(#46) Sneak Peek: The Stress & Bloat Free Summer Masterclass

On today's episode of The Raediant Life Podcast, your host Rae shares a sneak peek of the Stress & Bloat Free Summer Masterclass with Rachie Jo.

Tune in for: 

• A sneak peek of the 60 minute masterclass hosted by Rachel Nigro, Health, Nutrition & Fitness Coach and Rachel Kraft, Somatic Breathwork & Anxiety Coach
• A guided somatic breathwork experience
• How to create your own breathwork practices
• Nervous system regulation tools for everyday living
• Step by step plan to ditch bloat for summer
• How to eat and train to have a stress & bloat free summer

You can watch and experience the full masterclass here.

Contact Rachie Jo:

• Instagram
• Tik Tok
• Podcast
• Links

Upcoming Classes + Events:

• The Masterclass Pass 2024 *Virtual
• Schedule Your Breathwork Healing Session Package *Virtual
• (6/13) Breathwork and Sound Healing for Relaxation
• (6/27) Monthly Breathwork Healing Class at Yoga Shack
• (6/29) Vision & Goals Mid-Year Reflection Workshop
• (7/18) Lymphatic Drainage + Breathwork at Self Care Social
• (7/26) Use Code RACHEL10  | The OM Festival Vermont

DM on Instagram

Subscribe & Review on Apple Podcasts
Follow & Rate on Spotify

Download Breathe Easy: How To Create Your Own Breathwork Practice

Get started with 1:1 coaching here.

Participate in Curious Convos. Share your questions and topic requests!

Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing any emotional distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Radiant Life Podcast. I'm your host, rae the Somatic Coach, and I'm here to support you in healing your past, living in the present and creating your future, so that you can become the most centered, embodied and happiest version of yourself. Each week, I'll be bringing you episodes to help you navigate life's challenges, ease stress and tension and learn more about holistic healing, spirituality and wellness. If you're interested in becoming the best version of yourself so that you can live the life of your dreams, then you're in the right place. Subscribe to the podcast and the monthly newsletter and follow me on Instagram and TikTok to know when new episodes are released each week. I am so happy that you've landed here. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the podcast. If you are new here, I'm Rae, I'm a somatic coach and breathworth facilitator, and if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're tuning in for today's episode. If you follow me on social media, you'll have just seen that on Instagram, I announced a new workshop that I'm hosting this month, in the month of June, and this is a collaboration with one of my best friends, katie Kirchheim, and it's all about somatic breathwork and intuitive writing, which is really cool. So katie is a energy healer, reiki healer, intuitive medium, and we're combining both of our journeys and both of our skill sets to bring this like very special workshop. It's on june 28th at 7 30 pm in lynnbrook, new york, and what's really cool about this workshop is that katie and I will also be collaborating at a yoga festival this summer, called om yoga festival, and that's in vermont. So if you're in the local area and you're not going to come to vermont, or even if you are, you could totally do both. That'd be so fun. This is an option for you to experience that workshop right in lynnbrook. So we're really, really excited for this and I, if you have any questions, just let me know and I'll put the link in the show notes for that as well.

Speaker 1: 2:07

For today's podcast episode, I wanted to share with you a replay of the masterclass that I taught last week with Rachie Jo. She's a fitness, health and nutrition coach and she was also on the podcast a few months ago, and we collaborated on this workshop to really bring you information and resources and a guided breathwork experience so that you could relieve stress and be bloat free as we move into the summer. So I really enjoyed collaborating with Rachie and bringing you this masterclass. And what I did with the workshop is because this is a replay and it was a paid masterclass.

Speaker 1: 2:49

This is kind of like a sneak peek and then in the show notes, if you want to purchase the full masterclass with the guided breathwork experience, you can do that. It's $29. You'll get the replay. It'll go straight to your inbox when you sign up and if you have any questions about that, just send me a DM. But the link will be right in the show notes if that interests you. So I hope that you enjoyed today's sneak peek podcast episode. I hope that you have an incredible rest of your day, an incredible rest of your week, and I will talk to you soon rest of your week and I will talk to you soon.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Hi everybody, giving everyone a second to log on. Hi, jeanette, jeanette, robyn, sharon, what's up guys? So we're going to jump right into it because we want to make sure that we're super efficient with all of our time, everyone's time. We're missing a few people, but we're just going to get started, so I'm going to let Rachel kick off and introduce herself. I know it's confusing with Rachel and Rachel and Rachel's.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Rachel squared yeah, so I'm Rachel or Ray. I'm a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator and tonight I'll be guiding us through a little breathwork experience, talking about nervous system regulation and stress and anxiety. So I'm super excited to collaborate with Rachel. She's amazing and I'm excited to be here. So let's do it.

Speaker 2: 4:18

So excited and if anybody has any questions throughout, I'm going to ask if you just drop them in the chat, because we're going to leave like a Q&A all at the end. So basically how we're going to work, this is I'm going to give you guys a talk about cortisol, hormones and whatnot for the first half and Rachel's going to take over for the second half. You guys totally don't need to leave your cameras on, you can turn it off. I'm going to share my screen with you in just a second so that we can see the slides that we worked on. Okay, bear with me one sec and share. Okay, you guys know me with technology. I need a second and if for any reason, it's glitchy my internet connection is a little wonky right now I'm out in the Hamptons and it's not functioning right, so I apologize. Okay, sharing my screen. Can everybody see that? Okay, yeah, does it look like? Can you see the top here? Rach, help me out first. I can you see, like my.

Speaker 1: 5:21

I wanted to yeah, so I see your web browser and like canvacom, I see like the url and then the our first page is up there too sorry guys, give me one more second.

Speaker 2: 5:31

We want to try to get it full, full screen present. Okay, there we go. And share, is that better? Yes, okay, great, awesome. I'm just moving my little thing to the side because it's blocking my whole view. I'm sorry, guys. Okay, there we go. All right, so welcome everybody.

Speaker 2: 6:05

Everybody so rich and I were discussing. We decided that it would be really great to kind of collab and bring our two professions, everything that we do, together, and we came up with this stress and bloat free summer master class. So basically the idea behind this was everybody feels stressed, everybody feels bloated, but what we're not realizing is that the two are actually very connected. So I like to always start any kind of presentation I do with my own personal story. So this was me like years and years into my fitness journey. I was always in such in great shape I would say maybe not great shape, but before this I had like accomplished my goals. I was feeling amazing.

Speaker 2: 6:43

I went through a really, really negative place, negative experience in my life, and it led me to gain an uncomfortable amount of weight, be in a place in my body where I didn't feel good, but more so, my mentality was completely shot. I couldn't recognize myself. I didn't recognize myself when I looked in the mirror, but I had this constant anxiety Anytime I would leave the house. I would cope by going out and drinking and eating fast food and I just felt absolutely horrible. So what I was doing here was working out every single day because I thought I needed to shred as much calories. I was just kind of reverting back to what used to work to me work for me in like my teens, early twenties. I was eating very low calorie. I would starve myself all day to eat out at night so I could go out drinking. I was terrified of being alone with my thoughts Like meditation was like a hard no for me, because I was just so scared of what my brain would tell me. I had very painful cystic hormonal acne and, like I said, drinking multiple times a week. Overall I was stressed. So then I realized like I'm not going to let this negative situation take control of my life any longer.

Speaker 2: 7:49

Fast forward to now. I got back to my norm. I got back to what feels good for me and I really started incorporating that feel good feeling. If something made me stressed or overwhelmed, all I did was focus on bringing those stress levels down. So now I'm kind of quite literally on the opposite side. I work out four to five times a week, maintain a lean physique year round, eat when I'm hungry or when it's mealtime. I do meditation and breath work daily and that's really why I wanted to do this class with Rach, because breath work has really changed my life. Confronting those negative thoughts has helped me create such an incredible lifestyle that I'm truly proud of. Now that this person on the left, I don't even recognize who she was anymore.

Speaker 2: 8:32

So I want to kind of explain to you guys how stress and bloat are connected, because when we're chronically stressed, when we're putting a lot of stress on our body, it can cause that bloat. It can cause unwanted belly fat. I'll talk about something called cortisol belly in a few minutes, but basically it starts with understanding the mind, body and gut connection, which I think is so cool. I'm going to geek out on you guys for a few minutes. So basically I want you guys to think about this little connection here.

Speaker 2: 8:59

The stomach is known as our second brain. So have you ever gotten like really bad news or really anxious and then instantly gotten a stomach ache and ran to the bathroom. That's the brain-gut connection and it's on this axis. So how you think affects how your stomach and your body feels. Right, take it a step further. It really affects your hormones and us as women. I know we're just all women here today. Our hormones are very sensitive and our hormones change on a day-to-day basis. We have a 28 to 35 day hormonal cycle and the levels are rising and declining every single day. So also what you consume in your body, it affects how your stomach, mind and body feels and, of course, how your body looks. So, vice versa, if something that's going on in your mind can hurt your stomach, mind and body feels and, of course, how your body looks. So vice versa, if something that's going on in your mind can hurt your stomach, think about what you're putting in your stomach, how that can hurt your mind, how it could cause brain fog, it could cause additional stress, it could cause exhaustion and, as a result, it'll change how your body looks.

Speaker 2: 10:01

And I like to share this example that I posted when we shared this class. We have that constant feeling of stress, anxiety, exhaustion, worry, any kind of stress around the body, which we'll go over. It leads to an elevated level of the stress hormone, cortisol, in the body. And then that cortisol, it can increase bloat, it can increase cravings, your fat storage, it can increase your energy and mood. And I want to make one thing very clear from the start Cortisol is not bad.

Speaker 2: 10:29

We actually need cortisol. There's a good amount of cortisol that we want every single day. In fact cortisol, it rises first thing in the morning to its peak within 30 minutes of waking up. If we don't have that cortisol rise in the morning, we're not going to have energy to wake up every single day, but there's a balance to it. Then we go out and we get anxious and we eat something that upsets our stomach and we do intense workout and we only got five hours of sleep last night and that keeps the cortisol elevated, which we don't want, and that's what leads to chronic health conditions and things like bloat and fat storage and then in return, decreases our confidence because we have a lack of progress. We constantly feel overwhelmed, and now the summer is here, maybe you don't want to put on a bathing suit because you feel bloated and uncomfortable all the time, desire to exercise harder and eat less, which is another stressor on the body, and then this all kind of starts over again and eat less, which is another stressor on the body, and then this all kind of starts over again. You guys have any questions on any of that? Please, please, let me know. And so we said we called this class we're going to teach you how to regulate your nervous system through nutrition and movement as well, which we'll go over and breath work so you can have a stress free and bloat free summer and life for that fact.

Speaker 2: 11:44

So basically, I want you guys to understand what your nervous system is. Think of it as your command center. It's controlling so many aspects of how you think, feel and move. It's made up of the brain, the spinal cord, the nerves that they send electrical and chemical signals between the brain and other body parts. So your brain is your command center as well. You know that kind of links everything. But your gut plays a big role too. You can even see I mean, this is just a rough drawing but so many nerve endings go into your stomach and then the nervous system allows you to do all the things like walk, speak, swallow. So when your nervous system is compromised from elevated cortisol, all of your other systems can be thrown off. So I want you guys to understand the stress hormone a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 12:26

Cortisol, as long as we can see all that there. So it's an adrenal hormone. It's responsible for that fight or flight um, cysts, cysts, symptom, stress, danger. It's responsible for increasing blood sugar, which is good. We want that increase, but we don't want that always Right. Um, it's responsible for that increase, but we don't want that always right. It's responsible for reducing inflammation, but can also cause inflammation. So when it's super elevated it can increase the body's metabolism of glucose, so it helps you actually break down sugar. So see, these are all really great things. Regulates blood pressure, controls the sleep to wake cycle. This is just kind of an example of what happens when cortisol is increased. And there are some good things. There are some bad things, like that tunnel vision. Digestion slows down.

Speaker 2: 13:13

And originally, whenever I think of something wrong with the body or how the body's supposed to work, I always reflect back to caveman days. I'll call it so. Think, when we were created we didn't have cell phones, we didn't have nine to five jobs, we literally were put into the wild. I mean, so we were told to and to survive, right, that fight or flight was literally fighting for your life not fighting with your spouse or something. So we were designed to have that fight and then back then our nervous system would go right back down and relax. You know, there was, it was kind of one or the other, but now we're constantly having that fight and that's why we're having so many sources of stress and so many, so many elevated cortisol, levels of cortisol and so many hormonal imbalances.

Speaker 2: 14:01

I'll touch on some other hormones, but I'm really going to try to focus on stress hormone. It's kind of hard not to talk about all of them, but we have five hormones. Let's just say, if somebody is bloated or trying to lose weight, that really play a role. And for us as women specifically, the next two important ones are insulin and estrogen. And then we have some hunger hormones as well. But when cortisol is out of whack, insulin is going to be out of whack. You're going to start craving sugary things. You're going to feel exhausted. You're not going to be able to get good sleep because your cortisol is high. Your body is thinking, it's fighting for something, because your thoughts are going around in your mind when you're trying to go to bed at night. So our brain perceives emotional stress and physical stress the same. I always like to use the example as if you break your arm or if you get your heart broken, it's stress on the body and your brain is going to perceive it as stress, fight or flight and it's going to increase cortisol to help you cope with it and help you survive, which we don't want.

Speaker 2: 14:58

On a day-to-day basis, we want to be able to know how to bring that cortisol level back down. So emotional stress, social expectations, lack of self-compassion, physical stress, high intensity workouts we're told workout harder that'll help you lose weight, when really it's just increasing your stress levels and it goes back to that cycle that I spoke about in the beginning. A calorie deficit is a big stressor on the body and so then that leads to overall chronic stress and I don't want you to think like just put you in this category of chronic stress. I think you can kind of rate your own stress levels pretty well for yourself. But majority of people right now are overly stressed and we need to find other ways to support it and not just from, like, a bloat perspective. Yes, it's going to be very helpful and I'll show you guys how the cortisol affects bloat, but from a longevity perspective, elevated cortisol.

Speaker 2: 15:49

Hormone imbalances can lead to underlying conditions which, of course, we want to avoid. So chronic stress can cause the body to produce too much cortisol which, like I said, disrupts every process. You guys hear me? Okay, give me a thumbs up. Reach, yeah, okay, good, sorry, it said unstable internet connection. So when the body is under stress, cortisol can alter or shut down functions. After the stress has passed, it shouldn't return to normal. However, the body, like I said, is under constant stress, so it can lead to a number of problems.

Speaker 2: 16:19

I really like to use the example of being in a calorie deficit, because I know a lot of us women are. We're trying to reach those goals. We want to get feel good for summer, because I know a lot of us women are. We're trying to reach those goals. We want to get feel good for summer. So when you have in a calorie deficit, that's a stressor on your body. And then you're exercising, you're training really hard, reflecting back to those caveman times again, it's like your body is constantly being chased by a bear. It's never getting that chance to relax, because maybe it wants to relax, maybe it's going to get good sleep and recover throughout the night, but it can't recover because the high intensity workout you did earlier elevated its cortisol level. So it's all relative, and I like to use this example of cortisol body so it can show all the different areas that elevated cortisol could affect.

Speaker 2: 17:05

We're going to emphasize the bloat here today. Irregular period is a big one, weight gain is a big one, bad moods is a really big one. You guys can take a look and skim. Feel free to take pictures as we go along. But let's talk about the bloating factor. I like to call it cortisol belly. So what happens is when we have a consistent elevated stress that leads to elevated cortisol, and we kind of go two routes here, hence both arrows. One route is increase of salt in the body that's what happens when cortisol is released and then that can increase water retention. So then you retain water and that leads to bloating. We know that. And then another route it could take is a restriction of blood flow to the bowels and that leads to constipation, it leads to bacterial imbalances in the gut and that leads to bloating and then again that could lead to fat storage.

Speaker 2: 17:57

So let's talk a little bit about stress and diet, because and I want to bring it to stress diet and bloat it kind of is an overall umbrella for that, but these all go hand in hand. So how and what you consume can increase the body's cortisol levels in a number of ways. I also say I think I made a note on this later but who and how you spend your time can also increase the cortisol levels. So if you're spending your time with somebody who's really stressed and complaining all the time, that's going to rub off on you and that can increase your cortisol. So first thing we can start paying attention to is added sugar, refined carbohydrates, any kind of processed food, and I'll give you guys examples. So these foods spike blood sugar, which spikes insulin, which leads to an increase in cortisol. So we definitely want to eat them in a little bit less moderation. We want to limit these foods I'm not saying cutting them out. And then of course, they can lead to weight gain, especially if you've been in a long-term calorie deficit. So long-term calorie restriction, extended periods, can lead to elevated cortisol because the deficits are technically controlled.

Speaker 2: 19:02

Starvation and that's a big stressor on the body, and then the biggest one is starvation. So fasting, skipping meals, ignoring hunger cues, that leads to low blood glucose from not eating. It signals that the body's in famine and then that literally triggers that fight or flight response. So how can we balance our hormones? I'm just putting in that overall hormone umbrella because you guys can see how they're all connected. First, what we're going to do is we're going to ditch that all or nothing mindset, and I know it kind of sounds silly and it's kind of like oh, how do we do that? I want to reach a goal.

Speaker 2: 19:34

But when we restrict ourselves so frequently just like on this last slide here, this restriction and ignoring hunger cues and ignoring cravings, it throws our hormones off balance even more. Normally, when we're craving something, it's a telltale sign that there's something off. So if we're craving sugar, then maybe your blood sugar is a little bit low or maybe you didn't eat enough that day, or maybe you didn't get enough sleep, and I know it's hard to go into every single one right there. That's why I want to just kind of touch on each topic, but ditching that all or nothing mindset and allowing yourself touch on each topic. But ditching that all or nothing mindset and allowing yourself first of all to enjoy food, to allow yourself to eat the foods that you're craving First of all. It takes a big stress off of your body but it gives your body more balance and that's why we're going to implement the 80-20 rule.

Speaker 2: 20:23

So I want you guys, 80% of the time I know all of my clients in here this is what we practice and preach every day. We're going to implement 80% clean, whole, unprocessed, minimally processed foods, because that's how we keep our hormones balanced and that's how we keep our cortisol balanced. And if we have immense stress going on, immense lifestyle stressors, it's the least we can do for our body right Our body that's keeping us alive every single day. It's the least we can do for our body right Our body that's keeping us alive every single day. It's the least we can do is put good food in it, but we're human and we're women and we go through hormonal changes every single day and we're going to have cravings for chocolate, which is a sign that you're getting a period, because you're craving magnesium actually, and we're going to have that 20%. So that's your fun foods, your wine, your pizza, anything that you might consider bad, but it's not, it's just things we should enjoy in a little bit less moderation.

Speaker 2: 21:16

Number three is we're going to limit hormone disrupting foods, which we'll go over, kind of the ones that I mentioned already. And then we're going to talk about foods we're going to add in. So we're always told what foods we can remove, how about what we should be having more of, right? And then we're going to eat the proper amount of calories, slash, macronutrients for your body, which we're not going to get too much into today, but I'll be happy to help you figure them out If you're not sure. We'll go over this quickly.

Speaker 2: 21:40

Foods that help with balance feel free to take a picture of this. So these foods reduce inflammation, they regulate blood sugar levels, your overall health and so much more, and they really help you debloat, which is what we're looking for. There are foods that can help you bloat more, which is on the next slide, anyway, magnesium-rich foods. They help reduce inflammation. Elevated cortisol leads to inflammation, which leads to bloat, which leads to discomfort and pain, which we don't want. It helps metabolize your cortisol. So break down that excess cortisol and relax the mind. I think you guys can see here dark chocolate, spinach, broccoli, bananas, avocados anything high in magnesium. Foods, high in omega-3 fatty acids. They calm the body and slow down cortisol production. Salmon, tuna, flax seeds which I didn't put on here walnuts, chia seeds and then fermented foods. This one is actually one that I wouldn't recommend specifically for cortisol, but it's one that I would recommend for digestion and, as you guys saw, when cortisol is elevated, digestion can be off and that's why we get bloated, because maybe we're constipated and not going to the bathroom every day Unpopular opinion, or maybe it is popular, but what I hear a lot, rather I should say, is women not going to the bathroom every day.

Speaker 2: 23:01

Ladies, we have to poop. Sorry for saying it, it's so important. Think of it literally as releasing toxins in your body. If we're backed up, of course we're going to be bloated. Of course we're not going to be for saying it, it's so important. Think of it literally as releasing toxins in your body. If we're backed up, of course we're going to be bloated. Of course we're not going to be lose weight. Of course we're going to be stressed, even being constipated. Think about a backup of even the acidity in your stomach from not going to the bathroom for two days. Think about what that's doing to your brain, how that's fogging your brain. Remember, it's all connected. So fermented foods can increase the antioxidant properties of many foods, which is a great detoxer, helps you go to the bathroom which can lower oxidative stress, increase immune function 70% of our immune system lies in our stomach.

Speaker 2: 23:41

I can go on and on and I would keep you guys here for way way over an hour if I went on and on. But these also aid in digestion, decrease bloat. So that's going to be sauerkraut, not sauerkraut that comes in a can. Sorry, I had this picture here. You guys will see me post it on my story a lot.

Speaker 2: 23:56

It comes in a plastic bag. It has to have live probiotics in it. The canned ones don't have live probiotics. Kefir is really great, not the ones with added sugar in it. Kombucha is really great. Hard to find ones without added sugar in it, but that's great as well. Greek yogurt, flax seeds those aren't specifically fermented, but great for digestion. Things like ginger are really great for digestion. They're just not fermented. And then foods we want to limit. And I say limit, I don't say cut out. I don't want you to cut out donuts, I just don't want you to eat them every day because they're just not good for you. At the end of the day. Processed foods increase inflammation. It puts stress on your adrenal glands. Which hormones I'm sorry, which cortisol comes from and it puts the body at risk of weight gain and severe hormonal imbalances.

Speaker 2: 24:42

Caffeine I have a few clients in here that when we started she was drinking, she, they, they were drinking caffeine first thing in the morning, before food. So remember you guys, I told you that caffeine is at a peak. You're, I'm sorry, cortisol is at the peak first thing in the morning. If you have caffeine on an empty stomach, caffeine is an inhibitor, um, not an inhibitor, a, um, uh, an, what's the word? I'm looking for A stimulator. Sorry, it's going to stimulate even more cortisol while your cortisol is already elevated. So when you just simply eat before having caffeine, it's going to slow down that absorption and it's not going to spike your cortisol, which we're trying to decrease.

Speaker 2: 25:24

Certain vegetables, cruciferous and nightshade vegetables again not related to cortisol, they just can make you very gassy, like broccoli for me. You don't want to spend time with me after I eat broccoli and that might be TMI, but that's just how we get to know our bodies right. Dairy can lead to inflammation in the gut, not for everybody. This is more of like a general umbrella, but dairy can cause constipation Constipation we just went down that I won't do it again. And then, unfortunately, alcohol can increase cortisol while putting stress on the other hormones.

Speaker 2: 25:53

And as soon as alcohol hits your body, your liver's number one job is to get that alcohol out of your system. Your metabolism's job is to break that alcohol down. It could care less about fat loss, it could care less about digestion, it just needs that alcohol out. So limiting that I follow this gut health doctor that I've been really binging his content on, we'll say for the least, and he shares all these studies about alcohol. And so the ideal, the recommended amount, is no more than two drinks per week, which could be a lot, but maybe that's something that we can assess. And if you're having digestion or bloat issues, maybe that's the first place you start, or with any of these.

Speaker 2: 26:32

I'm going to run through this kind of quick because I want to get Rach on in a few minutes so that we can keep you guys with time. I'm going to record all this and I can send you guys over a copy if you have any other questions. Anyway, so stress and exercise. So, like I said to you guys, high intense training, training every single day, training when you're exhausted. If you got five hours of sleep, I don't want you working out that day. So let's focus on more of the things that we should be doing. So we wanna focus on strength training. This should be your main form of exercise. So strength training could be weightlifting, it could be Pilates, which is like my new love. It could be weightlifting. It could be Pilates, which is like my new love. It could be mat Pilates, it could be dumbbells, it can be incline walking, it can be resistance bands, anything along those lines. We're going to shoot for three to five days of resistance training. Here's just a sample four-day training split, just so you guys kind of better understand.

Speaker 2: 27:23

We're going to do low-impact, steady-state cardio. Because cardio, because high intensity cardio. First of all, if you're hanging onto the treadmill for dear life, you know the stress that's putting on your mind yes, a lot. And then it's putting so much stress on your body. So this low impact puts you into your fat burning heart rate zone. While keeping stress to the minimum, you should feel breathless but able to maintain a conversation in short sentences, and I suggest two to four sessions per week. 10,000 steps a day is another great goal very low impact. And then stretching the buildup of lactic acid from training does put stress on the body. Stretching can really help one calm your nerves, but just make your body feel good. When your body doesn't feel good, you're stressed. It's all relative, right, guys.

Speaker 2: 28:08

Wrapping up with this last slide, for me, we're going to talk about stress and lifestyle. So what I said before, what we do and who we spend our time with on a day-to-day basis strongly affect our stress levels. I love to go back to the quote if you spend most of your time with 10 millionaires, most of your time with 10 millionaires, you're going to be the 11th. If you spend your time with 10 millionaires, most of your time with 10 millionaires, you're going to be the 11th. If you spend your time with 10 stressed out people, you're going to be the 11th. Right, and stress does. I do believe that stress is a lot of how we perceive things. So we can start by choosing to perceive it differently. We can start by incorporating different practices, such as breathwork, which we'll get into in a second.

Speaker 2: 28:48

But you guys, sleep. That should be your top priority. If you are stressed, go to bed, get, get nine hours of sleep. All of these sleep studies here I actually put in seven to nine because I think it stresses people out when I write down eight to 10, but all of these sleep studies were actually done on men, which I think is so interesting. A new sleep study just came out, done on women, saying women actually need eight to 10 hours and an additional hour when we're on our period. So I think that goes to show that women are just literally a different breed and we can't really listen to these general studies. So, sleeping straight, consistent, high quality sleep throughout the night If you have questions or need tips on how to get better sleep, I'm your girl for that.

Speaker 2: 29:31

Hydration a very easy factor that you can control, non-negotiable. You guys. Drink your water. It's that simple. I know we're busy, I forget. Just drill it into your brain. You can drink your water. Shoot for 80 ounces minimum a day. And then wellness practices I am like a total wellness practice, wellness tool, wellness kit obsessed. So incorporating a stress management practice can be life-changing.

Speaker 2: 29:56

I literally cannot tell you guys how much breath work has changed my life. It all started when I was going through that bad time and a therapist recommended to me breath work and meditation and I was like you're crazy, I'm not sitting here listening to my own thoughts. They're horrible and they make me not like myself and they make me feel this. And then one actually gave me a practice. She said I want you to just sit there, close your eyes, picture like a beautiful river that you're sitting in front of and put your problem on it.

Speaker 2: 30:25

My problem at the time was my ex. Put your problem on it, put your problem on a leaf and watch that leaf float down the river. So I would sit there and meditate and I would put my ex on a leaf and watch him float down a river and you know what? It healed me. And now I'm in the best relationship of my life and I have all of that practice to thank for that breath, breath work, that meditation. So I'm going to pass the baton over to Ray reach. I'm going to go ahead and mute myself. Rachel's, let me know when you want me to tap over.

Speaker 1: 30:59

Yeah, I'm ready when you are, can you? Can you hear me? Okay, yeah, you can hear me, yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:06

Sorry.

Speaker 1: 31:07

Awesome, yeah, no, thank you so much. I learned so much from that as well, and I just love hearing about your story and how breathwork was helpful. So I'm excited to to chat with you more about what that looks like. So, yeah, a little bit about me. I'm Ray, I'm a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator, and what really was the catalyst of finding myself where I am today is that I grew up as a competitive athlete and you know, I went on to play soccer, lacrosse, lacrosse, college, and that was really where I got my biggest sense of like, purpose and self-worth.

Speaker 1: 31:42

But I had a lot of anxiety around my performance. So anxiety was something that I struggled with for my earliest memory is like seven years old or something like that, and so I was always doing the things I was doing the meditation, the yoga, the hiking and it wasn't until when my dad passed away unexpectedly, when I was 24, that my anxiety went from something that I could manage to something that was just like insurmountable. It was just out of control, and so that summer, after he passed, I went to a yoga festival with one of my best friends and it was super fun. It was like the way it was. It was like three days, you get to, like, make your own schedule. You could do dance, you could do yoga, you could do meditation, art, like anything you name it. And there was this class on the schedule and it was called Radiant Love Breathwork. And I had never heard of breathwork before and I read the description and it sounded outrageous and I was like, oh my God, this is what I need to do, like I need to do this. And I took the class with this woman, erin Telford, who I went on to become certified through, and I had never felt more calm in my body. I never felt peace of mind like I did in that moment when I needed it, like just so, so much. And so that was eight years ago. Fast forward, here I am today.

Speaker 1: 33:04

It led me to go down this whole rabbit hole of body-based healing and somatic work and Reiki and kind of opened me up to a whole other world, and so that's breathwork is really the primary modality that I've used to navigate stress and anxiety, and the somatic work, the body-based healing, is what really allowed me to kind of navigate that idea of like we're always trying to push away different emotions, whether it's, you know, anger or grief, or sadness or anxiety or stress, and it creates this like friction and we're like pushing it away. Pushing it away, pushing away and what body-based healing allowed me to do was really feel safe in my body, to feel a feeling, to feel an emotion, and that is something that we'll talk more about and what that, what that means, and all of that. But breathwork is a great resource for stress relief, for anxiety relief and for strengthening that mind body gut connection that Rachel highlighted with the cortisol. And it's just, it's so great, it's an easily accessible tool, and so I'm excited that we get I'm trying to hit next, and then I realized it's just, it's so great, it's an easily accessible tool, and so I'm excited that we get. Oh, I'm trying to hit next, and then I realized it's not on my computer. Thanks, yeah, so I'm excited to talk with you guys about breathwork tonight.

Speaker 1: 34:17

So breathwork is an active meditation technique and what is great about it is, like Rachel mentioned, if you've tried meditation and it's just like your mind is racing, you're trying to sit there and you're trying to like sit for five minutes, and I've definitely been there. Breathwork is what allowed me to finally be able to meditate. So it is great in that sense that it will allow you to really rest your mind, really connect with your body, relieve stress, relieve anxiety, feel more present and it will even, you'll see like, after doing it for enough time, it will increase your creativity, increase your focus. There's all these, all these benefits here on the right hand side. I think it's a great tool to supplement what you're already doing. So if you are already doing mindset work, already doing any like kind of like CBT therapy or something like that, breathwork is a great tool to have in your toolkit and it's your breath, it's, you know, something that you always have. You can do it in your car, you could do it in the morning, you could do it in the evening, it's with you at all times. Yeah, that's this one, thanks, yeah, so body-based healing is really this approach that is considered a bottom-up approach where, physically, starting at the like with the earth, like starting with grounding, and then working your way up through the body, physically up through the body, noticing different sensation, getting to like your gut, like what does your gut feel, like what's happening in the belly area, how does your heart feel, and working all the way up through the body and then getting to your mindset.

Speaker 1: 35:57

So mindset work is so important and with body-based healing you're moving through the body to then get to your mind. So there's a little bit of nuance there and I kind of broke it down here into three different areas. So we have mindfulness and the mind-body connection, nervous system regulation and then somatic awareness and really creating safety in the body. And mindfulness is basically awareness around your experience. So whatever might be happening for you with stress and anxiety, how that's showing up for you in your body, it's having awareness around what that experience is like. And we have the nervous system regulation. I'll talk about that on the next slide.

Speaker 1: 36:37

Sensation association, which is really allowing you to have that safety to understand what the different sensations in your body, what the meaning around that might be. So for some you might feel stress and anxiety. You know a shortness of breath, racing thoughts, sweaty palms. It could show up in your body in so many different ways and it will be a little bit different for everybody. So sensation association allows you to understand what is showing up in your body and why it's there. And then we also have resourcing, which is being able to resource from previous experiences that feel safe. So safety is a big part of body-based healing and really allowing yourself the capacity to feel safe in your experience, whatever that might look like.

Speaker 1: 37:25

And then we have titration, which is something that you'll hear me talk about a little bit more, but what it means is really knowing that you have full control over your experience. So I'll be guiding and cuing you the whole time when we do breathwork, but really listening and tuning into what feels good for you and how your body wants to breathe, and knowing that you are your own greatest inner authority. So I'll be guiding and cuing you, but really tuning in with what feels good for you. And then I always like to mention that there's no wrong way to go about this process of learning your body more, like understanding your emotional landscape more, as long as we're just learning and going and moving through what feels good for us and following what I call the ping of our intuition, like, oh, that seems interesting, let me try that. Oh, that really resonates with me. Like taking what lands, leaving what doesn't, and putting one foot in front of the other with the things that feel good for you and your body.

Speaker 1: 38:23

And then we have nervous system regulation. So this is something that I wish I knew when I first started, this little chart here was so helpful to just kind of understand what nervous system regulation is and what is actually happening when we're moving in and out of stress and anxiety. So we have in this green area what's called the window of tolerance, and this is where breathwork, somatic practices, a little toolkit that we'll go over comes into play. And when we're in our window of tolerance we might be feeling peace of mind, rounded, creative, present, and it's when we move north into hyper arousal. So that is when we're feeling anxious, angry more, we're outside of our window of tolerance and we're starting to see and feel different responses in our body. So we might be feeling, we might be having racing thoughts, we might be emotionally distressed in some way, and then when we go south of the window of tolerance we go into hypo arousal. So that's like the freeze or fawn trauma response or you might be feeling sadness or numb, you might not be feeling much of anything, you might be feeling unmotivated and it's the practices that we're going to do tonight that bring you back into your window of tolerance and expand it. So it's your body's response to different stressors that might be going on in your environment and we're all going to move out of our window of tolerance throughout the day. And it's all about coming back into your window of tolerance and using these tools to do that.

Speaker 1: 39:55

And what I love about breathwork is, you know, similar to like if you were going to go to the gym. You wouldn't go to the gym once and think that you were going to get like a six pack. It's the same thing with breathwork. You wouldn't do it once for five minutes and be like I'm going to be in my window of tolerance forever. But it does have a snowball effect and taking even if it's five minutes, if you did five minutes breathwork every day for 30 days, your nervous system landscape would change. So I always kind of refer to nervous system regulation, the window of tolerance and breathwork, because if you do it every day, you will change and expand your window of tolerance. And then we have a nice little toolkit here of different things that you could do that are related to the nervous system and will ease your nervous system, self-regulate yourself.

Speaker 1: 40:43

So we talked a little bit about mindfulness and I loved this little image. I thought it was so cool that I could find it. But basically this is something you can even do while you're driving. If you're driving and you're feeling stressed out maybe you had a long day from work and you're driving home you can even do this while you're driving. You can notice five things that you can see while you're driving and notice, like what are the shapes, what are the colors? No-transcript, but it is proven that our bodies, like each of our bodies, has a different frequency and when we go outside and we put our feet on the earth, even if we do it for 30 seconds, whether it's soil or sand or just some kind of element of the earth, it literally will regulate our nervous system. And I've been living in Long Beach for about like eight years now, but I can definitely say that being at the beach and just spending so much time in the sand, it has totally changed my nervous system because it allows your body to regulate with the frequency of the earth, which is very grounding.

Speaker 1: 42:02

And we have yoga, stretching, a walking meditation, moving your body and also doing a walking meditation, which is great. I have one of those on my podcast too. We have dance, so moving your body in a way that feels intuitive and supportive for you. Somatic shaking, processing emotion, like physically shaking your body If anxiety or stress is coming up. It is a very if you like sit with anxiety. It is a very kind of like jittery feeling, so you can like move your body, shake and let it out, and then, of course, we have breath work. So that's what we'll be doing tonight. So this is one way that you'd be able to create your own practice, and the practice that we do tonight is something that you can also do in the comfort of your own home at any time.

Speaker 1: 42:46

So the first thing that I think is always really important is figuring out what your intention is. Similar to if we were going to, like, go on Google Maps and type in our destination. If we just sit down and do a practice and we don't know where we want to go, we're kind of just driving on the road aimlessly, and the intention can be very simple. It could just be like I want to feel more calm, I want to feel at ease, or it could be something bigger too, and so really taking a second to check in with how you're currently feeling and how you're hoping to feel at the end of your practice, and then the second, which builds off the first, is really listening to your body. So some days you might be feeling more stimulated, where something restful might be really nice and nourishing to you, and other days maybe you're in that section on that image that we looked at earlier hypoarousal so you're kind of like south of your window of tolerance and you're feeling like unmotivated or maybe lethargic.

Speaker 1: 43:44

Maybe a more like deeper pace of a breath would be really helpful for you to kind of upregulate your nervous system, and so you can be creative with a breath pattern that feels good for you, based on how you're feeling. And then tonight we'll actually be doing this breath pattern. So we'll be doing one that's activating and one that's restful, and so the breath pattern that we have here is the pulse breath, which is inhaling twice through your nose and exhaling twice through your mouth, and that looks and sounds like this. And then we have the restful halo, active, which is inhaling gently through your nose and exhaling through your mouth, either with a sigh or just very relaxing, which could sound, which looks and sounds like this, and so we'll be doing that breath pattern tonight. So I'll I'll remind you of that when we get to that part, but that's that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 44:45

And then the fourth step is really just creating your space with intention. So that might look like very simply keeping the door closed so no one interrupts your five minute practice. It could look like grabbing some headphones. It could look like having a blanket, having some water nearby, really just making sure that wherever you're planning to kind of close your eyes and drop in for anywhere from five to 30 minutes feels really safe for you, because that's a big part of really experiencing all the benefits of breath work. Yeah, so for tonight I'm going to lead you through a nice 15 minute practice. We're going to do some grounding, I'll lead us through a little meditation, I'll lead us through the breath work and then we'll kind of soak in any of those shifts, any of that energy that moved around for a few minutes, maybe just like two or three. So if it's silent, that's why. And then we'll come back into the space and we'll be able to answer some questions. So just so you know what to expect for the breathwork.

Speaker 1: 45:52

Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you are moved or inspired, please share with me by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It means the world to me and I am so appreciative for your support in helping my podcast grow. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram and TikTok and follow me at raythesomaticcoach. Make sure you check out the show notes of today's episode for links to freebies, opportunities to work with me and ways we can stay connected outside of the podcast. I'm so happy that you're here and I can now wait to talk with you on our next episode of the Radiant Life podcast.