A Healthy Curiosity

We often talk about things like anxiety and perfectionism and when these issues are carried out to an extreme, they can sometimes lead to panic attacks. Whatever else may be going on, the root of it, as Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum identifies, is that we're scaring ourselves.

With her analogy of seeing snakes when we're really looking at a garden hose, Dr. Scheinbaum advocates patience and realistic thinking to allow our bodies to begin relaxing after trying to protect us. Our bodies react to perceived threats, which can lead to panic episodes. They also know how to relax. Our best course of action is to be patient and find ways to encourage our bodies to calm.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• How panic attacks differ from just feeling anxious
• What some of the steps are in the process of learning to deal with panic episodes
• The different ways Functional Medicine approaches panic attacks
• What technique she recommends for people who may struggle with meditation
• The benefits Dr. Scheinbaum sees in group medical visits

Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum has spent nearly five decades making healthcare and education more holistic and innovative. With a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, Dr. Sandi specialized in positive psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy, and mind-body medicine, and served as a teacher and the director of a clinic for Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD). She is a pioneer in her fields, having implemented programs such as the use of neurofeedback with patients and becoming the first-ever psychologist to earn certification through The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM). She is the founder of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy in Chicago.

Links:

The Institute for Functional Medicine

Connect With Dr. Scheinbaum:

The Functional Medicine Coaching Academy

Twitter

Instagram

Youtube

--

Learn more about the Level Up program

Living in today's industrialized society, we're exposed to environmental toxins that can overload our systems. Combine that with the junk in processed foods and it becomes more important than ever to do the occasional dietary reset. Dr. Alejandro Junger was forced to learn this lesson himself and has been endeavoring to help others do the same ever since.

While moving in the direction of living healthily requires effort, Dr. Junger has created programs that are an accessible on-ramp to help people take better care of themselves. Combining principles of functional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine, his system goes further into helping find ways to reset and detoxify our bodies.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• How growing up in Uruguay and then moving to New York informed Dr. Junger's path
• The general mechanics of how toxic materials can build up in the body and how the body detoxifies
• Why our bodies can't deal with the overload of toxins on their own
• Ways to support the pathways for detoxifying in our bodies

Alejandro Junger, M.D., is the New York Times bestselling author of Clean, Clean Gut, Clean Eats, and most recently, Clean7. He completed his training in internal medicine at New York University Downtown Hospital and his fellowship in cardiology at Lenox Hill Hospital. After his medical training, he studied eastern medicine in India.Now, in Clean7, he aims to make health transformations more accessible and easier to implement, especially for all whose fast-paced lifestyles means putting their health on the back burner.

Links:

The Institute for Functional Medicine

Connect With Dr. Junger:

Website

Articles by Dr. Junger

Instagram

Facebook

--

Learn more about the Level Up program

Free Balancing Yin and Yang Meditation

In a busy world that seems to demand more and more of our attention everyday, falling asleep can often be a challenge. If you find yourself in this wired-tired state, Catherine Polan Orzech offers some great insight into how we can practice mindfulness throughout our day in order to get better sleep.

By building a compassionate interest in ourselves, we can begin to treat ourselves with more friendliness and avoid creating additional layers of suffering for ourselves in the times when sleep just isn't happening. That shift towards non-judgment, stemming from a mindfulness practice, goes a long way towards setting ourselves up to feel better and sleep better.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• A quick energy integrity inquiry practice

• How Catherine got onto this track of mindfulness based help for insomnia
• The feedback loop of sleeping better and meditating better
• What she learned in the process of writing her book that surprised her
• How she defines mindfulness and why we all have the capacity do it

Catherine Polan Orzech is the author of "Mindfulness for Insomnia." She is on faculty at OHSU Center for Women's Health and is an expert in mindfulness based interventions. Catherine has been involved in the field of mind/body healing for over 20 years. She offers mindfulness and compassion-based individual, couple and family therapy in her private practice setting. She specializes in working with ways to alleviate anxiety, depression, the struggles felt in difficult relationships, chronic and serious illness, loss and grief.

Links:

Episode 47: Sleep Science with Dr. Michael Breus

Episode 42: Taming Your Inner Critic with Catherine Polan Orzech, MA, LMFT

Dr. Bill Moorcroft

Jon Katbat-Zinn

Connect With Catherine:

Website

Catherine's Book

--

Learn more about the Level Up program

Anxiety has surpassed depression as the number one mental illness in the US. Could our food and missing amino acids be part of the reason why?

Trudy Scott is an expert in the food-mood connection and she shares some different ways to look at how the things that we put in our mouths affect our physical and mental health. If we can look at our symptoms of anxiety as an opportunity to be in a respectful dialogue with our bodies, we can begin to hone in on the different sources of anxiety, such as low serotonin or low GABA.

On today's episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• How Trudy's own anxiety led her down this path
• Why a vegetarian diet was detrimental for her
• What the differences between low serotonin and low GABA anxiety are
• The connection between neurotransmitter deficiencies and gut health
• The social anxiety disorder known as pyroluria

Links:

Pyroluria

Professor Felice Jacka

Dr. Navaz Habib

Connect With Trudy:

Website

Anxiety Nutrition Institute

The Anti-Anxiety Food Solution by Trudy Scott

Register for The Anti-Anxiety Summit 5

Download Trudy's Free Guide on Anxiety

The Anxiety Summit 5 Order Page

--

Learn more about the Level Up program

Power is a complicated structure. With dimensions relating to both the yin and yang, those different aspects of power ultimately support and amplify each other. If we want to feel more powerful and reinforce that feeling for those around us, it starts with self-care.

As Audre Lorde put it, self-care can be a political act that expresses our own power outwardly. It also enables us to nurture our relationships. How we take care of ourselves is at the root of our power of presence and the energy that we show up with in the world to help amplify the power of others.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• Why presumptions of capability can shape feelings of power
• The feedback loop between how we take care of ourselves and how we feel
• How aligning outward actions with inward values strengthens both
• The importance of your environment in amplifying your power

Links:

She Podcasts LIVE

Audre Lorde

Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde reads Uses of the Erotic

Merk Nepo

--

Learn more about the Level Up program

Free Balancing Yin and Yang Meditation

Creating and maintaining healthy habits is often the biggest lever that we can pull to affect our health and happiness, but it can be an incredibly difficult process to change our behavior and create those lasting habits. Through her medical training and research, Dr. Kyra Bobinet has begun helping people to close the gap between the brain and behavior through behavioral neuroscience design. She shares her wisdom about how staying in effort can lead us to turn our healthy habits into automation.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• Dr. Bobinet's journey into becoming a behavior designer as she followed her curiosity
• How to move our good intentions into being habits
• The two big things people get wrong when building new habits
• Why she says that no one changes alone
• What she found in her research about what makes change stick

Kyra Bobinet, MD MPH, is a behavior neuroscience designer specializing in behavior change. As CEO/founder of engagedIN, Dr. Bobinet designs large-scale health and wellness products that impact hundreds of millions globally. She has an MD from UCSF School of Medicine, an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health and is consulting faculty at Stanford School of Medicine. Recipient of the 2015 Harvard TH Chan Innovator Award and designer of a patented clinical algorithm, her team is currently developing a habit engine AI for their Fortune 10 customer.

Links:

Jaak Panksepp

Episode 105: NeuroMeditation with Dr. Jeff Tarrant

Well Designed Life by Dr. Kyra Bobinet

Connect With Dr. Bobinet:

Website

engagedIN

Fresh Tri

Change Training Center

--

Learn more about the Level Up program

Find out more about the benefits of Qi Gong

Certain changes in our lives can often make us feel so exhausted and overwhelmed because it feels like there isn't anything we can do about the situation.

When Priya Massand was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and told there was nothing she could do except take the medication, it put an incredible strain on her. What turned her mindset around was the discovery that there were lifestyle and habit changes she could make that ended up delivering results. Even though there was a lot of work involved in taking this massive action to change her movement practices, the way she ate, and other big parts of her life, it was a relief to her to be able to reject the idea that there was nothing she could do about the condition of her body and life.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• Why being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis became a catalyst for change in her life
• The challenges associated with diagnosing MS
• What changes Priya has discovered to be helpful in living with MS
• How being in MS support groups differed from being in the Level Up community
• The effects that enhancing her self-compassion has had on her life

Priya Massand is a holistic health coach and has been working in nutrition and public health for 12 years. Her journey has taken her from an unhealthy lifestyle for most of her young life to an eventual place of understanding the concepts of health consciousness and self-care. Her years living in West Africa sparked an interest in health education, and her own health transformation led to pursuit of a graduate degree in Public Health at Hunter College. Her later battle with Multiple Sclerosis drove her to dig deeper into the realm of holistic health, and she pursued studies with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She now runs Shafi Wellness, a health and wellness business, through which she strives to support others, especially women with auto-immune disorders, on their path to healing.

Links:

Dr. Terry Wahls

Episode 127: Reversing Autoimmune Disease with Dr. Terry Wahls

Minding Your Mitochondria

Connect With Priya:

Website

Facebook

--

Learn more about the Level Up program

Find out more about working with Brodie 1-on-1

How do we find gratitude when we're in really tough situations? How do we soften ourselves and show compassion to both our body and mind when we're in the middle of a shame spiral? Gratitude and self-compassion are both things we hear a lot about and our guest for this interview shares with us ways to deepen our sense of both, in part by starting to treat them as linked ideas that we can cultivate and build on.

Patty Hlava, Ph.D. encourages us to start where we are and embody our gratitude as a way to heal and transform ourselves, instead of just treating it like a rote part of the routine. In our conversation, we explore some of the relationship dynamics between our mind, body, the divine, and other humans that can help to start externalizing our struggles and working through them with a deeper sense of what it means to be compassionate and grateful.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• How gratitude is something that we can cultivate
• Ways to deepen your gratitude practice through visualization and turning it into actions
• Why the most profound feelings of gratitude often come in the most difficult times
• What links gratitude and self-compassion
• Tips for finding self-compassion to escape a shame spiral

Patty Hlava, Ph.D., is a director of identity evolution and highest capacity intuitive specializing in Ayurveda, yoga, and psychology. With over 15 years of clinical experience in the health and wellness field as a licensed psychotherapist, certified coach, meditation instructor, and registered yoga teacher, Patty is an expert in guiding her clients toward sustainable habit changes for mind, body, and spirit. She has been involved in research and teaching on the subject of gratitude since 2006. Her research has been published in the International Journal of Transpersonal Psychology and Journal of Humanistic Psychology, as well as in several books.

Links:

Byron Katie

Connect with Patty:

Website

Patty's books

Gratitude body scan meditation on the Insight Timer app (free)

Gratitude audio course on the Insight Timer app (free with paid subscription to the app)

--

Learn about Brodie's Basics of Chinese Medicine course

Find out more about working with Brodie 1-on-1

A significant part of treating patients through Chinese Medicine is communicating the aspects of healing that are beyond just the physical. Practitioners can start to do this by embodying the personal cultivation and intentionality necessary to find true healing as an example for their patients.

Lonny Jarrett has been active in the Chinese Medicine field since 1980 and in this conversation, he discusses integral medicine and the importance of bringing patients' consciousness into their healing process in order to help them find healing that is beyond what they feel themselves.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• Why intention is the foundation of integral medicine
• The importance of Chinese Medicine practitioners embodying their practice
• How the development of states and stages interact in the framework of integral medicine
• Why true healing transcends the self
• How Lonny often spends his first visit with a patient and gets them on his side of the lens

Lonny Jarrett has been practicing Chinese Medicine in Stockbridge, Massachusetts since 1986. He is a founding board member of the Ac. Soc. Of Mass. and a Fellow of the National Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. Lonny is the author of Nourishing Destiny: The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine and The Clinical Practice of Chinese Medicine. He holds a master's degree in neurobiology and a fourth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. He was recently featured in the text, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling by bestselling author Stephen Cope. Lonny hosts NourishingDestiny.com, an online community for 3000 practitioners of Chinese medicine worldwide. His teaching schedule is at: www.chinesemedicine.courses and his texts are available from Spirit Path Press.

Links:

Free gift: Articles by Lonny

Ken Wilber

Dr. Leon Hammer

Other Links:

Spirit Path Press

Nourishing Destiny

Lonny's Courses

Chinese Medicine: Scholar Physicians Facebook group

--

Learn more about the Basics of Chinese Medicine course

Find out more about working with Brodie 1-on-1

Healing journeys can be incredibly stressful, but important events in our lives. Dr. Brenda Walding experienced her own protracted healing journey and she shares with us how the true healing began when she started to slow down and receive her own internal guidance, despite not fully understanding how to do so. By getting vulnerable and tuning into natural elements of her body and the world, Dr. Walding found the power of connecting with other women in sacred healing in order to find coherence.

On Today's Episode of A Healthy Curiosity:

• Her decade-long healing journey and the "Divine Whisper" that lead her to listen to her heart rather than her head
• What the initial steps and resources were as she started learning to trust her heart
• How she learned to distinguish the voice coming from her intuitive heart
• Background on HeartMath and how it relates to the teachings of Chinese medicine

Dr. Brenda Walding is a Women's Holistic Wellness & Empowerment Coach, Doctor of Physical Therapy and specializes in supporting and empowering women to truly heal and thrive. She is the author of Sick of Being Sick: The Women's Holistic Guide to Conquering Chronic Illness, as well as a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner and HeartMath Certified Coach.

She currently resides outside of Austin, Texas on the beautiful Lake Travis with her husband and dog. Brenda loves spending time in nature, connecting with her family and friends, dancing, facilitating sacred women's circles, and learning about holistic wellness and spirituality.

Get a free electronic copy of Dr. Walding's new book, Sick of Being Sick: The Woman's Holistic Guide to Conquering Chronic Illness. She's also offering a complimentary consult that you can schedule at www.brendwalding.com

Links:

Brené Brown

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

HeartMath

--

Find out more about working with Brodie 1-on-1

Basics of Chinese Medicine

Learn more about Qi Gong