing thing, and they go*deep breath* and they're done. Right? That's the, that's our nervous system self regulating. So we as adults, we need to trust that our body actually knows how to process these emotions. And we do have, you know, I do - we do like a crying action plan. Like if you have the urge to cry, what are you going to do, maybe take yourself to a safe space, you just let yourself lean into the spike, we call it. So let that feeling of pain that might be in your heart fully come up and overwhelm you. And you could sob and you can shake and whatever you need to do, it will usually only take about five minutes, and then it will subside and go back down. And then what are you going to do? Well have a drink of water, maybe have a shower, go outside, get some fresh air, like give yourself a bit of a plan so that you don't stay in that really sad state longer than is necessary. But it's actually trusting this innate intelligence that is within every cell in our body, that we can handle all of life's emotions, and that crying is healthy.

Sonia Nolan: 53:29

I'm very pleased to hear that because I am a natural crier. I'm just so interested in so many aspects of this you've really taught me so much this morning around the Warm Table, Charlotte. To leave us today with how can we tap into our hormones for a great day. Give us some ideas of how we can make our chemical cocktail for thriving.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 53:57

Okay, there's all the practical things I've said like drink water, sleep as well as you can, exercise, eat healthy food. Here's a question for you, which I'll just let you maybe answer in your imagination.

Sonia Nolan: 54:11

Sure.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 54:12

And maybe just to drop your cortisol before we try and answer maybe just take a few deep breaths, and feel the force of gravity and then this question for you to answer in your imagination, Sonia, who are you when you're at your natural best? Who is that woman? How does she think? How does she respond? How does she take care of herself? What type of mum is she? Who is that woman? And, you know, there's the Charlotte who is before you today. And there's the Charlotte who's Charlotte at her natural best, right? And I do not always get to be her. My teenage kids will tell you, I don't always get to be her. But yet I feel this kind of, like anchor in my heart that goes from the current version of me to Charlotte, who's at her natural best. And she's awesome, right? She - I love her. She's beautiful. She's inspired. She's peaceful. Right? And I don't always get to be her, but sometimes just remembering who she is. Sometimes that's enough. Yeah.

Sonia Nolan: 55:43

It's so beautiful. I'm actually feeling quite emotional. Feeling quite emotional thinking about the amazing Sonia. I like her a lot. I don't see her every day but I really really like her.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 55:55

Yeah, I do too. Yeah.

Sonia Nolan: 55:57

Thanks so much, Charlotte for joining me around My Warm Table and I really like the Charlotte that I see in front of me too.

Charlotte Ingham Ellery: 56:05

Thank you.

Sonia Nolan: 56:08

Thanks for joining me Sonia Nolan around the Warm Table. Let's grow the community. Please follow My Warm Table podcast on socials and like and share this episode with your family and friends. My Warm Table is brought to you by Females Over 45 Fitness. Keep listening now for a health tip from FOFF head coach Kelli Reilly.

Kelli Reilly FOFF: 56:29

Hi, it's Kelli Reilly, founder and head coach of Females Over 45 Fitness or FOFF for short. Strength training and menopause ladies, right, go hand in hand. Strength training helps with your muscle mass. It can help with osteoporosis, helps with your bone density loss, can help with your metabolism rate by keeping it high, and even help with your stress levels. So really try and get out there and get some strength training in because it's really important as we age and go into those more mature years, keep us out of wheelchairs and Zimmer frames. So remember ladies, it's your time to shine.