The Work IN to move out of stress, tension & anxiety

Yoga retreats sound so nice. Full disclosure, I’ve never been on a retreat per say and I have all the excuses to prove it. I’ve done yoga teacher training that lasted a week but I’ve never had the time to take away from my family, my job for anything like that that didn’t have some purpose to it. Shoot I can barely bring myself to take time off on holidays with my family. But I understand the appeal. I like the idea that you completely step out of your everyday life to rest and repair, recharge, maybe learn something new or simply take a full time out. I sometimes fantasize about running away like that. That seems like an awfully big privilege if I’m honest. And what is the point if nothing changes about the life you come home to?

Today our work IN is all about how to use retreats in intentional, mindful ways for practical, long lasting stress relief and resilience and an opportunity to try one without the big time and money commitment.  

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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When you live long enough, you’re going to accumulate trauma. Sometimes it’s big T trauma and sometimes it’s little t. The big T is stuff like assault, abuse, or car accidents, or combat, or witnessing a horrific event of some kind. Little t (the way I understand it) are the things that we wouldn’t normally consider traumatic on the surface but when you take them all together they add up over a lifetime. Like chronic illness, chronic pain, multiple surgeries, pregnancy/labor, accidents, toxic work environments, toxic relationships, long term financial hardship, death, losses. Things that we think of as common parts of life. There are too many to name here because the nature of trauma (what maks something traumatic) depends on an individual's past experience. What we don’t want is to become locked into a past version of ourselves that is limited by that past experience. Today I want to focus on the way traumatic events both big T and little t can shape our physical, mental and emotional health and become part of our subconscious identity, an identity pathology, and lock us into the past. So today our Work IN is a conversation about how this happens and how we can start to detangle ourselves from the fixed mindset  social sci op of identity pathology by first rediscovering who we really are and then redefining ourselves on our own terms.

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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Until about the age of 7 we don’t have the ability to reject any ideas or beliefs that we’re exposed to. Our baby brains haven’t developed that kind of filtering yet. So our early years are marinating in the beliefs of our caregivers about who we are and what we’re capable of in this world, what we should and shouldn’t do. By the age of 7 are well and truly programmed with all kinds of micro cultural expectations around health, wealth, education and behavior. For many people that micro culture includes identity pathologies and socially acceptable addictions like food and alcohol but also the emotional energy of stress and over commitment on one side and victimhood on the other. Our Work IN today is how to use the 3 things we’re always trying to let go of in yoga; judgment, expectation and attachment to defy definitions and expand our health beyond what the eyes can see and break our stress addiction.

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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178 Hypervigilance: A recipe for socially acceptable addiction 

Hypervigilance is a common stress and trauma response where it feels like you’re always on high alert. Even when you’re exhausted you can’t fall asleep, you have racing thoughts, ruminating, exaggerated startle responses maybe, irritable, emotionally dysregulated, reactive. Because it leads to insomnia and other sleep disorders it can be very detrimental to every system in the body. It’s also one of those things that opens the door to self medicating because when we can’t self regulate our nervous system we often turn to external chemical regulation. Our work IN today is how hypervigilance as a stress response can lead to socially acceptable addiction and natural ways we can self regulate for ourselves and our students.

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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Safe self regulation. The holy grail of trauma recovery. Safe self regulation is the ability to rise to any challenge, any threat from outside or inside the body and then return back to our “normal” socially engaged baseline.  In trauma relief circles we toss that word “safety” around a lot. In the media we hear it all the time in every area of life and especially in politically correct spaces ever since covid. Of course we want our communities to be safe, schools to be safe somehow ever since covid we’re now responsible for other people’s health and wellness (keeping us and them safe). Safety is a noble cause. But in the realm of the individual nervous system is it intellectually honest let alone realistic to expect that as our outcome? Our work IN today is how that word “safety” can undermine our purpose in supporting healthy resilience for ourselves and others. Are we doing more harm than good in the body and beyond?

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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What do you believe about your health? Who makes and keeps you healthy? Who is the expert in your physical, mental and emotional health? Today on the Work IN we’re going to talk about how our health beliefs and fear programming can make us and keep us sick, how big pharma and big food in collusion with the media and big government make that happen, and how you can take back your power.

It’s funny sometimes to point and laugh or roll your eyes at people who get caught up in all the tin foil hat conspiracy theories out there. I’m not talking about  “the truth is out there” theories and aliens…because those are totally true. I’m talking about the subtle conspiracies that hit closer to home. The ones that no one wants to believe.  Not because they couldn’t be true but because if they are true it means that the people we trust to take care of us, represent us and do what’s best for us, help us when we are sick do not actually have our best interest at heart. I am talking about the subconscious social-lies that require us to deny what we see with our eyes, feel in our own bodies and be fully indoctrinated by fear in order to swallow.  And that makes us foolish useful idiots. 

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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Welcome back to our last episode in our menopause metamorphosis series. Today we are talking about sleep.For the past few weeks we’ve been talking about how menopause and perimenopause affects our bones, our muscles,our pelvic floor, our gut, our brain, our metabolism and more and perhaps you’ve already noticed some of the connections between all of these areas. Sleep is one of those integral connections. How we sleep no matter what season of life we’re in is the canary in the coal mine. If we don’t sleep well we don’t function well and it’s an indicator that we aren’t functioning well. In perimenopause and menopause it’s the number one complaint for women. Not that we can’t get to sleep but that we can’t stay asleep. And the culprit is often the dreaded hot flash. What is going on here and what can we do about it? That’s the question for today’s Work IN.

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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Welcome back to our series on all the changes in menopause that go beyond hot flashes. Today we’re talking about the gut and gut health. We have discussed the importance of the gut microbiome in previous podcasts but never in relation to perimenopause and menopause. And that’s because no one really knew that was a thing until very recently. But it makes sense though since our gut and the biodiversity of the microbiome affects every other aspect of our health why wouldn’t our hormone balance be involved in some way. That’s the topic of today's work IN.

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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Menopause brain…We say it like it’s a bad thing. We laugh it off as if it’s a joke when deep down we wonder if we’re losing our mind. It’s not a joke. And it’s not a loss either. It’s actually an update. During perimenopause and menopause every system in our body gets a giant hormonal update over the course of a decade or so.  And just like when we update our computers or our phones, it takes time to learn the new systems. Things might look a little different on the home page than what we’re used to. The drop down menus change.  That’s our Work IN today. We’re looking at how and why a woman’s brain changes through menopause.

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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Have you heard? 50 is the new 30. It’s true you’re as old as you believe you are. But the body ages from the inside out. Our bones are the architecture of our body and we take it for granted for the first half of our lives. Then we start to feel random things from mystery weight gain to general pain and inflammation as we  start to lose the protection of estrogen and that’s when things start to get real. It can be scary and we can feel like we have no control over our health and wellness no matter what we do. One of the scariest parts of getting older is the fear of falling. That fear is based on the frailty associated with muscle and bone loss as we age. Estrogen is protective and it helps us build and keep our bone mass. Without that we have to do things through nutrition and exercise to pick up the slack.

The absolute mortality risk within a year after a hip break in women over 65 is over 20% according to the NIH. That begs the question, if women live longer than our beautiful men, how can we create that life to be vibrant and thriving as opposed to fragile and limited?

So our Work IN today is about strengthening the architecture of our body so that it can support us for a long and healthy life.

It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business  and so much more. 

I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.

The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get  all the details.

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