(upbeat music) - Welcome back to Family Health Matters, I'm Shelley Irwin, with me today, those panelists, Deb Timmerman, RN from Deb Timmerman & Associates, good that you are here Deb, Elle Ingalls, CEO and Founder of Pressure Free Living.

Looking forward to that, and Michele Fife, you are a yoga instructor, Ayurvedic Wellness Counselor, and we'll talk about you.

Thanks for being here.

And let's start with you, Michele, if I may.

Tell us a little bit more about how you are involved in this world of stress and your company.

- Well, I meet with people almost every day to help them manage stress and manage their health and wellness overall.

And as we know the effects of stress can really beak havoc on your health and wellness, not just your physical health, but your emotional health, your mental health, and affect all the other areas of our life.

So I see people daily and help them with yoga, breathing, diet, and lifestyle choices that help them to better manage the effects of stress and also reduce stress.

- Great, and let's move to you, Deb.

- Well, my company specializes in stress education, stress assessments, and my introduction to stress came as a nurse manager.

So I lived in that world of crazy for a while and I was actually training nurses how to deal with stress and not really managing my own.

So as I started to learn more about it and changed my life, it became what I did then professionally.

- Thank you for that.

Following your passion.

Elle, talk about you.

- Sure, I kind of came to stress management coaching organically for years.

I was a violin professor.

I was an executive.

I came from the performance realm.

And in 2010 my sons asked me to coach their baseball team and my mental toughness tools and I thought they were joking, like, who wants their mom and the dugout, but they were serious.

And I codified my method.

I call it the pressure free method.

So for the past 12 years I've been coaching that method to C-suite execs to 10 year old gymnasts and everything in between.

- Great, thank you for that.

Well, just chatting together here in this opportunity, I imagine each of us should be having a little stress.

We wanna do our best, but it might be a scary experience.

So let's begin with you Elle and let's talk about stress.

Give me a positive, give me a negative of a stress.

- Yeah, so I have a really clear definition of stress.

It's when you've triggered the fight or flight stress response.

So you may experience stressors or challenges.

Some people thrive on challenges, and most of my clients are high achievers.

They really thrive on challenges, but it's the tipping point when you actually go into fight or flight, that's when all sorts of habit gets reached both physically and mentally in your being and so I really empower people to understand the biology of the stress response.

So for example, I was working with a speaker recently, and he said, well, I don't get stressed before my talks, but I do get very excited.

He goes, well, how will I know the difference?

And I said, this is crazy, but do you have to pee before you go on stage?

And he goes, oh, absolutely, like multiple times.

So that would be a sign that he's actually triggered the stress response.

Other signs are any sort of chronic disease, mental or physical.

So of course you think of ulcers or diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, of course.

So basically understanding that tipping point, you can experience a challenge and not trigger fight or flight at all, but if you actually go over the line, as I call it, and you actually trigger the stress response, then, for example, a social situation, you won't remember somebody's name that you just met.

Like, it's totally blank.

You can't remember that.

That would tell you.

I help a lot of people with anxiety, depression, not having functioning here, and so that's really kind of how I define stress and know whether or not someone is dealing with a lot and, again, any sort of chronic issue.

So even allergies is a sign that you're triggering the stress response.

- Great.

Yes, we may likely touch more on triggering, and of course spend time on managing.

Michele, your example of a negative and or a positive stress.

- Well, I'll start by telling you my definition of stress is your inability to deal with a real or a perceived threat to your wellbeing, to your body, to your mind, whatever kind of threat is out there, which can be the threat of a deadline that's looming over you.

It could be a threat in the form of just worrying about all the things you have to achieve for your family to get through that day, you know, where the kids have to get to, and the work that they have to do, and then how your body can respond to it.

So, you know, we're looking at stress as a good thing, because sometimes that can be very motivational.

And I know myself personally, I work best under a little bit of pressure.

I like to have just the right amount of pressure.

But as Elle mentioned, there is that tipping point.

And we have to find that line, that balance between, we are stressed enough that maybe we're working harder, working faster, working smarter, but we're not so stressed that it's affecting our sleep, it's affecting our respiratory rate, our heart rate, it's affecting our digestive system.

That's when the stress is not a good stress.

A no bueno stress.

- Thank you for you.

Keep yoga in the back of your mind for our conversation.

Deb, obviously, expand on positive and or negative, and then I'd like you to touch a bit on perhaps early brain development here.

- So I see stress as information.

It's physiological response to exactly what Elle and Michele said, a perceived threat, or a lot of times it goes back to something that's happened to us before.

We've experienced something similar and so we have this physiological response.

And when I define it I think about our ability to cope and what the demands are on our body and on our physiological and psychological resources.

So what Elle said about the tipping point, that's exactly it.

So we need stress' information and we need it to sharpen the ax but we also need to know when it's affecting our bodies physically and being in tune with that so that we can do something to intervene before it becomes a crisis.

So to answer the early development piece, I do a lot of work in trauma and a lot of times people who are adults will have huge, stressful experiences or they've adapted to manage stress in a certain way, and they don't recognize it.

And that goes back to early development and things that happen.

So brain gets sensitized in this experience, certain things, and we get kind of a hyperactive stress response when it's related to a particular situation or a series.

And so oftentimes, especially through the pandemic, it feels like adults who kind of had things in check sort of lost that ability to keep it in check because it reminded them of early things that happened.

So maybe their family went through financial crisis, or dad lost a job, or there was more drinking, or maladaptive coping techniques used, and so they would be more stressed out and they didn't understand why.

So I think it's always important to talk about what happened to you earlier and how that shapes who you are and your stress lens as an adult.

- Yes.

Good to look back.

But staying in the present and let's bring it up.

Yes.

COVID-19, there is most likely continued stress from yesterday to today to what's going to happen tomorrow.

Let me turn to you Elle, again, I'll just jump into how best to begin to manage this.

This COVID-19 stress.

- Yeah, I go back in time and think that I used to think you have your stressful day, you work really hard, and then you take care of yourself afterwards.

So you go for a run, you do yoga, you take care of yourself and everything would be fine.

Both of my parents did that and they both died of stress-based diseases fairly young.

So I started to take a look at that when I started creating my method and I realized that the key is in the timing of actually noticing that you're starting to go into fight or flight and you have this beautiful about a ten second window to actually interrupt the stress response.

So when you can interrupt that stress response and don't release the stress hormones, your body and your mind can stay in a really beautiful place.

And so I describe it as a stress cycle because you'll even see articles where it says, well, after the stress response, you'll be fine a little bit later.

That's actually not true because there's a second flood of hormones.

So two different floods of hormones go out and keep you locked in the stress cycle literally for hours at the cellular level, and so what I help people do is feel what's really happening in that moment and choose them.

This isn't easy for everyone.

It's like we have to turn a key deep inside, like Deb was saying, especially if you've had early trauma, to say, I deserve to have a beautiful life.

We really deserve to have a fulfilling life even if there are a lot of challenges to have a fulfilling life and so breaking that stress cycle with this sweet little 10 second window is what my practice is all about and I have many different ways.

When you talk about COVID, too, I kept getting a lot of my clients who were parents saying, oh, our kids need help.

And one just messaged me this morning and said, you have no idea what you've done for my kids.

People are failing at what they normally could do so well and helping people understand that if they can just start to control that stress response then their brains can work again.

And it's just been beautiful to see some of that change.

And one of my clients said, Elle, you got to write a book for us parents.

So I actually did that.

I'm not a parenting coach but I wrote a book specifically to teach parents how to use the method with their little ones so they can start to create that emotional resilience in them and the whole family can then heal, which is what we found happened in our family, in 2010 when we all changed and understood this stress response.

- Yep.

Thank you for that.

I'm gonna actually jump back to you, Deb, on reaction to that and your COVID-19 pandemic present day stress control.

- Well, I would agree with Elle.

So I guess my kind of thought is that if we're not aware of what's happening in our body and we don't understand what's happening in our brain, then we cannot make the choice to have a different outcome.

So like Elle I focus on tools, primarily breath work tools that you can use in the moment all day long and focus on stress care.

Because like Elle said, at the end of the day, you wanna go home still being your best to your family and it's hard to eek out that hour of self care, but if you can use tools to manage all day, then when you go to yoga and do these other wonderful things you're not trying to get your system regulated, it's already regulated and then you can more deeply enjoy those experiences and those relationships because you can show up and be present.

- 'Cause stress, isn't going away.

Again, the positive or negative.

All right, Michele, we are ready for you to talk about yoga and more of your special technique in this management of stress.

- Well, shockingly, my special technique is just like the other ladies' special technique.

Just the first thing, you know, being mindful.

So Elle talked about being able to recognize that stress response, and that's really mindfulness in a word, mindfulness through yoga.

We're trying to learn more about our bodies, about ourselves and how we respond to things so that, we say in yoga often, or we, I say in yoga that, you know yoga is the ability to remain comfortable in an uncomfortable situation.

You know?

We've got our foot behind our head or we're trying to twist ourselves into a knot and how do we remain calm and breathing smoothly?

So once we learn more about our body and our bodies on stress responses and we're able to feel those changes occurring within us, you don't have to eek out an hour, you don't have to eek out 30 minutes or 20 minutes.

If you can just stop and pause for three minutes, five minutes and, you know, just stop and take a few mindful breaths, maybe stop and think of things that you appreciate or things that you are grateful for.

It's hard to feel stressed when you are feeling appreciation or gratitude.

So I usually try to help my clients to focus on the things that bring them joy so that for that moment, when they feel the stress arising, they can pause, they can stop, they can breathe, and then maybe just visualize the joys of their life, the appreciation, the gratitude, the good things, and then they can move forward and cope with whatever the present situation is.

But really a minute, you know, sometimes I'll catch myself feeling like I have too much going on and I'm stressed out.

Maybe I'm stressed out about being on TV with you today, Shelley, after all this time, but if I stop for just a moment and close my eyes and take a big deep breath then maybe let it out through my mouth like, ah, it's amazing just what that few seconds of breath will do, you know, for your mind and body, truly.

- This is a positive stress, being on TV.

Michele, because you're teaching us, and I wanna stay with you, Michele, expand into, okay.

It is important to practice at that moment.

But what about the importance of a 30 minute walk, a 45 minute run where that is my stress relief?

- Yes and I understand that completely.

Some people have feelings of stress relief are going to be stopped and then other people who are wired differently have stress relief that is, you know, connected as go.

I must go.

So I wanna work off that stress.

I wanna be busy and active, whereas other people might feel like I need to shut down for this stress.

I need to stop.

I need to lay to down.

I need to sit down, whatever.

It's important that you honor and respect those differences and take care of those in that way.

And, you know, I find it best if people try to maintain a structured schedule somewhat.

People work best, just like animals, just like our pets, with structure.

So if you have two or three days a week that you've designated as these are my days I take a run and I do this at this time on these days and that always happens this day, for myself I have a set day that I always practice my yoga.

That's just for myself and that is that time that I carved out that's just for me and I maintain the sacredness of that time.

If for some reason it, it must be bumped, I'll still to make sure to include it in that day.

So I think the consistency and persistency of a regular practice that you schedule for yourself is your self care.

You know, making yourself not just accountable, but also that you know that you're worth it, that you're worth taking that time to care for yourself in that way, whether it's yoga, running, meditation, cooking, gardening, you know, all of these can be stress relieving, meditative tasks that we do.

- Something about taking care of yourself.

Yes.

- Yes.

I wanted to add one more thing about that.

The important thing is the difference can be you can be out and Shelley probably you on a 10 mile run or something like that, and if you are rehashing all the things that are stressing you out you're gonna end that run feeling just the same.

But if you can enter into that run and the whole time just focus on your breath, focus on how your body's feeling, focus on the surroundings that you're seeing as you participate in that activity, that's when you're gonna find the difference.

It's that presence.

- Disco music, disco music.

There we go.

- Oh, let me have you spend some time again, Elle, with this pressure free, take me, I'm a client of yours.

Take me on a stress free journey.

Manage me.

- So one of the first tools that I teach my clients is to simply relax their abs.

We hold a lot of tension in our abs and some of us were taught to suck in our gut all day.

A lot of people try to look thinner and it's a neuroscience trick, but when you relax your belly muscles you tell your brain that you're okay.

You're also letting down body armor.

So if you're looking for deeper connection in relationship, 'cause our relationships cause a lot of stress for a lot of people.

So if you relax your belly muscles, people are much more apt to approach you, be connected to you because we don't have that body armor.

Also, what I find too is if you relax your abs, your throat is gonna be in a really healthier situation.

So some of my clients, their throat tightens in fight or flight.

By relaxing their abs, their throat relaxes, and they don't get that uncomfortable feeling and tightness in here.

So that's a simple tool that I teach right up front for my clients.

They get a lot of mileage out of that particular one.

My tools come in three forms too.

So I use body tools like the breathing.

I also have what I call mind tools for the internal stressors that are going on, and then also life design tools.

So one of my sons is a marathon runner and he just came on one of my shows with me and shared how even like in the race, he doesn't have to go to the bathroom at all.

Most three hour races, you're gonna stop at least once.

Some people stop multiple times, but he's been able to now regulate himself in such a way that he doesn't have any of that happen and his head is in a really great space for the race.

And I love how Michele talked about running is something or exercising is a great thing.

What I tell my clients is make sure though that you don't go too hard and retrigger the stress response because some people do in their exercise and now they're going through a whole nother cycle of this stress hormones and it can even be things like, you know, you're out on your run and there's a loud siren or a loud sound or an unexpected car and that'll boost your heart rate too high.

So finding that sweet spot of your heart rate when you're doing your exercise, because fat and glucose comes into your bloodstream when you go into fight or flight.

So it's great to use some of that up.

And because we do build stress fat, which is another whole thing we can talk about sometime.

- 29 minute show, thank you for that.

Deb.

Let's bring in, pick your topic.

You wanna talk, sleep, you wanna talk the effects of smoking or eating?

Where do we go?

Actually, let me lead it.

Let's how about sleep?

How important is my eight hours to minimize my stress?

- Super important.

So stress makes us stupid because it doesn't allow the thinking part of our brain to function properly.

So the amygdala is what's involved in that flight fight response and what keeps the hormones flowing.

So that's cortisol involved in that, and that messes up our whole circadian rhythms, it's connected to all kinds of other hormone production.

So we actually can biohack our own bodies.

So when we use certain breath tools and this concept called heart rate variability and coherence, we basically can align our body, mind, spirit hormones to work better together.

So, for sleep, that's a wonderful thing.

So one of the tools that I would teach is how to use that breath and we use the heart to do that as a way to turn that off and shift our biology and get us to a more renewing state.

And when we do that, our body gets to more of the parasympathetic.

So the brakes are on, it starts to relax versus the sympathetic where it's, you know, all systems are go, and we get much deeper sleep, helps us sort memories and do all that processing during the night.

That's absolutely vital for brain health and the quality of our sleep is great and we wake up with a full battery in the morning.

- Yes, Michele, take on.

I don't think you're a registered dietician, but the topic of we are what we eat, are there foods that help us manage stress?

And again, I'll throw that out to anyone, but I will start with you Michele.

- Well, first off I am going to say, because I experienced it myself recently, even though I'm a wellness coach and I can be stressed and I was feeling very stressed earlier in the beginning of this year and I started to experience some digestive distress.

And the first thing that I did was think, oh, I'm eating the wrong foods.

So I started to try to change up my diet and make it a little healthier because I felt like I'd slip looked into an unhealthier COVID kind of diet.

But after doing that and changing suddenly I realized that it was the stress that was weakening my digestion.

So as to what we can eat, the easiest thing for you to do is to eat foods that are easily digestible.

So that is, you know, staying away from fried foods, overly salty foods, overly processed foods, alcohol, and caffeine.

We tend to use caffeine more like a tool than we do as a beverage, unfortunately, and we really don't need to have it and sometimes that can contribute and even worsen our stress response that our body is having.

So I would say getting the diet cleaned up into an easily digestible way and also remembering that sometimes we have this notion that we've had a rough day and we wanna come home and we wanna have a treat because we deserve it because of the difficult challenges we faced all day.

And then what is that treat?

The treat isn't a treat.

It's a trick because it could be alcohol.

You know, you come right home from work and you're like, I deserve a glass of wine after that day I've had, It's exactly the wrong thing really, and the wrong way to treat your body at that time.

And I'm not saying you can't have a glass of wine, I'm gonna have a glass of wine later tonight probably, but just one and maybe later after dinner, you know, so it's moderation, it's putting yourself first.

It's taking care of yourself in a mindful and thoughtful way.

- Yes.

Thank you for that.

Let me move back to you, Elle, you said you have a book that you've written?

- Yeah, it's called Pressure Free Parenting, and it's on Amazon and I really go into detail about the method, the pressure free method, but I also share some really practical tips for people to make sure that they're helping their children with all of the different needs.

Even some of the most basic needs.

What I've discovered with some of my clients is that we've become so focused on some of the more self-actualizing.

Are they in the music lessons?

Are they in the sports?

And we're actually feeding them not so good things going back to Michele's idea.

Some not very good diets.

Sometimes I ask them like, what are you feeding your children?

Like there's no reason to have a Chicken McNugget or a chicken nugget if you can actually just give them some real chicken off your plate.

Right?

It's like so interesting to me.

So I share some really practical things in there too.

And then age specific stressors.

It's like in each time, thinking all through a child's life, even into adulthood, what some of those stressors are and how to counteract them using the method.

So, yeah, it's a fun book.

You learn a lot about my family.

My family gave you permission to share what's in there, so.

- If not, too late now.

We are ready for our, let's just say closing comments, and I will start with you Elle Ingalls.

So what do you leave us with and your resource please?

- I think it's really important to be gentle with yourself.

We've been through a lot in the past couple years and we're in such a hurry to make change happen.

But what I encourage all my clients to do is just really be gentle with yourself.

Process takes a little bit of time.

I've seen incredible fast acting things happen in my practice but for some people it takes a while.

So you don't have to be in a rush.

You can really take the time to learn from your practitioners what's gonna work for you.

And then, for people to find me, you can go to my website.

It's elleingalls.com.

And if you are on here and just say like, I really wanna talk to her, my calendar is simple.

It's just speakwithelle.com and you can book a time with me and we can find out what's going on with you.

- Thank you for that.

What do you leave us with?

What do you charge us with Michele Fife?

- Well, I would love to help people manage their stress with breath and yoga and maybe some diet and lifestyle changes.

I have a couple great resources on Amazon, also.

The two that I would recommend is if you have a lot of time, I have a video that's called Ease.

That's on Amazon, that is about an hour long practice, and none of it is vigorous or standing.

So the whole thing can be done seated, lying, or kneeling.

So really works for all body types and then recognizing that people were short on time, I also created two short videos that are called Sleep and Wake.

And they're also on Amazon and Sleep is 20 minutes, just 20 minutes of some yoga and breathwork and positive meditation reinforcement to help you put your head down and be able to put those thoughts away for the evening.

Whereas Wake is the same thing, but in the morning context that is designed to help you get up and get ready, clearheaded and in a good mood to have a good day.

So that's all out there on Amazon and my website is the same.

It's just my name, michelefife.com, so.

- 20 Minutes, we've got 24 hours.

So no excuses.

I'm making a note myself.

Deb, I give you the finale.

Close us up if you would.

- Well, I know we gave a lot of dire information today and talked about how bad stress is for us, but here's the good news.

We have control and we can change it and the best way to do it is with small sustainable steps.

So start with one thing and work up.

I think that it's a marathon, not a quick 100 yard dash for us during life, and that our tools should be sustainable and fit into our daily practices.

So for me, my website is lessstressinlife.com, and I have a podcast every week where we take the topic of stress and we put it down into bite size pieces.

So you can do one thing each week and make progress.

So we all know that small steps yield big results.

- Now how many people will Google less stress in life and then here you come up?

Somebody's been working with you.

Ladies, again, thanks to you.

And of course, we'll see you again soon.

Enjoy your day.

- Thank you, Shelley.

- And thanks to you for watching.

(upbeat music)