Hi, I am here with Brianna Bragg. Briana Bragg is a wellness industry leader specializing in meditation and mindfulness. She is the founder of Vacation of the Mind, a meditation program designed to be practical and welcoming. Her approach inspires people to assess their lifestyle and incorporate meditation to live a healthy and meaningful life. As an energetic, highly-driven visionary and entrepreneur, Briana Bragg loves life and lives it on-the-go, here is the full episode hope you enjoy. Listen in your favorite podcast app.

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Ari Gronich 0:01  

Has it occurred to you that the systems we live by are not designed to get results. We pay for procedures instead of outcomes, focusing on emergencies rather than preventing disease and living a healthy lifestyle. For over 25 years, I've taken care of Olympians Paralympians a list actors in fortune 1000 companies, if I did not get results, they did not get results. I realized that while powerful people who control the system wants to keep the status quo, if I were to educate the masses, you would demand change. So I'm taking the gloves off and going after the systems as they are join me on my mission to create a new tomorrow as I chat with industry experts, elite athletes, thought leaders and government officials about how we activate our vision for a better world. We may agree, and we may disagree, but I'm not backing down. I'm Ari Gronich and this is create a new tomorrow podcast.

Hi, my me. I am here with Brianna Bragg and the vacation of the mind we're going to be taking you on a journey. When you have nowhere to go and nothing to do. What do you do, you take a vacation of the mind. And Brianna is an expert in that field, I'm going to let her give you some of her words of wisdom and mental journeys to increase your immunity actually during the COVID Response Unit. So we're in this quarantine, everybody is shut down. And that means that your immune system is getting shut down too. And when you can do anything to help your stress levels, relax your mind, relax your body, it's going to boost your immune system. So Brianna, why don't you talk a little bit about who you are and why you're talking to people.

Briana Bragg 2:03  

Awesome. Thank you so much Ari, it's great to be here and glad we got the the technology to finally cooperate a little bit today. So I'm Brianna Bragg the founder of vacation of the mind, we're a mindfulness company with a passion of for oneness for for wellness, oh my goodness, let me start that over. I'm Brianna Bragg, the founder of vacation of the mind. And we're passionate about oneness through wellness. We offer workplace wellness programs, certifications and trainings as well as large mass events. And it's just a pleasure to be operating during this time. You know, a lot of people's senses are heightened, you know, our thoughts create these feedback loops that then create behavioral patterns. And when this when this all started, we all got kind of thrown into a survival mode and survival mode. You know, it's very interesting for the body because it pumps these hormones cortisol and adrenaline throughout the body on a consistent basis telling that telling the body that it needs to survive, and it needs to do certain things to survive. And while that's great and wonderful and short term doses, over a long span, it can cause serious health issues. It can decrease immunity, like what you were talking about. And mindfulness. And meditation is such a great tool to help combat some of that stress, relaxing the central nervous system, boosting immunity, reducing stress and anxiety, as well as improving focus and productivity. You know, everybody's working from home, we're all being faced with some additional challenges right now. With the kids screaming in the background, not wanting to do their schoolwork, or, you know, just us feeling confined in one place. And so meditation and mindfulness is a great tool to help get ourselves out of that negative thought patterns into a more positive place. Awesome. Thank

Ari Gronich 3:54  

you. So what got you started in in this field from where you started out originally?

Briana Bragg 4:01  

Yeah, you know, necessity, right? I've always been an overachiever mentality with that gogogo mindset that, you know, I thought to be successful or to have the kind of life that you want to live, you always have to be in go mode constantly responding constantly on living that hustle and bustle life. And that led me down a path of being very sick and ill at a very young age. And, you know, I was able to utilize meditation and mindfulness to really change my life. And now it's my passion to help others do the same. I think I know when I started out Ari, it was you know, a lot of YouTube videos and researching on the internet. And while that's great and wonderful, it can be confusing at first, you know, am I doing this right? I can't get my mind to calm How the hell do I get my mind calm if it's not trained? And so, you know, I learned some steps that helped me simplify the process. helped me reduce some of the guilt and shame over Am I doing this right? And then I formulated my own process that the more I practiced with other people or on other people, you know it, it worked every single time. And so now it's my passion to help other people. We have certifications and trainings where we teach the process to people who want to be an instructor, I think that, you know, that's going to help us reach the masses. And you know, we do our own one on ones and group trainings as well to help people learn simple steps that they can use, it doesn't have to be you don't have to go climb the entire mountain.

Ari Gronich 5:40  

So you mentioned corporate wellness and corporate programs, what benefit would it have for, say, an HR department to have somebody on staff that's trained in your system for their employees benefit and wellness?

Briana Bragg 5:58  

Yeah, absolutely. You know, first of all, I just want to back up and say that 80% of employees feel stressed. And there's $300 billion a year that's, that's B with that's billion with a B, just in the US alone, that's spent on health related costs that are associated distress. Now, that was before COVID-19. I don't even know if I want to know what that that number is going to look like, once we come out of this, right. And, you know, stress causes a lot of, of health issues it can cause insomnia can cause high blood pressure, it can cause fatigue, burnout. And the list kind of goes on, you know, headaches, upset stomach, I mean, there's there's a lot of illnesses, and that are associated with stress. And so having someone on the team to be who is trained in mindfulness and meditation is a huge benefit to employers, because employers are really focused on what productivity right they want as much out of us as we can possibly get. And you know, the time that we have to work well, what happens when a body is stressed out, is we're just kind of shutting down, we're less focused. I know for myself, I've had to even during this time, kick up my own meditation, because there are days where I'm just like, I sit down at my computer, and I'm like, I don't even know where to start or what to do, you know, and I've really got to dive into being a little more focused, we're less creative, we're less able to make decisions and handle problems as they come up and finding solutions for those problems. And so when you think about this from a productivity scale, employers are losing, you know, thousands of hours of productivity, because they're just they're pushing, pushing, pushing, instead of giving their employees time to reset time to pause time to calm some of those stress responses. And so having someone on the team, who's trained in a process that works to help their employees reduce stress and anxiety ultimately leads to more productivity, creativity and focus on the job.

Ari Gronich 8:04  

Absolutely. So I have a bit of a background in corporate wellness and corporate culture. And it amazes me, whenever I talk or consult with a company, that they're only looking at what they consider to be hard costs, when the largest cost to accompany is what's called presenteeism, and presenteeism. For those who don't know that term. It's not like absenteeism, which is when somebody is away from the office completely. presenteeism is when somebody is in front of their computer in front of their job at the job. And they're doing nothing, they're present. But they're not present. And that is 100% caused by outside distractions of stress, whether it's relationship issues, health issues, financial issues, those kinds of things. And so they they average it, so an average worker in a three or an eight hour day, is only productive for two to three of those hours. The rest of the time, they might as well be on the computer playing freecell

Briana Bragg 9:24  

Yeah, that's insane, isn't it?

Ari Gronich 9:26  

Yeah, that's how how productive they are. So if by using mindfulness, you cut that stress response down, you allow more focus and creativity, that productivity goes up. I mean, how much of a hard cost, we'll say, versus soft costs. How much of a hard cost would say getting five hours four to five hours of productivity out of an eight hour day versus two to three? How much would that earn that company? So When we look at those kinds of numbers, it really makes sense to use mindfulness and meditation and so forth in, in a corporate wellness program.

Briana Bragg 10:10  

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's an investment into the company and an investment into your team, you know, and one thing I will say about some of the up and coming generation, as they are requiring companies to provide additional tools and resources for health and wellness, because that's one of the things that's important to them. And I think, you know, not just looking at your team is what can What can it produce, but I love that you brought in that it's a culture, it's a culture shift in terms of supporting your employees, and really caring about them as human beings and what they're going through and, and how they're dealing with certain situations. And especially during this time, it's more important than ever to make sure that the emotional and mental well being of your employees is healthy. Otherwise, you know that those, those three hours are coming down to even less right now with with our situation that we're facing,

Ari Gronich 11:01  

right. And with employee loyalty, as well, taking care of your employees equals more loyal employees, they leave less because they feel taken care of. So even if you're maybe not paying them as much as the next job, but you have more of those kinds of benefits, that loyalty is going to create less turnover and less issues with having to retrain and find another employee and then get them on boarded, and etc. So it really, really affects the bottom line of companies. How about for just individuals, family members of companies, right individuals who are in the home, so I used to say, as a massage therapist, right, I used to say, if the police officer who pulled me over gave me a massage instead of a ticket, I might go home a little more happy.

Briana Bragg 11:58  

I love that analogy.

Ari Gronich 12:00  

asked, and and I might you know, be nicer to my family and so on. So what is the the benefit that reaches over to the rest of the population? When the employees are not coming home with having had a bad day? That's, you know, cost them their emotional state and their adrenal date? So what's the turnover? Around the Yeah,

Briana Bragg 12:25  

absolutely. Well, you know, they have more patience with their family, more patients at home, with their kids, but their spouse, you know, being able to handle situations that come up at home with a little more ease and a little more flow. You know, when you come when you come home, and you're in that stressed out state, you're snippy, you know, you're short. I know a lot of that is happening right now I've even had to check myself a couple of times with my partner, I was like, you know, okay, maybe I didn't need to respond that way, right. And so when we're at a heightened level of stress, we do bring that home. And you know, you don't have the time that you want to dedicate sometimes to your family, because you just don't have the emotional bandwidth to. And so when you're able to bring some of that down and operate from a more relaxed state that absolutely is going to carry over into the home in terms of time, you're able to give emotion, the emotion that you're able to give your spouse or your children and the patients that you're able to have to handle some of the little things that really aren't so big if you're not stressed out, 24/7.

Ari Gronich 13:33  

So let's talk about that responding versus reacting. And what mindfulness does, when you become more and more and more aware of what state you're in, and are able to then respond versus react, which is an issue we all tend to have at some point or another we react to the threat versus responding to the issue, right?

Briana Bragg 14:02  

 Yeah, you know, I love to use the analogy here on you're on a highway and someone cuts you off on the highway, you know, most of us react, right? We're flipping them the finger, we're cursing, yelling at them, you blah, blah, blah. I used to have road rage, I admit, you know, I used to be one of the worst road rage people probably meat on the planet. And I drove a fast car because of it because I wanted to get the heck out of people's way in hell. But what mindfulness does is it allows you to kind of calm those reactions down and really look at things from a different perspective. And so mindfulness is really the practice of becoming aware of your present moment, your reactions, what emotional state you're in with thoughts are going through your head. So most of the time what happens in that scenario and most scenarios in our life, you know, is we're thinking, this jerk just cut me off because of blah, blah, blah. Well, what mindfulness teaches you to do is instead of looking at it That way, looking at it from a different perspective, maybe he or she is on the way to the hospital because a spouse is injured, or a parent is, you know, just had a heart attack or something or, you know, maybe they just got a call that they needed to respond to something happening at their house, right. So what mindfulness does is really helps you to switch and change your perspective, on a situation, when you look at that situation of maybe their parent is just had a heart attack, right, you're not so reactive to the situation of them cutting you off, in fact, you'll probably hit the brake and slow down a little bit to let them over and let them go. So you know, the practice of just being aware of your thoughts can and and your reactions and your emotions can really help you move through life with more ease and being in a state of response instead of reaction. And then, you know, meditation is the process of retraining the brain to think process and react differently. And so things like utilizing your breath work, things like calming mind chatter, or you know, coming to stillness in the mind, even if it's just for a few seconds, those kinds of techniques and practices, start helping train the brain to think and process differently. And so you can think of it like this as a, you know, we have all these neurons inside of our head. And I like to think of neurons as the little highways that we're driving on that messages or reactions or responses are driving on in the brain. When you start practicing meditation, you know, maybe your little car in the brain is used to driving the major highways. But what meditation can do is it might show you a short, a shortcut Hall, or it might show you that backward that you've never recognized before. And so that just the practice of calming your mind of finding your breath, refocusing some of the thoughts that you have in your mind, shifts you out of that state of what you're what's normal to you the highways that you've known, and helps you find different solutions.

Ari Gronich 17:07  

So, on that, on that kind of a note, here's, here's my question, I'm going to give you a scenario. And I'd like if you if you're willing to share a tool, right, so let's say you're a 20 something year old. And your, your new spouse does something that reminds you of somebody when you were a child, that you reacted to that situation, and now you're reacting the same way to your new spouse, right? So give us a tool on how you might redirect your thoughts. And remember, okay, this is not the person that injured me, you know, or influenced me in that way. 20 years ago, this is somebody new. So give me kind of like a tool that you would use?

Briana Bragg 18:09  

Yeah, absolutely. And I love these kind of scenarios, because quite honestly, I've dealt with them in my own life and had to use my own tools, which is why I know they're effective. You know, so the first, the first thing to do utilizing a mindfulness technique is just to become aware of the reaction itself. You know, take take a moment to just pause. In my relationship, we call it freeze frame. And so it's like when we feel that we've been triggered by a certain something, it's like, okay, let's freeze this frame for a moment. And just take notice what's happening in your mind. What kind of thoughts are you having right now? What's happening in your body? You know, I found it very interesting through my studies that when we're in a heightened state, our heart rate is elevated. And when our heart rate is elevated above 90 beats per minute, we can't think logically, we actually cannot think logically. And so the technique that is the first go to is taking that moment to pause, recognizing, becoming aware of what's going on, and then finding your breath, using your breath to get yourself out of that heightened state. Inhaling for a count of four and exhaling for a count of four is a very effective tool for just calming the moment calming the response, calming the central nervous system, so that you can get back into logical decision making and figure out you know, maybe why you're being triggered that way, or even at least just have a normal conversation with your partner versus reacting and who knows what your behavioral pattern is at that point, yelling, screaming, throwing things, whatever it might be. The breath is an amazing tool, you know, it's free to all of us. Using that kind of a technique, inhaling and exhaling for a count of for about 10 times will get you out of that reactive mode and into a place where you can think more calmly and respond.

Ari Gronich 20:03  

Awesome. So I'm just going to add to that. Breathing in your nose and out your nose, calms your nervous system breathing in and out your mouth. heightened z is your adrenal glands and heightens that cortisol response. So one of the techniques that I always learned and use is, make sure I'm breathing from my nose. And then the second part of that is from Chinese medicine, you have this central meridian that connects here goes all the way around to your tailbone, and then the central governing meridians. And so they say, if you put your tongue at the top of your teeth right here, you're going to activate those energy channels to be in the correct direction to flow in the correct direction. So you create much more flow in your body. And I've always found that that helps me to relax faster. And you know, I've had, obviously my share of reactions and reactivity, versus, versus responding. And it's one of the things that even though I'm really well trained in tools and techniques, I'm not really very well trained in self actualizing, those tools and techniques. And so my next question to you is, how does one, get more self actualized? How to how do we remember to use the tools that we may be given in the moment of intensity,

Briana Bragg 21:44  

sharp, that's the hardest part, right. And by the way, I just want to say thank you for the inhale and exhale through the nose, I usually say that, and I, I forgot, because it does make a difference. It's 100%, you know, that speaks directly to your nervous system. So thank you for bringing that up. I appreciate you. elaborating on that. You know, that's the practice of mindfulness, you know, that becoming aware, we all have old thought patterns, we all have old behavioral patterns. And it's the hardest to actual life change. Because those are kind of on autopilot, you know, where they're responding from a subconscious state. You know, this triggers you and boom, before you know it, you're in an explosive fight with your partner, because you got triggered by x, instead of taking that time to freeze frame. And so it's really the practice of the awareness. And I talked to myself, I have conversations with myself quite a bit of you know, okay, all right, was a really that, you know, I understand that you're triggered, let's take a moment here and just do some deep breathing. So you're not, you know, you got to drop the guilt and shame, you're not going to be perfect, the few times that it happens, you're probably still going to respond in old behavioral patterns. But it's the practice of using these kinds of practices, when you find awareness, when you find yourself in those moments, because what what's happening in the brain is, every time you tell a negative thought pattern to stop, you're actually creating a new highway in the brain. So you know, you got to give yourself some patience, you got to have, you know, a little bit of remorse for yourself in the beginning of trying, right? But the more you do, and the more you practice these techniques, the better you become in that moment. And what's going to happen eventually is your brain is going to stop going to that old thought pattern and come into the new one because you've retrained it to do so.

Ari Gronich 23:44  

So do you have with with your practitioners do you create practice groups,

Briana Bragg 23:50  

practice groups, I Well, in order for them to become certified, they they have to have a certain number of hours and group training that they have to do? Absolutely, because it's the repetition is what's key with mindfulness and meditation, you know, it's very similar to going to the gym, right? Like just because you go to the gym, the first time you pick up that weight, new workout, your bicep, you're not leaving the gym, like super toned, and you can lift 400 pounds or whatever, whatever people want to do, right? You have to have that repetition, in order to build the muscle in order to build the tone, it's the consistency of practicing, that that makes the difference.

Ari Gronich 24:29  

That's awesome. You know, for corporations that would be great to have practice groups with within the company, within teams in the company to have that, you know, that period of time where they get together in a circle, so to speak, and listen to each other's issues and then practice their responses and that mindfulness, I think that it helps with productivity helps with employee morale, and, and so on, but that would also probably be a good Good idea to do inside of a home?

Briana Bragg 25:03  

Absolutely, yeah, we have I know, in my own personal home, we have implemented certain strategies and, you know, certain techniques that that we go to first, as a way to practice and become better, you know, we're all human, we all make mistakes, we all are triggered by different things, and those old patterns are going to come up. But it's, it's really when you can start putting those things in place in your home, you know, have an agreement with your spouse or with your children to take that pause to freeze frame, or to take a few deep breaths before you respond. And then having that that agreement with yourself, as well. It's important.

Ari Gronich 25:43  

Yeah, for me, I, I've been homeschooling a lot, Oh, goodness, my son is six. And, and, you know, I, I grew up in a reactive environment. And so I am a very perfectionist environment. And so getting frustrated easily is one of one of my current traits. And, and so what I've asked my, my six year old to do, is if I start getting frustrated with him, then he's gonna just say, I think you need to breathe now daddy.

Briana Bragg 26:26  

And like, at the buddy system,

Ari Gronich 26:29  

it really is cuz it's like, oh, you know, you're probably right, I probably need to call myself that wasn't the reaction that I got, you know, response I wanted to give. And, and, you know, for me, it's a lot of retraining, how I was treated, you know, by teachers, by whoever it was like, Okay, I was treated, like, if you don't get this, right, you're, you're a bad person, you're a bat, you're not smart. You're, you know, like, all these different kinds of things. And so I'm retraining in me so that I don't cause him the same kind of damage. Yeah, sure.

Briana Bragg 27:12  

And, you know, it's really, that's why I said that the agreement, right, because sometimes, when we're so emotionally charged, we can't even see that we're in that phase that that we've, you know, we've stepped across the line and entered into that, okay, now I'm reacting from a place where I really don't want want to be reacting. And so having that agreement with another person to kind of help call it out, as long as it doesn't lead into another area of a fight. Right. So important. Yeah. I love that you're doing that with your son. That's great.

Ari Gronich 27:46  

Yeah, you know, I, I think that it's a great technique for any of the parents who are now, you know, homeschooling forced to homeschool. It's a skill set that people go to school for, right. It's a skill set that people take for years and get a degree in education to be able to teach their kids or teach our kids. And, you know, we're not trained, we're not qualified. Yeah. We're, we're having to do that. Yeah, it's been, it's been really an interesting part of the COVID challenge. You know, I'm calling all these things, the COVID challenge, rather than this, that inner pandemic, because, you know, it's all what's the challenge? What's the solution? What's the challenge? What's the solution? How do we find a solution to this? How do I find a solution to this? And so when you've got nowhere to go, and nothing to do, you know, take a vacation of the mind. So what kind of journeys Do you like to take people on?

Briana Bragg 28:57  

Yeah, nature 100% nature. And I just want to backtrack for a moment. You know, as parents, it's so important that we teach our children these practices from an early age, kind of like what you were saying, so we don't pass down those, those traits that we learned that are not so great. So you know, taking a mindfulness moment with your kids or teaching them to breathe when they get irritated is another great tool that you guys can both practice together. But we love journeys through nature. I've always been a big proponent of being in nature, it's very healing. You know, there's a lot of research being done about this right now. Even just listening to nature stick sounds for a couple of hours a day can reduce stress levels by 200%, which is insane. It's it's such an insane number when you think about it. And so we love to walk through forests or rain forests, go to the beach, you know, to a mountain top sitting at a waterfall, by a lake a peaceful lake at sunset or sunrise. And so all of our journeys are designed, we like to call them recreation scenes. And so most of them are designed from real life experiences that someone has taken in their life. And I teach in my program, how to recreate that scene for someone and walk them into stillness from there, because it's my personal belief that, you know, it's very hard to sit in stillness unless you're trained. And being able to distract the mind first, really helps, especially people who are beginning their experience with meditation really helps them with the ability to sit and stillness for longer periods of time.

Ari Gronich 30:35  

Yeah, you know, you as a, as a hypnotist, we've always used outside sources of things like, use a candle light, right? So we'll have the candle flickering. And the goal is to focus on the candle or a spot in the room, or the, you know, what is it the tempo thing that is going tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, right. So we use these outside sources, to get into the inside sources, but as a meditation, you know, it's more the internal dialogue and the visualization inside of yourself. And so it's it's very interesting, the differences and similarities between say, hypnosis and, and meditation tricks that you can give somebody if they think I can't get out of my mind, my mind just won't stop.

Briana Bragg 31:36  

Absolutely, one of my favorite techniques for those that have a mind that they can't calm or quiet is to become the observer of your thoughts. You know, it's a very simple technique where you are more witnessing your thoughts. So you kind of take a step back. And you can either see yourself standing or sitting and just watching your thoughts float by as if they're on a movie reel, as if you're kind of watching a movie, detaching your emotions from them, detaching the judgments that you might have from them, and really just watching them being the observer. You know, with practice, obviously, this is going to get a little bit better, because we tend to chase our thoughts, which is usually what ends us up in the dark rabbit hole as I like to refer to it as versus when you can observe your thoughts, you're not telling your mind to completely shut off. If you have that issue, you're not, you know, trying to push them all out and get your mind to completely become still and quiet. You're still allowing the thoughts to be there. You're just shifting the view and the perspective of them.

Ari Gronich 32:40  

Okay, so let's say we're in the COVID line at the grocery store, where we've got to wait, you know, for 20 people to leave before the 20 people in front of us can go in. Yes. Right. So, I've seen I've seen people doing this where they're, you know, they're frustrated, they're getting angry, they're, you know, we should be able to get in, why are they you know, why aren't people leaving? Right? So there's that. And then there's the people who are just sitting there calm as can be Hmm. Right?

Briana Bragg 33:13  

Yes.

Ari Gronich 33:14  

What, what kinds of things can people do? During this particular time in our history? When we are isolated, were told to quarantine and stay home, when we go out. At least there's not the road rage as much because nobody's on the road anymore. But it's true. But no, there's there's the line rage or somebody just you know, what went into the, into my six feet of space, right? How do I develop when I'm inside of that fear? also being able to be in the mindfulness of, I'm in fear, but I am not fear, right. So

Briana Bragg 34:05  

yeah, you know, there's, there's a couple of different things here. You know, first of all, just again, finding your breath, using your breath, right, inhaling through the nose, exhaling through the nose, you can count your breath, you can there's, there's all different kinds of techniques that you can utilize to make focusing on your breath, not so boring as it can be. I know I've had to use that a couple times myself not so much from the rage of being online, but more from just the emotional overwhelm that I was experienced. And I'm standing there in a grocery store. And, you know, we're all in masks, and there's elderly people out shopping, and I just I'm like, please go home, you know, we'll bring you your groceries, right, like, and the shelves are empty. And there's all of these emotions that that I found myself feeling when I'm out grocery shopping. And so I've had to find my own breath a few times, you know, inhaling deeply into my lungs and exhaling and just getting myself recalibrated. You know, The other thing is perspective. I, there's a video I have on YouTube where it's titled the blimp perspective. And I talked about, you know how you can shift your perspective in certain moments to look at I use a football game specifically of how you know you have the the players on the field, you have the coaches on the sideline, you have the fans in the stands, you have the coaches in the box, and then you have the blimp at the top. And, you know, sometimes we get so in the game, right, as the players on the field that we forget that there's a whole community around us that's feeling certain things too. And they're going through their own emotional roller coasters with all of this. And so being able to change and shift your perspective. Instead, again, instead of you know, that person on the road who cut you off, being a jerk, maybe that person that got too close to you in line wasn't paying attention. And as simple like, hey, do you mind to step back a couple steps is sufficient versus you know, losing your cool and yelling or screaming or being all emotional and causing a scene, having some patience with yourself and with others. I mean, the bottom line is, we are all in this together. And I know everybody wants to get back to work. And I know everybody wants things to be back to normal. But we have to respect the process of this virus and, you know, have have just shift your perspective just a little bit, I mean, maybe you find a game to play on your phone, or maybe you have a conversation with a friend while you're standing in line or, you know, there's so many other things that you can do, to kind of shift out of that reactive phase of I'm mad because I have to stand in line and they're pacing me to, I can have some patience during this time to make sure that I am safe and others are safe.

Ari Gronich 36:49  

So I'm going to take it to the to the last kind of nth degree on what's been going on quite a bit. So we've had an increase in domestic violence, we've had an increase in child abuse, and we've had an increase in suicides. And I believe all of which can be reduced through mindfulness and meditation. Agreed. So I just want you to kind of address those things on what's going on when you're inside, it's kind of like you're in a prison, right? And what happens in a prison typically is a lot more violence and a lot more damage than what's happening on the outside world. And that's just because you're in a confined space. So, you know, can you help address for those people who may be either going through that kind of thing, or, or feeling the way that those people might feel? You know, how can we help reduce what's going on in that respect?

Briana Bragg 38:06  

Well, that's a that's a lot. That's a loaded question, given all three of those scenarios, you know, because I personally believe if everyone would just learn to breath the right way, a lot of that would be reduced, right? You know, instead of getting mad and angry and taking it out on your spouse, or your child, you know, learning to take that pause, learning to take a moment to timeout before you respond or react to a certain situation, could reduce these things. Having a different perspective on the situation could certainly reduce some of these things. And so I wish that we were all trained from a very early age in mindfulness and meditation, because it's really the art of becoming self aware of how you're reacting and how you're responding that minimises that, you know, unfortunately, a lot of these people are just reacting, they're, they're just in old, behavioral and thought patterns that are causing them to react. And then a lot of them, you know, put alcohol and things on top of it cause even more of an explosive reaction. First and foremost, you know, learning to if you are the person who's the victim in one of those situations, you know, learning to try and calm your own internal reactions is important as well, trying to get out of that situation. You know, can't really go anywhere right now, but going into another room. You know, and getting calming self soothing your own self can sometimes help to de escalate that situation. From a suicide standpoint, you know, really, in the purse in perspective, the thing that I've I struggled with my own depression at one time, and what I think found fascinating when I started really studying the brain of what happens in depression is that again, going back to those neural pathways, when we are depressed, neural noon, highways are created in the brain right to think and process things in a negative way. And the reason that depression is so hard to fight is because once your brain has that new highway, so to say that it's going down, that's its go to, that's the highway that now becomes traveled most often. And so when it's a depressive my state of mind, you know, one negative thought is going to lead to another, another negative thought, and then you're just going down that highway and down that dark path, the dark rabbit hole as I refer to it, and so you really have to practice even more stopping the car from going down that highway to begin with. And that takes a lot of practice. And that takes, you know, it was for me, it was almost eight months coming out of my depression, where I was practicing mindfulness for 45 minutes meditation for 45 minutes to an hour and a half a day, of just consistently repeating that one method that I've found to be very effective, especially in this time, for people who are facing extreme amounts of anxiety and depression is when you know, we, we may not always know when the negative thought patterns are going to start. But we usually can find ourselves there, somewhere in the middle of all of it, and just saying stop, three times out loud, is one tool that can literally put a stop to your thoughts. Another tool that I found is writing them down, journaling them, sometimes it's, it's really important to get those thoughts out. And then once they're out, and maybe you go back and read them, maybe you burn them, throw them away, whatever you choose to do, or you save them for a later date. But just having those thoughts out of your mind, helps to provide some reprieve for you. And again, you know, using utilizing your breath to help calm that central nervous system in the state of fight or flight that we tend to get into when we're in those different modes of reaction.

Ari Gronich 42:21  

Thank you. Anything else that you would like to, you know, to talk about and address? Before we we end the call? Normally, I would take questions right about now. But you know, we'll go back to after I put this on. On the on Facebook, we can go back and answer any questions that anybody might have in the comment section. Yeah, and do it that way, but

Briana Bragg 42:53  

happy to answer them, then

Ari Gronich 42:54  

if somebody just had a really good question for you.

Briana Bragg 42:59  

Well, one thing I just want to leave with is, you know, that we, we are the only it's so important for us to remember that we're the only species on this planet that has the ability to control our thoughts, that truly has the ability to control where we allow ourselves to go or not go with within our mind. And I know it's difficult for everyone right now. And I'm certainly not up here with a message of don't feel through your emotions and don't allow, you know, when the feelings of overwhelm or isolation or anxiety come You know, just push them down and don't deal with them. That's not what this message is about. What this message is, is you don't have to become them. You don't have to stay in them. You know, it's okay to recognize your feelings. I had to do this earlier today, I woke up in one of those moods. And you know, I went for a walk, change your state, move your body, you know whether you do something with exercise, you get out and take a walk in nature, you dance around your living room to your favorite song, shifting your state can help you get out of those patterns. You know, knowing that you have the ability within you to control your mind to manage your thoughts, instead of allowing them to manage you is an important factor here in being able to utilize some of the tools we've discussed. And there's so many more. But just being able to utilize some of the tools that we've discussed, to help you manage where you are right now. And you know, we have a blog where we're sharing different ways. In fact, in one of our last articles I shared you know, if you were let go from your job, or if you have kids at home, how are some of the ways that you can actually shift your thinking for the time being, to get yourself out of that negative state and into a more positive frame of mind. And so just knowing that you can shift and change your mind is really important utilizing the tools that are available to you And I know we're physically distancing, but having that social interaction with people, whether it's through zoom, whether it's through Facebook Lives, whether it's FaceTime, there's all these third party apps that have come up that people are using, you know, connect with people, just sending a simple text message and getting involved in a conversation can get you out of those feelings of isolation, for example. And so try to, you know, if you think about somebody reach out and ask how they're doing, and caring for other people will help to shift your own state.

Ari Gronich 45:32  

Awesome, how can people get a hold of you,

Briana Bragg 45:35  

we're all over the places vacation of the mind. So we're we have a Facebook group, as well as a page. In our Facebook group, we are offering mindfulness discussions on different topics every week, three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, as well as a 10 minute meditation. We're also on YouTube, we have a ton of discussions on YouTube, as well as pre recorded meditations that you can go and listen to anytime you want. Some of them are around some of the challenges we're currently facing. Others are for stress reduction, visualization, for protecting productive days at work. We're on insight timer, and SoundCloud and Instagram, you name it, you can find us and then you know, if you want to contact me directly, you can just go to our website, fill out a contact form or us [email protected].

Ari Gronich 46:23  

Awesome. I was thinking about this while you were while you were talking earlier. And I think for some of the people who are out of work right now, and not really sure what prospect they'll have at going being able to go back to the same job that they've had. One of the things that they might think about, is becoming a vacation of the mind practitioner, and taking that into their corporations and their places of business and their families. So maybe we'll figure out getting a link for them. When when we air it. And so that somebody can if they're interested in exploring a possibility of a new career, they can become vacation of the mind practitioners. Yeah, thank

Briana Bragg 47:18  

you so much for saying that. Ari, I appreciate that. We are offering our course at 50% off right now to help given you know, the landscape of everything, the COVID challenge, I really like that I'm going to adopt that into my language. We're offering 50% off, I'll certainly provide a link. And it's a self paced online course. So we've had a few teachers take the course we've had some people in the health and wellness space, take the course. And we're in talks with a couple of organizations to launch it through their organization as a way for people to earn an additional certification or switch careers right now or just earn CEC credits for those people who might need additional credits for the year. Now's a great time we have the extra time on our hands. Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.

Ari Gronich 48:04  

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think even for nurses and doctors that are going through this, that it would be a great opportunity for them. There are a lot of nurses and doctors are being furloughed right now. So being able to use this with your patience, you know, it lowers the, you know, the stress response, cortisol levels, and raises the immune system. So might be a good, you know, a good place for for people to be able to do that is inside the hospitals. And, and like I said, I'm an outside of the box thinker. And I think very strangely about different things. But, you know, I also like to put pieces together. And I think that what you're doing can be so valuable for the community at large for teachers, like you mentioned, teachers who are taking them when they come back, they're going to have this skill set that they'll be able to translate to their to their students. Yeah, especially kindergarten and not, you know, kindergarten on up preschool teachers, nannies daycare workers. You know, this is something that police officers, this is something that they can use in order to not only calm themselves, but help calm situations and problem solve and so on. So well we'll see if we can get a link out of the bottom of of the video when we're done with the technological, technological devices and thank you so much. And if you'd like to get a hold of me, you can reach me at Ari Gronich, at basically anything dot com. So Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, I'm Ari Gronich, on all of those. Or you can go to Amazon and check out my email. New Book a new tomorrow activating your vision for a better world, which is all about creating the world that we want to live in. Might one of my favorite sayings is we made all this up, we can make it up different, it doesn't have to be the way that we made it up. I love that. And always, like, you know, like Legos, we could tear them apart and create something new. And obviously, you know, we've got a system that isn't quite working. So let's just take it apart, you know, brick by brick, and rebuild it in a way that makes what we want, more easily and readily available. So, you know, if, if you'd like more information about that, please do get ahold of me and I look forward to chatting with you. And thank you so much, Brianna, for your time, your energy, your wisdom and knowledge.

Briana Bragg 50:54  

Thank you, Ari. It was a pleasure being here with you and really excited to partner with you. 

Ari Gronich 50:59  

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this podcast. I appreciate all you do to create a new tomorrow for yourself and those around you. If you'd like to take this information further and are interested in joining a community of like minded people who are all passionate about activating their vision for a better world. Go to the website, create a new tomorrow.com and find out how you can be part of making a bigger difference. I have a gift for you just for checking it out and look forward to seeing you take the leap and joining our private paid mastermind community. Until then, see you on the next episode.