Ep 53 Moving through life with greater ease with Sophia Breust

As we get older many of us experience joint pain and muscle pain. We think it is just our old joints but it might very well be dry fascia. In this episode I talk to Sophia Breust who is a structural integration practitioner about the many benefits of working with fascia.

Sophia has an interesting story and her own health and wellbeing today is a direct reflection of the benefits of structural integration. After going through some relational trauma in 2014, Sophia was diagnosed with PTSD. Experiencing symptoms from extreme anxiety, recurring nightmares, and shakes to lethargy, Sophia explored talk therapy to help resolve what she thought was a problem in her mind. Over 2 years, she showed up religiously to her psychology sessions, but she felt she wasn't getting anywhere.

​After years of looking for answers and feeling totally helpless, Sophia found Structural Integration & Myofascial Bodywork (MFB) and realised how disconnected she was from her physical body. This was the missing link for her; the problem wasn't just in her mind, it was in her body! Trauma is stored in the body, and if we become disconnected from the sensations that are going on in our physical body, our mind won't get a chance to be at ease.

After many years of healing, processing, feeling, and deeply connecting to her body, Sophia now helps many people make sense of their physical pain and what may be going on for them emotionally. She calls this Emotional Anatomy. While a free and open fascial system creates a more balanced emotional state, Sophia has seen the impact of MFB on excellent recovery, lymph & blood flow, and injury prevention. MFB, according to Sophia and many of her clients, is truly life-changing!

In this episode we talk about all things fascia, the bodymind connection, healing trauma and a bit about ageing bodies. Sophia is based in Adelaide, Australia, you can find Sophia on instagram @muscle_sense or via her website www.musclesense.net

EP 51 Supporting your body with nutrition in Midlife with Annie Gaudreault

In midlife, we start to notice changes in how our body metabolises food, how we recover from exercise and how we are able to deal with stress in our life. No longer can we drink lots of alcohol and pull up OK the next morning. Maybe there are a few sneaky kilograms piling on. This is because as we enter perimenopause, our hormones start to shift how we metabolise food and this impacts on many areas of our health.

Annie Gaudreault, who is a Licenced Nutritionist and Health Coach from Toronto, CA, joins me in the podcast to talk about the impact of nutrition on our life as we move into our midlife. Annie specialises in working with women in midlife to make sense of all the wellness information out there and to make sustainable changes to their health and wellbeing.

Annie has her own interesting midlife transition story. She started running in her 30s and as she approached her midlife transition she really trained hard and found emotional and mental resilience expanded and she was able to deepen her running expertise to run marathons. From there she moved into competing in Iron Man Triathlons. For Annie her midlife transition was an awakening. An awakening to becoming her true self and pursuing a new career in nutrition that created more meaning in her life.

• In the podcast we talked about:

• The lack of education around menopause and how this impacts our lifestyle choices,

• The impact of estrogen decline on other hormones in particular our metabolic health,

• How estrogen decline impacts on how our body can process sugar and simple carbohydrates. The impact on insulin production and how this may cause insulin insensitivity and pre-diabetes health issues,

• Strategies to deal with addiction to sugar and carbohydrates,

• Fibre and Protein in our diet and how eating more of these in midlife supports our health,

• How internalised cultural belief systems impact our perception of midlife and the impact of it on our life.

You can find Annie at www.veev.ca or on instagram @veev_wellness. Annie works globally online, so if you would like to book a time to talk to her about your nutrition needs at midlife you can book a call via her website.

Ep 50 Navigating life with self compassion with Belinda Haan

How do we navigate life with self compassion? What is self-compassion? Today I welcome Belinda Haan to my podcast, Talkin' about Midlife, to talk about how we can navigate life with self-compassion.

Belinda Haan is a mindfulness teacher, multidisciplinary coach and creator and humble guide to the full joy, catastrophe and sacredness of life.  She is the creator of "Emotional Support for Mothers" - simple practice for difficult days. This toolkit is a thorough guide for simple exercises we can use when we are having a tough day.

In this podcast Belinda and I have a great chat about what self-compassion means, why it is so hard for us to demonstrate it to ourselves, how we can learn to demonstrate it and how it supports us to thrive in life. We talk about our own journey with self compassion and how challenging it can be.

Belinda shares many examples during the podcast of the ways we sabotage ourselves and how our inner critic can get in the way of accessing self compassion to support us in life.

An Ambassador of Compassion with Stanford University, Belinda founded The Compassion Project and created The Emotional Support for Mothers Toolkit. She also delivers classes, coaching and other experiences at belindahaan.com

You can buy the Emotional support for mothers toolkit at www.thecompassionproject.au and you can find Belinda on instagram at @thecompassionproject.au

Ep 49 How do we get better at being with our emotions and regulating ourselves

Many of the clients I work with, whether they be senior executives I am coaching, or clients I am doing relationship coaching with, often have a goal of wanting to get better at being with their emotions. They want to be able to respond better to the challenges that life throws their way.

The only way to do this is to work with the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Your ANS state drives your thoughts, feelings and emotions. When you feel safe, connected and regulated you will experience different feelings and think different thoughts than when you feel unsafe and disconnected.

Most of us, over years of experiencing chronic stress or traumatic events, have a nervous system that is really struggling with the capacity of what it is experiencing. That means our band width gets very small and we can get overwhelmed quickly. The key is working with the nervous system to build the capacity to feel all your feelings. You cannot just block one out and expect to feel everything else. Our system is not that clever. When you repress one, you repress them all.

My other observation is that many of us experienced emotional neglect growing up. Our parents are the children of people who were very traumatised by wars, the depression and who lived in survival mode. There are many parents out there who think that their job is to provide a house, warm clothing, food and schooling and that that is enough. There was no capacity, focus or understanding of how to nurture the emotional life of their children because this was not role modelled to them. In the broader context of what these generations experienced this is understandable.
It doesn't have to be this way anymore.

We can be the generations that change that, we don't have to continue these patterns.

Talk therapy or coaching does not work because it does not work at the level of the nervous system. You have to work with a somatic approach with someone who is trained to work with the nervous system and trauma.

The benefits to your overall health and wellbeing are huge. You will have more energy to function each day and doing this nervous system work frees you from constantly having to spend huge amount of energy to calm yourself down when you feel anxious, reactive and unable to switch off. It helps you make some choices and start to take action when you are feeling constantly stuck and disconnected because your body is in shutdown.

Best of all it allows you to put your precious energy into what matters most to you. Into the relationships you care about and to enjoy life. It reduces your needs for experiencing big highs and lows and to learn to feel safe to feel contented and even sometimes bored. That life is made up of long period of contentment and experiencing joy from the simple things in life.