Episode 69 - Stress Is Undefeated, Your Body Doesn't Have to Be

Stress isn't going anywhere. The real question is: can your body adapt to it?

In this episode of Three Questions, I skip the usual "just breathe" advice and explore why so many stress-management techniques fall flat. Together we'll work through three simple questions and movement experiments that help you understand how your brain maps your body and why that matters when life gets overwhelming.

In This Episode You'll Hear:

• Why your feet may be the missing link in feeling calm and connected
• How better brain-body mapping can improve grounding, breathing, and movement
• Practical sensory strategies you can try immediately when stress starts building

I want you to remember the goal isn’t to completely eliminate stress…. But that it's about giving your body the information it needs to respond, adapt, and recover. 

Links & Resources For This Episode:
Find a Neuro Studio Teacher Near You
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Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions, where critical thinking is king, and my opinions and any research I share is just here to improve your learning and understanding. Hey, I'm your host, Meghann, and I'm so honored you clicked on Three Questions today, so we can talk about stress. Now, I don't know about you, but, like, little things annoy me.

Like, "Oh, just try this one breathing exercise and your life will be better," or, "If you just do X, Y, and Z, it'll fix your life and your sleeping habits." And then it's like the same shit you hear over and over and over again. Yes, we know we should all go to bed the same time every night. Yes, we sh- all know we should not be scrolling on our phones.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, end. So rather than breaking down stress or talking about stress, because let's be honest, stress is not going anywhere. It's here to stay. She isn't leaving. We have to figure out how to deal with her, okay? So what I wanted to do for this episode is talk about actual strategies that may or may not help us.

So just to set... Let's set the bar really low. Some of these strategies might not be helpful to you because maybe when I ask those three questions, you have already solved those problems for yourself, or those might not be the things that are making your body feel disconnected. Well, great. So reach out and then we can maybe do a stress part two and do three more questions we can ask.

But what I want you to do is maybe listen to this episode, so but then kind of come back to it because I want you to try. This is gonna be like a show and tell episode, so if you're watching me on YouTube, you'll notice I'm a little further back from the camera because I want you to be able to see my body when I'm doing some things.

So if you're driving right now, just kind of take it all in and maybe do what you can, and then we'll adjust as we go. So enough yammering on. Let's get right to question one. How are your feet responding to the earth, the ground, the floors in your house? Just think on that a minute How are my feet responding to the earth?

Well, if you are able to walk at all, even if you've got a hitch in your giddyup but you're able to walk, your feet are responding to the earth. So we're good and good. However, how our feet respond to the ground is going to dictate how the rest of our body responds. So a lot of times we do all these little things.

We go to the gym, we strengthen certain areas, we pay attention, but if we don't shift how our feet are responding to the earth when we're walking and living our lives, we're not gonna be recruiting those areas of our body anymore. So let me break that down a, a bit further. W- think about a wobbly table, okay?

So what's more annoying than a wobbly table, right? It's pretty annoying. But then if you just kind of find the right little napkin or, I feel like my mom is, like, great at this, the right size of things, it will make the table stop wobbling. Okay? Kind of an easy visualization. And for us with our feet, if our brain perceives our feet as very unstable, a wobbly table, well, just think about how much work the rest of the body has to do to deal with that wobbly table.

Now, let's flip side that coin. A lot of times, while people's feet may be unstable or loosey-goosey or flat, the other can happen. The feet can almost become too rigid in certain areas. This is something that might happen to yours truly, myself. So because of a lot of ankle sprains and ankle injuries, like, I, I'm, as the kids say, built different.

I have a large backside. I've got big glutes and I've got, like, no calves. I call it AANC body. All ass, no calves. Okay? So I've got this big butt and these very thin, wobbly ankles. I used to sprain my ankles all the time. And with those, that instability in the ankle, my feet would really stiffen up to support myself.

So when I stand on the earth, my brain doesn't feel any instability. It feels like I'm standing on two planks of wood. So now picture a table with, like, 18 legs all spaced around evenly. So that table doesn't have to stabilize. It's kind of there because it can't wobble and move because there are so many legs so close together.

So this is, like, my big pet peeve with people who wear toe separators all the time or their toes are, like, real far apart. You've kind of created a problem in a different direction. Your toes are so far apart you don't need the musculature or the brain involved to help the foot respond. It's just kind of I don't wanna say, I, I, it's like level on the ground with no activity.

Okay? So I want you to thank your feet. It's like we've gotta have this delicate balance of mobility in our feet, but not too much mobility that they're flopping around and we can't stabilize. Ugh, it sounds annoying, doesn't it? So here's my rule of thumb. What I want you guys to think about is what's something we can do every day to change how our feet are responding to the earth.

So rather than guessing, I want, if it's available, if you're driving, obviously you don't do this, stand up. Just stand up. I'm not going to 'cause I don't want my mic to fall over and we have to deal with sound issues. Notice how your feet feel. Not good or bad, just notice. Notice how they feel. Now what I want you to do is go into your kitchen or wherever you have paper towels and go grab one paper towel, okay?

And kind of roll it up. Now I'm on, uh, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see I'm just kind of rolling it. But if you're not, just kind of grab a paper towel and kind of make it like a tight little towel. All right? Now I want you to take your shoes off if you're wearing shoes. If you weren't wearing your shoes, well, you're already ahead of the game.

Now, here's what I want you to do with the paper towel. So I'm gonna show you my foot. Hello, foot. Oh, it's a little dirty at the bottom. I was walking around outside. You're gonna take your paper towel. I'm gonna turn this way so we can see my feet. Take the paper towel and make it a U around your big toe.

Hello. And then you're just gonna kind of write back and forth like, like you're rubbing your toe. Oh my God. Rub your toe like you're rubbing it, and just notice how that feels. Get the inside of the toe, get the outside of the toe. Then go to your second toe. Okay? Same thing. Rub either side. And yes, you guessed it, now we're going to your third toe.

And you know, as the toes get a little closer together, it might feel a little tighter. So you can always pull your other toes away, rub one side than the other. Sometimes when I get to these little guys, I like to go just in between my second and third toe, rub the inside of the third toe, then bring the towel between the third and fourth and do the outside of the toe.

Same thing on the fourth toe. Either do the U or rub the inside and the outside And last but not least, the little pinky, which I can do with U again. Right around that pinky. Now, the goal is to kind of glide the skin, take that towel off, and then stand up again, like right now, and just notice how you feel Take a minute.

Does it feel good? Does it feel bad? I'll describe what I feel when I do this. I feel short. Now let me explain. I am short. I am 5'3". I just took my niece to a concert. Um, oh my God, I sound like an old lady. This young man, his name is Alex Warren, very impressed. He put on a very good show. I only knew one of his songs, that Ordinary song, but man, he put on such a good concert, and it was so cool because I tried to get us pretty close, but I don't like to be on the floor 'cause I don't like to...

I like to have a chair, okay? So just where we were in the second row, he had, like, a second stage, and he was, like, right in front of us. I've never been that close. Um, and it was also... It's so much fun. This is probably how parents feel. It was so fun watching my niece just sing and, like, have a blast. It was amazing.

But anyway, back to my point. Um, uh, what was my point? Oh, I don't even remember what my point was. Why I s- told that story. Well, I'm gonna make it a different point. While I was standing in that concert, damn, my feet hurt. Oh, I remember the point. Oh, I'm so glad you guys are on this journey with me, and Joe, don't edit that out.

This is real life. So why I t- brought up that story is my 14-year-old niece is taller than me. So I am 5'3". However, when my feet really can't connect to the ground, I tend to almost, like, extend my spine up and kind of lift myself out of my body, and I don't kind of feel as short as I am. But then when I can really connect to the ground, man, I feel my whole body differently.

I feel 5'3". I feel connected to the earth. It feels kind of great. Now, after that whole hullabaloo of a story, hopefully, maybe you started doing your other foot if it felt good, and if it didn't feel good, do the other foot anyway. Each foot is different. They're like two different children, okay? So after you do this with your feet, let's just talk about what that was.

Now, you might see people rolling out their feet and releasing their feet. That ain't it. Okay, if your feet are tight and you need a lacrosse ball to roll out your foot, we need to think about why we need to do that, and your feet are tight for a reason. That is, your feet are gripping that way to try to stabilize you or connect...

or connect you to the ground. So yes, it feels amazing to roll out your foot, but it is short-lived, and it allows you to overuse that pattern again, okay? So if your feet feel tight, what if you just activated your hips or moved other parts of your body? Then see how your feet respond. Now, what we did here, we used kind of a gentle skin glide, and the goal was to change our brain mapping.

Let me explain for my non-science-y people or non-movement people. So in our brain, kind of the joints that are next to each other are next to each other in our sensory and motor map So take your hand and move your fourth finger. Notice how the other fingers are moving as well, but you're not meaning to move them, okay?

That's kind of brain map smudginess. So when our brain can't really differentiate the sensations between moving the fifth toe or the big toe, or pressure on the fifth toe versus the third toe versus the big toe, that is going to affect how our brain is mapping our foot. So by taking the towel, rubbing the insides of our toes, we're changing the sensation our brain gets.

So when you stood up, your brain might have been like, "Oh, wait a minute. I feel something different here. I'm feeling more pressure on my fifth toe. Let's adjust," because it could feel the difference between the fifth toe, the third toe, the fourth toe. Or guys, let's not like think of miracles, it might have just differentiated your, like fifth toe from your big toe.

I work with clients and we do all this brain map testing, and when I touch their big toe, they sometimes think it's their third toe. Or they feel it's their big toe when I just touch their big toe, but when I touch their big toe and their third toe, they're like, "Is that my third toe?" The funniest was I actually had a teacher back when, when I was in Australia, back when I was in Australia, it was like two weeks ago, and one of the teachers, she cracked me up.

She's like, "Do I have six toes?" And I was like, "Well, your brain might think so." And we then adjusted all that. So what if throughout the day you can do different things to help your brain respond to the ground differently. So what if you don't have a paper towel? Well, you can take your fingers just in between your toes.

I'm doing it right now. Okay? You could take off a sock. Use your sock. You could... Now put your foot on the ground. I want you to lift your heel and roll to just your big toe touching the ground. Okay? Try to lift the others off. Now try to slowly lower your second, third, fourth, fifth, not by moving the toes, but rolling the ankle.

So if I'm here, I'm rolling to the big toe and then rolling back. Okay? So if, uh, you're looking at my hand on YouTube, if we'd roll to the big toe and then just lower our foot. I want your brain to feel the different sensations when you touch different toes. Now try to roll to just the fifth toe touching the ground, and then roll your ankle back down and say to your brain, "Okay, I think this is, like, third toe.

This could be second. I don't know." And then big toe. Okay? Now, if you're thinking, "Why is this important, Meg?" Well, I don't know. Um, your foot is the furthest thing away from your brain, and we really want your brain to know everything that's available at your foot so it can respond accordingly. And everybody's at the gym trying to, like, strengthen their hips, make their glutes look better, get a flatter stomach, get more definition in their shoulders.

Okay. Those bodies aren't necessarily made in the gym. The gym makes them stronger, but if your brain can't differentiate between joints when you're moving throughout the day, right? If your brain can't differen- differentiate joints, it's just gonna move in chunks. So you're not gonna get the little different nuances when you're doing the dishes.

I tell my clients, pay a little more attention to your workouts. Differentiate your joints a little better so that throughout the day you're moving your body better. Okay? So think, bodies aren't just made in the gym. They're made throughout the day. Stay more active and keep your feet and your... Keep your brain alert to, alert to your feet and keep your feet alert to your brain.

Okay. So you've got three options for your feet. If your feet feel stiff, do a hip exercise without moving your foot. Number two, take a t- paper towel, rub in between each toe and on the outside so you're really kind of separating each toe from each other. And last but not least, do some movement where you try to get all the weight on one toe, roll it to the other toe, and help your brain notice the nuance.

Personally, I like to do that standing. I like to have one leg straight. I like to bend my other knee and lift the heel. So we're in what's called push off. So your knee's bent, hips flexed a little bit, and your heel is lifted. I like to roll to pinky toe and big toe. Then when I find maybe just pinky toe, I bend both knees, like do a little squat, and try to maintain the pressure at my toes.

Ugh. It totally resets my brain and says to my brain, "Hey, I want you to work my hips in this foot position. Now in this foot position. Now in that foot position." And guys, why is that important? Because every step we take is different. Every single step we take is different. So it's mission critical that your brain can understand the nuance of how your foot touches the ground.

If it doesn't, that's what leads to sprained ankles and injuries up the chain. Fix the feet, pay attention, but recognize the feet don't live in isolation. I'm harping on the feet because we don't walk on our hands. Okay? But just doing foot exercises is just the start. Number two: can you move your head without the rest of your body moving?

Now, you might be thinking, "What the heck does this have to do with stress?" So glad you asked. Okay. Well, number one, our head houses our brain Our head also houses our eyes, our ears, our tongue, our mouth, our nose. Co-- So it's this place where we get a ton of sensory information from our ears, our eyes, taste, smell, movement from the head, from the vestibular system, not just sound.

So knowing where our head is in space in relation to our body is critical. Something I see, and I see this across the board from people with neurological conditions to professional athletes, a lot of people have trouble knowing where their head is in space. Now, why this is important, if anybody's experienced a hot flash or a panic attack or any stressful situation, breathing can often be helpful, or it can actually make things worse.

Has anybody been having-- ever had a panic attack or hot flashes? People are like, "Just breathe," and you're like, "Oh, my God, I'm going to stab you in the eye." Now, if our body is disconnected, if our, what we call our upper quadrant, kind of like our shoulder girdle, can't reflexively respond, our diaphragm can't move efficiently.

So just breathing can be super problematic and actually make you feel more stressed. So if breathwork works for you, great. Breathwork will work for you even more when we can anchor our head to our upper body, and our brain knows where our head is in relation to our feet, circling back to question one.

See how I did that? So how your feet are responding to the earth can help with stress because, guys, stress is going to come up. Stress happens. But if we are disconnected to the earth and disconnected to our body, all that energy inside gets trapped. It can't escape. We can't feel grounded. We can't feel safe.

And these exercises aren't gonna fix your stress. It's gonna help your body able to manage it better. And people who manage a lot of stress, I hear myself saying it, and it annoys me. It's like, "No, no, I can handle a lot." And, like, when you hear yourself sounding it, it's like, okay, who are you trying to convince?

Yeah, a lot of us can handle a lot. That doesn't mean our body isn't pissed at us. So we talked about the feet. Now let's talk about things we can do with our head to get us reconnected to our body. So here's what I want you to do. Just put your right hand or put your dominant hand on your chest, like right on your sternum.

Just touch it. Now, from here, I'm gonna put both feet on the ground. Don't think. Just turn your head right to left as much as you can. Kinda go big.

And rest. Did you feel your sternum moving? I like to think the sternum is like a, a rudder of a boat. I think it's spelled R-U-D-D-E-R. I have no idea how it's spelled. But it's that thing that directs a boat. You know what I mean. So again, it might have been moving big or subtle. These aren't bad things, but just notice.

Now what I want you to do is put your hand on your sternum, and if it feels crooked already, just we'll deal with that later. Just keep it where it is right now. And I want you to turn your head with your eyes closed, don't do this driving, and focus on the pressure against your hand not changing And notice if you feel like you're trying to cure cancer here Now for me, when I turn to my head to the left, it's like easy, like duh.

When I turn my head to the right, I'm like, "I don't even know whose body this is." Okay? So if you were like, "Yeah, Meg, that was great, loved it," hold on tight. If you struggled a bit like me, maybe you've had concussions like me, maybe you have some, uh, binocular visual issues, so this is going to affect it. So what I want you to do, turn in the direction it felt easy.

Now focus on where your sternum is there. Okay? Now, when I turn my he- head to the left, it felt easy, and my sternum actually centered itself. Before, it was tilted to the right. Now just keep it there. Focus on your sternum staying still, and just bring your head to the other direction without your sternum moving And then back to the left or whichever side you were doing

Does that feel, make you feel more relaxed already? Now, last but not least, I'm gonna have you touch your sternum with the heel of your hand and cross like a finger. I have to do thumb to sternum, finger to my left arm. Okay? So turn your head in the direction it feels best. Now notice the distance between your sternum and your arm that you're touching.

Don't change the distance there, and turn your head. Making adjustments between your sternum and shoulder, not your head

That gave my brain way more information. It almost feels like effortless to do it now

One more

And up. Now, what's interesting, when I did the just touching the sternum, my he- whole body was rotated to the left. When I did it with my arm, my head was centered. Now, why it's important to isolate the head is because when we walk, our body is constantly doing a counter-rotation. Our pelvis rotates a little bit, our upper body, like our ribcage, rotates the opposite way, and then the head kind of rotates in the same direction as the pelvis, not exactly the same amount, to keep our head straight.

Okay? So there's all these micro-rotations, but when we walk, if we can't separate the head from the upper body, the head sometimes goes in the direction of our upper body, and then our neck gets all tense to try to pull the head back to straight. Or even worse, our visual system has to drag it. And at this point, if you're thinking, "Oh my God, this is way too complicated, I'm losing it," don't...

Hold on. I got you. I got you. Think about this We don't want our head to be dragged around by our body, and we don't want our body to be dragged around by our head. We need to move them separately, move them together. So when you're feeling stressed, say you're in the drop-off line for your kids, okay? Now, make sure your car is in park.

Put your ha- hand on your sternum. Turn your head in the direction it feels easy. Maybe you have to do the arm thing like me, and then just bring your head back to center. Three times. Maybe you turn the opposite direction. And then from there, take a big inhale and exhale through your nose and tell yourself you can do this.

If you did the inhale and exhale before you got the head organized, it might have done nothing for you. This is often why a lot of people can't meditate, 'cause their body can't calm down in the meditation position, and then they're like, they either give up, or finally after 30 minutes, their body relaxes.

But wouldn't it be cool to, like, get right into the meditation right from jump? Okay? Just organize your body. Now, for people who didn't feel their sternum, I got you. Take your hand that was touching the sternum, make an L. Just kind of touch a part of your pelvis, any part of your pelvis. Feel a bone or your low belly if you carry weight down there.

Don't pull your belly in, just touch it, and then touch a rib. Okay? So I'm touching my low belly and my rib on the right side. Now, turn your head Okay. I can feel my ribcage moving in relation to my hips and lower body. So for you guys, touch here. Which direction does it feel better to move the head? S- okay, attach your fingers there.

Don't let the distance between your fingers change as you move your head the other direction. Oh, that's lovely

Come back to center and rest. So what I wanted to illustrate there is although your upper body could be moving your head, the problem might not have been in your upper body. For me, it was more hip related and feet related. More on that later. But I could get organized with just touching my shoulder, but the root of the problem was lower at the hip.

So here's what I want you to take away from that. If it feels difficult to do these resets, it's probably not the reset your body needs. Okay? These resets should feel, like, so effortless, you're probably like, "Why didn't Meghann tell me this sooner?" Okay? So to rehash, when we're stressed out, first thing I want you to do is maybe change how your feet are responding to the earth.

Okay. Didn't work? Change how your head is responding to the earth. How we're gonna do that is make sure our brain knows where our head is in space, and we're gonna improve our brain mapping by making sure we turn our head without any other part of our body moving. Pure isolation. Now please note I am not going to talk about the eyes in this, um, podcast.

What is it called? A podcast. So again, if your eyes are the problem, you can either close your eyes or just don't do the head stuff. And last but not least, question three: Is your neck the sneakiest B-I-T-C-H of them all? Now, we just did head movement, and you're probably like, "Wasn't that the neck?" Yes, but I wanna talk about your neck in relation to your jaw and tongue.

Okay? So take your hand, bring it to the back of your neck, and try to touch those little bumps, the bones. Touch bones. Try to find them. Spread them out. Okay? I always like to say like you're playing the piano. From there, all I want you to do, sit casually, stick out your tongue as far as it can go

Rest. Did you feel any of those bones shift forward, back, side to side, any way? Okay. If the answer's no, no drama. Okay. Stick your tongue out again. Now, I want you to suck your tongue back in and see if you felt a shift in your neck when you pulled your tongue back in. Just note, when you pull your tongue back in, don't pull your jaw back.

Just pull your tongue back into your mouth. Okay? So either tongue out, tongue in. When... Now, for me, after I'm lecturing a lot, like after Australia, when I would stick my tongue out or pull it in, my, like, C3, so kinda like the middle of my cervical, would just go boop, boop, boop, boop. It was going out and in.

When I talk a lot, because your tongue is attached fascially and muscularly to your cervical spine and jaw, it's going to affect how your neck moves. So again, we talked about neck in relation to other parts of our body big. Now we've gotta talk about our tongue. So what I want you to do, stick your tongue out or in.

Go to where you feel the shift in your neck. Now, focus on maintaining the bones into your fingers and the fingers into your bones. Now, what you're gonna do, you're just gonna stick your tongue out and in without the bones shifting at all. So it's like your tongue starts at the back of your neck. And pull it back in.

Out, pull it back in. Keep those bones against your fingers as you stick the tongue out. Okay, do that a few times, and then swallow. Maybe stand up and see how you feel

Notice, notice if your eyes feel like they're lighter, easier, open more. Okay? Now what I'm gonna have you do, touch your neck again and move your jaw forward and back Now, if you don't feel your neck move, do you feel any pressure or something different in your ears? When I move my jaw forward, I feel ringing in my left ear, right?

Because what happens, it's fascially and muscularly pulling kind of right where my worst concussion kind of affected me, the back left quadrant of my h- skull. Right? So what I want you to do is if you feel any shift in your ear, use that, touch your ear or touch the back of your neck and try to move your jaw forward and back without that shift occurring, either at your spine or at your ear.

Go ahead

And when I have my hand just on my ear and I do it like an ear muff, so again, on YouTube you'll see I'm just kind of muffing around my ear. Muffing around my ear? Sometimes the words coming out of my mouth surprise me as well. Okay, so I've got that organized, and then I'm just gonna move my jaw forward and back

Swallow And after we do these, after you swallow, my goal for you is that your tongue is at the roof of your mouth. Cool? Last but not least. Now, hand position is critical. I want you to touch your neck. Okay? Kind of, you're gonna have to spread your fingers out, and for me, I've gotta kind of go lower. C7 is the bumpiest.

That's the one kind of at the back. Okay? So kind of get your fingers lower, and just take your opposite arm up and just reach your arm like you're trying to reach across the room. Let your whole body move. Reach that arm big. Now, what I want you to notice, does your spine move in the same direction as your arm, or maybe in opposite direction?

Okay. I'm just gonna do the same direction because we can't do all the freaking options. So what I want you to do is feel your arm, reach your arm, and feel how your spine is moving. Try to touch the vertebra, the bone that's moving the most. Okay? Now, swallow again. Wherever your tongue is, I want you to reach your left arm without changing the distance or pressure between your spine and your tongue.

Just try it

And rest. You might've been like, "Oh my God, I felt muscles in my arm activate." So when we move our arm, our shoulder blade, or what I call your wing bone, it should kind of move. It should upwardly rotate if your arm's up, and kind of come wide on our body. But most of the time when people reach their arm, their spine rotates as well.

I know. I know. It's hard to do this, and it's on our back, so we don't really get a lot of feedback there. So what you can do is by touching the spot that moves and bring a relationship to the tongue, that can help you isolate your arm. Okay? Now touch that spot that's moving again, and if the tongue didn't help, what I want you to do is look straight ahead and see your elbow in your peripheral vision.

So when you reach... So I'm seeing my right. I'm touching my neck with my ri- right arm. I see my right elbow in my peripheral vision. I'm gonna take my left arm, and I'm gonna reach my left arm without the spot I'm touching moving away from my elbow. And if it's moving towards your elbow, don't let it get closer.

Beautiful. Then you could even lower and lift your arm up and down without your spine changing distance from your tongue. It's keeping stacked under your tongue, or not changing distance from your elbow, which I like to do when I lower my arm. Okay? So today, rather than talking about strategies that aren't helping us with our stress, if we're honest...

I mean, it's helping, but let's be honest, we're all still a little too stressed. What I want you to think about instead off of today is how can you fix the foundation of your house? That's through our musculoskeletal, fascial, bones, all of that. How can you make sure that that foundation of our body is connected to the earth, can respond to the earth, and can respond to each other, the head, the upper body, the lower body, so all this stress and energy can come through us, go down into the earth, fly out through our head, and move through our body energetically in a way that doesn't jam us up.

Sidebar, this is a big note with hot flashes, which is a vasovagal response, something to do with our vagus nerve. Now, a lot of times when people get hot flashes... Now, please understand, I am only entering in perimenopause. Um, I used to get hot flashes really bad when I was younger, like really bad, to the point I remember at my, um um, in my 20s and 30s, like I would be drenched.

Like I would sweat from my head. It would... I... After a workout, I would look like I showered. I would get so drenched. I have this one, oh my God, it was so cute, this like army green dress. But it was like that fabric that catched sweat and like I wore it once and I had like a sweat stain down to my waist.

Okay? So I am not equating this. And so again, I, I don't speak on menopause because I haven't gone through it, although I'd love to talk about the science behind it. But I know everybody's gonna be like, "Can't wait until you go through it." Come on, let's all be supportive of each other and find strategies.

So what I'm saying is when I don't get them anymore, but when I do, the first thing I do is stabilize my neck Okay? And why I do that is I move my head around a lot to get vestibular information, um, post-concussion. So because of that, I have a lot of instability in my neck. Uh, this offen- also happens to people with hypermobility, EDS, POTS, all of that.

So just doing an isometric like that, it helps get my head back on my body so that hot, uh, like that, that heat, the panic, the anxiety can go through me and not get stuck. Um, I can also speak that this really helps manage my anxiety. Um, it doesn't fix anxiety. Um, sometimes medication is needed, sometimes therapy is needed, sometimes grounding techniques are needed.

And so if you're doing the medication and you're still not feeling great, try the others. If you're doing all the grounding and the therapy, try medication. It is not a weakness. Help your body help itself. And number three, if you've done the therapy and the medication, try some of these techniques to make sure your body can handle what's coming at it energetically, the stress, good and bad, and let it kind of...

let the body heal itself and adapt, which I know is easier said than done. So what I need you guys to do, give me some feedback. It was-- I tried to do my best to describe exactly what I wanted you to do. This episode might be best viewed on YouTube, but if you have any questions, reach out. I can also do some Instagram posts of each question so that you can see me demonstrating it on my body to help you learn.

I know a lot of times auditory and then trying to do the movement isn't the best way to learn. Um, I just wanted to give you the information and you can go from there. And by the end of this episode, I want you to ask yourself, what do you think was the bigger- biggest driver to disconnects in your body?

Is it your feet? Is it the inability to isolate your head from other parts of your body? Or could it be that talking, communicating, swallowing is actually disconnecting you? Well, technically it would be disconnecting your head from the body, but the moving the head without moving the rest of the body will not solve that, okay?

So there's two different... Well, there's a few different reasons our head could be disconnected. I want you to ask yourself, was it tongue related or was it brain mapping with the rest of your body or your feet, okay? And if it was none of the above, let me know, because I have way more where this came from.

So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Hopefully you're not more stressed after the episode and now have some tools to manage the stress that we all come in contact with every single day.