The Zen Leader

DOWNLOAD EPISODE > The Zen Leader welcomes guests Betsy Nelson and Mary Masi from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute to the show to discuss mediation and mindfulness.     Intro:Welcome to The Zen Leaderwith Lara Jaye. Whether you’re a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now, here’s your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:Good morning, Sarasota. It’s Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader.I hope you’re all doing well this morning. Today, in the studio, I have a couple of amazing ladies from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute: Betsy Nelson and Mary Masi. The ladies have joined us. I reached out to them a couple of weeks ago about a program that I saw on their website that just looked amazing that I felt like my audience would really resonate with and would want to know more about. So, I invited the ladies, and they’re here today. Good morning, Betsy and Mary. Betsy Nelson:Good morning, Lara. Lara:How are you? Mary Masi:I am well. Thank you. Lara:Good. Welcome to the studio here at WSRQ. Betsy, tell me… we’re going to start with you, Betsy. Tell me a little about you and your role at the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. Betsy:Well, Lara, I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and my specialty areas are working with couples and people with cancer, and along the way I did some training in couples, kind of emotional regulation and mindfulness and kind of learned that science was finally looking into those areas, and discovered — and this was back in 2009 — mindfulness-based cognitive therapy is a treatment for recurrent depression. As I looked into it further, I knew that was something that I needed to bring to this town That medication is something that many people don’t want to utilize, and I respect that, and that we need to have some treatment options that are effective and that are outside of the medication protocol. So, I got pretty committed to leading this group and I had a meditation practice, like many middle-aged adults, it was on and off. I had meditated, stopped meditating, meditated, stopped meditating, and I realized that for me to sustain a meditation practice, I needed a group to meditate with and I wasn’t really a Buddhist, so I didn’t really want a Buddhist Sangha; I wanted a secular group of meditators. Lara:So, something non-religious. Betsy:Something non-religious. Lara:Got it. Betsy:So, we started the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. Lara:So you were part of the beginning of it? Betsy:I am the beginning of it. Lara:You are the beginning. That’s awesome. “It’s all about my needs and have a group to support my meditations.” Betsy:That’s how it’s supposed to be, right? Lara:That’s awesome. So, this was back in 2009 and, at the time, you’re full-time working, a licensed social worker, and you had a lot of people coming in with depression. I, myself, suffered for a decade with depression and took a lot of different medicines, and it help a little, but then it just numbed me out. Betsy:Yeah. Lara:Then I couldn’t function like I wanted to. I didn’t have the energy I wanted to, I started gaining weight, a lot of those symptoms. But I wasn’t that depressed anymore, but I really didn’t care about anything. You know? Nothing. Meditation, and we’re going to talk about that, it is the one thing — I have this article on my website — that catapulted me to plan to redo my life, to change everything. The things that aren’t important just begin to fall away. Or, at least that’s what happened for me. Betsy:Yep. Yeah. The data are pretty clear on this that we don’t actually accept people into the program, the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program, who are currently in a major depressive episode. Because in that state, meditation can actually deepen the depression and we don’t want to have that happen, obviously. Lara:Sure. Betsy:So the data are pretty clear that it’s in an inter-episode, between episodes of depression, that this treatment, that this class, is extremely effective. It will really help the person develop the capacity to resist going in to depression, to live life in a way that sees it exactly as it is and doesn’t put a whole bunch of stories and layers, and filters on that can bring on a depressed mood. Lara:Why did you pick depression? I mean, there are so many different things that we could meditate and focus on. Was that just your specialty and what you wanted to dive in to? Betsy:No. It was that that was what appeared when I was at this conference, was I wasn’t very familiar with this Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which is the original program. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy is an offshoot of MBSR. It was the cognitive therapy program that I became familiar with and it is specifically great at addressing recurrent depression. Lara:Got it. Betsy:So, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a program that is really just out there because it’s a wonderful thing for all of us to do to reduce our stress. Jon Kabat Zinn founded this program about 30 years ago. He had gotten a faculty position at the University of Massachusetts and with Mass General Hospital. He was a Buddhist meditator and realized that his meditation practice was really making a difference in his equanimity in life, so he went to the pain medicine doctors at Mass General and said, “Listen, I want to try something. Send me your failures.” The pain doctors thought, “You know what? There’s really no risk in sending this guy our failures. They’re failures. They can’t control their pain. We don’t have anything to give them, so it isn’t going to hurt for them to try something else.” In fact, the majority of these people experiencing pain developed a new relationship to their pain so that they were in a much better way of working with pain than they were… Lara:All through meditation? Betsy:All through meditation. Lara:How does that… How would that work? Betsy:Well, the interesting thing about pain is that, in some ways, all bets are off. We can’t really tell somebody specifically how they’re going to work with their pain. What we suggest to them is that they observe it carefully. If you observe pain carefully, you see that it’s less continuous than you thought it was. It’s less fixed than you thought it was. Instead of having this giant, tight mass of something — because that’s a perception of our pain, rather than the actual experience of pain — we begin to see that pain ebbs and flows, that there are periods of time where we may have some background pain, but the foreground information is much more interesting, and we get engaged with that. Lara:When I was extremely depressed and in counseling, as well as on medicine, I picked up a book and the name of it was What is Your Depression Trying to Tell You?I kind of feel like that’s what you’re saying with the pain and the depression and meditation; it kind of helps you dive into it. What does it want to talk to you… or what is it saying? Is that kind of what you’re talking about, in some ways? Betsy:Yes and no. One of the things that we learn through mindfulness practice is that we are constantly creating stories and constructs about things. In fact, what we learn through the practice is to recognize the story as a story and to see that the story itself has repercussions on our mood and on our… Lara:Like a story from the past? Betsy:No. Even like making a story out of pain. If we can just see pain as pain and work with it exactly as it is, it may very well be that we’ll see that there were times in our lives that we tightened around some particular pain and that we’ve never lost that impulse. The meditation may demonstrate that to us. And that in the meditation, we see that, so now we learn to relax into that pain, instead of tightening against it. But without sort of the sense it’s going to… that there’s something else that’s going to tell us. We may learn about our past experiences or the way that we’ve created a relationship to pain that’s a locked down sort of relationship, rather than an opened-up and accepting relationship. Lara:Can you give me an example of how that might work when you’re actually in the practice of it? Betsy:Sure. We follow, very carefully, the breath and the body. If your listeners were going to come away with one message, the message would be: Attend to what’s going on in the body. We utilize the breath as a way of just recognizing what’s going on in the body. It gives us something to focus on that gives us some stability in our attention, so we observe what’s going on in the body. We might, for instance, have an experience where we have some sadness. Now, we could begin to focus in on the sadness by observing where the feelings are occurring in our body. So, maybe you get a tightness in your throat. Now, in my meditation, I bring my attention to my throat. What I notice is that memories and thoughts will come into the picture, and what I want to do is just loosen the grip on those. That’s really extraneous information. The important information is just what’s going on in my body. I continue to breathe and I continue to feel what’s going on in my body, and usually it will change in some way. So, we just continue to observe it, no matter how it changes, no matter what… Lara:Not, not judging it as good, bad, wrong, right. Betsy:Not judging it. Yeah. Lara:Just let it come up. Betsy:Exactly. And not going along with the stories that emerge as we’re doing it. We might have a memory that the cat died [00:10:00]when we were 7 years old or something and there was some difficult family experiences around that cat’s death. Right? Maybe this comes up in this moment that I’m feeling the sadness. What I don’t want to do is get off on the story about the cat. I observe it. There’s a Zen expression, “Like writing on water.” You observe it, like writing on water. Right? You write on water and immediately it’s gone. Lara:It disappears. Betsy:Yeah. The cat comes up? We just let it go; we don’t tighten around the cat. We allow ourselves to continue to feel what’s going on in our lives. Lara:No resistance. What we resist, persists. So just kind of let it flow through. Betsy:Yes. Lara:That’s beautiful. Very nice. Very nice. Thank you, Betsy, for this. When we come back, after break, we’re going to dive even more into this, and I’m so excited that Betsy and Mary are here from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. If you have any questions, I invite you to email me. Questions, comments, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]or visit me on www.larajaye.com, and we’ll be right back, after break, with The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader and we are here this morning with a couple of ladies from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute, Betsy Nelson and Mary Masi. Welcome back again. This morning, we are talking about just meditation and the Mindfulness Institute and all that it brings to Sarasota. Betsy, I want to ask you specifically about the MBSR, the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program. Tell me a little bit about that. Betsy:Sure. This is a program that’s taught around the world. Probably every year, tens of thousands of people take it. I think that’s not an exaggeration at all. When you read about research studies that demonstrate that mindfulness has had an effect on whatever it is, what they’re studying — heart, health, cancer, psoriasis, or whatever it might be — what the research… the treatment group is a mindfulness-based stress reduction group. So, that’s almost always the treatment group in these studies. It’s the kind of the gold standard of mindfulness in a Western model. It’s really an in-depth program. We meet for 8 weeks and we meet 2.5 hours each time we meet for those 8 weeks, then we have a day-long retreat towards the end of the 8 weeks. So, it’s a really intensive dive into mindfulness and we ask people to meditate every single day, while they’re taking the class. We remind them that they may not like it, and that’s okay, but they won’t know if this is effective for them or not unless they actually do it. So, it’s a small commitment of their lives to do… Lara:How long do you ask them to meditate every day? Betsy:Well, that’s always the interesting question. Right? If you meditate a little, you have some little results. If you meditate a lot, you have some bigger results. If you give yourself over to mindfulness in your life, you transform your life. Lara:Exactly. It transformed mine. I completely agree. Betsy:Yeah. Lara:Whatever you can do. Betsy:Whatever you can do. If you start with 10 minutes, that’s great. Jon Kabat-Zinn asks the people in his program, and actually Mary can speak more about that because she’s actually taken a class up in Massachusetts. My belief is that they ask them to do 30 to 45 minutes a day, and 30 is the minimum. Is that correct? Mary Masi:That’s correct. Betsy:So, it’s a really deep dive into mindfulness practice. It’s based on a very short teaching of the Buddha, called the Ānāpānasati Sutta, which “Ana” is the in breath, “pana” is the out breath, “sati” is mindfulness. So it’s a teaching on the mindfulness of the in breath and the out breath. Over the course of 8 weeks, we unfold the meditation practice the same way that it’s unfolded in this very short, 16-verse, sutra. So, we meditate on the feelings in the body, we meditate on perception, we meditate on thought, and we meditate in open meditation, sort of a Zen-type meditation. So, we take in whatever is arising and passing, moment by moment.That’s the way the sutra opens up. Lara:What does “sutra” mean? Betsy:A teaching. Just teaching. Lara:Teaching. Okay. Betsy:Yeah. Lara:Okay. Betsy:And there’s a little bit of cognitive therapy principles thrown in. But the class is really about the experience that each person has while going through these 8 weeks. In one week we’ll ask them, for instance, to focus on things that are pleasant and what is their relationship with things that are pleasant? How do they notice them? How do they know it’s pleasant? What arises in their body — and in their mind — when they are encountering pleasant things? Do they try to hold on to it? Do they try to augment it? Do they try to look for more? Then we do the same thing with unpleasant things. Then we would do that with difficult relationships. So, we have sort of a focus each week in our informal practice of mindfulness. When we’re not sitting on the cushion and we’re encountering life, as it is – that is the informal practice of mindfulness. Are we there, in this moment? Are we actually observing what’s going on, as it’s going on, exactly as it’s going on, without making something else out of it? Lara:Would you say that’s the definition of “mindfulness?” Betsy:It’s exactly the definition of “mindfulness.” Lara:People are using “mindfulness” and “meditation” interchangeably some. Can you explain that a little bit? Betsy:Sure. There are many, many forms of meditation. Probably most of them, if not all of them, are beneficial. They are beneficial in different ways. Mindfulness meditation is about being alert in a very relaxed way. So, it’s not about trance. It’s not about transforming this moment into some other experience. It’s being exactly in this moment, as it arises and as it passes, without making anything else out of it. In this meditation, we stay very relaxed, attentive, and curious about this moment. We can also do that same thing as we live our lives. So much of our lives are spent thinking about what used to happen or the conversation we had 10 years ago with somebody that didn’t go so well, or what could go wrong with making dinner tonight, or how about that trip we have planned 3 years from now? Lara:Right. The past or worrying about the future. Betsy:Exactly. Lara:Instead of actually being here, right here, present, enjoying the moment. Betsy:Right. Exactly. Lara:There you have it. How will that improve my life, if I am present and mindful? How is that going to make a difference in my life? Betsy:Well, that’s always the interesting question. Actually, Mary and I encountered this in our class on Tuesday night. Mary:Yes. Betsy:We have a person in the class who is kind of a skeptic about the whole process. The only way you can answer that question is to do the experience, is to live in the experience of being mindful. Make every attempt you can to do your meditation during the day and to open up to present moment experience as you live your life, and you will get an answer to that question. I can give you an answer for me, but it’s not very interesting. The interesting answer is what happens when you do it. Lara:It’s different for everyone. Betsy:Of course it is. Lara:The amazing thing I found about meditation and being mindful is it’s cumulative. Kind of like exercise and building your muscle is that I felt like it built up every day. It’s not something that just changes you overnight. Betsy:That’s right. Lara:It’s not magic. Betsy:Yeah. Lara:Well, it kind of is, in a different way. Betsy:And it’s hard work. Lara:It is. Betsy:Yeah. Maybe for the first 3 months you have these really wonderful experiences and it’s all kind of blissful, and I’m learning everything every day, and I’m getting more calm and patient, and people like me better. Then, maybe after 2 years, people are like, “You’re the same old curmudgeonyou used to be. What happened to your mindfulness practice?” “Well, I’m still doing it.” “Well, it’s not working.” Lara:[LAUGHTER] Mary, what about you? What happened to you when you broke in to mindfulness and meditation? What was your life before and then after? Mary:Well, in terms of meditation, I was brought to meditation at 14 years old by my father. He was a Transcendental Meditation person, TM. The youngest you can get a mantra is 14, so he took me to meet this elderly man, wearing a diaper — who I later found out was the Maharishi who had worked with the Beatles — but the experience was lost on me because I was 14. Then, over the course of my life, I had an on and off meditation practice. I experienced many different kinds of meditation and stumbled across the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute through a conversation with a friend and started to read about the Mindfulness Institute, or mindfulness. I think someone brought me to the Mindfulness Institute when it was in Betsy’s office somewhere. [LAUGHTER] Lara:Just in its infant stages. Mary:Yes, in its infant stages. What I found there was that I really, although I was a meditator, I was meditating to be in some other state. I found that getting in touch with what was actually going on in the moment for me helped with [00:20:00]both depression — and I am a person who has suffered most of my life with social anxiety — and being able to be present with what was happening in my body, in the moment, helped me realize when anxiety was arising and, therefore, to deal with it better before it took me. Lara:That’s fascinating, what you’re saying. So, instead of meditating… before, you were meditating to go somewhere else. Now, it’s “I want to feel in my body.” Is that what you’re saying? Mary:Yes. Yes. Lara:Okay. Mary:Definitely. Lara:And that made a difference for you? Mary:A very big difference in my daily life, and being able to, as she said, take mindfulness off the cushion and be very present in my body during my daily life really, mostly for me, even more so than depression, helped me with the social anxiety. Lara:Give me an example of social anxiety that you have or that you did have, that you don’t anymore. Mary:I was able… I would get very nervous and my body, actually, would shake, and my voice would tremble, and I would be unable to respond in ways that I was capable of responding and would often run from situations. You know? Find a way to politely dismiss myself from a meeting because I could no longer stand the physical aspect of being so anxious. With mindfulness present in my body, I could notice when a hand might start to shake or notice when butterflies started to arise. Lara:You could just feel it and then just kind of let it… Mary:Just sit with it. And, as she said, experience it in the moment, and rather than making a story about, “Oh, no. Here comes the anxiety and it’s going to get bigger…” Lara:And to be afraid of it? Mary:Yes. Lara:Instead, “Okay, it’s here. Let it go. Oh.” Mary:Yes. Yes. Betsy:And just as a scientific aside: When people ask, “Why should I do this?” There are all of the scientific answers. One of the things that we know is that introversion is a function of an overactive right hemisphere. Mindfulness meditation actually improves the function of the left hemisphere, and we find that people become less introverted, less shy, and more able to come forward and to be more optimistic because the left hemisphere is the optimistic hemisphere. Lara:Beautiful. When we come back from break, we’re going to talk more about that. I am Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. We’ll be right back. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. I invite you to email me any questions or comments on the show. You can email me at [email protected]or meet me at my website, www.larajaye.com. You can also find my guests today, Betsy and Mary, at the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. Betsy, what is the website for you? Betsy:www.sarasotamindfulness.org Lara:Tell me: Right now, you just started this week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, MBSR, an 8-week class. Do you have any room left for one or two people? Betsy:We could probably take one or two. Yes. Lara:Just one or two? Betsy:Yes. Lara:All right. When do you meet? Betsy:Tuesday nights, 6:00 to 8:30pm. If somebody wanted to join the class, they would need to be in touch with me beforehand. Lara:Got it. Betsy:It’s not a drop-in. Lara:And how could they get a hold of you? Through the institute? Through the website? Betsy:Through the website. Lara:Got it. All right. Right before break, we were talking with Mary and Betsy. Mary, tell me a little bit about your experience in the class. Mary:In taking Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, MBSR class, I was reluctant at first. Then, the structure of the class really was an inviting container, each week focusing on some aspect of mindfulness in my life. Lara:So, what Betsy was saying earlier about relationships or something not pleasant. Mary:Pleasant experiences, negative. Lara:Got it. Okay. Mary:And then being able to come back and share that with a group who was going through the same experience, have questions about meditating. In our MBSR class, we ask people to meditate a minimum of 10 minutes a day. As a new meditator, there were many different physical experiences and mental experiences that came up. It was very nice to have a group that I could rely on weekly to go in and talk about those experiences, to hear other people’s experiences, and know that I wasn’t alone. Lara:Were you ever scared meditating? Mary:I wouldn’t say fear, like maybe a nightmare. But sometimes some uncomfortable and disconcerting things could come up in meditation, and it was very nice to have Betsy as a mentor and to also know that other peers in the group were having similar experiences. Lara:And I feel like too often, when I’m meditating, things — especially if it’s something unpleasant that’s coming up — I feel like it’s stuck in my body and I can feel it. Meditation helps me to release that. Mary:Yes. Lara:But again, that can be scary. But for new meditators out there, what would you… Mary, as you were new, walking into it, what would be your recommendations for new meditators? Mary:Be patient with yourself and allow yourself to have whatever experience you have while you’re meditating. It’s okay if one day you sit down for your 10- or 20-minute meditation and you realize you spent the entire time sitting on the cushion thinking about whether or not you were meditating. That’s okay. Lara:Grocery list. [LAUGHTER] Take the pressure off, right? Mary:Yes. Lara:Yeah. Take the pressure off. I find that it doesn’t appear as if it’s useful, but it really was. It really is. But when we start throwing judgment on it, good or bad, it was a good meditation or it was a bad one or “I didn’t visualize anything this time,” or “Nothing came up.” Then, we, again, start throwing stories on it and make it even a bigger mess. Right? Betsy:Yep. Yeah. If you really dig down in to the meditation itself – and while we’re a secular institute, I want to say that this practice does come out of the Theravada tradition, which is a Buddhist tradition, of Vipassana meditation. “Vipassana” can be roughly translated as “insight.” Lara:Okay. Betsy:There is really sort of like two wings to this meditation. The first wing is one of developing stability or concentration – that we want to be able to stay present in this moment. We do that by focusing on the breath. There’s lots of traditional exercises, like counting “1” and taking a breath, counting “2,” taking another breath, and doing that up to 10, starting over, and then checking to see if you have some more stability. So, there’s all kinds of ways that we can help people to develop some ability to stay present in this moment, without the mind doing what it always does, which is to go all over the place, all the time. Well, what happens is it starts going less often and, in some ways, less far. Like we catch it more quickly. Lara:So, the breath and counting. It seems so simple. Betsy:It’s simple, but not easy, as Jon Kabat-Zinn says in “Mindfulness for Beginners.” Lara:And you’re telling me and our listeners that it’s really going to make a difference if I start breathing and…? Betsy:Yeah. Then what happens when we develop even a little bit of stability in our attention, now what we can do is open up awareness to the other wing, which is the insight wing. We begin to observe the mind like we would observe any other sense. For instance, if you are meditating on sound, you are able to hear the cars as they go by, the ceiling fan as it turns over your head, maybe your heartbeat, the bird that flies past the window and is singing while it’s flying. All of these noises – some of which are very constant, some of which come and go. Sometimes in my meditation I use sound as my object for focusing my meditation. I can also, then, use the mind. I can sit there with a breath and I can observe when a thought arises, and I can observe what my reactivity to that thought is. By getting to that level, that’s where the “insight” piece comes in because we can begin to see the habitual patterns of reactivity. Lara:We can see the things that trigger us. Betsy:Yes. And we can feel the way in which the body responds to it. As we are taping this, today is Inauguration Day. Lara:Yes. Betsy:Lots of people have lots of feelings about this day. Some people are joyously celebratory and some people feel angry and disenfranchised. Then there’s people in the middle. All of us have responsibility for what our reactivity is. It’s the thing I’m sure we’re going to be talking about in our meditation group today. Our reading is on Sisyphus, which I think is just perfect that that’s the reading that we have for today. Sisyphus is sentenced to this eternal punishment of pushing [00:30:00]this giant boulder up the hill and then having it roll back down, and starting all over again. Is it a punishment or is it not? If we just see each moment, as it is, sometimes we’re pushing the boulder up the hill. Sometimes we’re walking back down the hill to start all over again. Lara:There’s an ebb and flow to life. Betsy:Well, this is our lives. In every moment, we’re just doing what we’re doing. If the moment that I have a rock against my hands is simply this moment of having a rock against my hands, and it’s not a story about eternity, it’s just that in this moment in I have a rock against my hands. I am not in hell. I’m in mindfulness. So, the reactivity that we have to the situation is the suffering. What the insight meditation does is it gives us the ability to start understanding and having some compassion for our own reactivity. Lara:Let me ask you about that. So, all of us have reactivity and things that trigger us into maybe saying things unkind. I know I have, myself, when something hits me, and it really has nothing to do with what was said, but it may be something from the past that was coming up for me, would you say that meditation and mindfulness will help that? Will help lessen the triggers? Betsy:Yes. I love this expression that Charlotte Joko Beck has, which is that we begin to encounter life the way air encounters life. If you throw paint up, into air, nothing sticks. If we begin to see ourselves and work through these layers of filtering, and reactivity, and all of these perceptual biases we have, the fewer perceptual biases I have, the fewer things stick. This process is one where we begin to shed all of these limitations that we think that we have, all of these perceptual problems that we have. We begin to being open to what’s actually there. Lara:And what’s actually happening. Betsy:What’s actually happening. And then things don’t have to stick. Lara:Then we’re not going around, being triggered as much, if we’re staying mindful. Betsy:That’s right. Lara:And life is so stressful, I feel like, especially for, in the world, today, and today with what’s happening, the inauguration and all that, all that the world is encountering, the people, and I feel like there are so many of us that are hurting in different ways, and we unknowingly hurt other people or trigger other people. We just don’t know what’s happening. I feel like meditation, if everyone could even take 5 minutes a day, would start something, some kind of practice. It would make a difference. Betsy:Yeah. We’d have fewer downstream effects on ourselves and on others, and that’s a wonderful thing. Lara:It is a wonderful thing. Mary, what about you? Have you found for yourself that the reactivity had lessened? Mary:Yes. Most definitely. I found that during MBSR, probably about Week 6, I got it. I sort of opened up and really got how I was able to drive home from work and remember the drive home, rather than having the drive… Lara:You were present. Mary:Yeah. I was present for it, rather than it being a time where I was remembering everything I thought I had done wrong at work all day. Then, a couple of years after joining the Mindfulness Institute, I had a very serious surgery and I think mindfulness very much helped me through that, in that I wasn’t so worried about whether or not I was going to get better. I was able to be present with whether it was pain or whether it was healing and be really aware of feeling better each day. Lara:Beautiful. Fascinating conversation today with the ladies from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. We will be right back after break. [BREAK] Lara:I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome back. This morning we have Betsy Nelson and Mary Masi from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. Betsy, for a beginner just starting out, is there a class? Maybe they’re not quite ready for the 8-week class. Is there anything else that you can send them to at the Institute? Betsy:Oh, yeah. Great question. There are two options: One is, if you want to just jump right in, we have drop-in meditations every Wednesday night at 6pm and every Friday at noon, for an hour. We don’t meditate for an hour. We meditate for about 25 minutes to half an hour and then there’s a book discussion and that kind of thing. Then we also have — and this is really, I think, a lovely thing we have — a wonderful new teacher who has just moved to our community and she has been teaching meditation for many, many years and was actually the first person to be… I think the word is “ordained”… by Suzuki Roshi, who wrote the book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” Is that what it’s called? Mary:Yes. Betsy:“Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” One of my favorite books. It’s just lovely to have her here, so she’s teaching an Introduction to Mindfulness course for us and she’s doing one that starts this Thursday, but it’s full. Nobody else can join that class. We have 20 people signed up for the next one, so we’re really starting to plan these intro classes out. Currently, it’s 4 weeks, but I think we’re going to move it to 2 weeks and lengthen the sessions. But that’s a way to know what to expect when you get to the drop-in group. Some people are fine just coming to the drop-in group. We give pretty good instructions, so it should be comfortable. Lara:And again, what’s the website where they can find your or a phone number? Betsy:www.sarasotamindfulness.org. We don’t actually have a phone at this point. Lara:Okay. Where are you located at? Betsy:We are currently meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Fruitville, just east of [Geneva?]. Lara:Okay. For a beginner starting to meditate, if they maybe cannot get to the Institute, what would you recommend for them to start? Just step one. What would be that? Betsy:Great question. One would be Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book, “Mindfulness for Beginners.” Another would be to be seeking out guided meditations on the Internet, and Jon Kabat-Zinn has a number of those. Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield. These are a number of really wonderful teachers who have lots of guided meditations on the Internet. Lara:Fabulous. Mary, do you, yourself, do anything else outside of the Institute? I know you do your own… you do things at the Institute and you do your own private meditations. Do you use anything else yourself? Mary:I really enjoy walking meditation and I can be found on the beach. Lara:What would that entail? Just walking and focusing? Mary:Actually, just being present and feeling the sensation of the heel, the center of the foot, the toes, the shifting of the weight, the heel, the center of the foot, the toes, the shifting of the weight, and remaining present with actually the process of walking and feeling the sensation of the wind on the skin and the breath as you walk. Lara:That feels a little bit different than if I was walking on the beach, talking on the phone or having the music blaring. Just a little. Mary:Exactly. Yes. A little different. Betsy:And Mary is also a very skilled Yoga teacher and the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction class has a Mindful Movement component to it, and at the Mindfulness Institute we have Mindful Movement classes. Currently, mainly Qigong and Tai Chi, taught by Nancy Saum. But Mary brings a beautiful mindful leadership to those Yoga classes and the Yoga component of the MBSR group. Lara:So, Mindfulness Movement. You mentioned the walking. What were the other names? Tell me, Mary, do you want to talk a little bit about the movement? Normally, I think of meditation and I’m just sitting still, sometimes on the floor or whatever, so talk to me about that. Mary:Mindful movement. It can take many forms, but the focus of the movement is being present with the sensation of moving the body. Through the beginning of a movement, whether it’s a motion and Tai Chi or Qigong, or getting into a Yoga pose. Usually, in Mindful Yoga, poses are held anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes. Feeling what it is to move the body into the pose and how the body changes over the course of remaining in the pose, and then the shift in the body as we get out of that pose and transition into the next, rather than using music or something where we are in our mind and anticipating. Being very, very present with movement and also breath. Lara:For all of these things we’ve talked about today, and for our listeners who are running so hard, busy, busy, busy, as we all are, and numbing ourselves — possibly fast food restaurants — life is life and there is so much going on, and then we ask them, [00:40:00]“Okay, I need you to meditate 10 minutes a day and go for a walk on the beach, and take time and actually not answer emails while you’re walking on the beach or talking on the phone,” and I find that it’s hard to convince people oftentimes to get into this practice. Do you have that? Do you find that it’s almost like sometimes they need something, some kind of stress, something so stressful to catapult them into, “Okay, I’ve got to make changes”? Betsy:Yeah. I don’t try to convince people. I think that our lives present us with whatever it is that we need to wake up when it is we need to wake up. Sometimes we just need to wake up and we find it out. Some people have medical crises and that’s when they learn that they need to wake up. I think it’s wonderful if it happens before you find yourself faced with a medical crisis, but that’s sometimes how it is for people. Lara:Hence, for me, it was a divorce and a medical crisis that kind of sent me in to, “Okay, what am I going to do?” and I started with being still and then really learning what to do with mind chatter, and then, thirdly, meditation was what just opened me up to a whole new world of, “Wow, I can actually feel my body and I don’t have to fight it anymore.” I had such a disconnect with my body. Betsy:Yes. Lara:Tell me about the Institute. Is there any programs for that, the body and disconnect? Betsy:Yeah. I’m glad you asked that question. We have a really lovely teacher named Lily Myers, who is also a licensed clinical social worker, and she does a Mindfulness and Body Image class a couple of times a year for women only. She does just a beautiful job with that. So, there is a mindful eating component to it… and I haven’t taken the class. Have you? Mary:No, I have not. Betsy:So I am a little bit guessing, but I know as much as anything she’s working with the feelings that arise around body image. Lara:Body image. For women, especially, it’s so prevalent in the disconnect to our bodies, so I’m really excited that you guys are offering that. Tell me a little bit, Betsy, about the Institute. You are part of the Founding Fathers of it. You said in 2009. How has it changed from 2009 to now? Betsy:Well, we could also be called the Vagabond Meditation Institute of Sarasota. We had a… if you want to learn about impermanency, just join us. We’ve had a number of different homes and we had a home for about 3 years on Dolphin Street, in our own studio, and we got to looking at our programming and realized that we were scheduling programming to support the space. What we really want to do more of — and are starting to do more of — is we want to take mindfulness out to non-profit institutions, to schools, to corporations. We have — I’m going to loosely call it a Speakers Bureau — and we are able to do programs for other organizations on mindfulness. Lara:That’s so important. Especially, I feel like, in the schools and getting it out there. I know my own kids, after they graduated from high school, said, “Mom, I wish we would have learned how to handle stress.” Just the simple things. I taught them later, but it’s like they needed this when they were little. They needed this to grow with them. Betsy:Absolutely. And the things that we teach kids first is how to pay attention. The teachers are always saying to them, “Pay attention,” but nobody teaches a kid how to pay attention. Lara:They don’t. Betsy:So, that’s what we do. We teach them how to pay attention in a way that’s interesting; not in a way… they’re not being scolded in any way. It’s like, “Let’s find this moment. Let’s find how to live our lives as we’re in our lives.” Lara:And they don’t need medicine in order to pay attention. Betsy:No. Lara:Have you found that, in the school systems that you’ve gone out to, that it’s made a difference in whatever class or programs you’ve done? Betsy:The teachers have told us that it does. We’ve only had some brief experiences with the kids, themselves. That’s kind of a long story. I won’t get in to that here. But we’ve done some programs in the Title I schools in Sarasota and then we are currently working in Manatee County, training teachers and administrators in mindfulness. Lara:Wonderful. Any last words? What one thing, if you could get it out to our listeners, what would you say? Betsy:Well, I’d want people to know that they will feel, I think, warmly welcomed if they just show up unannounced. It’s how almost all of us start. There’s no reason to be shy about coming to any one of our drop-in groups. Lara:Great. Mary? What about you? Any last words? Mary:Do it. Lara:Do it. Mary:And don’t ever fear that you can’t do anything wrong. It’s a process and it’s something to be patient with yourself about, but do do it because it works. Lara:Fabulous. You ladies have been absolutely wonderful today, Betsy and Mary from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. Again, the website one more time? Betsy:www.sarasotamindfulness.org. Lara:I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderand I look forward to seeing you next week.   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:48:12]

DOWNLOAD EPISODE > Explore the Healing Effects of Nature with Captain Mike Nix, Key Life Charters. In addition to being a rock star captain of the Gulf Coast waters, Mike shares his journey from a desk job in Georgia to living his dream on Siesta Key, Florida.   Intro: Welcome to The Zen Leaderwith Lara Jaye. Whether you're a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now here's your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:Good morning! I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome back this morning. I hope everyone is doing okay. Today, we have an awesome topic, one of my absolutely favorites and have a super guest in with me for part of the time today. We're going to be talking about the healing effects of nature. With me this morning is Mike Nix, Captain Mike I call him, a good friend. He is with Key Life Charters here on Siesta Key, Florida. Captain Mike, welcome. How are you this morning? Mike Nix:I'm great. Thank you. Lara:Great. I wrote extensively about the healing effects of nature in one of my chapters in my book More Than Enough and spending time outside, for me in nature, was such an integral part of my own personal healing, and everyday continues to be a source of great joy for me. I don't know how to explain being out in nature, but it resets me back to me, Mike. Does that do that for you? Mike:It does. Lara:It does and I just think that you agree that being outside in nature and what you do is so huge. Mike, tell me a little bit. You and your wife run Key Life Charters on Siesta Key. Tell me a little bit about what you do on Key Life Charters and why are you so unique, because you are? You get that, what you're doing out here. Mike:Well, what we do is offer families and small groups of six and fewer people the opportunity to get out and experience nature, like you said. Siesta Key and Sarasota has so much to offer with wildlife and things that you can only see by water. For example, the dolphins and the manatees, and the bird life, and the vegetation, and the foliage that we have here. A lot of times when you're driving around you just overlook or miss it because you're paying attention to the road or you just don't… Lara:Well, we hope you are and we hope you're… [LAUGHTER] Mike:Right, right. Lara:Right. Mike:You just don't have access to those places. So what we provide is it's a total immersion type experience. So you get to not only do you see it, you get involved. You get in the water. You're able to go and collect seashells, and get on some of the sandbars, and ride out into The Gulf, and literally there's no telling what you'll see on any day. Lara:Right, it's always different depending on weather and everything. Mike:Right. Nature and wildlife is unpredictable so you never know what one day holds versus the next. One day you may go out and it just puts on a spectacular show. The next day it could be totally different. Lara:You just never know. Tell me about the boat that you own that you take people out on. Mike:The boat is glass-drawn 23-foot deck boat, so it provides ample seating for the groups that I take out. It's easy to maneuver and get around. The other thing about it is it has an easy access from the front or the back, so you can pull up to sandbars and people can get out. It's easy. I've not had any person out so far that can't on and off the boat, and some boats that's a problem. You just can't… the bow sits too high or the sides are too high. This boat really affords you the opportunity to get out on some of the sandbars and beaches, and things like that, and experience it. Lara:What I love, Mike — and if anyone is interested in contacting Captain Mike — what's your website, Mike? Mike:It's keylifecharters.com. Lara:So just spelled out Key Life and then Charters, C-H-A-R-T-E-R-S.COM. Mike:Right, right. Lara:Okay. Again, go to Key Life Charters if you want to contact Mike or have any questions. What I love on your website is you let people kind of design their day or their time with you. Is that right? Mike:Yeah, absolutely. Lara:How does that work? Mike:Well, they choose. We offer a list of activities and they actually choose what they'd like to do. Sometimes they just leave it up to me, so I can kind of coordinate be it a four-hour charter or an eight-hour charter. I can coordinate all activities to where they're at a certain spot at a certain time, able to get in everything before they have to go back to the dock. Lara:They kind of tell you kind of what they want. We want to waterski or we want to find a dolphin, and then you kind of work around that. Mike:Right. Lara:We want to go to a tiki bar, whatever. [LAUGHTER] Mike:Exactly, exactly. Lara:Whatever. Mike:Which, that's a very popular… Lara:That's very popular. What are some of the other popular things to do on the boat? Mike:I would say probably the most popular thing is dolphin sightings. Everybody loves to see them, and I still love to see them no matter the fact that I've seen thousands. It never grows old. Lara:It never grows old. Mike:It never does. As you know, having been on the boat, I'm able to get them sometimes to do some acrobatics in the wake of the boat, which is an absolute thrill. That's something you won't get on some of the bigger tour operators. They just can't produce the wake and you don't have the closeness of the dolphins that are literally within range that you could almost reach out and touch them. Lara:That's amazing. On one of your blogs, and Mike, you write an awesome blog on your website, and I just really encourage listeners to go check this out, your blog. Because it's not just about you're not just a charter come hang out on my boat for a few hours. Mike:Right. Lara:You give them the full immersion and let them just really experience water life and life, and can give them the tour. But on one of your blogs, you write, "The longer we're here, the more we appreciate all that is here and all that is in this area that has to offer." Boating, fishing, kayaking, the beach, biking, are all tremendously fun activities and things that you try to do often. You write, "I would encourage you to take a little time and engage in an activity such as hiking, biking, walking, boating, playing golf or tennis. Just get outside. This place is incredible," you say. Walking, running, biking, golfing, swimming — you mention paddleboarding — are just a few of these activities. You even write the old adage coming to mind, "A body in motion stays in motion." Were you, yourself, always such an advocate of getting outside and enjoying the pleasures of outdoor life? Mike:Well, a lot of my current outlook is the fact that I had a desk job for 20 years and didn't have the opportunity to get out Monday through Friday like I do now. The opportunity now is to get out everyday and that was a big decision when we decided to do this was the fact that we wanted to do three things. We wanted to be outdoors, do physical work, and meet a lot of people. That's how we decided upon the charter business. Lara:We is you and your wife. Mike:Right, Donna. Lara:Donna. Tell me a little bit about how did you end up here because you're not originally from here. Mike:Right. We're from the coast of Georgia. I was actually born and raised in Brunswick, Georgia, which is geography-wise is about an hour north of Jacksonville, Florida and an hour south of Savannah, Georgia. One of the more famous areas there is St. Simons Island, which a lot of people know about and started vacationing down here.             When I was about 10 years old, my family brought me down. Then when I turned 18 and started traveling on my own, this was one of the first places I came. Then I made it an annual vacation destination for my family and myself. I've actually got about 40 years' exposure to the area, and it's just a very unique place and I love it. I mean there's nothing that compares to Sarasota area and Siesta Key. Lara:Awesome. And you and your wife, you were living in Georgia and you decided, "Hey." What did you decide? We're just going to pack up and come here? [LAUGHTER] Mike:We did. Lara:What were you thinking? Mike:Right, it was a three-year plan. Lara:Okay. Mike:We had regular jobs. We had what a lot of people would strive for, which is security, but it just… we frankly got bored. It just wasn't filling a need that we had. The need being to be an active lifestyle in a beautiful place and meet a lot of people, and give them the experience that we had when we went out on a boat personally. We wanted other people to experience that, and I think we've done a good job of that. Everybody that's gone out with us has had a great time and laughter is the universal language, and to hear families' just unabashed laughter on the boat and having the best time is the most rewarding part of what I do. Lara:Oh, Mike, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. You admit. We're in these desk jobs and you're bored, and that's where a lot of our listeners are right now. They're doing the same day in, day out, and I really want to encourage them — even if it's for an hour a day or a couple hours on the weekend — to get outside. Get outside. Do something different. Isn't that what you needed to do for you guys? Mike:Yes, and I've always done that. Even with the desk job, I would get out even at lunchtime just for an hour and sit on a bench at the side of the ocean on St. Simons and just soak in the sun. It just kind of resets your day, even. But the biggest thing is to just get outside and enjoy what's here. No matter where you live, you can always find something that is just absolutely incredible that you've never seen if you'll just take the time and quiet yourself and look around. Lara:I love that, Mike.[00:10:00]We've got about a minute before our first break. Recently you went on a bike trip. That was just something a little different. How was that for you? Mike:Well, what we did was we left from Siesta Key. We left from our home and took about a 25-mile round-trip bike trip and got on the Legacy Trail, and went down to Venice, Florida, had lunch and some drinks. Lara:[CHUCKLE] Mike:And came back up Casey Key, which I would encourage any of your listeners to do that, to do a bike ride in this area. The Legacy Trail is great. You can Google up the location of where the trailhead starts. It's an easy path. Casey Key is an absolutely incredible view coming north or south on Casey Key. It's right along the Gulf. We just decided to do that one day and we had some people join us, and we had a fabulous time. Lara:Just on a whim. Mike:Right, right. Lara:We're going to go and have fun. It's about getting outside, enjoying nature. Mike:Right. So tomorrow is not supposed to be the best weather, but my wife is off — Donna is off — and we've already planned something for tomorrow. Lara:Super. Mike:We're going to be out. Lara:You're going to be out. Mike:We're going to be out. Lara:#1. Mike:Right. Lara:I love that. We're going to take a break right now and we'll be right back on The Zen Leaderhere with Mike Nix with Key Life Charters. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderhere on WSRQ, "The Voice of Sarasota-Manatee." To find me, you can go to wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com. My guest today is good friend Captain Mike, Captain Mike Nix with Key Life Charters. You can find him at keylifecharters.com. Mike, right before break, we were talking about the biking, and we talked a little bit about you moved from Georgia down here. Now, you still have a place in Georgia, right? Mike:We do. Lara:Okay, but you're down here full-time now? Mike:Right. Lara:Just hanging out. Mike:Mm-hmm. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Retired from the desk job and living the life. Mike:Right. Lara:We all need, at some point, I feel like we make these decisions to what are we going to do for the rest of our life? What is it that's really going to bring us joy? Is that kind of what you and Donna did? Mike:Yeah, that's exactly the point we were at. Like I said, we had desk jobs. We had regular careers for 20 years. We had the whole deal, the kids, and the homes, and the things, and a 9 to 5, 5-day-a-week type job. With the kids out of the house and on their own, for the most part, we decided that if we didn't do it now, we'd never do it. We didn't let the age that we were or the position we were in be an impediment to our ultimate goal, which was a search for a quality of life that exists that we found here. Lara:Were you afraid? Any fear come up when you made this move? [LAUGHTER] Mike:I was very afraid. My wife was not as afraid. [LAUGHTER] She was a little bit more bold than I was, and I was really the one that had done the same thing for 20+ years of my life. She had done different type things, so she was more apt to the challenge. I had started out in the insurance business at a very young age and stayed in it. So, a lot of the guys that I worked with and a lot of the people that I talked with thought I was absolutely off my rocker to do that. But at the same time, they said, "Man, I wish I could do the same thing." Lara:Right. It's the fear of following your dream, but yet you did it anyway. Mike:Right. Right. If you're afraid of doing stuff, you'll never do anything at all, so you have to overcome the fear. You have to address it head on, and it helps to listen, to read and to listen because that encourages you and gives you other insights of people who have overcome challenges. You can always find somebody who's been through the same path you have. Lara:Sure. You said that's helpful. Mike:It is very helpful. Lara:And to know that, "Hey, if they can do it, I can do it, too." Mike:Right, right. One of the things — and it may seem silly — but Steve Harvey has a thing. You can look on YouTube and it's a segment where he talks with audience after the show. Lara:I've watched that. It's amazing. Yes. Mike:Right, right, and he says, "It's on jumping." He said, "If you're going to work on a 9 to 5 everyday at a job you hate, that's not living. You're just existing." That was a huge motivation for us. We listened to that every single day for months. Lara:Before your move? Mike:Before the move. Lara:You were getting ready to jump. Mike:I was getting ready to jump.  Lara:And you listened to it. Mike:Everyday. Everyday we listened to that, multiple times a day. And that's fine. You can listen to anything you want to listen to, but until you start believing it and applying it in your own life, it doesn't do you any good. Lara:That's right. We have to believe it in our bodies, in ourselves, in our own mind and psyche, and then we get quiet and do that. Then the mind chatter comes up. "You can't do that." Mike:Right. Lara:"Well, who do you think you are to do that?" Mike:Right. Lara:Why should you be happy?" Mike:Exactly. Lara:So did all that happen to you, too? Mike:Absolutely. Still does. Lara:Still does. [CHUCKLE] Mike:It never stops. It never stops. People that you talk to… it's like if it's not one thing it's another. It's always going to be something that you're going to be self-critical of or you're going to have doubt. It doesn't matter where you are or what you do. In some people, that has driven them to tremendous success, but not happiness. What you want to do is get to that point where you, just like your book, you're more than enough. I mean you are where you are and it's as good as it's going to get. Lara:Right. Mike:Because you're not guaranteed tomorrow. Lara:We're not. Mike:At all. Lara:We're not. Mike:Right. Lara:And we're going to go for it. I had someone say to me oh, last fall. They're like, "Well, you come off so confident, but really you're just this scared little girl inside." I'm like, "Uh-huh. Yes, I am." Mike:Right, yeah. Lara:And I do it anyway. Mike:Right. Lara:It's moving through that fear. Mike:Yeah, and each charter that I have, you never know how it's going to go. They get to the dock. There's some apprehension because most people have never been on a boat and they don't know the area. Lara:Really? Most have never been on a boat? Mike:Most have not been on a boat. They don't have the experience. Many haven't. A lot have. They just want a captain for the day. But as the day goes on and they loosen up, and they begin to enjoy themselves, it always ends the same. They end up having the best time. Lara:I want to talk about what happens when you take someone out on your boat even for a couple hours, and I've experienced many times being out with you, you and Donna. I met you as a fluke when my assistant was in town and she chartered the boat. I got to be dragged along and I was so excited. I had just moved here and you had just moved here apparently. Mike:Right. Lara:We got to meet and talk; it was just the most amazing day. Of course, the dolphins found us. Mike:Right. Lara:Which it was great. We have some super video from that. I don't know. Mike, you just do something so different that… I don't know. It's just you. It's just you and how you bring people in and you hold them, and support them for the day, and show them around. It's just so unique. Mike:Well, I appreciate it. What I do is I just want to show them the best time possible. I want them to feel like the money that they pay for the time that they book me for was money well spent, and it creates a memory that'll last a lifetime for them. I want to be one of the highlights of their vacation. I don't expect it to be the end all of everything, but I want it to be one of the highlights, and a lot of people say it was the highlight of their vacation. Lara:Absolutely. I love that creating memories. That's what you do for families and for groups and people and lots of memories. I love that we can custom design the day. So, say we have four hours or eight hours, and you know the route from where we take off at the dock, from bar to bar, from tiki bar to tiki bar. [LAUGHTER] Mike:Right. Lara:Which I didn't even know existed that you could get by boat to the different… being a newbie here in town. But there are a lot of things like that, and then you know where the snorkeling is. Mike:Right. Lara:You know where all of that… Mike:Yeah. I mean, the thing I try to do is make it so that people don't have to think; they just experience. Our slogan is, "Leave your worries at the dock." Once you step onboard the boat, I take care of everything. You don't have to lift a finger. I take care of all the details. You may see me out on the water and I may have an innertube, fishing poles, casting nets, snorkels, everything, but I like to be prepared. Lara:Because you never know what the family is going to want. Mike:Right. Lara:Or the group is going to want to do. Mike:In a full eight-hour day, they can get in all of that stuff, as well as the sightseeing. The sightseeing takes place when you're traveling to your destination. If you're going to a sandbar or a tiki bar, that's where the sightseeing comes into play. It's not a separate thing. A lot of people get confused with that. It's just part of the boat ride. Lara:It's just part of the boat ride. Mike:Right. Lara:So, you stop amd take a restroom break. Mike:Right. Lara:Get some food if you want, whatever, and get back on. Mike:Yeah, a tremendous amount of things here to see and do on the water. A lot of them, just like I said, you can get to some of stuff by land. Some of it you can't; you can only get to by water. It's just an absolutely incredible experience to be on the water. [00:20:00] Lara:So, we talked about the dolphins. What are some of the other wildlife that you've run into out there? Mike:Well, manatees are prevalent in the warmer water. They're gone now because the water temperature is too low. The bird species here are incredible. Then if you get out on some of the sandbars, I've found dwarf octopus before. Lara:Dwarf octopus? Okay. Mike:Dwarf octopus, which is about the size of a quarter. Sea turtles that were as big as the bow of the boat, I've seen on multiple occasions. Just sharks, small sharks, and things like that. Lara:Yeah, how big are the sharks? Mike:Yeah. Probably about three and a half feet is the one I saw. But I tell everybody there's sharks in every body of water. Every saltwater body of water has sharks in it.That's nothing new. Lara:That's nothing new? So don't be afraid. Mike:Don't be afraid. Lara:Move through the fear, right? [LAUGHTER] Mike:Right, right, exactly, exactly. Don't let it stop you. Lara:Don't let it stop you. Can you remember one or two really fantastic days that just created a memory for you yourself? Mike:Yeah. One of the best days I had was a family from Norway, which, by the way, people from all over the world visit this area and that's such a nice thing. But they got to see it all. They got to see manatees. They got to see dolphins. They got to see sea turtles. They got to ride the innertube. I cast the net, pulled up 40 or so mullet — the kids just went crazy over that — and ended the day with a beautiful sunset as well as a lunch during the day. That was an eight-hour charter. Obviously, that's something they had never done before and that was the highlight of their day, and their trip. Lara:Wow! Life doesn't get much better than that. Mike:It was a great day.  Lara:I love your story, Mike, about you and Donna, and how you found each other, and you made this big leap into your new life, and you both are working everyday to build this business. But it's really to build this new life of happiness and joy. Mike:It is. Lara:At the same time, you're building community, helping others being able to enjoy their free time. Mike:Yeah. We didn't just come here to make money. We came here to establish friendships, relationships, get involved in the community because we love the place. We want to see it retain its character. We want to see it retain the beauty. It's a special place. There's no doubt. Lara:That's awesome. Listeners, you can find Captain Mike at www.keylifecharters.com. Mike, it has been an incredible pleasure to have you as my guest today. Thank you so much. Mike:Well, thank you for having me. Lara:Great! I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderand we'll be right back after these messages. [BREAK] Lara:We're back. I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderhere on WSRQ, The Voice of Sarasota-Manatee. wsrqradio.comor you can find me at larajaye.com. Today, we are talking about the healing effects of nature. This was a chapter in one of my books More Than Enough, and we just heard from Captain Mike Nix from Key Life Charters here in Sarasota/Siesta Key. We talked a lot about nature and being out and how important it is, even Hippocrates says, "Nature itself is the best medicine." I'm sure that you would agree once we can get out of the air conditioning and just go outside and breathe, you feel so much better.             When I first moved here, my realtor said to me, "Don't ever take this for granted. If you go a few days or even a week without getting a walk on the beach," which I live near the beach on Siesta, "If you go a week without it, you're taking it for granted. Get out there. Get out there and do that reset." I really appreciated that advice. Because standing, if you have not ever stood on the ocean's edge — and a lot of people haven't — or relished the sounds and the feel of crashing waves, and what it does for your body. Maybe you prefer beautiful mountains. I love Sedona, Mount Shasta, Yellowstone, all the parks. Maybe hiking is your thing. How do you feel? How does your body feel when you're in the midst of nature's beauty?             For me, I feel balanced, centered, relaxed, even when I travel. Especially when I travel, I like to find places to hike or walk outside of the norm, especially when there's business meetings. Often when I'm in LA, I walk the gorgeous Japanese gardens at the Four Seasons Hotel. Usually, just as I'm walking these gardens, I come alive. I wake up. I can feel my body resetting from the business meetings. The worries of the day melt away and I just soak up the incredible beauty that is all around me. Not far from that spot in those Japanese gardens, there are just beautiful mountains that I hike and explore as well. I really enjoy that.             Often on a daily basis, we're handling life. We're handling life as it comes at us, fast and furious. We spend our days putting out fires, which causes other emotional, physical, and psychological issues. A lot of times we can't sleep at night. We're clenching our teeth and we forget to breathe, especially we forget to deep breathe. Really, we forget who we are when we're not getting outside more.             The stress from this pressure cooker of life increases in our body until we become anxious, angry, and possibly even sink into depression. All of this really is just from our everyday life of living. I can tell you even Monday morning I was answering emails and I was just feeling the stress build in me, and it took a couple hours, and I felt like I was ready to explode, you know? I'm sure that you all have had that feeling before where things are just piling and piling, and you're feeling overwhelmed, and nothing is working.             I had a friend text me and say, "Hey, do you want to go for a walk on the beach?" Immediately I was like, "Yes, I need that reset," and went out for a couple of hours and came back, and I had a completely different mindset. My body was relaxed. I got a walk in. I got some sunshine, got that important vitamin D. I was a different person because I was able to jump outside of my box, get away from the computer screen, get away from the phone, and have some quiet time on the beach with a friend.             You probably have experienced that as well, but we have to be in tune with our bodies, know, "Okay, I'm feeling agitated or I'm feeling this way," or whatever. Instead of going trying to plow through something, if we can even get outside for five minutes or 15 minutes, something to reset ourselves is important.  I can say the past decade of my life, my personal life, has been honestly quite traumatic and no different than anyone else's. It's life. I did experience four of the top five stressors including family member deaths, divorce, moving, several moves [LAUGHTER], including across the country, and major illness.             If that weren't enough, I also had computers stolen, became an empty nester, endured a flood, and I just felt like my life was so topsy-turvy. But to be honest, nature was an integral part of healing for me through this difficult period. I never thought it would be. Although I grew up on 80 acres in northern Indiana on a dirt road, getting outside was not my thing. I much rather be inside. I did like to camp a little, but nature, getting outside, I didn't like bugs. I don't like bugs. I don't like to be cold. So for me to say that nature was healing, this is huge. But it really was.             A few years ago as the stress was just mounting in my life, I knew that I needed time for me and I needed to take a different route. I was at a point in my life where health challenges and past traumas were really affecting my daily quality of life. We were getting ready to enter winter months in Indiana and the polar vortex; we had had one year of that. We're getting ready to have another one, and the cloudy days, just no sunshine combined with cold temperatures and snow just really affect me and made me, for me, even more depressed. A lot of people love the snow and I say, "Great! That's nature. Get out there. Enjoy it." So whatever it is that nature that feeds you, whether it's snow or snow skiing, or snowboarding. My brothers they jet ski, so water. [00:30:00]:All different things. But for me, I needed some warm sunshine, so I decided to be a snowbird a few years ago and flew south. I lived on Anna Maria Island and I've always been drawn to the beaches. For me, it was just a really easy decision and I knew that it would provide a natural location that would support me in healing, and I was just thinking, "Okay, two months. Get out of the cold. Rest, relaxation." I was working. I could work from where I was at, and so I hung out on Anna Maria Island.             But the daily walks in the beach and viewing the sunsets over the ocean, relaxing on the island, it became just this part of a routine that supported my body as it healed from all of these past traumas. So, for me, as I walked on the sand, I envisioned. I would envision; it was kind of a meditative walk. I envisioned past traumas just washing out into the ocean depths with each step. As I stepped, each step I wanted to just let go of things. I felt emotions just being released from me.             Some days, as I was walking, I would just start crying and I could just feel things being released. Which no, you don't see. You don't see things being released, but I felt them. That's what nature does. We feel it inside of us. So, who knows why the reason. The ocean and sunsets for me provided a background of beauty and support that they assisted me in so many ways. Honestly, they did a lot of things. They helped me mend a broken heart. Being out in nature helped me release self-limiting beliefs, old patterns, and it helped me to enjoy life again and to reconnect with myself, my body and my own spiritual connection. All of that, did all of those things because I chose, for me, what fed me was to walk along the ocean's edge and sunsets. For me, it's just so important.             Author Wallace Nichols wrote about the fascinating connection between nature and healing, and I love this book Blue Mind: The Surprising Science that Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected and Better at What You Do. That really is the entire title of the book, kind of long, but he says, "Like a child depends upon its mother, humans have always depended upon nature for our survival. Just as we intuitively love our mothers, we are linked to nature physically, cognitive, and emotionally." I love that book. If you can ever dive into it, please do.             But in the early 80s, a researcher in Paoli, Pennsylvania collected info about patients who had undergone gallbladder surgery over a nine-year period. I love the research on this. Basically the results are probably not going to surprise you. On average, those who faced a brick wall, patients who faced a brick wall, needed a whole extra day to recover before returning home. They were far more depressed and experienced even more pain. Interestingly, only a few of the patients who looked into the trees required more than a single dose of strong painkillers during the middle part of their stay compared to those facing the wall, who required two or even three doses. When we come back after a break, we're going to talk even more about this. I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. You can find me at larajaye.comor on wsrqradio.com, The Voice of Sarasota-Manatee. In today's show, we are talking about the healing effects of nature. Studies repeatedly have shown that hanging out in nature can lower blood pressure, reduce anxiety, relieve stress, and sharpen mental states. It can even help those suffering from ADHD disorders, depression, addictions, insomnia, stress. Nature tends to bring out the best in each of us.             As Captain Mike was talking about earlier, for him even, he said it resets him. It soothes. It heals. It restores. It connects us. My older brother had an amazing experience with nature. Years ago, he had a landscape business and planted hundreds of trees in his backyard, and he told me that watching them grow was his church.             Recently, I'd spent several days hiking beautiful Mount Shasta in northern California. If you've not ever been there, I just really encourage you to make that trip. It was a last-minute add-on to a week of non-stop meetings in Los Angeles. The quietness of the forest of Mount Shasta almost immediately reset my body and mind. Hiking seems to be very healing for me, as it may be for you. The rhythm. I could just feel the rhythm as I was walking of putting one foot in front of the other, and it allowed my mind to wander a little.             I did a walking meditation to stay quiet and be still because I wanted to be present. I didn't have my headphones on. I wasn't listening to a lot of music, and I wanted to soak up every noise, every tree rustle while I was walking. I wanted to hear every step and every bird chirping. It didn't take too long before I had forgotten about all the L.A. traffic that I had experienced and the drive up that was actually very overwhelming coming from Indiana, and not much traffic compared to California.             But as I hiked uphill on Mount Shasta, I began to dodge boulders and I noticed how different emotions surfaced. This is something we're going to talk a lot about in The Zen Leaderis emotions and what to do with them because they're going to come up. The question is: Are we going to stuff them back down? Are we going to numb and dumb ourselves? Are we going to just keep working and pushing through so we don't feel our emotions? What are we going to do with our emotions? Are we going to drink? Are we going to overeat? Are we going to over exercise? What are we going to do with those emotions because they're going to come up? We need to feel. We are made to feel. They're going to come up. Again, what are we going to do with them? We'll talk about more of those in some other shows.             But as I was hiking, I noticed different emotions and sometimes my thoughts made me laugh. Sometimes the emotions. But mostly as I was stepping, I was crying and I didn't want to push the emotions down. I didn't want to judge them or figure them out, and I would do one step. I noticed that my hiking pattern changed as I was feeling. Instead of walking around the boulders that were in my way, I began to step on them and it was like a push with each foot. It leveraged and it helped me go higher and further and faster.             I feel like what a beautiful lesson from nature, to step on the boulders in our life instead of trying to bypass them. These boulders that are seemingly in our way, they actually may be there to launch us even further at a faster rate. Instead of trying to sidestep the obstacle, I say embrace it. Put your foot on top of it and let it give you a stronger leverage to propel you into the future.             For whatever reason, hiking and being out in nature seemed to escalate the kind of healing achieved, for me, especially in processing emotions. By the time I had left Mount Shasta after several days, I felt transformed. I mean, I was so centered, grounded, relaxed, quiet. What better place to release some of these past hurts and sadness than surrounded by God's beauty, whether it be on the water with Captain Mike or… I love paddleboarding and kayaking. What better place? Maybe it's snow skiing for you, waterskiing. Maybe it's just walking at your local park, which I used to do a lot of that in Indiana.             But science-wise, there are so many scientific reasons why you should be spending more time outside. You probably know that, but again, to get us away from work, away from email, away from the computer. So, one of them… I'll tell you 11 and we'll talk briefly about some of them. #1: Improved short-term memory. In one study, University of Michigan students were given a brief memory test and divided into two groups. One group took a walk around some trees, and the other half took a walk down a city street.[00:40:00]When the participants returned and did the test again, those who had walked among the trees did almost 20% better than the first time. Again, those who had taken in city sights instead did not improve. Again, improved short-term memory. #2 Scientific Reason: It restores mental energy. Isn't that what we all need? We need more mental energy and we need more physical energy. You know that feeling where your brain seems to be sputtering to a halt, the mental fatigue, because we push. We try to push ourselves. One thing that can get your mind back into gear is exposing it to restorative environments like being outside. A third scientific: Stress release. Really, we all know that. Head for the trees. One study found that students sent into the forest for two nights had lower levels of cortisol — a hormone, as we all know is used for the marker of stress — than those who had spent time in the city. We know that.             Reduced inflammation. Which “inflammation” is a big buzzword now; it's a natural process the body uses to respond to threats like damage. Being outside reduces inflammation. #5: Better vision. Can you believe that? Better vision from being outside in nature. At least also in children, a fairly large body of research has found that outdoor activity actually has a protective effect on the eyes reducing all kinds of things. So, that's amazing scientific research.             #6: Improved concentration. We know the natural environment is restorative and the one thing a walk outside can do is restore your waning attention. In one study, researchers worked to deplete participants' ability to focus. Some took a walk in nature, some took a walk through the city, and the rest just relaxed. When they returned, the nature group scored the best on a proofreading task. Again, we need to realize that there are so many benefits to getting outside.             #7: Sharper thinking and creativity. I tend to do my best work after I've been outside on a walk or watching the sunset. I agree, sharper thinking and creativity. Going for that exercise, whether it be just exercise or just sitting and watching a sunrise or sunset. Also researchers… #8: Possible anti-cancer effects. That's amazing. #9: Immune system boost. 10: Improved mental healthy. 11: Reduced risk of early death. The health effects of green space are wide ranging and studies can't prove cause and effect still, but they still show strong associations between access to nature and longer, healthier lives, which is amazing. I mean, that is what we all want.             Nature heals. Being in nature or even viewing scenes of nature reduces anger, fear, stress, and it increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally; it contributes to your physical wellbeing. We've talked about this, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the stress hormones. Nature heals. Nature soothes. It can help us cope with pain. Nature restores. One of the most intriguing areas of current research is the impact of nature on general wellbeing, which is so important. Nature connects. According to a series of field studies, time in nature connects us to each other and the larger world. If you're a person who doesn't normally spend time outdoors, I challenge you to start even with a 15-minute walk outside every evening. I want you to notice how you feel before and after. Do you feel more centered, balanced, grounded? There are hundreds of other studies outlining the benefits of spending time outdoors. What's important to note from all of the scientific, all of it, is the overall consensus is spend time outdoors with others everyday. This will provide the needed restorative experience your body craves. Your body craves it. All of our bodies crave it to be in balance.             That's what a family beach vacation does. Soak up the grass, flowers, sun, waves, mountains, rocks, streams. Let them balance you and reconnect you with the true you, which is, for me, that's just complete self-love and taking care of yourself. I love talking about nature and the healing effects of it. It's been great being with you today, and I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader and we'll see you next week.   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:45:17]

DOWNLOAD EPISODE > On this weeks radio show and podcast, The Zen Leader: Nourishing Your Body, my guests are Karen Odierna and Keith Campbell, CROP, a local chain of organic juice bars. Karen and Keith share their own stories of sugar addiction and low energy and how juicing provided an incredible boost to their life by sky rocketing their health.   Intro:Welcome to The Zen Leaderwith Lara Jaye. Whether you're a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now here's your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:Good morning. I'm Lara Jaye. Thank you for joining me here on The Zen Leader. Our topic today is a complicated, yet simple, sometimes controversial, always interesting, and that's nourishing your body. I wrote extensively about this in my book More Than Enough. In the studio with me are two amazing people who are focused on nourishing the whole Gulf Coast area. With me is Karen Odierna, founder of CROP, a local chain of organic juice bars and Keith Campbell. Welcome. Karen Odierna:Thank you. Keith Campbell:Thank you very much, Lara. Lara:Great! I'm so excited to have you here joining me talking about nourishing our bodies with juice. So, let's talk about this. First of all, why should we juice? Karen:Juicing, essentially, is the most nutrient-dense food you can put into your body. We have people come into the store. We either have people that juice or blend, maybe a little bit of both. But the explanation of what goes into especially a cold-pressed juice and the nutrient density involved is you have to use so much produce to get a pretty small amount of liquid in the end, and all those nutrients are so easily assimilated by your body when you consume juice because the fiber has been removed. So, nutrient density is really where we play and that's why we opened the store is really for the nutrient density of cold-pressed juice. Lara:Really, so it just pours… talk about nourishing our body. It pours in the nutrition. Karen:It really does. Lara:And our bodies can absorb it easier. Karen:The assimilation of juice in the body, because there is not fiber, it is rapidly absorbed and easily taken in. For instance, if you have a digestive issue or there's something going on within your body where you're having a hard time digesting, juice is one of the easiest ways to nourish and supplement what else you may be doing in your life. Lara:So the fiber, you mentioned that. That's interesting because when we blend in a Vitamix or a blender, we're throwing in the whole apple, everything, right? Karen:Correct. Lara:So juicing extracts? Is that what happens? Karen:Correct. All the fiber is removed in juicing, so that's a very controversial topic as well because people will say, "Well, I'm throwing away all the good stuff." I think it depends on who you're talking to and I always say, "Listen, we need it all." If you're blending, if you're juicing, whatever your method is to consume fruits and veggies, get them in. We don't care how you do it. We offer both at the store.             But, yes. Fiber plays a big role in our life, but if you're really looking for the nutrient density, juicing is a great way to get it and you can drink six juices in a day. You couldn't drink six smoothies in a day. The fiber also is hard to take in and is very heavy and is bulky, but like you said, we need fiber for lots of things in our life, in our body. But juicing, to me, I get the best benefit in the way that I feel when I juice. We have a saying called, "Jacked on Juice" and I mean really, I mean it makes me… I am zipped up and that's really why we started the company, which we can get into in a little bit, because I saw the effect it had on Keith when I first gave him a cold-pressed juice.             We had been Vitamixing and blending for the whole year prior to even thinking about opening CROP because that fiber does slow down that absorption, which if you're diabetic or if you have other conditions, I understand. Like I said, fiber may be a really important thing for you, but we need it all. We just are thrilled when anybody comes into the store saying that they consume a plant-based diet or they bring that into their lifestyle because that's a big part of it. Lara:Go ahead, Keith. Go ahead. Keith Campbell:I was just going to say the fact of the matter is the amount of produce that it takes to make one 12-ounce cold-pressed juice, it's much more than someone would consume or could consume really in one sitting. Lara:Yeah, so I want to know. When I come in and I buy one of your juices, how many ounces is that? Keith:It's 12 ounces. Lara:12 ounces. So how many greens am I getting? What am I getting? I know they're all a little different, but what's a typical…? Keith:Sure, I'll let Karen speak to that. But I'll just tell you that what we are known for is the nutrient-dense leafy greens, and Karen will touch upon this. But a lot of different juice companies or juice you buy in stores, they claim to have a kale or they have spinach or what have you, but it really comes down to how much of that product is actually in the juice. Of course, we're all organic, as you know, but Karen, you want to talk about that? Karen:Sure. So you said what goes into a bottle? Basically one and a half to two pounds of produce basically, on average, in each juice. However, we focus more on leafy greens. The weight of our juices is less if you're weighing produce before it goes into your juice, but in the end, you're getting more nutrient density because we hand pour those six cups of leafy greens. Before we started, I was weighing out every little leafy green that was going to go in that juice, and in the end, it was an average of those six cups of leafies that gives us three ounces of that leafy green juice.             That's what makes us different from any other company is that when someone comes into our store, any green juice in our case, I could say, "Lara, I know you're getting six cups of leafy greens in this juice outside of every other fruit or vegetable. I know in this juice you're getting eight cups of leafy greens," because we go through the painstaking process of juicing our leafy greens separate from everything else. Then we hand pour in every bottle those leafy greens. So, we go down the line, three ounces, three ounces, three ounces.             Typically juice companies do big bulk juicing and they kind of do all their ingredients separately, and they'll combine them all together, but they put usually a splash of leafy greens and that's about all you're getting. Like I said, I love that we can say, "This is exactly what's in your juice. This is exactly why you're always going to pay more at CROP because we spend so much time and energy on juicing those leafy greens, and the cost of leafy greens, to get a good yield, is pretty expensive." It's not a cheap process, for sure. Lara:I had no idea that you go to that painstaking… Karen:It is. Lara:That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. Karen:It really is. Lara:And that makes sense. So what is the… what are we supposed to have? What? Four to six… Karen:Five a day. Lara:Five a day. Karen:Yeah, or more. Lara:So if one of them, one bottle has six, already we're ahead. We're ahead of the game. Karen:Absolutely. Keith:Well, let me comment on that. The studies have shown that less than one out of seven people actually get that on a daily basis. Less than one out of seven. So, we have a saying in our store. Listen, the juice in this line, the three and four-ounce leafy greens. You're getting more than that in one bottle. What happens is we have a lot of customers, as a matter of fact, that will come in. They'll come in, buy one juice, one shot everyday. Lara:Wow! One juice, one shot everyday. Then they're covered and they can pour the nutrition in. That's what happens. Keith, I want to start with you and the benefit you had mentioned, Karen, the increased energy of juicing. What happened to you, Keith? Keith:About four years ago, I was actually… Karen:[LAUGHTER] Lara:We all have stories. I want to hear Keith's. Keith:We all have stories. Yes. I've been in the real estate investment business for a long time, since the early 90s. One day I came home from a long day and Karen had actually decided to help a friend of hers through breast cancer, so she bought a Norwalk cold-press juicer to do that and developed some green juices, and I got home after a long day and she says to me, "Listen, why don't you try one of these juices?" I'm like, "Leave me alone. It's a green juice. What are you talking about?" Lara:Yeah, yuck. Keith:It was about four years ago. I'll never forget it. Karen:[LAUGHTER] Keith:Because my body had been so nutritionally deprived as a general rule, it hadn't been getting these nutrients. Lara:So you're working a lot. You're stressed. Keith:Exactly. Lara:Are you doing drive-thrus? Karen:Being fueled by caffeine. Lara:Sure, mm-hmm. Keith:Fueled by caffeine, long drives. But, yeah. I mean eating out constantly. I mean I lived in the New York City area for over 10 years. Lara:Oh, yes. Keith:I don't think I cooked once. You can imagine what [LAUGHTER] has been through my body. Karen:[LAUGHTER] Keith:But I came home that day after a 12-, 13-hour workday and I had one of Karen's green juices and my body just soaked it up. At that point forward, it was… Lara:Immediately you felt amazing. Keith:Immediately. Immediately. Karen:And he was zipping around the house saying, "I need to take the trash out. What do I need to do? I need to do something. I have so much energy. What did you just give me?" Lara:Wow! Keith:It was really crazy. Karen Odierna:I'm like, "Wow!" I said, "You are the representative of everyone else that feels the same way after a 12…" Listen, 12-, 13-hour day is a long day to work, but he came in that day absolutely wiped out. It was a perfect day to do that little test. I'm like, "We need to do something with this," and within six months, we were building out our first store. Lara:That is amazing. Karen:It's crazy. Lara:Oh, my gosh. So increased energy. What about focus? Did that help? What else did it do for you? Keith:Well, when you're working, and as I do now — and I have been for many years — but you work 70, 80 hours a week. If you have any kind of too heavy of a lunch, you get bogged down in the afternoon. Too heavy of a breakfast, you'll get bogged down in the morning. So, my diet really consists of very light in the morning. I typically have two, three, four juices. Obviously, occupational advantage. That keeps me going. Lara:Not fair. [LAUGHTER] Keith:It keeps me going and I don't get bogged down. I don't get heavy and it allows me to work those long-hour days. Because without it, I don't think I could. Lara:So for you guys, you stay in this. Juicing everyday, you can stay in this amazing energy, focused, better digestion. You don't have to worry about losing weight. You're always detoxing. You're always on. Keith:Well, some of us are better than others, but… [LAUGHTER] Keith:Which, quite frankly, and Karen will talk about this, but really just trying to make it a lifestyle is one of our sayings on our shirts. Make it a lifestyle, not a diet. In other words, not everybody is going to be this raw, organic vegan, put 100% real positive things in their body all the time, and let's be practical. We try to incorporate our juices into people's life, into their daily lives. Therefore, when they do go off the rail, so to speak, and they have their pizza, they do whatever they're going to do, they know they can get back on track with this. I think that's a practical approach. Lara:What about how does it help your skin, hair, nails, immune system? Let's talk about that. Keith:Well, I think my skin looks great. [LAUGHTER] Karen:[LAUGHTER] Lara:Your skin looks great. Your skin looks great, Keith. [LAUGHTER] Karen:It's just what we were talking about earlier about the easily assimilated nutrients that's giving your body what it needs, and therefore the glowing skin, the whites of your eyes. I mean usually when people are doing juice cleanses, which we can talk about at some point, which listen, we're all about supporting a healthy lifestyle like Keith said, but I am more about making it a lifestyle. Uusually when people come into the store, we talk about cleanses. People like to cleanse for various reasons. [00:10:01]But typically people will cleanse for three days only to want to lose 10 pounds to fit into a dress, and that's not our way of… it's not a part of what we believe in, but it's okay. It's okay. Either way they're getting a great amount of, like I said, nourishment and an infusion of goodness into your body, which will make you glow. When people come in and are doing a lot of juice, they certainly are radiant. Lara:They're radiant. Karen:Yes, yeah. Radiant. Lara:Oh, that's beautiful. When we come back from the break, I want to talk more about decreasing the appetite and the sugar, what it does for that. There's just so much to it. Is it really healthier? Is juicing healthier than eating fruits and veggies or is it just different? Karen:It is different to me because of all of the nutrients that you get that have been squeezed into that bottle, and we can talk about organic versus conventional also, because organic juicing does make a difference, too. I mean outside of pesticides and everything else, if I want to eat the cleanest and consume the cleanest veggies and juices… Lara:We need to stick with organic. Karen:Yes, correct. Correct. Lara:Definitely. Okay, super. Thank you so much. Well, we are going to take a quick break right now and we will be right back with The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderhere on WSRQ. You can find me on wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com, L-A-R-A-J-A-Y-E. My guests here today — we're talking about nourishing your body — are Karen Odierna and Keith Campbell from CROP, a local chain of organic juice bars. Keith, where can we find you guys at? Do you have a website? Keith:We do. It's cropjuicesrq.comis the website. It's constantly going through revamping, so whenever you look, it's not necessarily all of the products that we have. We have three stores currently in Sarasota. One is on Gulf Gate Drive. That's the south store. One is downtown in the Ellis Building, which is at Orange and Main, and we're in the lobby there, the Wells Fargo Advisors Building I call it. Then we have one out near UTC, two doors down from JDub's next to Anna's Deli, so it's in a strip right there on the border of Bradenton and Sarasota. Lara:Awesome! Any plans to keep expanding? What you thinking? Keith:Well, I can't talk about that in front of Karen. [LAUGHTER] Lara:Okay. Keith:We believe that — if I could just touch upon this — the juice is critically important, but we also really want to make sure someone gets the customer experience. Lara:Absolutely. Keith:The phenomenal customer experience. Because I think that that is a dying art, has been in this country for a long, long time, and we've noticed certainly since we started that if you give the customer, you treat them more like clients, you truly look after their best interest, they're going to come back and they're going to refer, and it's the best form of advertising we could have. We've been very fortunate. We've been very well embraced by Sarasota and we feel very… Karen:We're grateful. Keith:Very grateful. Lara:Honestly, I had that customer experience when I walked in. Keith:Why thank you. Lara:You both were there. Karen, you were talking with another customer, and Keith, you were working and helping me. I was blown away by just the energy, all that went into everything, and I was just in awe and thrilled to have you on my show today. Keith:We're thrilled to be here. Karen:Thank you. Lara:Thank you. Karen, I want to dive into your story because I think it's really going to resonate with the listeners, and we have a lot that we can [LAUGHTER] go on there. Just tell me where you want to start. Keith:[LAUGHTER] Karen:Well, it depends how much time we have. Lara:Let's see. Karen:Because I could talk about this for a while. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Karen:The reason we started CROP was multifaceted, and one of them was the effect that I saw the juice had on Keith. But me, I've juiced my whole life for the last 20 years on and off. I've juiced. I've blended. I've done it all. When my good friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, she introduced me to cold-press juicing and I said, "What? Cold-press juicing. What is this about?" I still remember to this day the few of my good friends and family that I said, "I'm going to go out and buy this $2,500 juicer because I need to know if this is as good as everybody says it is." So, I get this juicer. Lara:You spent $2,500 on a juicer? [LAUGHTER] Karen:Yes, I did and it was well worth it. Lara:That's awesome! Karen:I will tell you that now our juicers are well beyond that cost. Lara:Sure. Karen:But this juicer is near and dear to my heart for how it does juice, and the product that it makes. So, my friend introduced me to the cold-press juices. I'm not really familiar with this. I did more research, bought the juicer. Keith had the effect that I saw that it had on him with the increased energy, but I have been a sugar addict my whole life, and if anybody knows me — and we even have it on our website — truly my dream job was to work in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory with all of his Oompa-Loompas running around.             I mean, I'm still fascinated by sweets. Sweets just… from the time I was eating Pixy Stix and Whoppers in my bedroom when I was in fifth grade, my mom didn't know, and I'm putting down the sugar and I'd get all moody and irritable. Like oh, my gosh! I was just driven off pure, refined sugars when I was younger. I was. Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year for that reason. [LAUGHTER] Karen:I now have come a long way from… Lara:Do you have a Reese's Cup juice yet? [LAUGHTER] Karen:You know what? No, can't go there. Lara:Can't go there. Karen:Listen, I did finally create a mint chip smoothie — which I can honestly tell you I will never eat mint chocolate chip ice cream ever again — and everybody says the same thing when they have it. Lara:Great, I'll have to try that. Karen:Yes. Oh, it's absolutely amazing. My sugar cravings also were significantly decreased when I consumed leafy green juice. This is when we were playing around with recipes, but I found that the leafy greens really gave me the biggest bang for my buck in terms of how I felt. It gave me energy, but then I didn't want my Twix bar. I didn't want my peppermint patty because my nutritional needs were being met, so I wasn't on that sugar bandwagon as much.             Once again, everyone I know is the biggest sugar addict. Everybody is like, "Oh, my gosh! I eat sweets. I have to have my cookie. I want this. I want that." Keith always tells me it's a female thing, and it may be, but I'll tell you there's a certain time and certain place that all females will just strangle someone if they see chocolate. Lara:Yeah, I was going to say, "Look out." [LAUGHTER] We need chocolate. Karen:Yeah, it's the way it is. That helped me significantly, and then it's also made me now choose better options when it comes to sweets. But in terms of opening the company, it really was my sugar cravings being decreased by green juice, but also my fitness background. I've been teaching fitness classes in town for 25 years. I've been teaching at the YMCA. I was teaching kickboxing. I also was an oncology nurse, so I was also seeing a lot of patients die and helping a lot of patients die, and it was really sad. I was in my 20s and I look back. I'm like, "Wow, that was a really heavy time in my life." It was all these different things that brought this to culmination to say, "Wow! I mean our food is not doing us any good." Lara:Here you are a fitness instructor, oncology nurse, and you're still having sugar cravings. Karen:Yeah. Lara:You know how to eat healthy. You know what to do. Karen:Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's amazing how it took me to really discover the green juice or organic leafy green juice to subside those cravings, but say, "I'm not the only one out here that's having these types of issues. We need to do something. We need to share this. We need to share what we've created," because there was nothing in town like this. In fact, what's really inspiring to me and keeps me going everyday is when people come in from all over the United States and say, "Listen, we have juice bars in every corner, but we have nothing like CROP where we live."             It's because a little bit of what we described earlier about our process and what we put into our product. It is a lot of time, labor, and love that goes into it. People taste that in the product. They definitely do. But it's really, like I said, multifaceted how I got here and it's been extremely rewarding. A lot of hard work. Hardest thing I've ever done, but extremely rewarding, for sure. Lara:Would you say you had a health crisis that led you to this? Or you just had a wakeup call? Karen:I had a wakeup call. It was looking around and seeing where I've been, who I've taken care of and saying… and since that time, I mean this was 14, 15 years ago that I've been out of oncology nursing to say, "This is just a continuous deterioration of where our food is going and what they are giving us to eat, and the quality of our foods." Keith and I always say, back when our grandparents were kids, everything was organic. I mean, you didn't have to say, "This is organic. This is conventional. This is GMO, non-GMO." I mean it's crazy. Lara:Right. All the labels now. Karen:It's crazy. Lara:And it's overwhelming for people. Karen:It's overwhelming. Lara:They're like, "Gluten, not gluten? Really?" Karen:Right. Lara:What do we eat? I know when we go to foreign countries, I have a gluten sensitivity here. But in foreign countries, I don't to the wheat. Karen:That's right. Keith:That's interesting. Lara:Yeah. So, it's interesting. Karen:Exactly. We were talking about how the GMOs and all these other things are banned overseas, but we have them in America. Lara:But we have them in America. So what is the food crisis here would you say? Karen:I would say it's all the, like Keith and I always talk about, with the pesticides and the genetically modified organisms of what they're doing to our foods to alter, to expedite production, of these foods to ship out, which they say is a good thing because we're helping these countries. But if you're inventing food that you're altering the process, there's something definitely not right; the over-processing of the foods as well. That's why I do believe there are more gluten sensitivities and this over-processing of our foods is not… our systems don't know what to do. They don't know how to handle it. Keith can probably speak to this a little bit more than I can, too, because he's done a lot more research on that end of it. Keith:Well, I have a saying when people come in. I think that, quite frankly, our food has been in bad shape for quite a few years, for decades, and we've been so indoctrinated as a society that this is what you're supposed to eat. Over time, you have these routines, these things you constantly, regularly want to eat, and how do you get past it? What we've discovered, of course, is if someone has the discipline to, let's say, go on a regimen for 30 days, they will get past all of these things. [00:20:00]Getting over the hump, so to speak. Then it becomes much, much easier. But a lot of people just continue to go on this diet, their chosen method of eating. I'd say — just to go take a left turn here — the most gratifying part about owning CROP is when you're talking with people that are coming in, trying to change their lifestyle, trying to change their body and so forth, and you hear, "I've lost 70 pounds by going raw, organic, vegan. My thyroid condition is under control. My child no longer has the ADHD because I'm feeding them healthy organics every morning." I mean, the stories after stories and stories. Lara:The sugar cravings are gone. Just over and over. So that's what you're hearing from customers. Keith:Constantly, constantly. Lara:All the time. Keith:Constantly. Lara:These are people who are coming in either daily or on a weekly basis, getting juice, and are committed too. They're nourishing their body. Keith:That's correct. Lara:And taking care of themselves. Karen:Yeah. They had that wakeup call somewhere where they had the awareness, and I do believe at some point either we'll have the wakeup call to be aware to what's going on around us. A lot of these people have already changed their life and their world. Now they're trying to find someone to help them stay on that path, because as we talked about, juicing is not easy. It's not a cheap process either, but it's a lot of time that goes into it. So, it's great that even if we have regular juicers at home, they come to us to supplement like, "You know. I just didn't feel like juicing today and I know you guys do it best, so I'm here for my weekly juice." Lara:They're just going to pop in for one. Right. Karen:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lara:Absolutely. Instead of driving through a McDonald's, they can stop at CROP and pick up something. Now with the three locations, it's very easy to do. Keith:Well, we've also realized in the juice business… and like I said, I've had businesses for 30-some-odd years. This has been one of the most gratifying, if not the most gratifying. But we've noticed in the juice industry — since the four or five years that we've been involved to some degree — it's almost like there's a race to the bottom now for quality. It's incredible how competitive the business can be. There are major juice companies with $3.99, 16 ounces at Sam's Club. I mean, you have to look at that and say, "What could possibly be in that juice?"             I'm sorry. We're in glass. We'll never be in plastic. We don't do what's known as HPP, which is what we believe is an artificial method of actually preserving the juice, which we don't subscribe to. We've taken the exact opposite approach. What we've been, again, fortunate to be receiving the support of Sarasota is we want to make the best product, and it's never going to be the cheapest. It's probably going to be the most expensive and there's a reason for that. But in doing so, we really do believe — and I can tell you because we've talked to thousands and thousands of people — people are changing their lives. There are a lot of people who come in, regulars, daily, certainly weekly that come in and this is what they need, and they see the results. To hear these stories is really impressive because cancer can't live in alkaline body, for instance, and the more alkaline you put in your body, the better off you're going to be. Just like I said, I tell Karen all the time. I kind of look at CROP… and again, this wasn't by design, but it's what we're hearing is that we've kind of turned into a form of people's healthcare. I don't think you can be more satisfied with an occupation than we are. Lara:I like that. We're going to take a break right now and we'll be right back on The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara:I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome back. You can find me here on wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com. With me are guests from CROP organic juicing, Karen and Keith. CROP, what does it stand for? Karen:Yes, that took me a while to come up with, but it does stand for something. Cold-pressed Raw Organic Produce. Lara:All right, so what's cold-pressed? You touched on it briefly. Karen:Typical at-home juicers or if you go into a typical grocery store and they make you a juice on-demand, they're using centrifugal juicers. Centrifugals are a higher speed, higher centrifugal. I mean, it's spinning. It's loud. It's noisy and it basically provides you a juice on-demand, but you do have to drink that juice typically within 10 to 20 minutes due to the breakdown of the cell walls of the fruits and vegetables. It's a violent process. That's how I think about it. I always ask people, "What kind of juicer do you have?" Well, I mean does it go, "Vmm, vmm, vmm?" I mean, I try to describe the sound because it's a really loud… it just sounds just very… Keith:Heat and energy. Karen:Yeah, heat and energy driven into the process. That heat and air that is driven into that process also breaks down the nutrients much faster; you do have to consume it right away. So, the cold-pressed method of juicing — and our method, especially — we use a two-step method of hydraulic cold-pressed juicing, which means we have to very gently break down all the fruits and veggies into a veggie pulp, right? Pulp slurry is what it's called. Then using tons and tons of hydraulic pressure, every last bit of juice is squeezed out of that pulp, but it's a very gentle process. It is called cold-pressed because there is not a lot of heat driven into that process. With that, the nutrients remain intact and nutritionally sound for four to five days. We believe even longer. But we do date aggressively with our juices because it's a raw juice. We want people to enjoy and consume that juice. Because when a juice is made, like I said, we want you to consume it, right?             Also packaging in glass, the shelf life, like I said, four to five days. Sometimes people say seven to 10 days for a cold-pressed juice now. But we do date our juices four to five days, but you do get that longer extension of the nutrients because of the process. Lara:So cold-pressed, raw, and then organic, which we're seeing everything seems to be labeled organic. [LAUGHTER] How does it work for you guys? Do you have trouble finding real organic? Karen:We have our days where we have challenges, but if we cannot find something that is organic, we won't make it. We would rather pull that juice than say, "Hey, we've replaced it with a conventional produce." We're just not going to do that because everything we do and our customers have come to know us as a company that is always going to be organic 100% of the time. Keith:Certified. Karen:Not organic when available. Certified organic. A lot of times local farmers are great to support and use, and we would love to support local farmers, but we are about certified organic first. If there's a local farm that also is certified organic, we will tap into them. Keith:If I could touch upon that, Lara. We do believe the future is going to be one where it's getting to know the farmer because there's a lot of great local farms. They don't make it cheap to get the certification, and quite frankly, a lot of them use organic practices. I mean farmers are generally good people that want to make the best product, and they want to make the healthiest product. I think that's probably ultimately where it will go, but the gold standard currently is, for the foreseeable future, I think, this is "certified organic." But at the end of the day, to Karen's point, we believe that the trust that our customers, our clients, have put in us is such that we can't violate that certified organic. We're not going to violate that. Lara:Then the last word and it is produce. You mentioned you use a lot of leafy greens. Karen:Mm-hmm. Lara:Obviously, all of it's organic. What would be an example of leafy greens? Is that the kale? Things that are green. Karen:Kale, chard, romaine, arugula. Lara:So it's a mixture of all of those. Karen:Yes. Depending on the juice and the recipe, there's a variety of the leafy greens in our more leafy green-dense juices that is. We've even started using microgreens because microgreens are the latest, greatest, hottest thing, and they should be. Because for as small and tiny as microgreens are, they're exponentially more nutrient dense than their mature counterparts to the point where they've been doing… cancer patients are consuming broccoli microgreens and having great effects in terms of their breast cancer. Lara:Now what's a microgreen? Karen:The microgreen is just the tiny little… I don't want to call it a sprout, but it's a little green that buds up to a few inches long. They get clipped and we juice those. Or a lot of times you go out to eat at a restaurant, they'll put a little garnish on top; those are microgreens. You just do a pinch or two a day and they say that that's really all you need when it comes to microgreens because they are up to 40 times more nutrient-dense than their mature counterparts.             A small little two-inch little green is more nutrient dense than their mature broccoli, and I know a lot of people would rather eat a few pinchfuls of microgreens versus sitting down and eating a bowlful of broccoli. Lara:Absolutely. Keith, right before break you said juicing is a form of healthcare. I love that. I love that comment. Keith:Well, we kind of look at it that way just simply because people need food to live. They're going to consume food on a daily basis. Why not consume the right types of food? Like I said, just to reiterate from what I was saying before, I think people have to get past that hump of saying, "Well, I don't like green or I don't like this or that." So what happens if people come into our store, as you know Lara, come in and we sample. We get them to taste and we believe… and I'll say this that half the population out there probably wouldn't consume the juice if it doesn't taste good or they consume a lot less of it. So we go to great lengths — Karen does — to make sure that the formulas, the recipes are right on, spot on as far as taste is concerned.             But what we noticed inside our stores is people gravitate maybe initially towards the fruitier ones. We have some that are all fruit, for instance. But ultimately in time, their body starts to adjust. Their taste buds start to adjust to having some greens, so you get introduced to maybe a one- or two-ounce leafy green. Then ultimately what happens is they go full leafy greens, and that's where all the nutrients are. So, yeah. We believe that that road that people take we kind of consider a form of healthcare. Lara:I like that. Healthcare is doctors. I mean, we [LAUGHTER]… Keith:Yes, yes. [00:30:00] Lara:Let's talk about that. [LAUGHTER] Keith:Yeah, I'm actually a doctor's son. My father was a radiologist. But for many, many years, we ate okay, but we didn't eat healthy like we do now. Quite frankly, western medicine, I think, is slowly starting to come around and starting to turn, and starting to see how much effect nutrition really does have on a patient's health. People are constantly coming into our store that have been diagnosed with X or recently diagnosed with X. We had one lady that came in literally from the doctor to our store just saying, "Listen, I was told to come here because you guys…" Lara:That's impressive. Keith:This was a holistic practitioner. Yeah, we were very impressed with them. We were grateful. So, we get these people with varying degrees of health concerns and we believe that we're at least having a part of their recovery, and that's the gratifying part. Lara:Wouldn't you say for really every single seven billion of us on the planet we all need to eat? We all need proper nutrition to feed our bodies. My listeners want to be at the top of their game. Keith:Sure. Lara:To be at the top of their game, we need to eat well, otherwise we're burning ourselves out at work. We're not getting… a lot of times we're rushing, not getting the food and the nutrition we need. Then we don't have the energy. So for you, Keith specifically, juicing really turned that around for you. But I think that for all of us and the listeners, as a part of our health, it should be part of our healthcare, juicing — in some form, even if it's only a half a cup a day or something — to make sure we get that nutrition in our bodies. Would you agree on that? Keith:Well, absolutely. I think I have a saying where if you're not planning your meals, you're going to make poorer choices. There's no question. Who has real time to plan the meals these days? We're off. A couple is working. They're both working. They have kids, etc. So juicing is a way of consuming it in a very quick fashion. You know you're getting great things to go through your body. I think that's probably the juice's attraction as well. Someone can come into our storefront, they can spend 30 seconds, grab a juice, they're out. They down the juice. They've gotten their nutrients. Regardless of what else they might do, they've taken care of themselves. Karen:I want to add something to that really quick because you just mentioned that it was a hot button when you mentioned we're all stressed. We're all rushing around. We don't have the time. All of these things lead to inflammation, which lead to disease. That's the big thing that if there's anything we're talking about quick grab-and-go, there's so much more of a benefit to this that if you really think about what you are doing and what you're putting into your body with the juice and the anti-inflammatory benefits, with the leafy greens and ginger and turmeric… we do a lot of ginger and turmeric at the store. We also do a lot of leafy greens. Anything that's going on in our life.             I mean gosh, you can walk outside and you're bombarded by the oxidative… all these environmental factors. Everything in our life is a stressor that is going to kick up inflammation. I don't care if you're a triathlete. I don't care if you go the gym everyday, because that's a good thing, but that's still kicking up inflammation. So, we still have to bring this inflammation down otherwise that is going to manifest itself sometime, somewhere, someday, and that's where the leafy green juice and the ginger-turmeric, and all these great alkaline-type foods keep us in check. Lara:Awesome point. Thank you. We're going to take a break right now, and we'll be right back with The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara:We're back. I'm Lara Jaye on The Zen Leaderand you can find us at wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com. My guests here from CROP, C-R-O-P. Keith, what again is the website? Keith:cropjuicesrq.com. Lara:cropjuicesrq.com. You mentioned the three locations. Do you also deliver? Do you do things like that? Keith:We do deliver. Each one of our stores can deliver to a surrounding area, so we'll deliver. We do quite a bit of corporate business as well. So the answer to that question is yes. I mean it depends upon the distance, but we sure do. Lara:Corporate events? Keith:Corporate events and we get asked all the time to do some great events. But, yeah. Depending upon where the location is, for instance, downtown handles the downtown market and Selby Gardens and things like that. But, yes. We're trying to be everywhere with those stores. Lara:Nice. During break, we were talking about juicing as it's not an end-all-be-all, but it's part of a healthy program. It's part of eating. You still need some protein. You can live on just juice probably for a short time. People do it for what? Detox? Karen:Right, for cleansing and detoxing. Lara:For cleansing. Karen:Usually it's some type of medical condition is putting someone into the space of a 40-day juice cleanse or whatever that may be. But typically when people come into the store, they're looking to do a three- to five-day juice cleanse. Lara:Okay, three- to five-day. But for juicing to be part of a healthy program, are there doctors or groups in town that might incorporate juicing? Karen:Yes, we actually work with a holistic practitioner in town, and twice a year she does a group cleanse. Dr. Jessica Lipham. She's fantastic and twice a year she brings people together to do a cleanse properly, so you train… you have your body prepped, ready to go for that cleansing part of the program. People just don't get done eating that Taco Bell, roll in and say, "I want to do a juice cleanse for three days." It's like, "Whoa, wait a second. You're going to feel terrible." So we really try to vet people to make sure what are your goals? What are you doing? Let's make sure you're successful because we want them to be successful.             We want to see them again just for the fact of what we were talking about earlier, making it a lifestyle. Just eat fruits and veggies. We always say to people, and I told you at the beginning, “We don't care how you get them. Just get them.” As much as people come to the store and they'll talk about the consumption of fruits and veggies, I mean we can't make any type of claims that juicing is going to cure you or it's going to prevent. But all you have to do is do some research on plant-based diets or what to do to prevent heart disease, or a lot of the cancer fighters are plant-based, cruciferous vegetables. Like I said, it's kind of… you know. Lara:Absolutely. I know when I got sick a couple years ago… it was actually only two years ago I was completely bedridden, and I moved from Indiana, and I came to live on Anna Maria Island for a couple three months just to recover and find out what was wrong. I didn't know what was wrong and it ended up being an autoimmune disease. Juicing was part of my healing at that point, bringing that in as part of healthy eating. I knew a lot about healthy eating, but I had not brought in juicing. It really just supercharged the nutrition for me. Would you say that that would do that, especially for immune system building? Keith:There's no question. Like I said, I think a lot of people start with juicing because it is a way of getting nutrition very quickly. Again, regardless, just introduce it into your daily life and your lifestyle. Lara:Awesome. Karen:We can just speak really quickly all day long about this time of the year. Half the people coming into our store are coming down with some type of crazy flu virus, anything that's going on, and they can come back a week later and say, "I can't believe how well that juice worked for me." The little anti-inflammatory shot that we call our "flu shots," which is ginger, turmeric, apple, lemon. It's amazing hands down. Every single day I can tell you at least five to 10 stories of people saying, "That worked. That worked." It's like well, yeah. I mean it was fresh ginger and turmeric. They're two of the most powerful anti-inflammatories around, especially when they're consumed together, very synergistic in their power. So, it works. Real food, real plant, real organic. We call it medicine. Lara:Our food is our medicine. Karen:Food is medicine. Food is medicine. Lara:People, I don't think understand that what we put in our mouths makes such the difference as to whether we can focus, how we treat other people. Maybe if you eat a bag of Oreos, you're probably going to not feel very great and might get a little grouchy. Keith:Right. Right. Lara:Versus downing a juice, which really, I was surprised at how little calories a 12-ounce juice had. Karen:Exactly. Lara:If you're looking at that and then the nutrient density of, it is amazing. Karen:Which is a wonderful thing, and when you were just speaking of how you feel, and speaking of our flu shots, I mean two-thirds of your immunity is based in your gut. Lara:Yes. Karen:So when people are out eating poorly — I mean day after day after day — and then they come down with this terrible virus, it's like think about what's going on in that gut. Lara:What did you eat? What are you putting in there? Karen:What's in there? Yeah, for sure. Lara:Right. If it's all the burgers and stuff, which everything is great in moderation, I feel like, but you have to eat more and more of the higher-energy foods, the fruits, the veggies, all of it. Karen:Yeah, the high frequency. Absolutely, yeah. Lara:Absolutely. Talk about the juices in the store. I mean I'm always going through Publix. Why can't I just pick some up there? They're a lot cheaper than yours. [LAUGHTER] Keith:Well, as Karen was mentioning earlier regarding the type of juicing that they do, well, first of all, a lot of the cold-pressed juice companies out there, they're in 16 ounces. They're in plastic and they have a fraction of the nutrient density that we do. A lot of the green juices, as a matter of fact, Lara, that you see in a store, are mostly cucumber and celery. The vast majority of it. Now that's all fine and good, except the cucumber and celery is really mostly water, right? It's predominantly water. Lara:So why is that? Price wise? Instead of using the leafy greens. Keith:It costs one-sixth as much to make. Lara:Got it. Keith:Yeah, because it yields all this water and all this juice. You go get a green juice at most stores, pick one, and it's in a plastic container because to be able to wholesale at a store, it has to be in plastic and subject to this HPP process I was mentioning earlier. It's a 16-ounce juice. It's in plastic. It has a fraction of the nutrients. It's mostly water. Don't get me wrong.[00:40:00]It's certainly better than grabbing a burger down the street, but it's a very different process, and again, we have a three- to five-day shelf life. We don't necessarily believe in that process, although it is USDA approved. We believe in the three- to five-day cold-pressed process. Lara:Which is what you do. Keith:Yeah. Lara:Talk to me about juicing, Karen, as part of a way of self-love, of taking care of yourself. Karen:Include it often. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Karen:Do it daily, if you can. When people come into the store and that's the biggest question. They say, "Well, how much juice should I be consuming everyday?" That's why we really do love to give the customer service that we do because I need to know, Lara, what your needs are and if you have something going on or an autoimmune condition, or if you're a triathlete and you're burning it at both ends doing eight hours a day of training.             But as baseline, like we were talking about earlier, five a day is minimum. Optimally five to eight servings of fruits and veggies, great. A lot of times we do hear people say, "But I can't afford to do this everyday." Buy a juice and split it into two servings. It's still going to be more nutrient dense, and you're getting your servings per day than anything else that you could be consuming. That's the biggest thing is we all have different needs, and we have a lot of patients that come into the store with diabetes or Sjögren's or fibromyalgia, even, like I said, a lot of oncology patients. A lot of times they know what they need. I just need to direct them in terms of taste, and like Keith said, we really go the extra mile to make a juice that tastes good. Because I am convinced that if a juice doesn't taste good, we all know we're not going to drink it.             For example, we peel our beets and every time someone comes into the store they're like, "I hate beet juice." I'm like, "Well, it's the first juice you're going to try today. Here you go," and they usually leave with that juice because we peel that dirty skin off. Beets are earthy, but the taste of our juice you cannot compare to anything else. We just had some of the people from the company in our store that support us with the machines we use, and they were speaking to different processes. I said, "Well, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that." I do it my way.             We created our own method. Like Keith said, nobody does it like us, and it does take a lot of labor, time, and there is a method to our madness. Believe me there are days I'm like, "Wow! What did I create?" because this is insane. We could make this so much easier, but that doesn't make a good product. Lara:You want to keep the quality up there. Karen:We want a premium product and we're a premium product. I always tell people it's not a cheap product. It's not a cheap process, but taking care of yourself is an investment, and especially if you're going to go all organic or you're going to drink cold-pressed organic juice. My gosh, drink one a week. I mean just… Lara:Do what you can. Karen:Yes, do what you can. Lara:Do what you can. Do what you can. Karen:Absolutely. Lara:That was one thing I was so surprised about was back to the taste, walking in and tasting some of your different ones. It's not like you're eating a big salad. I mean think about how many cups of leafy greens that would be in putting that into your body, and if you just ate that, what it would taste like. But you add, you have, I don't know what you do, but it's amazing. [LAUGHTER] Lara:You usually add a little fruit, so there's just a hair, maybe a hair of sweetness and they're all at different levels is from what I noticed. Karen:Yes, yes. Lara:Yeah. Of course, I think making it organic makes such a difference. I know that we see the word organic everywhere — we've talked a little bit about it — but I just really want our listeners to understand the importance of organic. Keith:Well, if it's not organic, there's so many products that are very toxic that are allowed to be put on our food. That's just the bottom line. Let's face it. Eating fruits and vegetables is better than eating certain other types of food everyday that's completely processed. But too many people treat their bodies like a filter. I mean there's been many, many studies done. Traces in your urine or it's something in your body, in your blood test where you have toxicity, toxicity, toxicity. All of a sudden you go all organic, that toxicity gets removed and it gets removed very quickly. I tell people all the time. I don't think we're going to cure a lot of these diseases that everybody says, "One day we'll eradicate," until we take a very serious look at our food. Lara:Absolutely. Karen, do you have anything else to add? What is one thing that you really want our listeners to know about CROP? Karen:Oh, about CROP specifically? We're not the typical juice company. We're really not and you need to come in to get the experience and learn what we're all about, and understand the process behind everything from when that produce comes through the door to the way we bottle. It's very handcrafted. It's a lot of labor and love and we love what we do, and we're just trying to make Sarasota a healthier place. That's about it. Yeah. Lara:That's awesome. Thank you both, Karen and Keith, for joining me this morning. Karen:Thank you. Thank you for having us. Keith:You're welcome. Thank you for having us. Lara:I really encourage listeners to pop in one of their three stores here in Sarasota. If you're traveling through town or any time, please stop in and try. Check it out. Thank you so much for joining me this morning on The Zen Leader. Have a great weekend.   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:45:07]

DOWNLOAD EPISODE > Men's health is at the forefront of our conversation today! Paul Seguin and Ron Bramson from Men's Complete Health join Lara Jaye discussing the mens health crisis in America including men's hormone replacement and erectile dysfunction.   Intro:Welcome to The Zen Leader with Lara Jaye. Whether you’re a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now, here’s your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome. I hope you’re having a great weekend. With me, here in the studio, are a couple of amazing men and we are going to talk about a topic that is actually dear to my heart, believe it or not. We are going to talk about men’s health because we need our men to be healthy. Here, with me, are Paul Seguin and Ron Bramson from Men’s Complete Health. Welcome, Paul. Paul Seguin: Thank you. Lara: And Ron. How are you guys? Ron: Thank you. It’s a pleasure being here. Lara: Yes. Thank you for stopping by the studio. You’re with Men’s Complete Health here, in Sarasota, Florida. Paul, tell me a little bit about the business and why you started it. Paul: Well, personally, when I turned 50, I had a real lack of energy and couldn’t concentrate, so I had my hormones checked. When they were balanced out, I just felt “right.” Lara: So, it was a personal… Paul: It was a personal quest, for me, yeah. That was 17 years ago. I have enjoyed a very high quality of life since getting my hormones balanced. Lara: Wow. We talk a lot on my show about women’s health because I’m a woman, and I bring it from my perspective. I really was excited to have the men’s side on because, for our listeners, these people are working… everyone works really, really hard, as we all do here in America, and they’re exhausted. That’s one of the first things you said was energy levels just plummet as we age. But do they have to? Paul: No. They certainly don’t. What happens is it’s a crisis. It’s a health crisis for me in the U.S. now, mostly brought on by chemicals and toxins our forefathers didn’t have to put up with. In fact, in 1950, the average male had a testosterone level of 1,200. Almost everybody. Lara: What year was that? Paul: That was 1950. Lara: 1,200. So, what are we at? Paul: Now, we have young guys — 35 and 40 — coming in at 250 and 300. So a third of the level, or less, than our forefathers. Lara: And that’s from toxins? Paul: Yes. Ron: We are actually seeing young men in their 20s, believe it or not, with levels 250 to 300. Lara: Unbelievable. Ron: We had a patient just a couple weeks ago that was below 200, which is concerning. Lara: So, for a late-20-year-old coming in, what are his symptoms? Ron: Usually they are complaining of things they are embarrassed to talk about, actually. They are complaining about loss of libido, sexual dysfunction problems, irritability, tired feeling all the time, and they’re saying, “Hey, I’m only 27 years old. Why is this happening to me?” Lara: Oh, absolutely. That young of age. Lack of focus. Is that one of the symptoms? Ron: Oh, absolutely. Lara: Okay. Ron: Inability to concentrate, easily destructed, nodding off and doing what we normally associate with grandpa after Thanksgiving dinner, falling asleep in a chair. Lara: So this is happening to the young ones as well? Ron: Young men. Absolutely. Lara: That’s amazing. So, they come in to see you and really you do a whole hormone panel? Ron: Well, we start by just talking to them, getting a feel. I like to get a feel for what brought them in and what are they hoping to accomplish. Are they concerned about anything? Are they looking just to get big, muscular? Because testosterone, it’s a lot more than just about muscles and sex, which people don’t seem to realize. I mean, that’s at the bottom of the list. By the time a male loses his libido, that’s the last thing to go, by the way. There’s everything else before that. Lara: So, all of those symptoms we just mentioned… and, a lot of times, I think that, in our stressful lives, we just think that that’s how it’s got to be. We don’t even realize it’s from a hormone imbalance. Ron: Exactly. It’s an insidious process. It starts very gradually and you don’t even pay attention to it until sometimes someone close to them — a significant other or family member — says… that hasn’t seen them, perhaps, for a while… being down in Florida, a lot of them go back home and they say, “What’s happened to you lately? You’re not the same person that you used to be. You used to want to go out and do things. Now? You kind of just want to lay around or watch T.V. or play video games.” A lot of times, they’re told that they’re lazy or not motivated. Lara: And that’s from low testosterone, a lot of times. Ron: That’s one of them. It could be other things, too, but that’s certainly at the top of the list, for sure. Lara: So, tell me. I’ve always heard that if men have a big tummy — maybe they don’t drink beer, perhaps — that might be from a hormone imbalance. Is that possibly true? Paul: Yes. What happens is the chemicals — Bisphenol A — that plastics are made from and pesticides, they mimic estrogen in the male body. So, we have so much more estrogen than we… Lara: So men and women, but we’re talking about men today, getting too much estrogen. Paul: Right. And from outside sources plus, when they get about 45, a male starts aromatizing his testosterone into estrogen. Lara: What does that mean? Paul: Aromatizing would be like converting. In our body fat, there is an Aromatase enzyme. A simple way would say that a man in his late 40s starts to convert his own testosterone into estrogen, which is very dangerous. Estrogen causes us to not only hold that belly fat around the middle, it aggravates our prostate and causes prostate enlargement. Then, if it’s high enough for long enough, it could contribute to prostate cancer. Ron:I think the misconception is a lot of men just naturally assume that they don’t have estrogen because that’s what women have. Lara: Sure. Ron: But, actually — and I was surprised when I found this out when I got started in this — men need a little bit of estrogen or you can’t function sexually, or a lot of other ways. But not very much. Conversely, women need a little bit of testosterone, but certainly not as much as men. So, I think there’s a perception among most men that they don’t even consider estrogen as being the cause of some of these problems because that’s what women have; men don’t have estrogen. Well, men certainly do get high estrogen levels. The belly fat… Lara: Is one of them… Ron: The breast fat. Lara: Oh, and men, if they’re developing breasts. Ron: Absolutely. Yeah. Loss of muscle tone is the first thing that starts to go. We see this in young men, too; not just middle-aged or older. Lara: Tell me, Ron, what’s your story? What got you in to this? Ron: Well, actually, my background was in orthopedics. I’ve been an orthopedist for most of my life. Lara: This is a switch. [CHUCKLE] Ron: I came here, I was with the Army in Hawaii, doing orthopedics as a Physician’s Assistant, and I came here about almost 4 years now. I knew my testosterone levels were low. I was having a lot of the symptoms. I had it tested there and I was referred to a doctor here, in town, and I met with them and they started going over everything, and he said, “Well, you’re within the range.” Now, “the range” for my lab went from 250 to 900-something.” Lara: Okay. Big difference. Ron: That’s what they consider… I think I was barely, by my fingertips, clinging on to the lowest level. I was at 252, I think. It’s the old bell-shaped curve that we were familiar with from high school. If you fell under that bell-shaped curve, you were considered “normal,” within the range. Just intuitively, I knew there’s someone at 250 is going to feel the same as a male who is at 950. There’s no way. But he said, “Well, you seem very depressed.” I said, “Hey, of course I’m depressed. Look at all these symptoms I have. No energy, tired all the time.” Getting out of bed in the morning was a major problem for me. It would take me sometimes 10, 15 minutes to just get out of bed. He said, “Well, I think maybe you need an antidepressant.” I said, “An antidepressant? Wait a second. Of course, I’m depressed, but I don’t need an antidepressant; I need testosterone.” Lara: So, you told the doctor that? Yeah. Ron: I was telling him that. The more I asked, the more he said, “No. You’re within the range.” Lara: Because you’re within the range by 2 points. Ron: Unfortunately, there’s a lot of doctors, if you’re within the range — exactly, even by 2 points — you’re within the range and they’re scared to prescribe something if you’re within the “normal” range, which is unfortunate. Lara: Very unfortunate. Very unfortunate. Ron: I finally did find a doctor who prescribed the pellets. They’re inserted subcutaneously in the gluteal area. I don’t consider that to be the most ideal delivery system, but for me, it was better than something. The first thing I noticed the next day is I woke up and I got out of bed. You might say, “Well, what’s the big deal?” You can wake up and get out… [00:10:00] Lara: It’s huge. Ron: Well, for me. I didn’t notice it until halfway walking towards the bathroom. I stopped and I said, “I just got out of bed.”Before, it was because I would roll over or I would look at the clock, I would look at the window, I would look at the ceiling. I would force myself on one elbow. I mean, that’s how it was. Lara: Sure. Ron: I got out of bed like I did in high school. Lara: Ah, you felt amazing. Ron: And I just suddenly realized… the very first thing I noticed. Then, of course, as the days and weeks went on, I noticed other improvements in everything – concentration, ability to get things done during the day. I had started having checklists, like I used to do, and checking things off as I got them accomplished. Lara: And you actually got to check them off. Ron: And I actually got to check them off. Lara: And feel amazing. Ron: And I was actually able to throw the list away at the end of the day, then start the new one the next day. Lara: Even better. And start the new one. Ron: That was the first thing. Then, of course, then I became more involved, and then met Paul and we got started with this. Lara: That is an amazing story. We’re going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back, here on WSRQ. [BREAK] Lara: Welcome back. I’m Lara Jaye from The Zen Leaderand for more information, you can find me at www.wsrqradio.comor www.larajaye.com. I’ve got Ron and Paul in here from Men’s Complete Health. Paul, what website can they find you at? Paul: We are at www.menscompletehealth.com. Lara: So just spelled out, www.menscompletehealth.com. Paul: Right. Lara: Super. Right before break we were talking about, Ron, your story and estrogen. One of the other things that I have always heard — and tell me if this is true as well — is that alcohol sometimes, in men, actually converts to estrogen, which causes even more problems. Is that true? Paul: In several ways. But the main way it does is the estrogen is excreted by the liver. That’s how you get it out of your body. Both men and women. So, when you drink, your liver is overtaxed, along with all of these chemicals we’ve been talking about. What the estrogen does, and this is both in men and women, but it’s insidious. As it goes to the liver, the liver — preferentially — is getting all the poison out. It lets the estrogen take another loop through the body, if you will, so the estrogen levels continue to go up, with disastrous results for really, again, both men and women. But we’re mainly concerned about men. The obvious thing that happens is these men carry a lot of weight right around their middle. They’re not fat anyplace else. Then they have or they develop a little gyno. That’s the same reason, by the way, these young boys… you see young boys with “man boobs,” if you will, if I can say that on the radio, but you see it all the time. Lara: It’s from too much estrogen? Paul: It’s too much estrogen. Ron: The technical medical term is gynecomastia. Paul: Yes. Lara: Okay. Ron:[LAUGHTER] Paul: Yes. Gynecomastia. Lara: I won’t ask you to spell that. Paul: It’s usually pronounced “gyno” for short. But it is a serious, debilitating condition as far as the look of it. That is why our doctors, Ron, is very cautious and careful about monitoring the blood levels. That’s one thing that the primary doctors are just too busy to do. Lara: That’s how you’re different than if a man just went to his primary doctor and asked for some testosterone. Ron: Yes. Lara: You do a whole different… Ron: Yeah. Lara: Tell me how you guys do it differently. Paul: First of all, they usually don’t even track many levels in the body. For example, prolactin contributes to prostate cancer. Rarely does your primary ever check for prolactin. Even some of the other hormone clinics don’t check for prolactin. That not only hurts your sexual function, it’s dangerous too. It contributes to a much higher incidence of prostate cancer. Lara: Tell me about the prostate cancer. Do you see a lot of that come through or issues that could contribute to that? Paul: There are. In fact, we give a seminar on prostate cancer prevention. There are so many things you can do that, of course, your doctor doesn’t tell you because they’re not in to vitamins and minerals. But just one little mineral alone, boron, if you take it at 8 mg to 12 mg daily — which is a tiny amount — can reduce your prostate cancer risk by 64%. Just that one little mineral. There are five or six vitamins and minerals that you can take to keep your prostate healthy. Usually — even though 28,000 men a year die from prostate cancer and last year there was over 200,000 men diagnosed with it — a BPH or benign prostate hyperplasia. So it’s just an enlarged prostate is what most men get. It can affect your life – frequent urination. Lara: Yeah. What are the symptoms? Frequent urination. Okay. Paul: And getting up in the middle of the night, two or three times. Lara: Which that could also be a sign of diabetes and other things, too. Yeah. Paul: Again, nothing happens in a vacuum and that’s why we like to do a very comprehensive lab. Ron: When the patients first come… Lara: Yeah, tell me about the very first… yeah. Ron: A thorough history, the patients’. Again, we don’t take the place of their urologist; we don’t take the place of their internal medicine doctors. I like to think that we try to work in conjunction with them. There are many doctors in this town that are very much attuned and on the same page with us, but unfortunately, many that — like the doctor I saw — if you fall within that range, you’re fine. Lara: And I love, Ron, that you took control and you knew that your body needed more. You kept going until you found… Ron: Well, I have the medical training. Lara: Right. Many people don’t. Ron: Many don’t. Lara: They just go, “Okay. I’ll continue to feel miserable.” Ron: Yes. I encourage patients, that they… it’s important that they get the digital rectal exam. We do the PSA levels. If they do decide to go that route of starting exogenous testosterone, every 6 months we get a PSA reading. We look to see if there’s any significant change in that number. If there is — and we’ve had a couple patients, obviously — we stop and we refer them to the urologist for further workup. We are not taking them away from their conventional medicine, but we’re kind of trying to augment what they’re getting from their primary care, from the urologist, from their internal medicine doctor. Lara: You work with them. So, when they first come in, you sit and talk with them, find out their goals, and then you do the bloodwork. Ron: We get a very thorough history. We have a few pages that they have to fill out. I want to know what medications they’re on, if they have any history of prostate problems, any history of any kinds of cancers. These are all important things that we need to get from the patients. Then we do extensive lab work. Patients complain that they feel their entire body’s being drained of blood because of the number, but actually it is not that much, if you were to measure it. But it is fairly extensive. We test thyroid. We do a complete metabolic panel. We do prolactin, progesterone levels. A lot of… estradiol. Lara: Even on men? Ron: Even on men because these are all important. A lot of men are very surprised that we’re testing these things. They say, “My doctors never tested this before.” Lara: Right. You guys are unique in that. You want to look at the overall picture and see how everything is working together. Ron: Well, that’s very important because nothing is in a vacuum. It all interacts. The interesting thing about hormones is the symptoms of too little of a hormone mimics the symptoms of excess. Lara: Oh. That’s fascinating. How are we going to know? We have to test it. Ron: Paul has a saying that you can’t fix what you can’t measure. That’s why we do this lab work. Lara: Wonderful. So, they come in and you work with them. You get the blood test and the blood tests come back, and then you decide, based on the bloodwork, what kind of vitamins? Ron: Well, we get the lab work back. Usually within 7 days, everything comes in. We contact the patient, have him come in, we meet with them, go over their lab work with them, and we come up with a treatment plan – what we think would be beneficial to them. Not every patient, automatically, is put on testosterone. Sometimes patients… we’ve had some men, believe it or not, in their 70s, they have natural levels over 1,000. Lara: Wow. Ron: We’re sitting there, scratching our heads, and they swear they don’t do a thing; they just eat right and exercise. Lara: What did those men need if they didn’t need testosterone? [00:20:00] Ron: Well, sometimes they need Vitamin B. It might be low on their Vitamin B. They need zinc and some other types of vitamins or minerals. Lara: And you can tell that by the bloodwork and what they… Ron: We go over all their lab work and we can kind of get an idea if there’s anything that stands out. So, it’s not automatic that every single man needs to be put on testosterone. Not every single man has low T. But the majority do. Lara: But the majority do. Ron: And that’s the way it is. Lara: For those that you put on testosterone, because of low T, you’ve mentioned that you felt better the next day. Is that the norm that people might feel better the next day? Ron: It is because they feel so crummy before. The difference is noticeable immediately. Yes, usually within 24 to 48 hours, they notice changes. It’s that quick. Lara: That’s fascinating to me. Then, eventually over what? Four to six months the body might actually change? Ron: Oh, not even that long. Usually within a month, they start noticing loss of belly fat, loss of fat elsewhere, increased muscle mass, increased strength. Sleeping better is the big thing we hear from a lot of patients – that they actually sleep better through the night. And, of course, enhancement in the bedroom. A lot of times, and this is the most fascinating to me, these gentlemen, they’re partners bring them in, which was really unheard of. Lara: Oh, really? Ron: When I started at the school 30 years ago, you would never see that. Lara: Oh, really? Ron: Their wives and girlfriends, their significant others, and partners actually come in and bring them in and force them to come in. [LAUGHTER] Lara: I like that. Take control. Ron: And they do. Absolutely. Lara: That’s awesome. We’re going to take a break right now and we’ll be right back, here on WSRQ. [BREAK] Lara: Welcome back. I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. In the studio with me are Paul and Ron from Men’s Complete Health and you can find them at www.menscompletehealth.com. You can find me at www.wsrqrradio.comor www.larajaye.com. Right before break, we were talking about when you have people in, when you have men come in. Tell me what is the initial cost? Paul: Usually, the patient uses his health insurance for the lab work. Now, if they don’t have health insurance, we have a very great rate with one of the lab companies and the bloodwork can range from $99 to as much as $400 or $500, depending on what the person needs. Lara: Their insurance? Paul: Yeah. After that, when the bloodwork comes in, there’s the initial consultation, which we charge $100 for and that’s when Dr. Ron or Dr. Hodge go over all of the bloodwork. We take our time to go over each line item on the lab work so the patient understands what those numbers mean. We don’t try to rush the guy out the door. We want him to be educated and learn what everything on the bloodwork means to him. Then we present… the doctor prepares a Treatment Plan and the Treatment Plan addresses everything that was off in the bloodwork. At that point, the patient talks over with the doctor on what fits them and then we get started on the program. Lara: And then we get started from there. Ron: Now, the money for the consultation, the $100, gets applied towards any medications that… Lara: Oh, wonderful. So, really, it ends up being a free consultation. Ron: Exactly. Exactly. Lara: Which is amazing and unheard-of. Ron: Yeah. Lara: And it’s not like a 10-minute… you’re spending well beyond 10 minutes that a normal physician would spend with you. You’re spending half an hour to an hour. Ron: Absolutely. Lara: And a couple different times, which is just amazing. Ron: Yes. Lara: Low T has been in the news lately. Is it really safe? Paul: Yes. It’s very safe. Through the years, there was always a controversy. But a famous Harvard urologist, Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, wrote a book called “Testosterone for Life.” I urge every male to buy it. He dispels all the myths that testosterone caused cancer and all the other myths that have been propagated through the years. A qualified doctor does it and it’s monitored closely. The way we do it, it’s very, very safe. In fact, it’s unsafe when the levels are too low. Lara: Why would you say that? Paul: Well, when the testosterone level gets below about 220, there is a major increase in cardiac events. So, your heart. Not only does your brain need testosterone, but your heart muscle needs it to function. People always ask me, “Well, what’s the side effects?” Well, we first say the side effects of being too low is a heart attack issue. So, when it’s done to the proper level, one thing we do is physiological doses. What does that mean? Our doctors only do what the normal male has. We don’t do steroids or high doses beyond what the normal male body should have. Lara: Wonderful. Ron: One thing about Dr. Morgentaler, by the way, he still teaches urology at Harvard University. In his book, he mentions when he was younger and started investigating this, he said, “If high testosterone levels cause prostate cancer, then why is there not more prostate cancer among young men, who have the highest levels they’re ever going to have in their life?” It didn’t make sense to him and that’s how he started investigating and found out that there really wasn’t a correlation between that. Now, as a caveat, if a patient has prostate cancer, a pre-existing, then testosterone, yes, indeed, could exacerbate it. So, no, we would never put a patient on testosterone if they are diagnosed with any of the stages of prostate cancer, which usually, by the way, is a very slow-growing, which is why it’s rare for a patient to die from prostate cancer. Lara: Because it’s slow-growing. Can you tell that from bloodwork? Is that something you can tell from bloodwork? Ron: And clinical exam and the patient’s history of symptoms. Then, of course, the gold standard is having a biopsy done, where they actually look at the cells. Lara: Amazing. We were talking at the beginning of our show about… I personally feel like we have a men’s health crisis. You were talking you even have 20-year-olds coming in. Talk to me about the loss of self-esteem for these men who are 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. It’s devastating, I think, for them to have all of these symptoms and then the loss of libido, and then all of those things. It just pulls them, in my opinion, down even into more depression because of all of the symptoms, and they really may not even know it’s because of their hormones. It’s just a hormone imbalance. Ron: And it causes a lot of stress in relationships because they’re embarrassed to talk about it or don’t wish to talk about it. Of course, their partner feels there’s something wrong with them; that they’re no longer desirable, that they’re not attractive anymore or, worse yet, that perhaps they’re not being faithful, and it causes a lot of strain in relationships, which is unfortunate. Lara: Really, I would encourage our men listeners, if you have any of these symptoms, and I’ll have you list them again, to give you guys a call. Get in there. Just get a blood panel. Just talk to you guys just to see what is really the issue. Go ahead and give the symptoms out again and some of the different things that you see that come in the office. Ron: Loss of energy, feeling of tired no matter how much you sleep; the more sleep, more tired you feel. The inability to do simple tasks that were easy before, loss of concentration, loss of libido, sexual drive, and energy. Loss of interest. Lara:Sure. [00:30:00] Paul: I think the overwhelming feedback that I’ve gotten over the 17 years that I’ve… for the first 15 years, I was just a passionate advocate and didn’t get a free toast or anything. I just urged every man to go do this. The single biggest comment that I would get, the feedback I would get back, is these guys would call me up after about 6 weeks and invariably they would say, “I forgot how I used to feel.” What they meant was this doesn’t drop overnight. Okay? You’re 1,200 when you’re a teenager and it goes down ever so slightly every year. Ron: After age 30, it’s about 1% a year that it drops. Paul: It drops a tiny bit. So, the Type A personalities — the guys that tough it out — they are the last to come in because they just get out of bed in the morning and they just push themselves. Lara: Push, push, push. Paul: Right. But then even those guys crash. It makes me feel so good when these guys call up and say that. There is a term called “feeling of well-being.” What does that mean? It’s just kind of a little bit of confidence, a little bit of self-worth, and respect. What happens is that that’s what they get back – the feeling of well-being. They just feel good. It’s as simple as that. They just feel good. Lara: And they feel like they used to. Paul: They feel like they used to. Yes. The biggest thing is they forgot because it went down ever so little bit each year. Lara: Right. We forget. We forget. Paul: Yeah. Lara: Tell me what’s your oldest patient? How old can someone take testosterone? Paul: We have patients from 21 years old to, I think, 84. But we have many at about 78. For some reason, there’s a lot of 78. Today, especially, maybe in Sarasota, there’s a lot of 78-year-olds married to 50-year-old women and so they have a little bit special issue. But, really, a lot of my – I don’t know why I have so many at 78 that are athletes. They are either avid golfers or amateur competitive tennis players. In sports, as far as healing from injuries, we’ve got one pretty solid, amateur, competitive tennis player that, in his last set, he would fade. He would do real good, he was strong, everything. In the end, he would fade. He was just very, very happy that he got through the whole tennis match, all three sets, with energy. Lara: So the added testosterone. Paul: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Lara: That’s amazing. We are going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back with our last segment, here on The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara: I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome back. You can find me at www.wsrqradio.comor www.larajaye.com. With me, in the studio, are Paul and Ron from www.menscompletehealth.com. Ron, what’s a phone number if we wanted to call today and get an appointment? What phone number would we call? Ron: It’s 941-203-8944. Lara: Can you say that again? One more time? Ron: 941-203-8944. Lara: Great. Again, if not, go to www.menscompletehealth.com. Paul, in our last segment here I want to talk about diet and supplements. I talk a lot about nutrition here on The Zen Leaderover the weeks and how important nutrition is in our bodies to keep our fuel and our energy up. What would you say for me? Paul: Absolutely a large part of what we do is nutrition and supplementation. Not pharmaceuticals right off. A lot of guys would like to be natural or like to say, “Look, what can I do naturally, before I do any prescriptions?” We do that. It’s not always successful because of so many chemicals we’re fighting against, but we will — especially with our young guys — we don’t put them directly on testosterone right away. We do some natural ways to increase their own testosterone level, which we work hard at taking diet, supplementation, and doing a lot of things naturally. Diet is so important. You can literally change your life. We’ve had so many Type II diabetics out there and we get more and more men in that have… the test for diabetes is Hemoglobin A1C, and that’s a look at your blood sugar level over a 3-month period. It’s a number where the primary doctors don’t look at. We look at it and start working on it early. Ron: A lot of patients will get their primary care doctor to do a fasting glucose level and it’s normal, so the patient mistakenly thinks, “Oh, I don’t have diabetes. My fasting glucose was…” Lara: In that one, particular instance. Ron: But it’s almost like an EKG. An EKG does not show that your heart is healthy; it takes a picture of your heart at that particular moment in time. Now, most likely, it is fine. But it doesn’t give the picture over the last 3 or 4 months. It’s just at that moment. The same with the fasting glucose. A Hemoglobin A1C gives us the picture for the preceding 3 or 4 months. It gives an idea of how your glucose level has been running and also what they call a 2-Hour postprandial, taking a blood test 2 hours after a meal. Does your glucose level actually return to normal at that time? Lara: So, you guys look at this as well, if they’re diabetic or not, and then can help prescribe the proper… Ron: Yes. Yes, many patients are very surprised to find out that they are what we call pre-diabetic. They say, “My doctor never mentioned it,” and it’s because they’ve always had normal fasting levels. But, again, that doesn’t give the whole picture and that affects a lot of their energy level and weight gain, and other things we’ve been talking about. Paul: It’s also a crisis out there in the Type II diabetes. It’s growing at an enormous rate. It’s costing billions of dollars a year to treat these people with Type II. It’s really a lifestyle disease. They call it that because if we put these borderline Type II diabetics on the right diet, cut that sugar down, and give them a few supplements, it’s amazing. Lara: What’s the right diet? That’s what everyone… Paul: Yeah. Lara: I hear a different diet every day. What’s the reality? Paul: Isn’t it funny? Diets, yet, for the last 40 years, they say, “Oh, this is the absolute one,” and it changes all the time. The main thing is to stay away from fast carbohydrates meaning, of course, chocolate and sugar. Sugar is the number one… Lara: Carbs, pasta. Paul: Just high carbs. And do more fibrous carbs. Lara: What’s a fibrous carb? Like a sweet potato? Paul: No. Not even potatoes. More like broccoli, cauliflower, that kind of thing. Or, really good, spinach and kale. All the things that most people don’t like. For some people, it’s life-threatening to get one less number and they get in to full-blown Type II diabetic. We really work a lot on that. A lot on diet and supplementation. So, it doesn’t always have to be about hormones. Lara: Would you say when you… let’s say they come in and their hormones are out of balance and they are maybe pre-diabetic. Is balancing their hormones… would that actually help? Paul: Oh, absolutely. It does. Yeah. Lara: It does? And how does it help? Paul: Well, one reason, of course, testosterone alone helps with blood sugar quite significantly. But there’s other things they do, but mainly, it’s diet. It really is. We try to work with people. We understand they like certain things. You don’t have to become a monk. Ron: Yeah. I don’t want your listeners, the male listeners, think there’s no sense coming in because they like their bagel once in a while on weekend mornings. The nice thing about getting your hormones balanced, you start getting more energy, you start exercising more, and you can enjoy those things and still maintain a fairly good health level. I mean, my weakness is I love chocolate cake [00:40:00]with that creamy stuff inside. Lara: Who doesn’t? Ron: I mean, you know, I’m not going to give that up. But I go to the gym, I exercise. I’m in fairly decent shape. They shouldn’t think that, “No sense trying to get these. I’m not willing to give up all of those things.” Lara: Yeah. Because when we start feeling you were taking everything away from them, it’s already… “I’m already not feeling good and now you’re going to take away my yummy chocolate.” Ron: Yeah. Lara: What I say is, if you want to do it gradually, stay doing what you’re doing and then maybe start adding in a bunch of the spinach and kale, the really good high-energy foods. More protein. Start adding that in and I feel like when people do that, the other stuff naturally, gradually, falls away because your body just eats it up, that nutrition. Ron: Absolutely. Paul: We see it all the time. A lot of times, just a little exercise. We don’t want people to think that you have to go to the gym for an hour a day because just a little exercise will bring your blood sugar down. It will bring your blood pressure down. Lara: What’s “a little?” I say a little is 4 minutes. Paul: Fifteen to 20 minutes of cardio. Of course, weight training is the best. It doesn’t have to be long – 15 or 20 minutes of that. Ron: I think there was a study just recently, 15 minutes of cardio, of getting your heart rate up to approximately 70% of maximum. Two or 3 days a week is all you need to do, which is really not very much. Lara: So, that was good enough and we don’t have to beat ourselves into the gym all the time. Ron: No. You don’t have to beat yourself up over this. With getting your hormones balanced and a little bit of exercise, it’s amazing at how people will feel like so much has been done to them. Lara: Amazing. If there is one thing that you could tell our listeners, that you would like to remind them, what is it that you really want them to take away from this show? Paul: I think, for me, it’s just like your car or taking care of your boat or anything. You check the levels. We just urge people to come in, check your levels, see where it’s at. Maybe they’re okay. But if they aren’t, then we can at least know that. At least know where your levels are at. Lara: Okay. That’s awesome. Ron: And I would say ask questions. Don’t take one answer. If I had listened to that doctor that wanted to put me on an antidepressant, God knows what would have happened. Just keep asking questions. If something doesn’t make sense or something doesn’t seem right to you, keep asking because, most likely, it’s not. Lara: Right. I love that we are encouraging listeners to… first of all, they have to notice that they have these symptoms and they don’t have to have them. They can feel good again, which I love. Paul: Absolutely. Lara: That encouraging them and they can call you. Tell me, Ron, the phone number one more time. Ron: 941-203-8944. We are located right here in Sarasota, 2100 South Tamiami Trail, on the corner of 41 and Datura Street. Lara: Great. And it is www.menscompletehealth.com. Any last words, Paul? Anything else you really want our listeners to know? Paul: Again, I think just like you say, they don’t have to suffer with this low energy and lack of concentration. It’s very simple and very cost-effective to feel great. Ron: And you don’t have to join a fancy gym. We’re so fortunate to live here, in Sarasota, where there’s so many outdoor parks and areas to exercise in and recreation. Just get out and start moving. Lara: Absolutely. Thank you Ron and Paul. Thank you for joining me today. Paul: Thank you. Ron: Thank you very much for having us. Lara: It’s been great having you. I’m Lara Jaye on The Zen Leader. Have a great weekend.   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:44:10]    

DOWNLOAD EPISODE > Host Lara Jaye and The Zen Leader welcomed celebrity talent scout, global producer, thought leadership strategist, and former buddhist nun , Karin Roest to the studio. They discussed her ideas to merge your purpose, passion, skills, and interests into one extraordinary business and life in which Karin refers to as Meditation & Margaritas.   http://meditationandmargaritas.com http://www.karinroest.com/

The Zen Leader welcomed Geoff and Poppy Spencer from Relational Experts about their own love journey and their new radio program on WSRQ called The Relationship Restaurant. In the last segment of the show I discuss a concept called Projection- which is the subject of my new blog post.   Intro:Welcome to The Zen Leaderwith Laura Jaye. Whether you're a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now here's your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:Good morning, I'm Lara Jaye and thank you for joining me here on The Zen Leader.I'm so excited for this show today. My guests are Poppy and Geoff Spencer. They are certified coaches, relationship coaches. I want to call you love coaches. Could I call you love coaches? Geoff Spencer:Sure. Poppy Spencer:Sure can. Lara:Welcome to The Zen Leader. How are you guys doing today? Poppy:Thank you. Geoff:We are great. We're great. We like this love thing already. Lara:You like it? Geoff:We're excited about that. Lara:I like it. I like it. Relationship and love. This is a tough topic for some people. I'm sure we're going to… Geoff:And they often don't go together, relationships and love, unfortunately. Lara:[LAUGHTER] They don't. They don't. We've got lots to talk about. But the main reason you guys are here is you have a new show here on WSRQ that's getting ready to start. Poppy, can you tell me a little bit about the show first? Poppy:We are so excited to join the WSRQ family and we rolled out this program that we trademarked because of our own lack of communication many, many years ago — I'll let Geoff fill in on that background — and we thought, "Isn't it kind of like when we introduce couples to hard topics that they need to talk about?" So, we made it like a restaurant menu to go through those things, like courses of those challenging topics that crop up in all relationships, whether it's personal or in the workplace. Lara:So what would be an example? Geoff:The salad course, the greens is money. Lara:Ooh, the salad. Ooh. Geoff:One of the really tough topics to talk about, money. Lara:It is. Money, money, money. Geoff:Mm-hmm. Lara:That's a tough one for couples, too. Geoff:We even have a thing we start with, which is a lot of fun… because before you really can get to the hard topics, you have to talk about some of the little, little things that can get in the way. We have a whine list spelled w-h-i-n-e. The whine list. Lara:[LAUGHTER] I like the whine list. Geoff:These are all these little things that often can pile up and get in the way of being able to talk openly about more challenging topics, so things that the couples have to make sure that they talk about and get out in the open, the little things that have crept up and often started little and build and build, and build, and if they aren't addressed, they can become so much more. Lara:They can. They can. Money was a big one for my ex-husband and I. Geoff:Sure. Lara:I say ex-husband — we were married 25 years — but he would say the only reason we stayed married was because we had the same house, but we had separate checking and savings. I'm sure that you hear that a lot with different… to say, "Okay, what's going to work for different couples?" because it's different for everyone. Definitely. Geoff:It is. Lara:So, tell me. The Relationship Restaurant,when does the show start and air here? Poppy:It starts next Thursday, April 13th at 5 o'clock Eastern Standard Time for one hour. It'll be a live show, for the most part, and we welcome call-ins, and we might touch on a topic that might gain some commentary, and we can have a live coaching if somebody wants to call in, too. Geoff:It might even be like remember the old Frasier Crane show? Lara:Yes. Geoff:On the Frasier Show he goes, "I'm Frasier and I'm listening." Lara:I'm listening. I'm here. Geoff:I'm here. Lara:So, you're ready. I like the idea of The Relationship Restaurant. So, we've got salad. We've got whine. What else do you need besides salad and whine, right? Geoff:All the different things are involved. There's little things like the amuse bouche, the little things you start off at a nice restaurant where they give you just a little sample of something. We often talk about this in a relationship as something that you can just start with that it's a nice gesture. It's a nice thing in a conversation to start off with. You don't want to often just go right to meaty topics, the main courses. You want to often have something that's a little nicer to talk about. Lara:Absolutely. So what got you interested in relationships and love? I can't wait to hear this story. Poppy:Okay, so the backstory is Geoff and I were college sweethearts, and we were 21 years old — and we're much older now — and madly in love, and the only problem that we had was I was ready to graduate and he had one more year of school. Right before graduation, I broke us up, not because anything was wrong, but… Geoff:It's because I was a schmuck. [LAUGHTER] Poppy:Piggybacking on last week's… Geoff:Last week's show. Lara:On last week's show, I like that. I love it. Poppy:So, we realized — fast-forward 32 years — we didn't have the communication skills and the maturity to learn how to speak to one another about those "what happens next" and "what's going to happen to us?" Geoff:We actually figured out it came down to two words. Two words were the difference of what my lightning-quick mind might have figured out being the guy, 21-year-old schmuck that you are at that age. But Poppy asked me, "What's going to happen next year?" I simply went to… my mind said, "Well, I'll be back here at school and I'll be captain of the waterskiing team," something I was aspiring to and, "I'll be enjoying another year of school." Lara, that wasn't what she really wanted to hear. Lara:That was not the answer. [LAUGHTER] Geoff:That wasn't the answer she was looking for. She wanted to hear about all the things I was planning to do to keep our relationship together. Lara:Ah. Poppy:So we made assumptions, which is what people still do so often today. Geoff:And fill in the blanks. This was in one of these areas that we laugh about. In fact, we wrote a book about this whole adventure called 1 Billion Seconds, which is 32 years for math majors out there to figure out. But Poppy and I actually figured out these two words. We figured out that was the whole thing. It was to us. What's going to happen to us? If she had said that, we might have still stayed together. Lara:Oh, because she answered the question that you asked. Geoff:Yeah, right. Lara:So often we're asking questions, but it's the wrong question. Poppy:Right. Lara:Or it needs to be more detailed. Geoff:Poppy filled in the blanks. She made the assumption that because I didn't say anything else then, well, he must not really care if he didn't think about those things. Lara:He doesn't love me. Geoff:He doesn't really love me as much as I love him, which wasn't all the case. I was crazy about her. She was just a wonderful young lady, and I was just madly in love, and we were having the time of our lives. We dated the entire school year. Literally, almost the third day of my junior year, her senior year, we dated the entire year. Lara:So Poppy, you broke up with him, broke his heart. Poppy:Oh, and broke mine. Lara:Absolutely. Poppy:When we were breaking up, I was stunned that he was upset because, of course, I had already made those assumptions that he didn't really care. Geoff:That he didn't care. Poppy:I was like, "Well, if he doesn't care, why is he getting upset?" I tried to say, "Wait, wait," and he was too upset and he walked away, and we never had any contact for 32 years. Never ever had a closure or any other kind of re-discussion or revisiting. Lara:So Geoff, you didn't feel like you wanted to reach out or fight or you didn't know what to say? Geoff:Well, during that process, Lara, I actually asked her. I said, "What are you talking about? Why are you breaking us up? We're great." I said, "Don't you still love me?" She says, "Well, yes." I said, "Well, then why are you doing this?" She'd say, "I don't know." The whole thing just kind of became just a train wreck and my ego had been pretty stomped on at that moment, and this is a 21-year-old guy's mind. This is not a guy who's thinking through this whole process really well.             All of a sudden, he's injured and he's wounded, and he's embarrassed that he's being thrown aside, and I just remember storming out of the room just being too upset and hurt. I'd asked the question multiple times and never got an answer. So I said, "Well, I guess she doesn't really want to be with me," and I stomped out. Poppy:So when we're in that kind of situation… and then that whole thing pretty much shaped who we became today. I was a former therapist and a psychology instructor, and we know about things like flooding that happens in relationships when two people are highly emotionally charged with something. They cannot… it's almost nearly impossible to process what the other is saying when we ourselves have gotten an overload of emotions going on. Geoff:Their mouths are moving, but you really aren't… Lara:We can't hear what they're saying. Geoff:You can't hear it. You can't hear it. Lara:We can't put it in our… Poppy:Right. Lara:I say we can't hold it in our bodies. Poppy:Right. Lara:I can't hold it. I can't understand it because there's so much going on. Poppy:Right, and that's what was happening during that breakup. Even when your heart rate gets above 100, you don't process well either. It's a physiological problem. So, that was what happens, and we both just split for that many years. Then during breaks between a divorce and a remarriage, I looked for Geoff several times and I could never find him. I pretty much gave up until… Geoff:Until I just magically one day had this thought pop in my mind. "Whatever happened to that great gal back in college?" I was single. I was in a position to consider this, and I just did a quick search online, put her maiden name in there, Poppy Terrace, and it popped right up on Facebook, and her Facebook page took me to her professional page where her phone number was. Call for a free consultation. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Did you do it? Geoff:I was like, "What is she going to do? Throw me aside again?" I was like, "We'll both have a good laugh about the fact that we're twice divorced." Lara:Geoff, that's awesome. So, love begins again. Geoff:And it was amazing. It was all still there. [00:10:00]We realized nothing had changed. We realized that we'd never fallen out of love. We just left each other. It was still there. Lara:That's an amazing story. And you both moved on. You had children with other partners. Geoff:Mm-hmm, yes. Lara:And got divorced and then came back together. Geoff:Right. Lara:And your heart was full. Poppy:It was. Through all this talking on the phone for hours and hours and hours, we discovered that we need to help other people with this, not to let poor communication or under developed communication be the reason why people are not having wonderful, intimate relationships. Lara:That's beautiful. When we come right back from break, we're going to talk more about this communication, and I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderand we'll be right back. [BREAK] Lara:I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader and welcome back here on WSRQ and you can find me here at wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com. With me here in the studio are Poppy and Geoff Spencer. I'm going to call you certified love coaches, as I said. Poppy:[LAUGHTER] Lara:The relationship love coaches. If listeners want to find you, what website can they find you at? Poppy:Our website is relationalexperts.com. That's R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-A-Lexperts with an S.com. You can find us on Twitter “@relationalateam” and on Facebook at the same name, Relational Experts on Facebook. Lara:You guys are all about relationships and communication, and really, that's the core of people being together, and it's communication, and can people talk and share without triggering other people, and that kind of thing. Is that what would you say is your expertise? Poppy:Well, we say that relationships and communication are basically synonymous. Geoff:Yeah, without the communication, the relationships just fall apart. Lara:You don't have a relationship do we? Geoff:Yeah. Poppy:They definitely go more than hand-in-hand. Lara:Because you hear people say going through a divorce or breaking up, "We are just not connecting anymore." You connect by communication. Geoff:Mm-hmm. Poppy:Right, perfect. Lara:Absolutely. Geoff:In fact, we even developed a tool. When we wrote our book — Poppy mentioned this earlier, too, about the concept of what we discovered in our own journey — we developed a tool called the "emotional clock." It took the analog clock that we are all familiar with and each of the emotions, especially on the right side, where all the disempowering emotions, the disheartening emotions, where we don't communicate, where we aren't sharing, we aren't getting a point across. We're just letting things slide and letting things build up, and it builds up to a point where you actually get to a point of anger often, shame and guilt, the things that are carried inside, and you hit a wall. You hit a wall we call 6 o'clock where you have to make kind of a go-no decision.             This is often where a lot of people reach out to us where they've hit a wall in their relationships, and they don't know if they can move forward or not. They don't know if they should say, "I think I've gone far enough and I don't think there's a way to save this, and I think I'd like to talk about next steps." That's where we usually have a lot of people talk to us. We do all we can to help them, guide them back towards the relationship if they both want that. Or if they don't, we try to very gently and nicely take them into the next steps of their lives. Lara:Beautiful and next steps could be it just depends. It's different for everyone depending on what they're willing… kind of effort probably that people are willing to put into it. What would be the couples that come to you… and maybe they're not just couples. Do you have singles come to you? Poppy:Oh, sure. Lara:Both. You have both. What would you say are the top couple three reasons that people come? Is it the communication, lack thereof, or just struggling? Poppy:I think you mentioned it before. One is that lack of connection of a fulfilling relationship, that they don't feel worthy in that relationship. There's not a lot of intimacy, I guess. Geoff:It usually comes down to an intimacy thing. Because if they're not speaking and there's other things that get in the way, usually things like lovemaking goes away. They realize that they're sharing less and less and less. Poppy:A few weeks ago we were in Santa Barbara, California with our master coach Jack Canfield, The Chicken Soup for the Soulguy. We spent 12 hours for two days in a row with him. He was wonderful. Out of that with our fellow mastermind coaches, we discovered… somebody came up with a word, a phrase that we thought was so powerful because many relationships are comfortably numb. We thought that was really compelling. Lara:That's amazing and it's so true. Not only are relationships that way, but we all walk around, a lot of us, like that, comfortably numb. I talk a lot about that in my book and here on the radio show. We numb and dumb ourselves so we don't have to feel, because sometimes it's too painful. It is too painful. Poppy:Right. Lara:But I love that comfortably numb. Then how do you, as couples, come in, try to work with them? Because a lot of it is really although it shows as a communication issue or a problem between two people, really it's deep down inside are they loving themselves enough? Are they numbing themselves? It's coming out, maybe, in the marriage. Would you say that? Poppy:Yeah. I think it's absolutely completely the individual and what they bring to it. I can speak from my own two past relationships and marriages that I took 100% accountability and responsibility for a marriage that didn't work. I think I feel pretty good about relaying that to my four children that blame has no place in a relationship, that you need to own up your stuff, whatever that is. Lara:I like that. Geoff:One of the things, Lara, I always talk about. This is usually a big challenge for guys, too, is the idea of vulnerability. Many guys really look at that as weakness in some way. "I can't be vulnerable. That's being weak." It isn't. It's so critically important in the relationship that the guys are willing to open up, share their fears. It always usually comes down to that. There's fears that they're covering up, that they're hiding and numbing themselves might be through alcohol, through whatever, just mindlessly watching television. It can take them anywhere. Lara:Right, work, eating, medicine. Geoff:Anything. Poppy:Over working. Lara:Over working, mm-hmm. Geoff:There's so many different ways to let these things just get stepped on and stepped over. It takes a lot of courage. This is always the one thing this always comes down to, the courage to look at it, to be willing to open up and say, "This is where I'm at," and people are often afraid to bring up the topic. This is where this emotional clock comes in because it might actually expose what they really think and they really feel that the relationship can't work. They might be afraid of that and they discover it can work, in many cases, and they just never shared this thing. The other spouse will go, "I never knew that. Why didn't you tell me that?" Lara:They could have been married 20 years and not known this about each other. Geoff:And never known this. Right, right. Lara:Maybe they've hidden a part of them or thought that they would be made fun of or no, I… Geoff:We all carry these kind of burdens, as I'm sure you've seen throughout our lives. It's something that a teacher told you, parents told you, some other person you dated told you that can cloud so many of your judgments. So often those things need to come out and it can through just good open dialogues. We try to open that up in people. Lara:Beautiful. Yeah, we internalize things that are told us when we're young and it comes out later. So, you two are so unique and I love your story. You learned these tools when you two got back together, so would you say you're different people now? I mean if you were married to the other people and had these tools, it would be a whole different ballgame, would you say? Geoff:Yeah, we've talked about this at length, about what if we'd stayed together the whole time? Maybe we did in a parallel universe. We even wrote that in the book. Maybe that did happen because we had so many times where our lives have overlapped in many cases, and we were always stunned by the many different times we were actually in the same kind of track together.             But, yeah. We've talked about this, but we said we wouldn't appreciate where we are now and what we have without that journey. That journey really made it so crystal clear to us what works in a relationship really well and what doesn't. Poppy:It's almost like you need the contrast to know that. So, we took each other for granted when we were 21 year olds. We were at this beautiful college, an ideal paradise, and going back into the working world, I had a job that was waiting for me and it was sort of like, "Well, that's not the real world. College is just fun." That even shadowed the way I used to think about our relationship. My relationship with Geoff, Lara, is that I thought, "Well, maybe that wasn't real because it's not the real world. Maybe that was just magical and not authentic." [00:20:06] Geoff:It was magical. This is Rollins College, if we didn't say that already. It was a magical, lovely spot and we had just a magical time together. But the relationship really was that good. The minute we reconnected, it was the most amazing thing, too, in this phone call. It took literally seconds for us to realize that we had both made a mistake. Poppy… and this is one of the things we've written about, too, about how immediately vulnerable both of us were. There was no pretense. There was no gamesmanship.             I know my mind was like, "What am I going to fool this lady with? We dated for a year. She knows who I am. I'm not going to fool her with any kind of fast talk or anything else." We both completely opened up, exposed ourselves, we were honest. Poppy:So you weren't going to be a schmuck. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Geoff:No. Lara:No schmuck. Geoff:Because guys can be schmucks, as we all know. Lara:Guys can be schmucks, as we know. So Poppy, when you got that phone call from him, what did you do? Poppy:Oh, I was actually buying a car and I was in a dealership, and I thought, "Well, I don't know anybody in North Carolina," where Geoff was living at the time. When I heard his voice, I didn't recognize it right away, which still astounds him to this day. Geoff:I mean, I think I have a unique voice most people can pick up on. Poppy:But I hadn't. Thirty-two years was a long time with absolutely no contact. I had no idea where he was living, and he said, "This is somebody from Rollins," and my kids were teenagers at the time, my younger two and all I could think of was, "Oh, this is probably the annual fund calling to ask to give money." [LAUGHTER] Geoff:[LAUGHTER] Poppy:I was like, "Oh, I don't know if I can do it this year." I said, "You're probably calling about the annual fund." He said, "No, I'm not calling about the annual fund." I was just like, "Oh, my gosh! I just looked for you four months ago on Facebook and you weren't there." So, we talk about Law of Attraction — I know you're familiar with that, Lara — and I felt like I pre-paved these 32 years with intentions. As a former therapist, I used to do vision boards and was heavily into the Law of Attraction. I felt like I had pre-paved it, and the timing was not right when I reached out to him. Geoff was otherwise occupied. He did not have an account on Facebook at the time, and it didn't occur to me to look on LinkedIn, which is where he was. [LAUGHTER] So. I just sort of gave up and I was like, "You know what? It's fine. I'm going to take care of my kids." Lara:That's surrendering to divine timing is what it's about. Poppy:Yes. Geoff:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Lara:Well, it has been a pleasure to have you two and I cannot wait to hear the show next Thursday. Tell me again next Thursday at 5? Poppy:5 o'clock to 6 o'clock Eastern Standard Time. Lara:Eastern. Geoff:Right, The Relationship Restaurant. Lara:Here on WSRQ. Geoff:Mm-hmm. Lara:Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Geoff:Thank you, Lara. Lara:And we'll be right back after this break. [BREAK] Lara:I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderand welcome back for our last segment. Geoff and Poppy Spencer are here with The Relationship Restaurant Showthat's starting next week, and they are love and relationship experts. Right before break, we were talking about your journey back together, which is so beautiful. I think about sometimes people might say, "Oh, well, do you think it was a mistake marrying other people, breaking up and marrying other people?" I just truly don't believe in mistakes, especially when children are involved and life. Did you ever have regrets or believe it was a mistake, or ever have those thoughts come through your mind? Poppy:Absolutely not. I'm totally on the same page with you. I have four children. Geoff has one. Geoff:We have five children together. Poppy:We have five together. They're millennials now. I would have to say that if when Geoff re-entered my life had he not been fully embraced by my children, we would not be sitting here today. So, no. The previous marriages that produced these beautiful children, I've always honored my ex-husbands as the father of my children. I've never disparaged them and I think we can attest to that. Geoff:Yeah, we are actually friends with… both of Poppy's exes we're friends with. Lara:That says a lot about you, too. Geoff:Well, part of this — and this is one of the things we've written about before — is don't forsake your ex for the sake of the kids. It's because of the love for the children we've worked really… made a big, big conscious effort to be as ingratiating and as good with the exes, and it's really gone beyond that, too. We developed friendships. We were just very recently… Poppy is from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area and her family, big Green Bay Packers fans, okay? I've had to take that on, Lara, or get divorced. One or the other. Lara:You didn't have a choice. [LAUGHTER] Geoff:No, I had to do it. Poppy:It was in the vows. Geoff:It was in the vows. Lara:That's right. Geoff:So, we went up and watched the big championship game in Atlanta, the NFC championship game, and stayed with her second ex and his new wife and had a delightful time. Lara:That's beautiful. Poppy:They were lovely. Geoff:They couldn't have been nicer hosts to us, and this is something that we'd worked towards, though. It didn't happen overnight. It was making sure that we invited them to significant events, children graduating from college. Poppy:Always. Geoff:Those kind of things. Poppy:Even eighth grade graduation, that kind of thing, but big party, celebration afterwards. So, I've always embraced them and to the point where my three daughters and one son, occasionally they'll come and they'll go, "Oh, I'm annoyed with Dad because of this," and I'm always the one, "Well, you know what? Your dad is really, really good at this," so we were always really good about pulling out all the positives. Lara:We know them well enough. Poppy:Yes. Lara:Even a couple weeks ago my mom passed away and my ex-husband came up and spent time because we were from the same hometown and married 25 years together, 28. So, it was supportive for me to have him there because he knew everyone. He knew everyone. It's still part of the family regardless of the paperwork that changes, the unraveling, but definitely important. Geoff:I really enjoyed, by the way, Poppy was mentioning meeting the other children and meeting her children. I had a wonderful time with that because one of the things that I discovered in watching the interaction is her children were so delighted at how happy their mother was. They saw a different mother. Lara:That is huge. Geoff:They saw a different… Lara:Children want… yes. Geoff:A different woman. To me, it was always so surprising because I saw the exact same girl that I dated in college. I saw that same person. I didn't see anybody different from that. The kids were like, "She's so different. You brought out a different side in her." I was like, "Well, okay, but [LAUGHTER] this is the same girl that I fell in love with, the same person that I know. Lara:But our kids didn't see that if we were going through a tough time. Geoff:No. Yeah. Poppy:I even said that to my children. I am not role modeling the best version of myself for you as a mom, and I suppose as a wife, either, I'm not being the best that I can be. I'm not sure how to do that in these relationships. Both of the divorces were mutual and I think everybody is really happy now. Both my exes and… Geoff:We even played golf. Poppy:Yes. [LAUGHTER] Geoff:Her first ex was down helping the daughter to move back to Milwaukee, and we took them. We picked them up at the airport. We had lunch and dinner with them with the family. We played a round of golf the next day, and we had a great time together. Lara:This is why you're relationship experts because not only for each other, but then also the exes and how you've brought all of that because it's relationships. It's people. This is why you are experts at it. Geoff:We try. Lara:Tell me how you… a lot of people… coaching is still fairly new, a new field, especially here in the Midwest, in the South, versus the Coast. How is coaching different than therapy? Poppy:So my coaching mentor, Dr. Dave Krueger, who's awesome — he's in Texas — but he likens therapy to being an archeologist and he says that coaches are like an architect. So, the therapist will spend time in the process of digging up stuff from the past, from childhood, from whatever past relationships. But their primary goal isn't to move forward, which is what we are. We're architects. We're like, "Let's take your goals. Let's reframe them and then let's move forward." If you get stuck, certainly a non-judgmental environment. We always promote that. If you get stuck, that's okay. You're not going to get blamed or shamed [LAUGHTER] or any of those things, but we will help you get unstuck. Lara:So you would say therapy more is past focused. Geoff:It is and it's often… we've had a couple of clients that we've actually said, "We don't think you're really in a position to do coaching." It was clear that they had a lot of things in their background that they hadn't dealt with. [00:30:00] Lara:That they probably needed a therapist for. Poppy:Absolutely. Geoff:They absolutely needed a therapist, so we have relationships with therapists. We'll say, "This person really needs to figure out what's really deep down within bothering them and then causing them to have these issues because they aren't in a position to move forward right now." They let us be the architects of a new life, a new relationship, a new story. Poppy:So when we meet a perspective client, it's a two-way street. We have a mutual thing. Is this a good fit or is it not? There's oftentimes where they'll say, "Yeah, yeah, it's a good fit," and we will say, "I think a psychiatrist or a psychologist might be better to serve you." Lara:Depending on the issues and how deep seeded and that kind of thing. Poppy:Correct. Lara:So, give me an example. Walk me through, maybe, a first coaching session with a couple. Geoff:Do you want to start it? Poppy:You go ahead. Geoff:Well, it's really kind of just… and you also said with a couple and you asked this question, too. Is it always a couple? No, often it isn't. It's often one of the parties. Lara:So maybe one person is unhappy, but the other is not. Geoff:Right. Lara:That happens. Geoff:Today it's usually…. it's the wife. It's the lady who comes to us and says… Poppy:She initiates. Geoff:She'll initiate it and say, "There's a lot of things that are really wrong here," and it might be any number of things, substance abuse, lack of intimacy. There can be any number of things that are bringing this topic forward. Poppy:Or even empty nesters. "Oh, my gosh. I just realized we haven't communicated really in several years, and now my kids…" Lara:Transition periods of love. Poppy:Right. Lara:That's painful. Poppy:Especially here in beautiful Sarasota. People want to move down here and maybe they're in their late 40s or 50s, and suddenly they're like, "Well, I'm going to be displaced and I'm going to move here. Then what?" Geoff:So we laugh and we try to get that conversation just opening up as to what is the issue that they're dealing with, and that might take awhile. Poppy and I have gotten pretty good at reading people's expressions and reading all those little micro expression things. We'll often be able to start to pose those more opening up the dialogue questions to try to get at what it is, and the very important thing to find out early on is the commitment level of both parties. Are they both wanting to make this work? Get that topic on the table and get that out. Lara:Very important. Geoff:If they are both very much wanting to make it work and there are things that are just in the way, you've got a great basis for making this happen. Poppy:Also, in making it work, and why you want to make it work has to be… it just can't be because, "Oh, well, my parents were divorced and I never want to get divorced, so I'm going to stay in the marriage, but I'm not going to change." Lara:We have to look at the reasons. Geoff:Yeah, this has been a hot, debatable topic often with different religious overtones to it. Of course, the idea of staying together no matter what. Poppy:For the sake of the kids. Geoff:Yeah, for the sake of the kids. We often look at this. We understand and appreciate the religious connotations to it, but we also know the things… this is what Poppy was talking about earlier, too. What are we teaching our children? We see so many… these cycles just repeat themselves if there's a lack of respect, if there's a lack of courtesy, and there's just nothing but fighting and anger. Well, the children will typically learn that and take on. They'll find a spouse with the same kind of dynamics, and they'll just continue that kind of relationships in their own lives, which is sad. They should learn a very different kind of relationship. Poppy and I have been very excited to be able to show our children the very best possible way to communicate, the best possible love. Lara:Not just your children and now the world here on WSRQ. Geoff:Yes. Poppy:[LAUGHTER] Lara:I am so excited to have you guys join the WSRQ family next Thursday 5 o'clock Eastern Standard Time live here in the studio will be Poppy and Geoff. Thank you so much for joining me today. Geoff:Thanks for having us. Poppy:Thank you, Lara. Lara:We'll be right back after a break. Geoff:Okay. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. For this last segment today, I'm going to talk about one of my favorite topics and something you may not have actually heard of, and it's called projection. Projection is a theory in psychology, in which humans, we defend ourselves against our own unconscious impulses or qualities, actually both positive and negative. What we do is we deny our existence or deny whatever the existence in ourselves while attributing it to others. Now I'm going to explain this.             For example, a person who is habitually rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude. It's sort of a blame shifting. This projection is so common, quite common in everyday life. Now another way to look at it and one way that I always explain it to clients is we all walk around with projectors on our heads, just kind of imagine that looking out into the world. So as we're all walking around, we're all projecting our own stuff on to others.             Now, it shows up as we're doing things and talking to other people, as maybe it'll show up as me saying… my projection maybe somebody else is being rude when really it's me that's being rude. Or I might say, "So-and-so is being very selfish," when in fact, it's me that's being selfish. Even positive attributes. Saying someone is so beautiful. They're mirrors to us. In reality, most of the time what we are seeing in others is really a mirror of our own stuff.             So, I really want you to grasp this concept today. It's so important because it's a clue to how we are doing or what it is we need ourselves to work on inside. It especially happens when we have a lot of unprocessed emotions that we don't want to deal with. Maybe we are numbing ourselves so we don't have to look at whatever part that is. Eventually, though, it's going to show up. It may show up as anger projected on to someone else. Usually, it's projected on to those people closest to us, our loved ones, the people we don't want to hurt.             It's also important so that before we go on blaming others for being a certain way or complaining about so-and-so being so selfish, we really need to look within. We often have a bunch of uncomfortable, even embarrassing and frustrating, emotions that we do not want to deal with. According to famous psychologist Sigmund Freud — I'm sure you've all heard of Sigmund — these emotions are projected on to other people so that other people become our carriers of our own perceived flaws. Now fortunately or unfortunately for us, this form of emotional displacement makes it easier to live with ourselves because that way everyone else is responsible for our misery, not us. We are the victim or the good and righteous person.             Now, there is no end to the types of feelings we can project on to others, but here are some of the five most common that I see often. One of them is insecurity. We feel insecure about some aspect of ourselves, especially our body images. We often project on to others those same insecurities. For example, we can say, "He or she is so ugly." In reality, it's you that thinks you yourself are ugly or whatever it is you're calling the other person. You're probably just insecure about yourself. People with low self-esteem tend to put others down, because in reality, that's how they feel about themselves. You can always spot a bully by this because bullies are always putting other people down. But really it's that's how they feel about themselves.             Another example is attraction to someone other than your partner. Now this is actually quite common. When someone is attracted to a third person, they feel inside it's not acceptable to be attracted to someone else. Instead, they blame their spouse for cheating and it's their way of not dealing with their own feelings. A third example is body image issues. He or she is ugly or overweight. In reality — we've talked about this, the insecurity earlier — it's that whatever it is you're calling the other person, you're probably just insecure about your own image issues yourself. That's how we feel about ourselves.             Another one is disliking someone. “He or she doesn't like me.” If you dislike someone, say, for example, Sally and I aren't willing to admit it, you might try to convince yourself that Sally doesn't like you. But in reality, it's you that doesn't like Sally, but you're unwilling to admit your own feelings. Another example is anger. Of course, this is a huge feeling that is often projected on to others. You might be steaming on the inside and instead of handling it yourself, you tell yourself, "So-and-so is such an angry person." [00:40:05]:Or you create an outburst even in a grocery store line, a story telling yourself about the teller being so angry, when really all along it was you inside of you. Again, we're walking around with these projectors on our head, “This is my image,” and projecting it on to other people. It's our unconscious or subconscious way of seeing what's happening.             I also talk about if you're noticing or being triggered by someone or something, or something that somebody does, these are important to look at it closer. We all project in our daily lives. We project to protect ourselves against emotions, against thoughts, against perceptions that we ourselves judge as being too bad or ugly, shameful, or uncontrollable.             Often these disowned aspects of ourselves, they form what I call our "shadow selves." I do want to say that if you feel as if someone is actually projecting their own stuff on to you, even though you're pretty certain that they're doing this, I want to suggest that telling them probably isn't going to do any good. You will most likely be met with some massive resistance that you think you're all that. So holding up the mirror to them, this is probably going to be a time in your life that you're going to have to lay down your own ego and your desire to be right and focus on your own stuff. Go within.             I've been the target many times for people to tell me what they think I should be doing different in my life or what they see for me. When I'm not asking for your advice, let me tell you, I'm not open to hearing your opinion. I will ask you if I want to hear what you think. Now people ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers. Until then, I recommend keeping your opinions to yourself, and this includes telling others that they're projecting on to you.             Honor that everyone is on their own journey and learning along the way is optional. [LAUGHTER] So projecting thoughts or emotions on to others allows the person to consider them and how dysfunctional they are, but without feeling the discomfort of knowing that these thoughts and emotions are their own. We can criticize the other person, distancing ourselves from our own dysfunction, and that's what projection is.             But one of the problems with projecting our stuff on to others is that it makes us think that we are so much better and superior to others. It makes me think I don't have to look at myself and my own inadequacies. I can just focus on how messed up you are. We fail to see the good in people because we are so busy picking out others' flaws, which in reality, they're our own flaws.             Secondly, projection can create a mess because we don't deal with the feelings inside of us in the first place. This is one of the main points that I teach, embracing our emotions, not being afraid of them. Welcome them, feel them, let them become a part of you. It's then and only then that they can't hurt you anymore. Until dealt with, the unprocessed emotions will always find their way to the surface sometimes even hurting others.             In order to stop projecting on to others, we must become aware of what we're doing. It's about getting quiet and being still and noticing what's happening in our lives. What are we saying to people around us? What are we saying to ourselves? When you're seeing others in a negative light, ask yourself if you're projecting. Also understand that when others are criticizing you, they may well be criticizing a projection of themselves.             Remember the visual I gave you of all of us walking around with a projector on our head shining on others our own stuff. Become aware of what you're beaming out into the world and choose to handle it yourself. Thank you for joining me this morning on The Zen Leaderand I look forward to seeing you back here next week. Have a great week!   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:44:38]

DOWNLOAD EPISODE > What does Google, Aetna, Intel, and General Mills all have in common? Mindfulness in the workplace programs! Leaders around the world are integrating mindfulness programs into their corporate cultures positively impacting bottom productivity, enhanced wellbeing and lower annual healthcare costs—all positively impacting bottom line profitability. Join me and my guest, Dr. Laurel Geise of The Geise Group while we dive deep into mindfulness in the workplace. Intro:Welcome to The Zen Leaderwith Lara Jaye. Whether you’re a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now, here’s your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:Good morning and welcome to The Zen Leader. I’m Lara Jaye. I’m so excited that you have joined me this morning. Before we get started with our amazing guest that I have here in the studio, I want to invite you next Tuesday, April 18, to an amazing event. I’m going to be speaking here, locally, in Sarasota, at 7 p.m. Again, it’s next Tuesday, April 18. I am going to be talking about “Finding Your Happy: Six Keys to Unlock Your Limitless Potential and Redesign Your Life.” I just think it’s time that we all discovered whatever that means — happy — is for us and to be able to live our bravest dream. I am going to be revealing transformational information that will help you embrace your current reality while moving into your dream life – whatever that is. We are also going to be talking about why your subconscious programming is running your life. We are going to talk about what to do with mind chatter, how to change the negative thoughts and beliefs that you have about yourself. We are going to be talking about why connecting to your body is so important. How to know you’re enough, have enough, are doing enough. Ways to love yourself without being selfish and living from your purpose when you feel stuck in the mud, and how to hear from God and trust the answers. Plus, more. It is time to live happy. It’s your time. I would love for you to join me next Tuesday, April 18. To sign up for that, please go to my website at www.larajaye.comand then go under “Work with Lara” and “Events.” It’s under “My Live Events” and I really look forward to seeing you there next Tuesday on the 18th. We are going to get right in to our show today, The Zen Leader. My guest today is Dr. Laurel Geise. Laurel is the CEO and Founder and Mindfulness at Work expert and speaker, highly sought-after business consultant, and from The Geise Group headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida, just down the road. She is recognized as an expert in Mindfulness at Work Program Deployment, which makes her uniquely qualified to bring the benefits of a mindfulness program to organizations around the world. A 30-year corporate career and I cannot wait to dive into this. Laurel, welcome. How are you today? Dr. Laurel Geise: Oh, I’m fantastic. Thank you, Lara, for having me here today in sunny Sarasota, Florida. Lara: Yes. Love it. Love it. You came down from St. Pete to hang out with me today. Dr. Laurel Geise: I did. Lara: We have the Laurel and Lara Show today. I am so excited! [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laurel Geise: I love it! Lara: I am going to start with some basic questions, just for our listeners. What is “mindfulness?” We hear about this word all the time. What is it? Dr. Laurel Geise: What is it? Yeah. I mean, you may have seen it on T.V., it’s very popular in magazines, online, social media. In fact, I think it’s one of the buzzwords of 2017, “mindfulness.” But, to your point: What is “mindfulness?” I like the definition by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who said, “Mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way. So, on purpose, in the moment, without judgment.” On purpose, in the moment, without judgment. Let’s look at each one of those. On purpose. It’s the conscious focusing of our attention where we want our attention to be. So, focusing where I want to focus, on purpose.  In the moment is being here, in the moment, right now. So, not thinking about the past, something that happened yesterday or last week or a year ago. Lara: Or what we’re going to eat when we get done here. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Lara: Or we’re going straight to we’re right here, right now. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. And not projecting into the future. When we project into the future, that creates anxiety because we’re making up what’s going to happen. It’s staying here, right now. What we find is that stress actually happens when this present moment isn’t what we want it to be. Lara: Say that again. I like that. Stress happens when? Dr. Laurel Geise: Stress happens when the present moment is not what we want it to be, which really takes us into the third part, which is “Without judgment” – really allowing ourselves to watch what’s unfolding in front of us and to just take a breath and then step into it. From a leadership perspective, this is so key because it allows us to learn how to respond to a situation instead of react to a situation, which I think is the true hallmark of a leader – that ability to respond and not react. Lara: Talk to me about the difference between those two – responding and reacting. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. We find ourselves we’re in this highly digitized world. There is so much stress. You know? We have deadlines. There’s more to do than we could ever get done in one day. We find ourselves in situations — particularly at work — where somebody might, let’s say, “push your button.” Right? Lara: Oh, yes. That never happens. Right? [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laurel Geise: Right. So, we find ourselves at work and something happens. I get triggered. Someone says something or someone acts a particular way, and I’m judging that. Through that judgment, I react. I simply react. I don’t take a moment to breathe and respond. I think it’s that moment that mindfulness helps you to be more in the present, in this present moment, right now, to just take a deep breath and to really just watch what is happening in front of you. Then choose your response. Choosing your response instead of mindlessly reacting. Let me talk about mindlessness. If we would compare mindfulness with mindlessness, it’s interesting because a Harvard study says that we spend 47% of our time in a state of mindlessness. What’s mindlessness? Have you ever driven home and you arrive home, in your driveway, and you have no idea how you drove home? Lara: Absolutely. Dr. Laurel Geise: Right? Lara: So, that’s mindlessness. Dr. Laurel Geise: That’s mindlessness. Lara: I was there. Dr. Laurel Geise: I know. I always ask, when I’m teaching. Everyone always puts their hands up because that’s a human experience that we’ve all had. So that’s mindlessness. Mindfulness, in contrast, is like grabbing that steering wheel of your attention and being aware of where your attention is. When we can be aware of where our attention is, that’s when we can choose to respond instead of react to a situation. Especially at work, but this also works at home. It also works at home with our family, with our friends. Just allowing ourselves to take that one moment, that one breath, before we choose how to respond. Lara: These big “M” words: mindfulness, mindlessness. Where does meditation fit in? Dr. Laurel Geise: The way I look at it is mindfulness is more of an informal practice; so, it’s a practice that I can integrate throughout my day at different points. Maybe I spend 5 minutes to maybe 1 minute being mindful and focusing on my surroundings. Versus meditation. I look at meditation as more of a formal practice, so I’m going to sit down for 20 or 30 minutes and practice focusing my awareness. When I compare the two, I just see meditation as more of it’s something that takes a little longer and it’s a little more formal. Does that make sense? Lara: Absolutely. Let me ask you… mindfulness. You talked about the reaction versus non-reaction, but I’ve read a lot about being mindful with eating or, like you said, with driving. So, really, it’s everything. We could be mindful with everything. Dr. Laurel Geise: Well, that’s right. In fact, your entire day could become a mindfulness practice. It’s a practice. I look at it as like a brain training. We are focusing our awareness on our breath and focusing our awareness on this moment. Typically, when I’m sharing this with people, I start with a 5-minute breath awareness practice, which is really simple. We just sit down, we close our eyes, and we begin to focus our awareness on our breath. Every time our awareness starts to shift, we just notice it and we bring our awareness back to the breath. It’s just very simple because every time we sit down to be mindful or to meditate, there’s going to be different thoughts in our mind, different sensations, different emotions. We are going to hear things in the environment. That just moves our awareness away from our breath. But every time we become aware that I’m not focused on my breath, I just very gently bring my attention back. That’s a 5-minute, formal practice that you can do in the morning, you can do that before you go to work. To your point, once we get to work, there’s a lot of ways to integrate mindfulness. You can arrive at your desk and spend 1 minute just focusing your awareness on your breath and bringing your intention, all of your awareness, and all of your focus in to starting your day. There’s also techniques — Mindful Meetings — where we start a meeting where everyone spends 1 minute, just 1 minute, focusing their awareness on their breath, being centered, being focused. Then we turn off our devices. Lara: What? Did you just say, “turn off your devices?” [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laurel Geise: I know. I said it. Lara: You perked me up. Ohmy gosh. Dr. Laurel Geise: Turn off your devices. Lara: No. Laurel, no. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes.[00:10:00]Exactly. So, turning off our laptops, our handhelds, and really bringing our attention and awareness into the moment as we have the meeting. What they have proven is high-performing companies do this and they find that the meetings are more efficient and they’re more effective, and they actually are more productive because everyone’s attention is actually in the room. Lara: Be here, now. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Lara: Then we can focus and get it done and get out, and then you can work on something else. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Exactly. That is a secret that a lot of companies are using these days to be more productive and also be more creative and more innovative because your awareness is there, focusing on … Lara: Such a simple practice. Dr. Laurel Geise: Right. Lara: I know I have been — you have been — in probably meetings that go on and on and on. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Lara: And no one gets anything done and people are just working on other things. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. When we have mindful meetings, we don’t have that. Right? We’re very efficient. We’re very focused on exactly what we’re there to cover, what we’re there to solve, what are the challenges that we want to talk about, then we bring the meeting to an end, and we give everyone in the meeting 1 minute to talk about any final thoughts. Then, the other secret is ending 5 minutes early. Have you ever had that calendar where you have back-to-back meetings at work? Well, if you end 5 or 10 minutes early, that gives people the time to get to another meeting and get focused again before they plunge back in to another problem-solving arena. Lara: Amazing, simple concepts. We are going to take a break right now and we’ll be right back on The Zen Leaderwith Dr. Laurel Geise. [BREAK] Lara: Welcome back. I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderhere on www.wsrqradio.comand you can also find me at www.larajaye.com. Here, in the studio, is Dr. Laurel Geise, “Mindfulness at Work,” CEO of all of it – The Geise Group. Dr. Laurel, what website can people find you at? Dr. Laurel Geise: People can connect with us at our website, which is www.thegeisegroup.com. Lara: Can you spell that? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. T-H-E, Geise, G-E-I-S-E, Group, G-R-O-U-P.com. www.thegeisegroup.com. Lara: Awesome. You have a little gift for them when they arrive at your website. Dr. Laurel Geise: I do. When you come to the website, I actually have an executive white paper that you can download, which actually talks about mindfulness, what are some of the challenges we’re facing, and mindfulness as a solution and the high-performing companies who are using mindfulness and what their results are. Lara: Nice. Nice. Why are mindfulness programs so popular in organizations, especially right now, in 2017? It just seems like this is a buzzword. I have a module in my own program called “Play with your M&Ms. Play with Mindfulness and Meditation.” [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laurel Geise: Oh, I love that. I love that. Lara: Isn’t that fun? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Lara: So, eat M&Ms mindfully. Right? I should have bought us some today. Dr. Laurel Geise: Oh, M&Ms. I love M&Ms. Lara: Tell me, why do you think it’s so popular right now? Is it just our stress levels? What’s going on in the world? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yeah, I think there’s a couple of things. I think, first of all, is the stress. I think that when we start looking at stress globally, the National Institute of Health has declared stress a global crisis. We specifically focus in on work and work stress. What we find is that, according to Forbes, we’re spending over $300 billion a year on the impact of stress on our organizations in lower productivity, in turnover, in absenteeism, and higher healthcare costs. When surveyed, we find that 83% of Americans say that their work is a significant source of stress in their lives. 83%. When we survey employers, 75% of employers say this is their biggest workplace issue impacting productivity and well-being. Lara: Is stress? Dr. Laurel Geise: It’s the stress. We have the employees and the employers have all come to recognize this is a challenge. This is something that we’re all looking for – new solutions. We have also found that 50% of the people who are working today say that their stress is “very high or overwhelming.” Think about that for a moment. One out of every two people that you are interacting with at work is so stressed that they probably can’t even comprehend what you’re talking to them about. Lara: Hence the reaction. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Lara: The reactionary triggers when people can’t handle the emotions of everything that’s coming up. It makes sense. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. That’s right. Then, 33% of us are suffering from insomnia. Have you ever woken up at like 2 o’clock in the morning or 3 o’clock in the morning? Lara: Oh, wait. That was last night. I mean this morning. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laurel Geise: There you go. We find that our mind is racing with all of the things that we need to get done at work. Well, again, that is the stress. Also, there was a recent study released by Harvard about second-hand stress. This is really interesting. It shows that because we have mirror neurons, that when you’re stressed, I become stressed. Think about that. When you’re working one-on-one, like when my manager is stressed, I may become stressed. Or if a team is stressed. I’m just working with this social media company right now and what’s interesting is the way that their office is laid out is just this one giant room, where everybody is working in this one giant room. What they’ve shown is that stress is an emotional contagion. It’s like the flu. So, if one person gets stressed, the entire office gets stressed, just because of the way that we’re architected. Lara: This domino effect. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Exactly. That is one reason why I believe that mindfulness is becoming so popular, because it’s not just within the office space. If you look at sports teams, the New England Patriots use mindfulness, the Cleveland Cavaliers use mindfulness, the Chicago Cubs use mindfulness. So, they are using it also to focus, to be more focused on the goal in front of them. Secondly, I think the reason it is becoming really popular is because of the research. There have been over 3,500 research studies released on the efficacy of mindfulness and well-being. You couldn’t say that 10 years ago, but now we can say that. Especially the impact of neuroscience. So, we look at such things as neuroplasticity. Lara: What is that? Dr. Laurel Geise: Neuroplasticity is our brain’s ability to rewire itself. We can do that rewiring of the brain through very simple mindfulness training and mindfulness practices. So, that 5-minute exercise that we talked about earlier. Just doing that 5 minutes a day helps you to start rewiring your brain. What that does is it helps also to build the thickness of your brain, especially in the pre-frontal cortex, where our emotional center is. That’s what really helps us with that taking a breath and responding instead of reacting in a situation. Lara: That’s amazing. The white… what did you call it? The white pages? Executive Summary you immediately … Dr. Laurel Geise: White paper. Lara: White paper. Google, Aetna, Intel, General Mills. These are big companies who are bringing mindfulness programs in. Dr. Laurel Geise: That’s right. That’s right. So, you take a look at some of these – like Google. The Google program was started by one of their engineers and it started in 2007, so 10 years ago. What they found is that by bringing mindfulness into the workplace, they felt it helped them with their mental clarity, with their focus. They felt calmer. They were more patient with their fellow team members. They also felt more resilient to stress. Aetna is another great case study. The Aetna program was actually started by Mark Bertolini, who is the CEO, who had a skiing accident and broke his neck in several places. During his course of healing, he went through all traditional therapies and then started to meditate to manage the pain. It had such an important impact on his life, he wanted to bring mindfulness and meditation to work. Now, Aetna has 50,000 employees and today 13,000 of those employees are practicing mindfulness. What they’ve seen is a 62-minute increase in productivity every week, which equates to a $3,000 increase per employee in productivity. At the same time, they’ve lowered their healthcare costs by $2,700. So, when you think about that impact, when you think about bringing mindfulness to your company, I always say, “Do the math.” Do the math. If you could have employees in your company practicing mindfulness, you could have productivity increases of up to $3,000 per employee and lower the annual healthcare costs. Lara: These numbers are huge. That’s hard to believe. Dr. Laurel Geise: That’s multi-million-dollar impact on the bottom line. Lara: Absolutely. On the bottom line. Dr. Laurel Geise: Simply by learning how to use mindfulness tools at work. So much so — Aetna is so committed to this — that they actually have a Chief Mindfulness Officer that they appointed last year. The first one in the country. Lara: Amazing! How progressive! Dr. Laurel Geise: How progressive. His responsibility is to continue to expand that program, not only within Aetna, but then to their customers, too. To their clients. I’ve seen this in other companies, too, where once they have formalized the program within their organization, they actually are offering it to their clients, too.[00:20:00]I mean, this is revolutionary. Lara: These are big companies that we’ve been talking about. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yeah. Lara: But what about smaller companies? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. I’ve worked with companies from coast to coast and from smaller companies, law firms, financial services, social media to huge companies out in Silicon Valley, to smaller advertising firms. I’ve worked with Fortune 50 down to Inc. 5000 companies. I don’t think the size of the company matters; I think it’s the commitment of the leadership to bring in these skills for their employees. Lara: Because the leaders see the benefit, besides numbers. Dr. Laurel Geise: Absolutely. Lara: I mean, obviously, the numbers tell the story. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Lara: But they can tell because their employees are less stressed and calm. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. And people are using this as – what I see is a competitive advantage in the marketplace because they now tout that they have a mindfulness program, which helps them to not only retain their current employees but it helps them to attract the best employees. Lara: I was just going to say it brings them in. It can attract them. Dr. Laurel Geise: Absolutely. Lara: Attract them and keep them. Dr. Laurel Geise: Absolutely. Lara: And they’re happy and they talk about, probably, their happiness at work, which is huge. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. I mean, you take a look at www.salesforce.com. They have 10,000 salespeople and, right now, they are training 500 salespeople at a time in mindfulness, and how to be mindful, and how to apply that mindfulness in the sales process. So, instead of what I call “selling and telling,” they’re actually listening and learning and providing those solutions to their clients. I am seeing the application of this, really, across the organization. So, not only in operations, but also creativity and working with tech firms and being more innovative. Allowing yourself to go to that space to be in the now, to be in the moment. Clear your mind and allow that greater clarity to come forward. Lara: And this message should really speak to our leaders, our listeners, that want to bring their companies to the next level, as well as at home. This can be applied anywhere, like we talked about, but especially at work. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. I love that, too. I always share that with my clients that everything you learn here, you’re going to be able to take home and share with your family and share with your friends, and it will make a difference in their lives, too. It’s amazing the shifts that can happen in a corporate culture when you start to integrate these really simple tools. Again, that’s my focus is what can we do in 1 minute? What can we do in 3 minutes? Because we’re all really busy, but I know that everyone can stop and take 1 minute before a meeting starts or take 3 minutes as they arrive at their desk. Lara: Absolutely. We’re going to take a break right now and we’ll be right back with Dr. Laurel Geise. [BREAK] Lara: Welcome back. I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader, here on www.wsrqradio.comand you can also find me at www.larajaye.com. Here, in the studio, with me is Dr. Laurel Geise, mindfulness expert at work. Dr. Laurel, welcome back. Dr. Laurel Geise: Thank you. I am so excited to be here today/ Lara: We’re having so much fun. Dr. Laurel Geise: I love it. I’m loving it. Lara: Question for you. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes? Lara: We’ve been talking a lot about all of this, but I want to know how did you get in to this? How? Why? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yeah. That’s interesting because I was a business executor for 30 years. Lara: You were in the corporate world. Dr. Laurel Geise: I was in the corporate world 30 years, working for Fortune 500 companies. I held C-level positions. I was the Chief Information Security Officer, Chief Compliance Officer. I spent at least 10 years in the boardroom, working with the executives. Lara: You did it all. Dr. Laurel Geise: I’ve done it all. I’ve been there, done that. I understand the stress. I understand the pressures. I understand the deadlines, the need to do more with less. I actually started my career – I was actually a computer programmer in Buffalo, New York. I actually invested in myself and I went to school at night to get my MBA. As I was getting my MBA, I actually met my soulmate, Bob. We had such a great life and we actually moved from Buffalo to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I worked at Fifth Third Bank. Then we moved to Dallas, Texas, where I started working at First American. Then after that, Core Logic. Life was good. We both had great careers. We were spending our weekends at the country club. We were golfing. We loved going to concerts. This one Saturday, we were getting ready to go to a concert. It was actually the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over Tour, when the Eagles were getting back together, at Texas Stadium in Dallas, Texas. Oh, my gosh. I got chills thinking about it right now. We were getting ready for the tailgate party and I remember Bob came out in the kitchen and he said, “Honey, I don’t feel well,” and I was like, “Oh, hell has frozen over. We’re going to this concert.” So, I gave him some aspirins and said, “Lay down. I know you’ll feel great in a little while.” But he came out, a little while later, and he said, “Honey, I really don’t feel well,” and he had his hands over his heart. I just knew, intuitively, he was having a heart attack. I literally put him in the car and drove him two blocks, to the hospital, pulled him in to the emergency room and he went behind those doors with the doctors. I was so scared, sitting there. We had just moved to Dallas. I really didn’t know anyone. Our families were in Ohio. I just sat there and cried. Finally, the doctor came out and said that Bob had survived the heart attack and I could go see him. I remember running up to see him in ICU. I was kneeling by his bed, holding his hand, and as I did, we were both crying. These were tears of gratitude, tears of joy, because we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. The next morning, the doctor came in and he said, “Well, I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is that Bob survived the heart attack with very little damage to his heart.” The bad news is that they had found a tumor about the size of a baseball in his lung and that he had lung cancer and he had 6 months to live. Despite all of the surgeries, the chemotherapy, the radiation, then the experimental chemotherapy… I’ll never forget that day when I walked in the hospital, 6 months later, and his doctor met me at the door and said that he only had a few hours to live. He had slipped into a coma. I could remember how I could smell that antiseptic smell of the hospital, and as I walked in the room, I could hear the beeping of the machines and I could see him laying on the bed. As I walked towards the bed, I remember I could taste that acid coming up in the back of my throat. As I knelt down next to the bed and I held his hand, that was the only time he never held my hand back. After he died, I went into a really deep depression. This depression, it lasted month after month until it became years. There was this one evening, I remember, where I was literally curled up on the bathroom floor and just crying out to God saying, “I need help because I can’t go on. I just can’t go on.” In that moment, I heard a word and the word was “meditation.” I have to tell you, I didn’t even know what meditation was at that point in time. But, through a series of synchronistic events, I met Dr. Deepak Chopra, who is like the world’s leading meditation instructor, and I learned how to meditate. As I integrated that meditation practice into my day, I healed myself. So, not only emotionally and physically, but also spiritually. As I became well, I just knew that I wanted to share this with other people, so I became an instructor. So, here I am, in the corporate world, where I’m Monday to Friday. Lara: You were at the top of your game, in every way. You and your husband. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yeah. Lara: Then life happens. Dr. Laurel Geise: Life happened. Exactly. Lara: And that’s what I think a lot of our listeners can so relate to is they have it all, but life is happening. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Lara: And it’s painful. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Lara: And they don’t know where to go. Dr. Laurel Geise: And there is a greater gift in that. You know? And now, as I look back, I see the gift that Bob was in my life and I see the gift that we shared a great love. He also took me down the path of learning how to meditate, and that changed my life. Then I started teaching weekend seminars and I was working with people who had terminal illness in their family, so to help them — not only the patient, but the family — to deal with that stress and with that trauma. Then that really parlayed into me starting to speak at conferences about meditation and mindfulness. Over the past 20 years, I’ve taught tens of thousands of people the benefits of mindfulness and how to bring it into their life. Lara: I am blown away, Laurel, at your story. I’m kind of speechless right now.  Last night, I saw this movie and it must have been for today, Collateral Beauty. [00:30:00]I don’t know if you’ve seen that, the new movie with Will Smith. Dr. Laurel Geise: Will Smith. Yeah. Lara: Yeah. It reminds me of this and the pain that he has of losing his daughter, and they were trying to find the collateral beauty. Sometimes you don’t find it until later. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Lara: And the pain in the beauty of the pain. Dr. Laurel Geise: And the beauty of discovering your bigger “Why?” That’s what happened for me. I discovered my bigger “Why?” and that bigger “Why?” was I’m in the corporate world and I led a very compartmentalized life, where there was the corporate world, and then there was the teaching the mindfulness and meditation. Lara: So, how did you finally make that shift? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Several years ago, it just… I was watching what was going on at work. I was working with the largest financial institutions in the world. I was managing teams in North America, Europe, India, Australia. I was seeing the stress on myself, but I was also seeing the stress on the people I worked with and our clients. It hit me one day. I had been in the corporate world for 30 years and I had a very successful career, but I felt there was more. I felt there was more for me to do. A bigger “Why?” It came to me one day: “Your ‘Why?’ is to bring mindfulness into the corporate environment, to bring these tools and these strategies and these techniques into organizations so that we can help make people less stressed. So we can handle more. So we can enhance our well-being. So we can be more productive. So, work is a place we want to jump out of bed and run to work.” Lara: To run to… and it should be that way. Dr. Laurel Geise: Right. Lara: Jump out of bed and be excited. Be excited. Dr. Laurel Geise: Absolutely. And, dare I say it, to be happy. Lara: Oh, my gosh. That word. I have chills. Dr. Laurel Geise: I know. Stop, stop. [LAUGHTER] Lara: No, we can’t be happy at work. Who are you kidding? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yeah. Lara: So, I’m going to tell the story. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Lara: Well, I want you to tell the story, but I want to remind you when I met you. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Lara: Laurel and I met at a group called “Speaking Empire,” in St. Petersburg/Tampa, and Laurel told the story of working with Speaking Empire and looking out the window. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yeah. Lara and I met at a professional speaking event because we’re both professional speakers. After I had left my job, after I retired, I was starting something new. Really, a lot of growth. I had not been an entrepreneur before, starting your own business. I went to Speaking Empire for speaking training. Because if I’m out there speaking, I want to be the best speaker that I can be. So, I went to meet them at their offices in St. Petersburg. We were sitting in their boardroom. I looked out the window and, as I looked out the window, I could literally see the tower where I used to work, in the corner office, there on the 16thfloor, and looking back at me, I’m across the street, in this other building. I remember thinking, “That’s my past. That’s my past, all of that corporate experience. Now I’m here, in this office, and I’m being trained to be the best speaker so that I can empower people in organizations.” I could see Dave’s and Dustin’s smiling faces looking at me and supporting me in that transition, and I just cried because it was so overwhelming. We always say we can look back to connect the dots so we can move forward. It was one of those moments where I could actually look back in my life and I understood everything. I understood every experience I had been through and I understood that taking this step, I could impact even more people than I could within that large corporation. Now we can really impact millions of people by bringing them mindfulness at work. Lara: Amazing story. Thank you, Laurel. We’ve got one more segment with her, but we’re going to take a break right now and we’ll be right back on The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara: I’m Lara Jaye. Welcome back on The Zen Leader.Here, in the studio, is Dr. Laurel Geise. Dr. Laurel, what website, again, can they find you at? Dr. Laurel Geise: Our website is www.thegeisegroup.com. If you go there, we have a free executive white paper that you can download and share with the leadership in your company and your teams about the benefits of bringing mindfulness to your organization. Lara: Is that how you would recommend, maybe if a listener wanted you to come speak, that they should maybe download your white paper and maybe take it to someone there? Dr. Laurel Geise: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that’s what starts the process. Then, typically, one of our team members will come in and we will speak for maybe 2 to 3 hours, like a half a day. So, I’ll usually use that as an introduction either to leadership teams, we’ve spoken to women’s groups within organizations, to board groups within organizations, to specialized teams and get people excited about mindfulness and what it can do for them and also for the organization. Then we find that, typically, we’ll work with the organization. It’s great to have the training, but to be successful, to really see the sustainable results, what I have found in my experience is that you really need to have a formal program. A formal mindfulness program where you have training classes, where you communicate about it, where you provide ongoing tools and support. That’s our expertise – not only the training, but helping companies to design and deploy the program that works for their environment. Lara: Would these be like weekly training of some sort? It could look like that or something else? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yeah. Sure. Typically, what we see for our teams is a weekly training. Again, what we do is we align the goals of the Mindfulness program with the goals of the organization. Is it employee well-being? Is it lowering healthcare costs? Is it increasing productivity? More creativity? More innovation? What are the goals? We align those. Then, typically what you’ll see is a 6- to 8-week program for the employees. So, maybe an hour a week, maybe 75 minutes a week. At the same time, what I’ve also seen is for the leadership teams, it’s typically a day training, maybe two. So it could be around an annual sales meeting, an annual leadership meeting, where we just take a day out and we train all of the leaders on mindfulness and the tools. That way, they can support their teams. You can see how that could be successful where you have the teams learning it and you have the leadership learning it at the same time. Lara: So, you’re kind of training the trainer, in some ways. Dr. Laurel Geise: That’s exactly right. Because when we work with an organization, we identify a Mindfulness Program Manager. Let me say, typically, this is like a part-time position, but it has never failed. With every organization I work with, there is always someone who is passionate about mindfulness or meditation or employee well-being, and that person steps in as a part-time position to support this and, over time, as the program matures, then you could have a full-time person supporting this. Lara: Fabulous. What are the personal, professional, and team impact of mindfulness? Dr. Laurel Geise: I think if we look at this personally, if we practice mindfulness, it helps us to handle our stress better, more resilience. We’re less anxious. And, as we talked about earlier, helping to regulate the emotions – the responding instead of reacting. Professionally, I think having more resilience, being able to respond, because goals change, projects change. We are always course correcting. Can I still stay on task with all of those changes? Also, better decision-making because I’m more focused. Since I’m more focused, I have more clarity and I have better time management because I do have that focus. With teams, what we find is there’s more enhanced ability to listen. We use mindfulness techniques like mindful listening and mindful conversation that helps us to not only actually listen to each other, but also, as we’re going through the day, to have a better relationship with our other team members. What this does is it helps to enhance the team performance and then it ultimately enhances performance across the organization. Lara: You mentioned mindful listening and that’s one of your big tools that you use at work. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Lara: Explain that a little bit more to me. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Mindful listening is, again, very simple, but it’s actually listening to someone – and we typically do these exercises for 3 minutes. So, for 3 minutes, two people would sit down, or even in a group, but you would listen to the person speaking for 3 minutes, without interrupting them, and actually being in the moment and listening to what they’re saying. Because what I have found, in my experience, is that when we are talking with someone, we’re not even listening to them. We’re thinking about what happened yesterday, what I have to do next, and there’s really no communication. Lara: Taking the dog out. Did I get the dishes done? Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Lara: It’s like our To-Do List. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. I have to pick up the dry cleaning. I’ve got this report due tomorrow. I have to do this. I find that, as I’m teaching, [00:40:00]that’s one of the most impactful exercises that we do as a group. Then, what you do is you switch and you have the other person actually listen for 3 minutes. Then we go in to a conversation, a meta conversation, about what was happening. What were you noticing? What happens is you begin to notice what you’re noticing with your awareness. You become aware that… and I remember the first time this happened to me. I was talking to a colleague of mine at work and I was thinking about some project, and I became aware that I wasn’t even listening to my colleague. As she was talking, I was thinking about something else. Lara: We become aware that we’re not aware. Dr. Laurel Geise: You become aware that you’re not aware. Then it takes us back to where we’re spending 47% of our time in that state of mindlessness. Then statistics say that 70% of our employees are not engaged. Well, it’s no wonder that we’re having some challenges with productivity because we’re not focused and we’re not listening. Lara: We’re out of it. We’re just in our own little zone. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Lara: Always. A lot of people are always thinking about themselves anyway and what’s going on, versus the other person and what they’re trying to communicate. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Yes. Lara: Hence we interrupt or we try to get them to the next point. That kind of thing. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes, exactly, because we have an agenda in our mind. Right? So, typically, we’re not actually listening. Imagine what it would feel like if you actually listened to someone for 3 minutes. Just listen and allowed that person to be heard. It’s very simple, but the impact is transformational. Lara: That’s amazing. You talked about mindful listening is an amazing tool at work. Mindful meetings. I think you briefly mentioned that at the beginning. Are there any other tools that you teach to use at work that maybe our listeners could take with them? Dr. Laurel Geise: Yeah. I think another one is just the next time you get a cup of coffee or a cup of tea to just spend a few moments, as you’re getting the coffee or tea, and bringing your five senses into the experience. So, feeling how warm that cup of coffee is and smelling the aroma, and actually tasting it as you’re taking the sip. Because what I have found is that when you can bring the five senses in to the moment, it will bring your awareness into the now. When we connect with the five senses, it brings us into this moment. That’s a very simple way to focus on being here, now. Lara: And to be mindful in all that we do, everywhere we’re at. Dr. Laurel Geise: Exactly. Exactly. Lara: That’s a beautiful way: Bring the five senses. Dr. Laurel Geise: Into the moment. Yes. Lara: Into the moment. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. And another tool that I teach is literally the standing in line. How many times during the day have you found yourself standing in line? Well, you can practice mindfulness while standing in line. Instead of becoming irritated that you’re in a line and you’re not moving quickly enough, just take a deep breath and focus your awareness on your breath. Just do that for a moment or two and watch how much that will help to calm you down, lessen the stress, lessen the anxiety. Lara: Absolutely. Dr. Laurel Geise: Simple tools that take a minute or two but can have an incredibly profound impact on your day. Lara: That what I… with clients that I work with, these sound like such simple tools. Hard to do, sometimes, just because we don’t want to take the time. Dr. Laurel Geise: That’s right. That is exactly right because we think we don’t have enough time, and that’s a lot of the objection I hear. “Well, it’s going to take too much time,” or “It’s going to cost too much money to do this,” or “I can’t do this.” Well, I can tell you it works for everybody. We’ve proven that. And it only takes a moment or two. Maybe a minute or two. And we all have a minute or two. I believe once you can engage in that minute or 2 or even that 5-minute breath awareness technique for 5 minutes, once you feel the change in your mind, in your body, feel yourself relaxing, you’re going to want to do this more. It just perpetuates. Imagine if you have a team of people doing that. Then imagine if your entire company is actually being mindful several times a day. I have clients where they pick a time of day where everybody is mindful for 5 minutes. I’ve seen other clients – back to the www.salesforce.com. What I love about them is they’re building a 61-story tower in downtown San Francisco, at their headquarters, and on every floor they have a “Mindful Zone.” So they actually have a space within the business, on every floor, where people can go just for 5 minutes, just to be mindful and practice these tools. Lara: If these big companies are doing this, our smaller companies, anywhere, can do this. Dr. Laurel Geise: Yes. Absolutely. Lara: This proves that it is worth it. Dr. Laurel Geise: Absolutely. That is really why I’m here, is to help companies – big companies, small companies, new companies, old companies. It doesn’t matter. It’s all about getting the message out and helping you to bring mindfulness into your organization. Lara: Dr. Laurel, amazing. Thank you so much for being in the studio with me today. Dr. Laurel Geise: Oh, thank you for the invitation. I have had such a great time and I look forward to talking with everyone. I would say check out our website and also you can call our office at 727-501-6675, and let’s schedule a strategy call to see how we can help you to bring mindfulness into your organization. Lara: Super. It’s The Geise Group. Dr. Laurel Geise: www.thegeisegroup.com. Lara: www.thegeisegroup.com. Thank you so much, Dr. Laurel. Dr. Laurel Geise: Thank you, Lara. Lara: Listeners, have a great weekend.   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:45:55]

DOWNLOAD EPISODE > Mindfulness, Food & Body Image are the subject of todays Zen Leader Podcast. Lily Myers, psychotherapist and instructor at the Sarasota Mindful Institute talk about this popular subject.    Intro:Welcome to The Zen Leaderwith Lara Jaye. Whether you’re a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now, here’s your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:Welcome to The Zen Leader. I’m your host, Lara Jaye, international best-selling author, speaker, and spiritual mentor. Through my coaching programs and radio show, I help you courageously transform your disconnected, unbalanced life into a joy-filled and meaningful one. Imagine living a life full of ease, vibrant health, thriving relationships, and purposeful work without sacrificing yourself to achieve it. Whether you’re a leader at home or in the boardroom, I help you navigate the ups and downs of life, giving you clarity, confidence, and connection you so desire. Let me ask you: Have you ever struggled with food or your body image? My guest today, a local psychotherapist, has a rich blend of professional experience and prior work as a hospice bereavement counselor, career counselor, corporate human relations trainer, Hatha Yoga teacher, and a meditation instructor. Her prominent aspect of her approach to individual therapy is integrating this mindfulness in psychotherapy. She helps her clients develop their inner resources to self-regulate their thoughts and feelings, as well as calm themselves and be less reactive to life’s circumstances. She helps you connect with your authentic self, experience peace and well-being. Learn how to reduce stress — who doesn’t need that? — and provide a safe and respectful approach to communicating with your own partner through mindfulness-based psychotherapy and Imago therapy. If you’ve ever battled with eating too much, too little, eating too fast, junk food, or eating to fill emotional needs, you are going to devour this next hour. Anyway, please welcome my amazing guest, Lily Myers. Lily, welcome to the studio. How are you today? Lily Myers: I am fine, Lara. Thank you very much. Lara: Good. I am so excited to have you here, finally. Yay! Lily: Yes. Yes, it’s so good to meet you, finally. Lara: Yes. Yes. Lily: Yeah. Lara: So, we are going to have a blast, coming up here over the next hour. Lily, you teach a very unique class at the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute and it’s about mindfulness food and body image. So many of us struggle with that. Tell me just a little bit about this class, to begin. Lily: Okay. It’s a 6-week class, meets weekly, 1.5 hours each time. We begin with mindful eating. That is really paying attention, really becoming aware of what is it that we’re eating, and I guess just everything about eating the food — it’s tasting the food — and that may sound like it’s obviously, but we don’t always taste our food. Sometimes we eat so fast that we’re not aware even of what we’re putting in our bodies. It’s really engaging all of the senses – tasting the food, smelling the food, looking at the food, really seeing it. Even hearing the food. Lara: How do I hear the food? I want to know. Lily: [LAUGHTER]Well, you hear the food if it’s crunchy. Some food is pretty silent. Lara: That’s true. You’re right. Crunchy. There you go. Lily: Yeah, crunchy. Like potato chips. Lara: Potato chips. So, it’s bringing these five senses in to something. Lily: That’s right. Well, bringing it all into awareness, but there’s also a sixth sense in Buddhist philosophy, which is the mind. The mind is actually the sixth sense. It’s also what we think about the food, too. Lara: What would be an example? What would I think about the food? Lily: Well, you might think “I really like this food,” or you might think “I’ve got to have more of it,” and that might override what the stomach is telling you, which is, “I’m full right now.” Lara: Or we can even… would “appreciation” also be another way to think about it? Lily: Absolutely. Absolutely. “I really appreciate this food because it is so tasty,” or “I appreciate it because it’s healthy for me and it’s so wonderful that I’m being able to nourish my body in this way.” Lara: It sounds so amazing and beautiful. Why does mindful eating… why is that even important? Why would I want to do this? Lily: I think you’d want to do it for several reasons: One is to have a healthier lifestyle, to really be able to make choices — conscious choices — about what am I eating and what am I putting in my body? You know that adage, “We are what we eat.” You know? It’s eating good quality food or maybe separating that out from other kinds of food. There is research that’s being done now that is coming out and saying people who eat mindfully, of course they eat slower, and when you eat slower, you get full. You have a sense of fullness faster, so you then tend to eat less. That’s another reason you might want to practice mindful eating – to eat less. And to also be able to say, “No,” if you know you’re already full. Lara: Wonderful. I do an experiment with my gals, when I do workshops on mindfulness, the mindfulness piece. I give everyone one M&M and we bring in all the senses, like you talked about. Lily: Yeah. Lara: And most… I don’t think any of them have ever just eaten one M&M and sucked on one M&M, and how long it takes to actually have it melt in your mouth. Lily: Mm-hmm. Lara: It feels amazing. The satisfaction factor of it is so, so amazing, because it lasts so much longer. Lily: Yes. I think the very first mindful eating that was done, or that became well-known, was when Jon Kabat-Zinn did it in the program he developed, which is really the program that all Mindful programs are based on – so, even the Mindful Eating program. His was called Mindfulness-Base Stress Reduction.In his very first class, he passes out raisins to people. So, you eat one raisin or maybe two raisins, but you don’t eat handfuls of them. Lara: And we’re used to eating handfuls. Lily: Exactly. Lara: It’s like dump all the M&Ms, dump the raisins, peanuts, and we shove them all in our mouth, and we go through drive-throughs fast, fast, fast. So, Jon uses raisins. Lily: Yes. Lara: You get that sweet and you get to taste all of it. Lily: You do. You do. I use a raisin, usually. You could use lots of things. You could use dried cranberries, craisins… Lara: I use M&Ms. I say bring on the chocolate. Lily: [LAUGHTER] Lara: Melt in my mouth. Lily: Yes. Lara: It’s all good. All of it is good. The one thing I find when I’m really conscious of mindful eating is that if I had, which I don’t think I’ve seen a Twinkie in a long time, but if I had one in front of me versus something else, if you really taste it, they don’t really taste that good. They’re not… I mean taste-wise compared to maybe an amazing salad with avocado. Maybe it’s my taste buds have changed. I don’t know. But I can’t really think about wanting to savor a Twinkie. I think that when we are truly mindfully eating and bringing in all the senses, our body just naturally craves — wouldn’t you say it craves — the healthier foods sometimes? Lily: Well, I would say that. I don’t know if everybody would agree with us, Lara. [LAUGHTER] Lara: Right. That’s true. All right, you’re right, Lily. Lily: But I’m in agreement with you there. Lara: Okay, good. Lily: Absolutely. Lara: Yeah? Lily: Yeah. Lara: It just depends. Lily: Yeah. Lara: Talk to me a little bit more about the body image portion of the class. I’ve struggled over the years and I know many of our listeners deal with the body image, and the hatred that I personally had for myself. Talk to me about that piece. Lily: Well, you mentioned the hatred and that’s one of the things that has really struck me over the years of doing this program is how many — not all, but many — women really struggle with how they feel about their bodies. The hatred is there. It’s huge. It’s a challenging part of the program because it’s really about looking at it in a mindful way and it can be hard to do for women. I do some personal work in the program – so, some journaling. Sometimes it’s hard for women to talk about it and that, by the way, one of the reasons why I offer the program to women only is this body image portion. Lara: So, they feel safe. Lily: They feel safe and there’s a trust factor that’s very important so they can share as much or as little as they feel comfortable sharing in the group. Sometimes it’s talking in the larger groups, sometimes it’s really talking one-on-one with one other participant, and sometimes it’s doing individual journaling, but it’s really about helping them come to a place of self-acceptance. That can be hard for people. [00:10:00]They often think it means they’re giving up on themselves. I really stress that self-acceptance is not giving up; it’s really a starting point. It’s really saying, “This is where it is right now.” Lara: That’s beautiful. We have to love ourselves right here, where we’re at, whatever size we are, however we look, first. Lily: Right. Yes. Lara: Before anything can shift, isn’t it? Lily: Right. This is the way it is right now. This is the starting point; it’s not the ending point. It’s the starting point. Lara: We may not like it, but… Lily: Right. Lara: That’s very difficult. We are going to take a break right now. We’ll be right back with Lily Myers and we are going to continue this amazing conversation about mindfulness food and body image. We’ll be right back. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I am Lara Jaye, with The Zen Leader, and you can find me here at www.wsrqadio.comor www.larajaye.com. Here, in the studio with me, is Lily Myers from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. Welcome back, Lily. Lily: Thank you, Lara. Lara: Lily, what website can we find you at? Lily: Thewww.sarasotamindfulness.orgwould be Sarasota Mindfulness Institute’s website, then I have a website, which is www.lilymyerstherapy.com. Lara: Can you spell that? Is it L-I-L-Y? Lily: Yes. It’s L-I-L-Y M-Y-E-R-S. Lara: Fabulous. Thanks, Lily. Lily: www.lilymyerstherapy.com. Lara: www.lilymyerstherapy.com. Thank you. Right before break, Lily, we were talking about body image and I had mentioned the hatred. So many women, like we talked about, have this disconnect with their body. I call it a disconnect. For years, I said I hated myself. That’s such a strong word, but I really felt that way. I have one story. I was in high school and I used to have this beautiful dresser with the big, tall mirror, and I had it covered in cardboard because I didn’t want to look at myself. Lily: Wow. Lara: I hated myself. I’m 5’6”, at the time, I probably weighed 120, and I thought I was an elephant. I was going to the prom that night and I remember taking down the cardboard just so I can see that I looked okay, then I put the cardboard back up. At that time, I was in high school. Then you grow with that and the deep roots of not… and then here, you finally… maybe people start working with you later on. It can be even more engrained. Lily: Mm-hmm. Lara: The disconnect to their body and the hatred. Is it possible to even turn it around? Lily: Mm-hmm. It is possible to turn it around. I think your story is such a poignant one, that it is so hard for some women to accept how they look. Some of it, certainly, comes from cultural elements – what we’re told beauty is and that it’s not… Lara: I thought it was a size. I thought it was the size I was. Lily: That’s right. That’s right. Lara: You mean it’s not? [LAUGHTER] Lily: No. No. It’s like everyone has beauty. Everyone does. So, yes. I think to move past that, it involves really looking at your conditioning and really looking at the belief systems that are really held in place that keep you in that “I’m not good enough.” Really. Isn’t it? Lara: Yes. Lily: “The way I look is not good enough.” Lara: I’m not good enough. What I do isn’t good enough. It was that prevailing… you probably don’t know this. Anyway, my book is More Than Enough, because I didn’t think I ever was. I started to meditate, and that was the one thing that I started to do was to meditate. But the more hatred I put on myself, the sicker I got. Lily: Sure. Lara: Like organs started to not fail, I was gaining weight. Because I hated myself, I became disconnected to my body, and of course, it’s just giving me what I am thinking. Right? Lily: Right. Lara: It’s giving me back… so I had to switch that. That’s really what you do is you help people in the 6-week class switch it. Lily: That’s right. And meditation can really help that process. When you were just saying that, it reminded me of something that Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Buddhist meditation teacher, something that he talks about is you’re always watering seeds and there are all kinds of seeds inside of us, so it depends. Are you watering the seeds of suffering? Are you watering the seeds of negativity? Or are you watering the seeds of joy? Are you watering the seeds of ease and happiness? We have that choice. Lara: We do. I didn’t think I had the choice. All these thoughts come in our head and I did not know that I get to choose. Lily: Yes. We often think that our thoughts are outside of our control. As our thoughts come and go, that is outside of our control; however, there are some pieces of that, that we can control. We can make choices when we are aware of a thought that comes in. Lara: What I would do, as thoughts would come in, I would decide. I knew that they, scientifically, produced a chemical reaction in my body. So, the worse I thought about myself, the worse my body felt, of course. I thought, “Well, if I could switch that, switch what I thought, then maybe my body would change,” and it — honestly — did. Obviously, it did not happen overnight. It takes a long time. Lily: Right. Lara: But it worked. It was the mindfulness, going in to the mind. Lily: I think what can happen so often when there is the lack of acceptance of who we are and how our body is, is we set up the shame-based cycle where we overeat, we eat compulsively, and then we beat ourselves up for doing that. We think we can’t stop ourselves when we’re in one of those episodes. Afterwards, we beat ourselves up mercilessly. Then, to punish ourselves even more, we go on this very restrictive diet. That may work for a short amount of time, but then we want to break out of it. You know? So, when we break free, then we go right back in to the binge eating. Lara: It’s a vicious cycle. Lily: And there’s that vicious cycle and it’s very shame-based. Lara: It is. We make ourselves feel so bad. Yes. I didn’t need anyone to say anything mean to me. I did it to my own head, to myself. Right? Lily: That’s right. That’s right. You knew what to do. Lara: I was my own worst enemy. Lily: Yes. Yes. Lara: I still have to. But this is… I love this topic, obviously. That’s why I’ve been bugging you for 4 months to have you on… Lily: [LAUGHTER] Lara: …when I saw your class at the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute because I want listeners, I want people – and there are so many millions of people who struggle with this. Lily: Yes. Lara: With the food, not being able to control it, and the body image. And they may be a size 2 and still think they’re fat. Lily: That’s true. Lara: It doesn’t matter. Or maybe they’ve lost weight, but can’t see the beauty. They can’t see that. People will compliment me all the time and I couldn’t accept the compliments. I couldn’t hear anything people said because I had my own beliefs. Lily: Yes. Lara: The Mindfulness class kind of helps break down those beliefs, would you say? Lily: Yes. Absolutely. It helps us see clearly that that even is what we are believing because we often don’t know. We don’t have that awareness. Lara: Because we’re running through life so fast. Lily: Yeah, and because we all have self-talk. The other piece is that we tend to believe everything our thoughts tell us, and thoughts are not… Lara: Yes! You mean I don’t have to believe all of that? Lily: Well, thoughts are not facts. Sometimes our thought is truthful, but it’s not always. It’s an opinion. It’s a judgment. Lara: But who is that opinion and judgment? I need them gone. [LAUGHTER] Lily: [CHUCKLE] The negative ones need to go. And, of course, the first step is recognizing, “Oh. Oh, my God. Look at what I’m telling myself.” You know? Lara: Yes. Lily: Look at that thought. Wow. And, you’re right. You often are doing it to yourself. You don’t need anybody else. Lara: So, we get to decide, as we hear these thoughts, whether it’s true or not. Lily: Yes. Lara: And to keep it. Lily: Yes. Yes. And there is such a thing as talking back to those thoughts, too. Lara: Ooh, what can I say? Lily: “I’m not going to believe you anymore. Stop.” You know? Just, “Stop.” Lara: I can say that? Lily: You can. Lara: Does it work? Lily: Sure. Absolutely. It’s empowering yourself. Yeah. Lara: That’s amazing. Wonderful, Lily. Lily: Yeah. Lara: Tell me, Week 1. First of all, this amazing 6-week class begins, I believe, did you say May 15th? Lily: May 15th. Yes. Lara: To sign up, they can sign up online or call the Mindfulness Institute. Correct? Lily: No. They would actually call me or they would email me. Lara: Okay. Go ahead and give that information out. [00:20:00] Lily: It’s[email protected]or they can call me at 603-924-2216. Lara: And this is for women only. Lily: Yes. Lara: A 6-week Mindfulness Food and Body Image class beginning May 15th, here in Sarasota. Lily: Yes. Lara: You said it’s an hour and a half, once a week. Lily: Yes. For 6 weeks. Lara: For 6 weeks. Women only. Lily: Yes. Lara: I love it. Lily: Yes. Lara: Talk to me about Week 1. Lily: Week 1 is getting to know each other. We do our first mindful eating exercise in that, which is the raisin. Lara: The raisin! Lily: Which we’ve talked about a little bit already. Lara: Maybe you should take M&Ms, listeners. No, just kidding. Lily: [LAUGHTER] Yes. Lara: Thank you. I’m just kidding. Still raisins. Lily: It’s giving an overview of what the class is and then really talking to women, having them tell a little bit of why they’re coming to the program, what’s going on in their life, what are they most interested in getting out of the program, and then going right in to that first mindful eating exercise. Then, at the end of the class, I usually also do some sitting meditation as well. So, we probably start with a 5-minute or a 10-minute sitting meditation that ends the class. Lara: From the first class, what’s the biggest surprise from that raisin? Lily: Oh, gosh. There’s lots of different… I mean, sometimes people realize they don’t like raisins. Lara: Okay. Lily: For a lot of people, it’s hard to eat it so slowly. For some people, it’s the taste of the raisin. It’s like, “Oh, my God. You know, I’ve never eaten just raisins. I eat them in trail mix or I eat them in cereal or I eat them in oatmeal cookies.” “Oh, this is what a raisin tasted like. I didn’t know it was so sweet.” So, there are lots of different experiences around it. Lara: Beautiful. Thank you, Lily. Lily: Yeah. Lara: We are going to take a quick break and we’ll be right back with Lily Myers from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderand you can find me here at www.wsrqradio.com. Here, in the studio, is Lily Myers from the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. We are talking today about this great class she has coming up in May on Mindfulness Food and Body Image. So many of us struggle with this, Lily, and just before break we were talking about what happens in Week 1. It’s a 6-week class. What do you do in Week 2? Lily: Well, I should say at the end of the first class, there’s a mindfulness activity for people to do during the week. There’s usually, actually, a couple of activities. One of them is to eat a piece of fruit, a whole piece of fruit, mindfully, sometime during the week. They can take an apple, an orange, whatever it is, and to eat that mindfully. Another activity is to look at pleasant eating experiences. I give them a form that they fill out. What I suggest is, at the end of each day, they kind of review what they’ve eaten and see what was pleasant. Maybe that piece of fruit. Maybe that was a very pleasant experience. Well, what made it pleasant? What were the physical body sensations at the time they were eating it? What kind of thoughts were they having? What kind of feelings were they experiencing? Then what happens when they think about it again? So, when we come back to the second class, that’s what we start with talking about. We’ll usually start with a quieting, centering, calming meditation and then we’ll move in to: What was the week like for you? How was it, eating a piece of fruit, mindfully? Sometimes I will break them up into smaller groups, maybe two or three people, and they will talk about their pleasant eating experiences. Then we’ll move on in the class, and in that class, we do another mindful eating meditation. Usually it’s some kind of fruit. It may be a slice of orange or one slice of apple. In that meditation, it’s more looking at how their senses are engaged as they are eating this piece of fruit. Lara: Amazing. Are any of them, when they come back, Week 2, and they’re talking about their experience of the piece of fruit, surprised at anything? Are they frustrated how long it takes to eat? I get frustrated because, time-wise, I’m in a hurry and I don’t want to spend the time. Especially if I have just spent an hour cooking a fabulous meal, which I do like to cook it, but then I am running out of time to eat it. Lily: I would say that people have a wide variety of experiences around this. Some people wait until the very last minute and they do it the night before, or even the afternoon of, saying, “Oh, my gosh. I have got to do it.” [LAUGHTER] Lara: They put it off. “I’ve got to do my homework.” Lily: Right. Lara: “I’m in trouble.” Lily: Exactly. Other people take to it right away and they start changing the kinds of foods that they eat. Lara: It just depends if they’re ready or not. Lily: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think there is a big readiness factor. Lara: Definitely. Lily: Yeah. Lara: Do you qualify the people when they call? Lily: Yes. Lara: Okay. So, you make sure? Lily: Yes. I usually do either talk to them by phone… sometimes we only have an email conversation, but usually I will ask them what are they looking for or what’s going on for them right at this particular point in their life that’s making them decide that they want to take this class. Lara: Sure. Week 2, what is the theme pretty much on Week 2? Lily: I would say Week 2 is still around Mindful Eating. The other component of it is looking at the different kinds of hunger that we have. We have stomach hunger – we haven’t eaten for a while and our stomach starts growling and saying, “Okay. I’m really hungry here.” Sometimes we’re so hungry that it’s a cellular hunger, where our entire body is saying, “Ugh, feed me.” Lara: Is that maybe the blood sugar drop, too? Lily: Could be. Lara: Okay. Lily: Yes. Yes. Then you’ve also got maybe you’re not that hungry, but we’ve probably all had the experience of we walk by a bakery or walk in to a bakery and it’s like, “Ooh.” Lara: You smell that. “I’ve got to have it now.” Lily: Yes. And you can almost taste it. So all of the senses get engaged. Then you’ve got mind hunger, where your mind convinces you that you’ve got to have that to eat, and it can override the stomach hunger. You’ve also got heart hunger. Lara: I was going to say that’s where most of mine is. I need a hug is what I really need. Lily: “I’m lonely. How can I feel connected? Oh, I’ll go have a piece of cake.” Something like that. Lara: Yeah. Then here comes the guilt. Lily: Yeah. Lara: And then the vicious cycle comes on and on. Lily: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Lara: Okay. So, that was Week 2. Week 3? What’s your theme for Week 3? Lily: Week 3 starts moving… well, in Week 2, again, I’ve got to go back to Week 2. Lara: And they all build on to each other? Lily: Yes, they do. They build on each other. Between Week 1 and 2, we’re looking at pleasant eating experiences. Between Week 2 and 3, we’re looking at unpleasant eating experiences. This doesn’t have to be the worst meal you’ve ever had; it could be something very simple, like you want something really cold to drink and it’s lukewarm. Or you like to eat food that’s really hot and this isn’t; it’s cool. Or it could be a piece of fruit that just doesn’t taste as sweet as you’d like it to, but there’s something that’s unpleasant about it. So, we talk about unpleasant eating experiences in the third class and how that impacts what we eat and how we eat it. Then we move on into the body image. The last half of that class is really doing what’s called a Body Scan Meditation, but with an emphasis on body image. It’s looking at the different parts of the body and what is our response to that. What is our relationship to our body and different parts of our body? Lara: Are we rejecting? I notice, when I finally got quiet and got still, and started meditating, I realized I was rejecting parts of myself that I didn’t like or didn’t want to accept, or didn’t want it to be that. I think a lot of us do that. Lily: Yeah. Lara: Yeah. The mindfulness piece of the eating is so important and we so struggle… people struggle, sometimes, in our stressful lives, running through fast food and trying to get the kids everywhere, and we’re all working full-time jobs. What is your best advice for that? Lily: It’s interesting because people think it takes [00:30:00]so long to eat mindfully. In some ways, it does. But in other ways, it becomes such a pleasure to do that. I would still say as much as you can slow it down, you’ve got to slow it down. I think if you can also… If you start slowing down your eating, I think that’s going to impact your other family members as well and they’re going to slow it down. Lara: Don’t you think, too, when we slow down, obviously the quantity… I think we’re satisfied on smaller amounts. Lily: Exactly. Yes. Lara: Then it doesn’t take as long to eat, so there you go. Lily: You save time. Lara: That’s where you save time! [LAUGHTER] Lily: You don’t eat as much. Lara: You don’t eat as much. But the heart hunger, I think, is a key for a lot of people. Lily: Mm-hmm. Lara: The mind hunger. So these are the different things that I think people really struggle with and why we overeat, why we rush. Things like that. You say you talk about that in Week 3. What about Week 4? Lily: Well, in Week 4, we do more of that as well. The homework assignment between Week 3 and 4 is really looking at our body. What do we like about our body? What do we dislike about our body? So, Week 4 is talking about what are all those things that we do like about our body, and it’s hard for some women, many women, to even talk about what they like. You know? Which is pretty amazing. Lara: That’s how shut down and disconnected so many of us are and probably have been since we were little. Lily: Yeah. So, sometimes we’ll do an exercise of what was it like for you at dinnertime when you were growing up. What are some of the messages you picked up from family about food and about yourself? Lara: Ooh, I bet a lot comes up then. Lily: A lot comes up. Did you have to eat everything on your plate? Could you leave things on your plate? What about if you disliked certain kinds of foods? What are the belief systems that came out of those very early experiences? Lara: Very important. Lily: Yeah. Lara: And all that is in Week 5. Week 6 – talk to me about how you wrap it up. Lily: I should also say that there are healing meditations in Week 4 and Week 5 around forgiveness around body image and around loving kindness, and body image. These, I think, are really important. Again, ways that we can begin to accept this is where we are and this is okay. We’re complete just as we are. Again, it doesn’t mean that we can’t change some aspects of who we are and what our body is like. We’re changing all the time. In Week 6, we do wrap it up. We do another eating meditation. I call it a “Tea Ceremony.” So we have some kind of tea and, usually, either a cookie or a piece of dark chocolate as a way of wrapping it up, bringing everybody back together again, looking at what did we learn, what was helpful about this class, and where do we go from here. Lara: Thank you, Lily. We’ll talk more. We’ll finish up Week 6 as soon as we come back from break. Lily: Okay. Lara: We’ll be right back. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I’m Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderand you can find me here at www.wsrqradio.comand my guest, Lily Myers… Lily, what was the website address again? Lily: www.sarasotamindfulness.org. That’s for the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. My psychotherapy website is www.lilymyerstherapy.com. Lara: Lily, our last segment here, we were just talking about your Week 6, the last section of your Mindfulness class. I did not want to skip over the importance of the tea and chocolate ceremony. We were rushing there, towards the break. I was like, “Oh, no. We need to talk about that some more,” because it is, really, the ceremony and ritual. All of that is really important. That is what… everything is sacred. Everything we do. Lily: Yes. Lara: Getting dressed in the morning. Eating. Driving to work. That’s really what you’re trying to portray, probably, in that end. Lily: Yes. And food is particularly sacred. It gives us life. Lara: It does. Lily: You know? And I think we forget that in our modern lives. We see foods that’s in a grocery store that’s already pre-packaged. We don’t even know where it comes from. Some people don’t know where it comes from. Lara: Would you say those Oreos give me life? Lily: [LAUGHTER] Lara: I think that’s part of what we’re eating is that maybe not giving me… or it’s sustaining me; it might not be helping. Lily: Well, of course it depends how much of it you do eat. You know? I’m a firm believer, everything in moderation. Lara: All in moderation, right? I like that. Lily: Including moderation. Lara: Yay! Lily: Yeah. So, one cookie is… Lara: Is all good. Lily: …is different than you eat the whole bag of cookies. Lara: That’s so hard to do. Anyway, Week 6 of the class. How do you wrap things up? Lily: Well, I think an important component is what are people going to do next. What are they going to do next Monday night, when they’re not meeting? Because the class gives people, a group of like-minded people, to come and practice with and be with. Not only are you getting the instruction from a teacher, but you’re also getting peer group support, and that’s so important. There are lots of suggestions that I make to people about what can they do next. Some of it is continuing with mindfulness meditation, continuing that practice. Sarasota Mindfulness Institute has two weekly meditation groups – one on a Friday from noon to 1pm and one on Wednesday from 6pm to 7pm in the evening. They are drop-in meditations. Anybody can come to those. I co-lead the Wednesday meditation and there are a couple of people in that group… people can come and go as they want, but that have taken the Mindful Eating and Body Image program. Lara: This helps keep them on track. Lily: Yes. It can help keep them on track. And there are books that people can read. I’m sure there are apps that people can get on their phone more around meditation than around mindful eating, specifically. But it all helps. Lara: But there is such hope for people who are struggling. Lily: Yes. Lara: And I think that’s one thing that you really want to get across to our listeners. There’s hope. Lily: That’s right. That’s right. Lara: Lily, why are you interested in this? Lily: Well, in some ways, I’ve always been interested in healthy eating. I grew up in rural Vermont. My mother always had a big vegetable garden and also some fruit. We had an apple tree, we had strawberries and fresh berries, but lots of vegetables. I can remember, from a very early age, helping her in the garden, so I knew where food came from. I helped her plant the seeds. Several months later, I’d help her harvest the vegetables. Lara: So, you’ve had that appreciation for this food and watching it go from seed to the table. Lily: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. And how delicious fresh food really tastes. You know? Lara: There’s a huge difference. Lily: Mm-hmm. Lara: Huge difference. Lily: Yes. And how nourishing it is. Lara: So, this has just always been your interest. Lily: It has been a strong interest of mine for many years. Yes. Lara: So, then you got in to therapy and went that direction. Lily: Well, I actually got into Yoga. Actually, Yoga was the door that opened everything for me. Lara: At what age? How old were you when you…? Lily: Early 20s. Lara: Okay. Lily: Yeah. Lara: So, you’ve been doing it quite a while. Lily: I have been, really. Yes. Since mid-70s was when I started practicing Yoga. Then Yoga led to a meditation practice in the early ‘80s, then that led to psychotherapy. Doing my own personal psychotherapy and that led to my wanting to be a therapist, so I went back to grad school in the mid early ‘90s and became a practicing psychotherapist in the mid-‘90s. Lara: What do you focus on in your own personal practice? Lily: Meditation. Lara: No, practice of… in the office. Lily: The psychotherapy practice? Lara: Yes. Lily: Yes. Mindfulness-based psychotherapy, so it’s really helping people. A lot of people come for mood disorders, depression, or anxiety. I think mindfulness is particularly helpful with people who have anxiety disorders because it really calms them. Lara: When people come see you, even in your office, do you help them with meditation mindfulness even there? Lily: Yes. Lara: So, not just at the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute? Lily: Not just at the Sarasota Mindfulness Institute. No. No. I can help them. Of course, it depends on what their presenting issue is and what they want to work on. I also do couples counseling and I have a particular approach to doing that, which is called Imago relationship therapy. [00:40:00]There is also relaxing and centering in that approach as well because couples need that, too. Lara: What would that be? Lily: What do you mean? Lara: [LAUGHTER]What’s relaxing and centering? Lily: Sometimes I will have the couples in the room because they can come in and their minds can be so full of stress — and some of it is stress towards each other — so I will have them sit quietly and just go inside themselves, then think about their partner and come up with something that they appreciate about their partner, which may be something they haven’t thought about for a while. Lara: It helps them to remember why they got together in the first place. Lily: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Lara: This whole piece of mindfulness and meditation – they seem like buzzwords nowadays, but they are so powerful. Lily: They are. Lara: These words are so powerful and to… What would you say to someone who is stressed, who has some anxiety, who is living life at a fast pace? How do they fit this “something else” into their life? Lily: Well, I say that it takes patience and that it takes a commitment. You make it a priority if it’s important enough to you. Sometimes it takes time for it to be a priority for people. It’s not a quick fix. That’s something that is very counter to our culture and yet it’s so needed in our culture. I think that’s why it’s becoming increasingly popular – because it is so needed. I agree with you. These words, when I first started practicing mindfulness and meditation, they weren’t buzz words. There weren’t that many people that did them and now it’s just exploded everywhere. I think what we have to pay particular attention to is that it doesn’t get dumbed down and it doesn’t become something that’s just on the surface. Lara: I agree. Because it’s so important to our becoming aware of what’s happening, to slow down, become aware, and that helps us, I think, make decisions to just bring this happiness back in. The benefits of it… we haven’t even talked about the benefits of all of this. Lily: That’s right. I mean, you touched on the mental clarity that can come out of meditation practice. Just that is such a significant benefit. You know? I would say that one of the biggest benefits for me is not reacting so much to the circumstances of life. Lara: Yes. The triggers. Lily: Yes. Both inner and outer. But being able to respond to what’s happening in the moment and that’s very different to just having a big reaction around what’s happening. Lara: We see people react and trigger all the time. Last week, I was somewhere and someone went by my friend and I and threw his cup of water on my friend. We never know what people are thinking. He didn’t even move a muscle, my friend. Just completely calm and centered, and I was blown away by, first, the person who… “Really? You’re going to throw a cup of water on someone?” but, secondly, my friend did not even… he was like, “I don’t know why he did it. It doesn’t matter. It’s not about me.” How beautiful is that, to stay centered and grounded like that? To just let it go? Lily: Right. It wasn’t about ego. Lara: It wasn’t. Lily: Right. Lara: And for all of us to have that, to have that desire to not react to the traffic and to the stress, and in the kitchen when I walk in. The stress of, “Okay, I’ve got to grab something.” Lily: Right. Right. Right. So, it’s always — it’s often — about starting again. If it’s a breath meditation practice, we start to follow the breath, our attention wanders off. We come back to the breath, we start again. It’s the same thing with mindful eating and it’s the same thing with how we want to change, if we want to change, how we eat. When we fall off the wagon, we just get back on again. Lara: We just get back on. We do a reset. Lily, it has been such a pleasure to have you today. Thank you. Lily: Thank you, Lara. Lara: Thank you, listeners, for joining me today on The Zen Leader. I invite you to listen in every Saturday at 10 a.m. here on WSRQ, online, or on our podcast for even more amazing conversations with visionaries who are here to share their wisdom to support you in living your best life. For ongoing inspiration from me, go to www.larajaye.comto subscribe to my blog and receive a complimentary meditation and PDF of my best-selling book. Until next time, choose love. Have a great day.   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:45:13]

The OolaGuys(Dave Braun and Troy Amdahl) are on a mission to change the world with a word (#Oola) by collecting 1,000,000 dreams in the form of handwritten stickers on the side of a vintage 1970 VW Surf Bus. By inspiring positive change, the OolaGuys are on a mission to guide people toward finding more balance and growth in the 7 key areas of life - the 7 F’s of Oola (Fitness, Finance, Family, Field, Faith, Friends and Fun). By removing the stress from a life out of balance, you will be able to reveal the greatness and purpose that is inside all of us. A better “you”, makes a better family, a better community, and ultimately a better world. Intro:Welcome to The Zen Leaderwith Lara Jaye. Whether you're a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now here's your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:Welcome to The Zen Leader. I'm your host Lara Jaye, international bestselling author, speaker, and spiritual mentor. Through my coaching programs and radio show, I help you courageously transform your disconnected, unbalanced life into a joy-filled and meaningful one. Imagine living a life full of ease, vibrant health, thriving relationships, and purposeful work without sacrificing yourself to achieve it. Whether you're a leader at home or in the boardroom, I help you navigate the ups and downs of life, giving you clarity, confidence, and connection you so desire.             With me here in the studio are a couple of guys on a mission to change the world with one word: oola. The OolaGuys are coauthors of the international bestselling book series that started with Oola: Find Balance in an Unbalanced World. In their newest book, Oola for Women: Find Balance in an Unbalanced World, coauthors Troy Amdahl and Dave Braun have put together a tribute to women. If you truly have a desire to live an Oola life, it's paramount you identify those toxic traits that hold you back from finding balance and growth in the seven F's of Oola, and embrace the transformational characteristics that will help accelerate your journey to greatness.             The Oola Dream Tour is on the road and traveling to all 50 states in a vintage 1970 VW Surf Bug collecting dreams in the form of handwritten stickers stuck to the sides and front of the Oola Bus. Welcome, Dave and Troy to Sarasota. How are you guys? Dave Braun:Thank you so much for having us. We're great. Lara:Yeah. Troy Amdahl:Thank you. Lara:Thanks. You guys are just doing it all right now. What is Oola? Troy:Oola is exactly what you were describing. It's a state of awesomeness when your life is balanced and growing in the seven key areas of life. We live in this unbalanced world of being pulled in multiple directions. There's 2,000caloriesaround every corner. People are struggling with extra weight, struggling with toxic relationships, toxic friendships. People aren't working on their marriage. They're just inadvertently working on their divorce. Struggling with debt. So people are struggling in this unbalanced world and what we're saying in Oola is when you get outside of your life for a minute and just look at your life in these seven areas — fitness, finance, family, field, which is your career, faith, friends, and fun — and you work on balancing and growing in those seven areas, that's when you can live your Oola live. Lara:So step out with a higher perspective and look at it. Troy:Yeah, just take a break. We're all wrapped up in the day-to-day of running to work and running home, and kids, and soccer practice, and like I said 2,000 calories around every corner, and just the stress of life that we don't take the time outside of our life just to take a break and say, "Okay, where am I in these seven areas? Where am I as a mom or a dad?" Lara:Say those seven areas again. Troy:Fitness, finance, family, field — which is your career — faith, friends, and fun. You don't look at those areas and you're like, "Where am I as a mom or a dad? Or where am I with my finances for real? Not sweep it under the rug, but where am I with my debt and my income and my budget and my giving and my saving? Where am I and then where do I want to go? Then how am I going to get there?" and have a plan for your life moving forward.             Although stuff is going to happen in life that's going to mess up your plan a little bit, if you have no plan at all, you just end up going down the habit of an extra five pounds every year, the relationship is a little more toxic, a little more debt, and moving in what's called opposite of Oola, moving into an un-Oola-verse, un-Oola part of life, and you want to move your life into Oola, into more balance. Lara:Is Oola a real word? Dave:It actually comes from the word oo-la-la. Lara:Oo-la-la. Ooh, I like that. [LAUGHTER] Dave:It's a word we made up, which just stuck. In fact, there are two gals in Sarasota getting it tattooed [LAUGHTER] somewhere on their body today. Lara:[LAUGHTER] We are not doing that here in the studio today. [LAUGHTER] Dave:No, no. Troy:We might. This just started. You have no idea. Lara:I am not. Troy:We're here to be… Dave:We just heard about that on social media, so we may have to check that out. Lara:We might have to. Dave:But it's a word we made up because that's how your life feels. We thought, "What word describes how you feel when your relationships are tight, when there's more money at the end of the month, when you're feeling fit and healthy and vibrant, and when you have a connection to your purpose? That's Oola. That's what's been missing. That's why I think it's so sticky. This message took off because everyone is being told how to live. They're on this path. They find themselves in school, in college, on this path, and it's like they wake up one day disconnected. Lara:They're listening to everyone else instead of their own soul. Dave:Absolutely. Lara:Instead of themselves. Dave:Absolutely. The beautiful thing about Oola is your Oola is your Oola. Every sticker, we have the bus out there. It's six layers thick with handwritten dreams from people, and the thing that amazes us every time we see someone put a Sharpie to a sticker is how different our dreams are. As a culture, we're taught to think, "If I have the white picket fence and this size house." Lara:That's so true. Dave:"And this car. Then I'll be happy." I'm like what we're encouraging people to be is be whatever the heck it is you want to be. Lara:Be you. Dave:Your financial goals. Some people want to be a billionaire. Bruno Marx, he wants to be a billionaire. [LAUGHTER] Some people just want to pay the bills at the end of the month. You be you and boldly pursue that, and that's how we feel we're going to change the world with this word, is encouraging people that they're more capable than they realize if they tap into their unique gifts and abilities, and they just actively go pursue that. Lara:Tell me which one of you two is the guru seeker and which one is the guru? Dave:I'm Dr. Dave, the Oola Seeker. Lara:You're the seeker. Dave:Kind of unfortunately, but I'm cool with it. Lara:Okay. Dave:I've come to accept it. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Dave:Dr. Troy is the Oola Guru. And how this all really started was we literally go back to 1997. I started working for Dr. Troy. I was an intern in his office getting my doctorate degree. I was an intern in his office, and when I was graduating, he came to my graduation and he literally said, "Let's go to Vegas and work on our Oola." I'm like, "Wow! I don't know if I can even approve this with my wife. This sounds crazy." Lara:[LAUGHTER] He said that in '97 and you used the word Oola then? Dave:No, he was saying, "Let's go work on our goal setting and our life balance." Lara:Our goal setting. Oh, okay, got it. Dave:I'm like going to Vegas. I'm from a really small town in the middle of nowhere North Dakota, so for me, it was like this was the first time I was on an airplane. I was 23 years old. Flew into Vegas. Dr. Troy meets me and we're in a taxi going to the Hard Rock Hotel, and I'm like, "Okay, what are we doing in Vegas?" We're celebrating my graduation. What's this thing you're talking about balancing your life? What's that all about? He goes, "It's not at all what people come to Vegas for. We're literally going to go work on our life." Lara:Yeah, you don't balance your life in Vegas. [LAUGHTER] Dave:No, and we did, and we did. That's what we did. Lara:You imbalance it. Dave:So, we went to the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas and we sat down on the floor at the Hard Rock with 3x5 notecards, a couple other guys, and he had the notecards labeled: fitness, finance, family, career, faith, friends, and fun. He had them labeled, and it was the first time ever I stepped outside my life and I looked at my life and these notecards and I said, "Where am I?" Lara:How old were you? Dave:I was 23 at the time. Lara:You were 23. So that was the first time you actually got to think about it. Dave:Yeah, that was the first time I was introduced to Oola before it was a word Oola, the concept of looking at your life in these seven key areas. Instead of just setting maybe a sports goal or a grade in school goal, it was a goal on what kind of dad do I want to be and what do I want for my faith? What's my purpose in life? What do I want for fun in my life?             I left after a couple days in Vegas of going through this exact same process of where are you today, where do you want to go, and how are you going to get there. I left with notecards full of notes on what I wanted for my future, and I had $100-some-thousand dollars in student loan debt, and I had three kids, and I'm starting a career and it's like, "How do I do all this?" But I had a plan. When I followed that plan, what I found is after a couple years of reconnecting with Dr. Troy every year to work on our Oola, work on our life, I found success in these seven areas in my late 20s. I had the big house and I had what I wanted.             I had the career and I was working on my fourth child and I was building a family, and being the guy I wanted to be. Then Dr. Troy moved overseas to pursue some business with his family and we just lost touch like friends do. We lost touch. When he moved back a couple years later, he moved back and he was retired. He'd bought a place in Arizona and has a summer home in Minnesota, and married 26 years. He's the guru. He's balancing and growing in all these seven areas this whole time. For me at this time, I had drifted from the principles of Oola thinking, "Well, I have it. I'm in my late 20s and I've hit the American dream." Lara:So you got it all. Dave:Have it all, the American dream. Lara:You're still not happy. Stuff starts falling… Dave:No, yes. I think it was more humility stuff. I thought, "Wow! I deserve it all. I must be just so amazing that I can build a big business and I can be this cool person in a small town," and I think it's a humility thing. You start making decisions that are just uncharacteristic and just not in your value system. What happened to me, if you look at the Oola: Find Balancebook, the original book that came out a couple years back, it starts with a story of me living in a motel, going through a divorce, and calling Dr. Troy and saying, "You're never going to believe this, but all this cool stuff I had, my Oola life is gone, and I have nothing." I was desperate. It was two in the morning and I'm like, "Okay, I filed bankruptcy, going through a divorce, the kids don't even know, living in a motel, driving my mom's crappy old car," like a $1,500 car because my cool cars were all repossessed. Lara:That must have been really hard on you to make that phone call. Dave:It was crazy. You know what? It was a phone call I should have made three months earlier, and I lived in this motel for three months, and I would call my sister, and she would say, "Be grateful and have faith." That's amazing advice to be grateful and have faith, but… Lara:But it's hard when you're in the middle of it. Dave:Yeah, definitely the gratitude part. Lara:You needed a way out. Dave:Yeah, I had the faith like, "I'm going to get out of this," but the gratitude part, I actually hated the word. How can you be grateful for a failing marriage? Lara:I've lost everything. Dave:Losing everything. The weirdest thing is everybody has these three or four moments in life where your life changes direction. I was laying in this crappy motel bed, it was about two in the morning, and I heard a loud noise outside my door. I woke up and I looked around and there's cop lights flashing around my crappy motel room. I woke up and I ran over and pulled back the curtains, and the cops were using a battering ram to break into the door next to me, and they pulled this guy out and I knew the guy. I saw him everyday for two months. I was there a month before he was.             They pulled him out, and I walked outside that day and I sat against my mom's Taurus, and I'm like, "I need to not call my sister. I need to call Troy." Then the last person you want to reach out to when you're in a tough spot is your want to reach out to your most successful friend. That's the last person you want to call. Lara:Right. You already feel like crap. Dave:Yeah, but I know I needed to. I called Troy and I just vented. I was like, "This is what's going on in my life. You're not going to believe this." [00:10:00] Lara:Then Troy picked up the phone. Troy:I did. Lara:That's awesome. Dave:Which is really surprising if you know Troy. [LAUGHTER] Dave:He's not the most sensitive. Before he interrupts me, let me tell you what he said because he was doing this whole… he said two things. One was amazing. They were both pretty amazing, but one was amazing. It was like where you are… I'll never forget this. He said, "Where you are is just where you are. It's not who you are." He's goes, "I know you're not…" Lara:Say that again. Where you are… Dave:Where you are is just where you are. It's not who you are. Lara:That's beautiful. Dave:“I know you're designed for something better. I've seen it in you. You still have that in you. You have it in you to go to your old life. “Then I said, "What do I do?" Then he said, "Well, the good news is you're at the bottom, so it can't get much worse." Lara:[LAUGHTER] We can't get… Dave:Can't get much worse. Lara:That's good. That's good. Dave:That was bad at the time. [LAUGHTER] Lara:Right. Dave:Then he said, "Call me tomorrow." So, I walked back to the motel room a little defeated like call me tomorrow? I feel like I need to work on this now. But I did go back with the hope of, you know what? You're right. Where I am is where I am. It's not who I am. I'm capable of more. I have a family. I had five kids now at the time. I'm like, "I'm capable of working back on my Oola life." Then when I called him the next morning, that's where I started to get perspective again on Oola and start to change my life. Lara:I love this. We're going to be right back after this break to continue this conversation with the Oola Guys. [BREAK] Lara:I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome back and you can find me here at wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com. Here in the studio with me are a couple of fun guys. Oola. Oola Guys, Dave and Troy. They have an international bestselling book Find Balance in an Unbalanced Worldand a new one coming out for women. I can't wait to hear about this, guys. But I want to go back to right before break we were talking Dave about your story, and it was… I don't want to gloss over that because it's so important. A lot of people, a lot of our listeners, are right where you're at right now, and are hearing you, and you reached out to Troy. And Troy, you picked up the phone and you told him to call back the next day? Troy:Yeah, this is exactly what we've been talking about. This is what we find on the bus, by the way, is I think when I talked to Dave, the feeling I get that he felt alone in this. He felt the burden of the finances and the relationship stress. He felt like he was the only person on the planet going through this.             When we travel and meet people city-by-city, coffee shops, parks, beaches today, and we collect their dreams, it's exactly what he needed to do is what we're finding with Oola. The perfect example, we learn a lot from the bus. It's like a metaphor for life. We were in upstate New York collecting dreams. We're going to all 50 states. We were doing a leg up in the northeast, and we heard we were close to Niagara Falls. So we thought, "Okay, we're close to Niagara Falls. Let's go check that out," just because we want to see the country, too, and meet people. We get up like two little kids. We've traveled a ton, but we've never been to Niagara Falls. I don't know if you've been. Lara:I have. It's beautiful. Amazing. Troy:We had a crystal clear day. It was a cool day, blue skies. We pull up in that 1970 VW Surf Bus full of dreams, and you know then when you get close you can actually, like a subwoofer, you can feel the power of The Falls. We're like little kids. This is going to be amazing. [LAUGHTER] Lara:I can see you two. [LAUGHTER] Troy:This is going to be… are you kidding me? I can hear it. I can feel it. This is going to be beautiful. Then you park your car and you go toward the thunder of The Falls, and you see these boats that these people dressed in these funky blue ponchos going to The Falls. So we're like, "If it's this majestic from here," we're a quarter of a mile away, can you imagine what this is going to look like if we get in one of those boats, in one of those ponchos, and go to The Falls, in The Falls? So, we buy our ticket. We put on the goofy tourist poncho, which if you ever go, it's not a gimmick. Get one. They're functional. You need it. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Right, or you're going to get wet. Well, you are going to. Troy:So, the boat just slowly works its way to The Falls and we're just high fiving and fist bumping like, "This is unbelievable." But since you've been, you know when you get to The Falls, you can't see squat. You can't see a thing. You are buried in the mist and this is what Dave was, and this is what many of your listeners are, is that if you're buried with credit card debt, marriage trouble, relationship stress, lack of purpose, you don't even know what fun is anymore. You're in the mist of The Falls.             You're in this beautiful place. If you could just back out, if you could put the boat in reverse and back out a half a mile, you would see the beauty that's in you, that we see in you, when we meet people. We would see the potential and the greatness that you have in you, and that's really at the heart of Oola what Oola. It's not, yes, it's a very specific goal-setting process and how to set goals in a way you can achieve them, and what are these blockers that get in the way — and there's a whole system to it — but the reality is the first step is reconnecting people that you're designed to be great, not to be average.             If you're feeling anything less than that, it's likely due to a life out of balance. So let's back the boat up out of the mist and see the beauty in your own life. That's exactly where Dave was. That's exactly where many of the people we meet on the road are, is like, "Hey, man. You're amazing and let's just reconnect to your unique gifts and purposes, and you set a plan for your life by setting goals in these seven key areas." Lara:Goal setting, though, is very… men do a lot of goal setting. I set a lot of goals and then I don't make it, and then I feel worse about myself. So then what do you do with that? Troy:Well, what we find for people who set goals is usually at a bar December 31st. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Sure. Troy:[LAUGHTER] But no, if you really take it like we did in Vegas, if you really take it seriously and you want to plan for your life, you take a couple days to step out of the mist and work on this seriously. But if you've set a goal, or your listeners have set a goal they haven't achieved, they've likely run into what we call "Oola blockers."             It's easy to structurally say, "I want to make 20% more this year. I want to pay off two credit cards. I want to lose 10 pounds. I want to eat 10% less sugar." We can structurally teach someone how to set a goal, but when it doesn't happen, they're likely running into fear, guilt, anger, self-sabotage, laziness, envy, or focus issues. These are the seven most common things that we lay out in the book that people run into like, "I want to grow my business 20%," but then they run into fear because they have to go on social media or they have to do a presentation, or they have to ask for a raise.             Or, "I want to heal my marriage, but I don't want to lay this on the table, this thing I've been holding back and hiding from my spouse.” “Or I don't want to confront my spouse about something I know.” “Or I want to find my purpose, but it's very uncomfortable to have this conversation with people around me because I know beliefs are so different." That's the key is if you've set goals like many people have and they don't come true, sometimes it's tactical. You don't set it properly. But many times you're running into one of these things called "Oola blockers" and you need to learn how to overcome. Lara:For me, I totally agree with everything you're saying. At the very end of that, it also comes down for me as divine timing. Troy:Absolutely. Lara:That's where I take it to that. But Troy, I want to hear your story. How did you get into this? Troy:So we've been living these principles, for me, a little before 1997. When I was growing up, people set money goals and business goals, or sports goals. Lara:Right, that was it. Troy:Sports and grades and money. Basic goals. I grew up with a father who worked three jobs to put a roof over our head for four kids, and none of them looked that glamorous. We had a very middle class life. My brother, who's super successful, worked really hard to build big businesses, but he wasn't home a lot in the early years. I remember making a conscious effort that, "You know what? I'm going to define success on my terms. Yes, I want to have a certain financial life for me and my family, but I also have goals for fun and I also have goals for my family. I also have faith goals.             I want to see success in Oola terms, which is winning at business and at life. We meet people all the time with big bank accounts and no relationship. We meet people with great relationship [LAUGHTER] and no bank account. So, the key is to find that balance. Lara:I'm glad you mentioned that because a lot of our listeners are there. I mean, that's the point where they're at is they have these amazing jobs and W-2 jobs, or whatever, but they're not living from… they don't feel right and they're not congruent and balanced with themselves. Troy:That's out of Oola and they know it. Lara:They do. Troy:Your listeners will know. It's a feeling you have inside. We gave a talk last night to a VIP event, and this gal just broke down. She was a very type A, driven woman who was just overtaxed and overscheduled. I'm like, "Does that feel right?" I mean, your body speaks to you physiologically. It knows what's good for you and it knows what's bad for you. If you are in tune to that, you will find your Oola life. You have to put out the noise of what social media says you should do and your parents and your spouse and your neighbors, and just find that place, again — outside the mist — to say, "What really do I want? How am I going to get there?" Lara:Take that quiet time, get still. That's what you did, Dave, in the motel is you had that quiet time even though you didn't want it. Dave:Yeah, mine started the next day. I went back to the motel and I'm like, "That was terrible. That was the worst advice I've ever had." Lara:[LAUGHTER] Dave:Then I called him the next day and I said, "Okay, I barely slept. I'm really stressed out here. My neighbor just got hauled away and I don't have a house." He said, "Go take your mom's crappy car, drive up into the mountains. I live near the mountains." He said, "Sit down with a notebook, just like we did back in Vegas, write down the seven key areas of life. Write down where you are and start writing down where you want to go."             When I looked at that, I was going through my family stuff. I'm like, "Okay, we're going through a divorce. That's inevitable. That's happening. I'm not stopping that at this point anymore. There's nothing I can do about that." But I wrote down goals. I said, "Okay, we're going through a divorce, but we're going to stay a family forever." So what does that mean to me? I'm going to talk to my soon-to-be ex-wife and say, "We have five kids. We need to take care of them and make them a priority, and never ever fight in front of those kids, and do stuff together as a family." What am I going to do for my finances? When I got to field, my career, I'm like, "What do I want? What do I really want? Do I want to go back into practice and take care of patients?" [00:20:00]"What do I really want?" I just thought about that for a moment and I wrote it down, and I said, "You know what? What I want to do," and I wrote this down. I still have this notebook sitting on my dresser that says, "I want to be a visionary leader, educator, entertainer, facilitator of Oola around the world." I said, "If this works for me, if I get my Oola life back, I want to share Oola with the world." That's what I wrote down. Lara:That's amazing. That is a great story, and I love where you started. So you sent him to the woods… and I just wrote an article about the power of stillness and especially nature. So, that's where you went. You went to the woods. You took your journal. You got still. Dave:Yeah, it was amazing. I remember coming back down and I talked to Troy, and I got all excited. I'm like, "We are going to go share Oola with the world," and then he brought me back to reality by saying, "First, let's get you out of that crappy motel and your mom's crappy car." Lara:[LAUGHTER] Right. Step one. Troy:[LAUGHTER] Step one. Dave:I think this is the thing with goal setting, too, is that you have to take these mini goals, these little baby steps, every single day towards your big dreams and not like, "This is my big dream. I failed on Monday. I'm done. I quit." It was like little dreams. "Okay, let's move into a two-bedroom apartment with five kids. Let's move into a minivan and get rid of this car that's not starting. Let's get a job." Let's slowly start taking those little bitty, bitty mini goals, mini steps to my Oola life. Then I said, "At that point." He goes, "That point then we'll start sharing Oola with the world, but let's first get your Oola back." Lara:So that's where you were at. You were like, "Okay, I'm going to work on this first." How long did it take you to get your Oola? Dave:After about two years, I was actually at Dr. Troy's lake cabin two years later. He said, "How's life?" I said, "You know what? Life is balanced." It wasn't great. It was balanced. I'm in a condo. I have a little cooler car. My kids are doing great. Lara:Making progress. Yay! Dave:Making progress. Life is better. So I said, "We're moving in the right direction." Then at that moment, he said, "Is it time to start to share this with the world?" I just felt my heart sink because I was reading that goal everyday to be a visionary leader, educator, entertainer, facilitator of Oola around the world. At that moment at his lake cabin, he made that a reality by handing that back to me and saying, "Are you ready to do this?" My heart just sunk because I'm like, "Oh, no. I made a promise." Lara:Are we ever ready? [LAUGHTER] Dave:Yeah, are we ever ready to take that step? Lara:Time to do it. We are going to take a break right now and we'll be right back with the Oola Guys. [BREAK] Lara:I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderand welcome back. With me here in the studio are the Oola Guys. Troy and Dave, tell me why is Oola taking the U.S. by storm? Troy:It's an organic thing. Dave said he had to tell the story. We just ended with that. I have this story to tell. So in the cabin, neither of us… we struggled to write a four-page paper in college. So we're like, "Are we going to do a blog? Are we going to do a video, a YouTube thing, or should we…?" Dave:So we actually said, "What are you going to do?" [LAUGHTER] Troy:That's true because I was not coming out of retirement. Lara:Let's clarify this. Dave:That's exactly what he said. Don't listen to much what Troy says. Troy:[LAUGHTER] Dave:The first thing he said is, "I'm not coming out of retirement." Troy:That's true. Dave:This goal, your dream is your dream. Troy:[LAUGHTER] Dave:You want to share Oola with the world. You want to be a visionary leader, educator, entertainer, Oola facilitator around the world. Lara:You go right ahead. Troy:You go do that. Lara:You go do that. Dave:Because I'm going to golf and hang out with my family at the lake house. Troy:True. Dave:That's true. See? Troy:[LAUGHTER] Yeah, you're admitting it. That's amazing, man. Dave:Then he goes, "I'll help you outline it." That outline three days later was a book. Lara:Oh, was the book and then that got you excited about… Troy:Well, he should be in sales, actually. Because if you look at the first book came out, you think you're going to sell 42 copies, right? It was self-published. We didn't think anyone was going to buy it. We truly had a notepad with… he's got a really nice sister that'll buy two. I have a rich brother who'll buy five. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Right. Troy:We had this list and all of a sudden the book just started taking off. The actual first 10,000 copies of our first book is the back of my head because I wanted nothing to do… my life, I didn't have my Oola life, but I had a pretty good life. But what happened was is when you start connecting… and you see this in what you do. There's a paycheck. There's making a paycheck and then there's making a difference. Lara:Absolutely. Troy:There's something so rewarding about showing people their purpose. We're not telling them how to live at all. We're just saying that you're designed for something amazing. These are some principles that worked for us and many people that we work with. Why don't you see if it's a fit for you? Then the feedback you get is just so rewarding. It's the most amazing experience that I've been… Lara:Sometimes people just need someone else to tell them, "You know what? You're here. You're meant for something amazing." Troy:Yeah. If anybody follows us our stuff on social media, people always ask us, "What is Oola?" There's a bunch of people getting tattoos and wearing… is it an apparel brand? Is it a publishing book series? We started this leg of the tour in West Palm going through middle-of-nowhere Florida, Alligator Alley, in the middle of the night. All of a sudden, this guy passed us in a truck, blue-collar guy with a big beard and a work shirt on after a sweaty day of work. He rolls down his window as we're cruising down. He goes, "What's this word?" We're like, "Hey, it's about living fully, man. It's about winning in all the key areas of life." He goes, "I love it." He goes down the road.             We're on Facebook Live, literally on Facebook Live just killing time cruising. We had four hours in the bus. All of a sudden we get up the road and he's waving his arms in the middle of the road like there was a car accident. Dave is on Facebook Live. He goes, "We're going to get shot in the middle of Florida." Dave:[LAUGHTER] Lara:[LAUGHTER] Welcome to Florida, guys. [LAUGHTER] Troy:Yeah, so we're like, "Let's pull over." So, we pull over and this guy walks to us… it's caught on live video. We're going to see if we can track him down. He walks toward us. Lara:This is the one who just passed you? Troy:Yeah, 20 minutes ago. Lara:Okay. Troy:We've lost track of him. We don't go fast, so we go like 45 miles an hour. He's gone. But he's reflected upon his life, must have looked it up online or something. Lara:While he was driving. [LAUGHTER] Troy:Yeah, we don't advocate that. But all of a sudden, he's pulled over, and we pull over and he comes up. He goes, "I need to know more about this." We're like, "It's just we're collecting dreams." He goes, "What do you mean you're collecting dreams?" We're like, "We're on a goal to collect a million dreams." He goes, "Why?" Skeptical. We're like, "We just believe people are designed to be great and in this world we're living in, they can't see it anymore." They're buried in debt. Lara:They can't. Troy:In toxic relationships and going from Point A to Point… Lara:Technology and junk food. Troy:Yeah, cats doing backflips on YouTube. Lara:Right. [LAUGHTER] Troy:I mean we're filling our brain with Snapchat. It's like no one knows what their purpose is anymore. He said, "That is the coolest thing." Then all of a sudden he started to tear up because I said, "Here's a Sharpie. These are the dreams. What do you want?" He goes, "I don't know." He couldn't speak. This big 200+-pound guy with a big beard and his lip was quivering. Lara:They don't know. They've given up. They don't know what… Troy:He didn't even know what to write down. He didn't say, "I want to go to Disneyworld. I want to go hunting." He didn't know what he wanted to do. He goes, "I think I just want to know my purpose." I'm like, "Brother, that's your goal." I grabbed him a yellow faith sticker and I grabbed him a Sharpie. I'll show you the sticker after we're done here. Lara:I want to see it. Troy:And he put it on the corner of the bus with a shaky hand. You'll even see that. He said, "I want to find my purpose." He slapped it on the bus and he gave us a big hug, and with tears in his eyes, he got in his truck and went home. Lara:You made a difference. Troy:That's it. Lara:Driving down the road. Troy:I have cool cars, cool houses that have air conditioning. [LAUGHTER] Why do we drive through no power steering bus with no air conditioning? It's because of guys like Travis that we met in the middle-of-nowhere Florida that now knows that he's designed for better than where he is right now. Lara:He doesn't know that and he gets up everyday and he goes to the same job, and is not happy. He didn't know that he could shoot for something bigger, did he? Troy:To your exact point, he needed someone outside of himself to see that in him and give him permission to live for. Lara:That's what your first book has done for men and women. So why did you write a book for women and how did you write a book for women? I want to know. Dave:We wrote the first book and that was literally in the lake cabin, the three days we outlined this process. This process that we would go through in Las Vegas about looking at your life in these seven areas, the three steps to your life: where you are, where you want to go, how are you going to get there. The blockers that get in the way. The accelerators — like gratitude, love, passion, and wisdom — the things you can tap into to get to your Oola life faster. We started to outline it and that became a book, and we threw it out there, “Literally, we're going to sell 42 copies.” Lara:That was the first book. Dave:First book. What happened is it organically grew and it organically grew. We actually started a Facebook page, and we started all this stuff because people were asking for it. On Facebook and on social media, on Twitter, we would say, "What do you want from us?" because people would say, "We want hats. We want t-shirts. We want this," and we have all that. People are wearing it all over the world. We were like, "What do you want?" We kept hearing over and over and over that we want a book for women, specifically for women. We're two dudes going, "How are we ever going to write the book?" Lara:[LAUGHTER] I know. I want to hear this. [LAUGHTER] Dave:We're like it's going to be 260 pages and you open it up and every page is blank. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Exactly. Dave:There's nothing we know about… we would justify, "I have four sisters. I have four daughters." He's like, "I have a couple sisters, a couple daughters." It's like, "Hey!" It's like "No, we don't know anything about women." We were in the bus, the Oola bus, going from San Diego to San Francisco. We had our two boys and we're driving up the coast, and after about three, four hours taking a break, we just started collecting dreams. The bus was blue at the time with a couple stickers on it. We're driving up the coast and we pull over on this beach, and we're just chilling, and the boys are swimming in the waves, and we're hanging out.             There's this couple taking pictures. It's a beautiful day on the surf, a beautiful family. She's about 35. He's 35, a couple kids. They have a professional photographer. They're taking pictures. Troy and I are sitting against the Oola Bus just chilling and watching this. All of a sudden, they come walking up the steps towards the bus. They're like, "What is this?" She's like, "What are you guys doing?" I said, "We wrote a book about balancing and growing your life, and finding that one thing that's missing that you really want in your life that's going to help you get to what's called your 'Oola life.'"             I said, "Just grab a sticker and write a goal on it and put it on the bus." I said, "What area?" She goes, "I'll take a family sticker." So she grabbed this orange sticker and she wrote. She was happy. They were all hugging and laughing, and she put a sticker on the bus and walked away. The boys came up from the surf and we're like, "Hey, ready to go? We've got to get to San Francisco." So we looked at her sticker before we got on the bus and it said, "To survive stage four cancer long enough to see my daughters become women." [00:30:03] Lara:Wow! Dave:We sat in the bus. This was bus was exploding with music and laughter, and from that point forward for the next 30 minutes, no one spoke. Our boys were quiet in the back and we were quiet in the front. We felt the impact of where people really are when you meet them at a beach or at a donut shop, or a coffee shop. Lara:The heaviness of life sometimes. Dave:The heaviness of life sometimes. Lara:Really weighs people down. Dave:At that moment, we're like, "You know what? If we team up with another woman author and we collect these stories of these women that put stickers on the bus — some we meet on social media, some we meet at live events — and their challenges that they've gone through, that will inspire women." That's essentially what this book is. It's a book of the Oola principles: where are you today, where do you want to go, how are you going to get there. Little tips, how to get your Oola life, how to push through fear, guilt, self-sabotage, have more self-love, how to tap into gratitude and be grateful for the good and the bad in your life. Lara:All of it. Dave:It has the stories tapped into and packaged with 42 women who have… just ordinary women that have gone through things and just have done extraordinary things with their life on the outside. Lara: Is this book out yet? Troy:It comes out… yeah. Dave:May 2nd was the release date. Lara:May 2nd. Awesome, thank you. I know we have only one segment left, and I really want to dive deep into the seven F's and so many other things. I think we needed a two-hour conversation, but I want to know a couple really important things like do you guys sleep in the van? Troy:No, no. Lara:These are really important things. Okay, no, you don't sleep in the van. Dave:Two things. Two things. Troy:Not on purpose. We're just exhausted. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Okay, right, okay. Dave:Two things that we get asked all the time: do we sleep in the van and do we sell weed? We don't do either. Lara:Okay. I wasn't going to ask that one, but okay. Dave:Okay. We get asked that all the time. Lara:Okay, no, no, no. I was not going to ask that. Troy:You haven't seen the bus yet. Lara:Okay, I have not seen the bus yet. I'm going to take a little tour of the bus. I wanted to know if you sleep in the van and I wanted to know if you're still friends. You've had some trips already together, and you're still speaking. Troy:No, we've hung out since this book came out. We hang out all the time. So my Oola, I was structured, business-driven, type A, and he's taught me how to have fun. That's the cool thing. Lara:So you're the perfect couple. Troy:Yeah, we are the… well, yeah. Dave:I wouldn't say that on air. Lara:Just kidding. [LAUGHTER] Troy:Yeah, my wife would hate that, but we hang out. Lara:Okay, okay. You're bros. You're bros. Troy:Yeah, we're brothers. We're actually like brothers. We hang out all the time. Lara:Awesome. So what has been the biggest surprise traveling across the U.S.? Troy:I think just the impact that this has made. Lara:The impact. Troy:Yeah. Lara:Something simple. Troy:Something simple that is such a simple message that I think the timing is right for this message. Lara:What do you think people really want to hear? Troy:I think they want to hear that they're worth it and they don't have to be like everyone else. They can embrace their uniqueness and boldly be that, and there's a community for them to do that in this world with connectedness and social media, and that's the good thing is you're not alone. If you're going through a seeker season and a struggle, there's someone else going through the same thing and been there, can guide you through. If you like this, there's someone who likes that as well. The coolest thing is spending a couple days in that bus meeting people. Lara:Amazing, amazing. We are going to take a break right now and we'll be right back with The Zen Leaderand the Oola Guys. [BREAK] Lara:Welcome back. I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leaderand you can find me here at wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com. With me here in the studio are the Oola Guys, Dave and Troy. How can people find you if they're looking for you? Dave:Yeah, social media. I mean Oola Life at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. That's where most people… then our website oolalife.com. Follow the bus. Follow where your dreams are going. The other coolest thing is that we're out to collect a million dreams, and we're serious about that. We know that not everybody can get to the bus because we're going from right now from Florida to San Diego. You can go to oolalife.comand you can submit your dream, and we'll have someone handwrite your dream for you and get it on our bus. So oolalife.com. Lara:That's awesome. Dave:Oola Life on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. Lara:Oola is O-O-L-Athen life.com. Dave:Yep. Lara:Oola life. All right, what are the seven F's of Oola? Troy:Fitness, finance, family, field, which is your career, and then faith, friends, and fun. Lara:How can those seven F's improve my life? Troy:The key is you got to balance them. People are naturally driven typically to two or three of them. Some people are money and business driven. Some people are faith and family driven. The key is you can't ignore them. It's like these things are happening whether we want to acknowledge it or not. It's like the circus performer who's spinning plates. We're not spinning one or two plates. You're spinning seven plates every single day, and you just have to be aware that they need to stay on the stick. You can't be so money driven and so business driven that you lose touch with your family or your faith, or lose touch with your fun in life because you'll wake up one day with lack of purpose. So just by you embracing who you are and where you want to go and always looking at your life through the filter of Oola, like seven areas, where am I, where do I want to go, how am I going to get there, you'll make sure you stay on your path and don't drift like Dave was saying he did. Lara:How can Oola help me change my actual lifestyle to keep balanced? Dave:It does exactly that. I mean not only how can it help it, that's exactly what it does because it takes you out of that mist that Dr. Troy was talking about. You back away from your life with the process of Oola. Oola is a process that became a book, and now that book is a process for people to look at their lives uniquely different than they ever looked at their life before, and say, instead of waking up and going to work and coming home and just doing the same thing over and over, you've got to look at your life finally in these seven areas and start to identify the areas that are low, the areas that are a little weak, the areas that are strong.             You can even go to oolalife.comand there's a wheel. There's a test you can take that can show you where your life is out of balance. You look at your life and say, "This is where I need to start to work on in order to have less stress and more purpose in my life." So Oola provides that little, simple tool to start to help you find more balance in your life. Lara:Dave, don't you think reading that vision for yourself everyday made a difference at pulling you towards it? Dave:Absolutely. That's step three. Step one in Oola is where you are. Step two is where you want to go, and step three is how are you going to get there. Your life is so worth it. That's the thing you have to really understand is you're designed for this greatness and a purpose. Lara:But how do you feel that when you're sitting in a Motel 6? Dave:Everyday you start to read. Read what you wrote down when you were inspired. I had tears in my eyes writing down I want to be a visionary leader, and I want to share Oola with the world. I had tears in my eyes. It wasn't something I just threw out there going like, "Maybe I want to do this someday." It's like I knew in my heart that's what I needed to do. You have to take time. If you're struggling right now, you have to take time outside your life. It could be a quiet corner. It could be laying on your bed. It could be just sitting there going, "What do I want in these seven areas?"             Then when you really deeply commit to that and you know that's what you want, write it down. Read it every single day. I would love to tell you that, "Oh, now it's going to be just amazing." You know how many hard days I had? You know how many times I read that and I'm like, "This is a joke. How am I going to be a visionary leader, educator, entertainer, and facilitator of Oola around the world when I can't even make a payment? I can't even pay my rent. How am I ever going to do that?"             But you have faith that you'll get through that and you'll keep working every, everyday towards that, and understanding that you're going to fall back. This is where those accelerators come in. It's part of the book. There's seven chapters on accelerators: gratitude, love, passion, wisdom, integrity. One of the greatest accelerators of all, to me, is love and gratitude, but gratitude, just be grateful for all the good things which is so easy for people, but be grateful for all the bad things, too, because they're leading you somewhere.             When I would start to wake up every morning and read my goal, step three. Read it. How are you going to get there tactically? Read what I wanted in life and then started to be grateful for the junk that happened, too, and understand that's just part of life. That's how I'm going to get there. I'm going to go through tough stuff, but it's going to be worth at the end because I'm designed. Lara:Sometimes they are the catalyst to get us to where we need to be. Dave:Absolutely, 100%. Lara:Because if you didn't have that experience, you wouldn't be sitting here today. Dave:I say that and I feel it. If I don't say that, I feel it every time I step on a stage or I jump out of the Oola Bus for someone that's waving us down in the middle of the road, or at a donut shop. I said, "If I wouldn't have gone through those bad things, if that wouldn't have happened, I would never be doing Oola. We wouldn't be having this conversation." It was because of all the bad stuff.             So this is so true of where you are is just where you are. It's not who you are. If you're going through a bad time right now, it might be the springboard to something amazing in your life, but you have to have faith and you have to have a plan, and you have to have gratitude everyday as you go through this journey to get there. You just have to keep pushing and taking little steps forward every single day towards your Oola life. Lara:Fabulous. What are the Oola blockers and how can they help me de-stress? So many of our listeners are so stressed. Troy: Yeah, we talked about that earlier. These are the things that get in your way. Let's say you're doing step one and you have a vision for what you want in your life in these seven keys areas. Something is holding you back if that doesn't happen. They are fear, guilt, anger, self-sabotage, laziness, envy, and focus issues, and they get in the way. You can be well intended in, “I want to make this much money. I want to heal this relationship. I want to get in shape,” whatever it is, but if you're straight up lazy and you can't get to the gym or grow your business, that gets in the way. You need to learn to overcome.             You were asking how can you learn more? That's why book two was written. Book two was written in a way that we do live events, two-day live events called Oola-Palooza. They sell out right away. We do lectures for people in companies. We wanted to put everything in one book. [LAUGHTER] We wanted to put all the tools in one book. Lara:That's Oola: Find Balance in an Unbalanced World. Troy:The second one, too. Lara:And for women. Both of them. Troy:The cool thing about the women one is the first one is our stories. If you go to oolalife.com, you'll hear our backstory of how this all came together and why it's going crazy organically. But the second book is designed to be a standalone piece for women, where if you knew nothing about Oola at all, you could hand the book to someone and they'd go, "I have the tools to overcome blockers. These are the seven key areas and these are the seven accelerators I need in my life, and these are the three steps I need to take." [00:40:00]The fuel behind it is the inspiration of these women we've met on our journey that are putting dreams on the bus that we talk to. What I love about it is these aren't famous women. These aren't entrepreneurial women. These aren't people with just crazy gifts. Lara:Everyday people. Troy:Everyday people we meet doing extraordinary things and overcoming the exact same challenges that as a community of women, women are going through and sometimes don't call it out because they don't want to put it on the table. These women have been brave enough to share their imperfections to make people feel normal and loved, and also they help share the solutions of how they overcame issues with guilt or fear or anger. It's an amazing collection of stories.             After our first book came out, the original publisher of Chicken Soup for the Souljust loved it, and they said, "This is what this needs to be." If you think of Chicken Soupstories and real applicable everyday principles, and you're just merging them, that's what this… Lara:So that's how you wrote your book for women? Troy:Yeah. Lara:You brought the women in. Troy:That's how it happened. Lara:I love it. Tell me a little bit more in detail about the Oola Dream Tour, what you guys are doing right now. Dave:That started with our, Dr. Troy just mentioned, Oola-Palooza, which is a two-day event we do in Vegas. It was funny because Troy is like, "Let's bring people to Vegas, where we would hang out, and let's just throw it out there and see the ones that show up." Well, we had a lot of friends show up from social media. [LAUGHTER] Dave:So we had this big event at the Hard Rock and instead of sitting on the floor, we actually rented out the Vinyl nightclub at the Hard Rock, and we all worked on Oola for two days. It turned into this amazing events. At the end of this two-day process, we had surfboards on stage because it's a little bit our brand. It's like surfing and just the freedom of that. We had stickers, and we said, "Okay, now declare one thing you're going to change and come up on stage and put your sticker on a surfboard." We're like, "That's going to be fun. This is going to be so much fun to see what people want to change in their life, that one thing."             Well, what we found as we were standing there and there's a microphone and there's bright lights on stage and people start coming across and they say their name, and they say their one thing and then why they want that, tears. It's incredible what people are going through that they walk in this room smiling, and by the end of this two-day event, they're looking at a sticker and they know they need to do something to move their life forward and they slap it on a surfboard. We were like… Lara:You saw the power of that. Dave:We were in tears. We were in tears and I think we went home and slept for two days. We'd talk everyday 10 times. We didn't talk for two days. We were just a mess. Dr. Troy called me about four or five months later and he's like, "We need to take this on the road and it just can't be these tickets to Oola-Palooza. They're an investment." It's not just for those people. We want to make this for everybody.             He goes, "You know what represents freedom? A 1970 Surf Bus." He goes, "Let's throw those surfboards on top and let's go across the country and meet people where they are, and collect their dreams, and start to bring that greatness out inside of all of them." That's the birth of the Oola Dream Tour. When he started telling me about it, I couldn't even say yes fast enough. It was like, "Let's do this." Troy:I know we're wrapping up, but we started that. That was the first event. People are saying, "What are you guys doing in Vegas?" We invited people. It sold out right away. Then everyone in the room re-signed up for next year. So the next year was sold out at that event. So we want to change the world, not 200 people. The tickets were $1,000 or $1,500 a piece, so I'm like, "That's not everyday people. Let's buy a bus and meet people in their community and connect them to their dreams," so that's the organic part of that. The event is amazing, but we just collected some dreams down at the park down here and at the gas station. Lara:You're just going straight to the people and I love that. Troy:Absolutely. Lara:It has been such a pleasure to have you two Oola Guys in the studio today. Thank you. Troy:Thank you so much. Dave:Thank you so much. Lara:I want to invite everyone to oolalife.comto learn more about these two and their amazing dream tour right now. Thank you for joining me today on The Zen Leader, and I invite you to listen every Saturday at 10AM here on WSRQ online or even on our podcast for more amazing conversations with visionaries who are here to share their wisdom to support you in living your best life. Have a great day!   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:44:19]

DOWNLOAD EPISODE > Dr. Laura d’Angelo and Dr. Nathan White, Sarasota psychologists, join Lara Jaye on The Zen Leader to talk about How to Handle Sudden Tragedy and Deep Grief.   Intro:Welcome to The Zen Leaderwith Lara Jaye. Whether you're a leader at home or in the boardroom, Lara provides the tools to help you get unstuck in different areas of your life. Now here's your host, Lara Jaye. Lara Jaye:Welcome to The Zen Leader. I'm your host, Lara Jaye, international bestselling author, speaker, and spiritual mentor. Through my coaching programs and radio show, I help you courageously transform your disconnected, unbalanced life into a joy-filled and meaningful one. Whether you're a leader at home or in the boardroom, I help you navigate the ups and downs of life, supporting you in living your best life.             Today, we've been talking a lot over this year about navigating life, and we talk a lot about the ups and what to do. Today is going to be, I'm just going to tell you. It's going to be serious. We're going to talk about when bad things happen, tragedy, life. We're going to talk about that today, and I don't know where we're going to go with it [LAUGHTER], but it's going to be good and that's all I got to say. I've got a couple of amazing guests here in the studio and Dr. Laura d'Angelo welcome back! Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Thank you, Lara. Lara:Yes, and Dr. Laura is an author and local psychologist. She's enjoyed a career in public psychiatry, serving on the faculties of Vanderbilt and Oregon Health and Science University, providing statewide consultation and training in Development Disorders and Mental Health. Dr. Laura has been in private practice here in Sarasota since 2011. Joining her as well is Dr. Nathan White. Dr. Nathan, welcome. Dr. Nathan White:Pleasure to be here. Thanks. Lara:He is a licensed psychologist who holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. Dr. White works with a range of clinical issues, including mood and anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, and life transitions. He looks to help clients discover their strengths and develop plans for effectively meeting life's challenges, which is what we are going to do today. Welcome both of you! Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Thank you. Dr. Nathan White:Thank you. Lara:I’m so excited to have you in there. We're going to talk about deep tragedy today and I have so many questions. My life [LAUGHTER]… and listeners know I'm always real. So, I'm going to be real and tell you that a couple months ago my mom passed away – I've talked about that on the show before. My dad moved in with my brother and his wife, such a blessing to be able to have him do that. In the last 10 days, my brother has lost two of his four boys in two completely unrelated accidents. The boys, they were 25 and 31, and so that's where I'm coming at today and, "Okay, my body has shut down. I'm numb and this didn't even happen to me." This was my family, though, my brother. So, a complete tragedy and it's times like this when you really see what's important. Talk to me. I mean I've mentioned what my events are, but there's other events that someone, our listeners, might be going through. What are some of the other events, too? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:That's a hard one to follow up with. [LAUGHTER] Lara:I'm sorry. [LAUGHTER] Right? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Nathan. Dr. Nathan, do you want to go first? Dr. Nathan White:Well, to your question of what are some of the other things that people can deal with. I mean we're talking about real stuff today, Trauma. Lara:Exactly. Dr. Nathan White:Trauma comes in a lot of different forms. It can come in definitely losing someone. It can come in abuse and a lot of other forms, witnessing horrific things. So, trauma has a lot of different manifestations that can come about. Lara:It can be anything at any time. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Natural disasters, a car accident. I think the list keeps getting longer. I think when I started my training decades ago we were focused mostly on abuse, incest, but we live in a traumatogenic world. That's a word… Lara:What does that mean? [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I think it's a world that genders trauma. Lara:Right. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. Dr. Laura d'Angelo: I think we're affected on so many levels, personally, macro levels, micro levels. I had no idea that my career would be about trauma when I started out in 80s, started my training. There's two things that came to mind, two examples of loss in families. One is I know a couple who were in their 80s now, and they're just lovely people. Many, many years ago, they lost both of their daughters to cancer. One was young… I don't know the details. The other was maybe in her 20s. But both of their children left them under those circumstances.             They are people of financial means as best as I can understand, and they have dedicated their lives to philanthropy and creating services and resources with hospitals in the city where they live, and crisis lines, and help lines. Lara:So through this trauma, they were able to turn it into something amazing to help others. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah, and they've been this for decades because they're in their 80s now. This happened to them… their losses happened many years ago. Lara:That seems so with not just trauma, but for all of us in our lives. The thing that takes us down might actually be what builds us up, maybe. I'm hoping. [LAUGHTER] Praying. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:There's a saying, if I can remember this and some spiritual writings by a Persian prophet, and it says, "My calamity is my providence. Outwardly it is. Inwardly it is fire and…" okay, I guess I'm a little anxious. "My calamity is my providence. Outwardly it is fire and vengeance. Inwardly it is light and mercy." Lara:Oh, Dr. Laura, that's beautiful. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:It's beautiful. It's how do we get there? Lara:How do we get there? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:How are we aware of getting there? I think that's the question we ask ourselves. Lara:Is it different for, let's say, a loss? For me, it was totally different, but I'm asking is it, in general, different with the patients and clients that you work with? If you got a chance, for those living, for us to say good-bye versus a sudden, didn't know this was coming accidents? Dr. Nathan White:Is it less painful? No, not necessarily. Lara:No. [LAUGHTER] Right. Dr. Nathan White:They're both going to be painful, but I think that my observation is when sometimes people get a chance to say good-bye it gives them some comfort because unresolved things… Lara:There's some closure. Dr. Nathan White:There's closure. Lara:You get a chance. Dr. Nathan White:Whereas if something sudden happens, there's a lot of could have, should have, wish I had done, wish I had said. So you're not just dealing with the loss, but you're dealing with all these things that you didn't get to address. Whereas if you get to say good-bye, sometimes that can help to… Lara:If they have a long illness or something. Dr. Nathan White:Exactly. Lara:You have an opportunity to. Dr. Nathan White:Right. Lara:That makes sense. Dr. Nathan White:To kind of cope in a different way. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I have a situation that I was just reminded of. A close friend of mine lost her brother last week. He was in his 70s. He was ready to go. He had an illness. He didn't want it to be treated, so he had all his affairs in order and he lived in another country. She was there several times to say hello and good-bye. Everything was as good as it could be in saying good-bye.             After he passed, they learned… they might have known this before, but he had requested that there be no funeral and not even an obituary. He was a fairly prominent person within his community. She said, "There's something that's just weird about it." She said, "This is really hard not to be allowed closure under those circumstances." He didn't even want prayers said. I think they were going to spread his ashes, but she said she's going to do it on her own, but she doesn't want to dishonor his wishes. Lara:So she wanted to honor him, but at the same time, she was struggling with closure. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah. Lara: The funeral and all of that is for us, anyway, right? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:She felt like, "No, this is really hard for me not to be able to have this last step," which is a more common step, than not, I think. Lara:That makes sense. That makes sense. Dr. Nathan White:That makes sense. I mean even when we're young we learn how do you say, "How are you?" You're greeting someone and then when you leave, you're saying, "Good-bye." Lara:Yes. Dr. Nathan White:So at a young age, we learn that. So whereas… Lara:If we don't have that opportunity to wrap it up… Dr. Nathan White:Exactly. Lara:And say good-bye. Dr. Nathan White:It can be harder. Lara:It can be harder. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. Lara:I would say I totally agree with that and can see that even those that may be… my son was in Japan and couldn't get back for my mom's funeral, and so he had a harder time processing it and grieving, I think, than the rest of us who got to be together and move through it. Dr. Nathan White:Right. Lara:For those that were a part, that makes total sense. There are all different kinds of stages of grief, and I think I'm witnessing all of them and everyone deals… Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Experiencing them, too. Lara:Experiencing all of them and all at once. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. Lara:I feel sorry for people around me right now and our family, but tell me… and we're just going to start this because I know we've got about a minute and we're going to take a break. But grief can be so deep and everyone it seems handles it differently. What are your thoughts on that? Dr. Nathan White:Well, in the literature, Kübler-Ross came up with the stages of grief with denial and a lot of other things like anger and bargaining and depression and acceptance. [00:10:08]But that's just a context for how we experience things. Not everybody experiences all those different things, and as you said, you were experiencing a lot of those same emotions all at once. Lara:[LAUGHTER] All at once, yeah. Dr. Nathan White:But as we've been talking about on the show, we all experience death and trauma very differently. Difficult emotions can come up. Lara:We never know when they're going to come up. Dr. Nathan White:Right. Lara:What's going to trigger us. Dr. Nathan White:Right. Lara:I think is very… what I'm seeing, too. It's like we might think we're okay in that moment, and then I notice, oh, something somebody will say or mention his name or something will remind me of that loss, and then it'll just be tears or whatever. Dr. Nathan White:Sure. Lara:Yeah, definitely. Well, we are going to take a break right now. When we come back, we're going to continue in talking about the stages of grief. We'll be right back here on The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara:I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome back. You can find me here at wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com. In the studio is Dr. Nathan and Dr. Laura. How can we find you two here in Sarasota? What's your web address? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:We're in the midst of moving. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Nathan White:Transitioning. [LAUGHTER] Lara:You're in transition. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Transitioning. Yes. So you caught us right in the midst of it. Lara:In the middle. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I will be at the Center of Revitalizing Psychiatry right on Wood Street, right off of Tamiami Trail. I've been in practice, my own practice, for five years, and actually this very week we're moving to a new facility. Lara:Yay! Congratulations! Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Thank you. Lara:Great. What about you, Dr. Nathan? Dr. Nathan White:I'm working out of two different offices, but one of the offices that I'm going to be working out of is private practice on 1751 Mound Street right next to the P.F. Chang's in Sarasota. Lara:Awesome! Pick up some P.F. Chang's and go see Dr. Nathan. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:We've been working together since 2011. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. Lara:Nice! Dr. Laura d'Angelo:So we're going to have separate offices for the first time. We'll still be in contact because we share patients. Dr. Nathan White:That's right. Yeah. Lara:Wonderful. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I'm going to miss his presence. Lara:Well, it's such a pleasure to have you both on together as we talk about grief and trauma. Right before the break, we were bringing up the different stages of Greek. Greek? Grief. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:That, too. Lara:Yeah, that, too. It feels like that sometimes. But you mentioned the stages. Let's talk about denial. This can't be happening to me. What happens when we're in denial? Is that generally the first stage? Dr. Nathan White:For a lot of people, it's shock. I'm reminded of one client that I had who they found themselves reaching for their phone to call that person that they lost. It's that experience where you're in reality, but you're not. You're hit with the news, and it's just you can't believe it's happening. It's like a dream. Lara:Like a dream. Second stage: anger. Why is this happening? Dr. Nathan White:When bad things happen, people don't usually get happy about that. Lara:[LAUGHTER] Right. Dr. Nathan White:[LAUGHTER] When it surfaces, it can manifest in a lot of different ways. It can manifest itself towards others, towards the world, towards people themselves. Lara:That brings up kind of blaming. Dr. Nathan White:Sure. Lara:We want to blame somebody. We've got to find out why this happened. Dr. Nathan White:Exactly. Lara:Somebody needs to pay for why this happened. Dr. Nathan White:Right. Yeah. Lara:I don't know. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:It's normal. It's normal. Lara:It's normal. You just feel so hopeless and helpless. Dr. Laura d'Angelo: It's normal. Lara:Then bargaining. What does that mean? Dr. Nathan White:I think it's the woulda, coulda, shoulda. “If things could be different…” “Oh, if I had been better…” “If I had done this…” Or, “How could things transpire if this had happened.” In some ways, it's still in denial because you're having difficulty accepting it and you're wishing that something could be done to prevent it. Lara:Depression. Another stage. Dr. Nathan White:When the news really hits in, it's difficult, especially if you don't feel like you have purpose. Earlier in the show, Dr. Laura was mentioning how people use tragedy to transform it to something else, where they were giving to others. A lot of times if you don't find that thing to ground you — whether it's helping others or support or whatever it is to ground you — you can just get stuck in the feeling of depression. Lara:A loss. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I think that it's a question of how do you find meaning in suffering, the eternal question. Viktor Frankl wrote much about that after World War II, right? Lara:Yes. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I think that's a really important point. How do you find meaning and purpose regardless of loss or even without loss in life, but especially at that time? I like the term transcend. Eventually, how can you transcend what's happening here down here? How does it raise up? What happens to us? It takes time, too. It takes time. Lara:It does take time. Lots of time. Then the last step, acceptance. Will we ever accept? Do people really accept the suffering, the loss, the trauma? Dr. Nathan White:I think there are degrees of it. As you move further and further away from painful things, the reality can fit in and set in more. The pain may still be there, but it can minimize in intensity. So acceptance, I think it's a matter of degree. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah, I know one woman not personally who had seven children, one of whom was one of my dearest, dearest friends. But one of her first babies died at the age of two and I met that mom. She was a matriarch. I met her years ago. All the kids were young adults and such and were all grown up now. But she said she felt she had one foot in heaven, and she carried that with her throughout her life. So, it was just really… Lara:What a wonderful example. Aww. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah, it was really lovely and I think about that a lot. She's passed on now. She lived a ripe old age. Lara:But that's a great way to take the trauma and hold on to the loved one that you've lost and still move forward in life, because really that's what is so hard after a trauma. I mean it seems like physically… let's talk about physically what happens. You get the news. Your body just seems to shut down. Eating, sleeping, you can't process things. What else happens it seems? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Or you feel stomach punched, don't you? Lara:[LAUGHTER] Yes. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Some people might sleep more. Some people sleep less. Some people eat more. Some people eat less. I liken it to the moment if somebody comes up to you and says, "Boo!" and scares you and you have moment where you're scared and it stays with you. Adrenaline. Lara:Is it adrenaline that's going? Okay. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Adrenaline, cortisol. You probably don't know all the chemicals — we have notions — but I think that physical feeling stays with you, and it wears you out. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah, yeah. Lara:Fascinating. Dr. Nathan White:I'm also reminded of other clients who I've seen who the threshold for dealing with emotion is different because they've experienced a trauma. They're more likely to tear. They're more likely to have energy. Then it just kind of goes away, if a trigger comes up or if they're reminded of something. Lara:Oh, that's really interesting. Help me understand that some more. Say that again in a different way. Dr. Nathan White:Sometimes I'll see people who, as they're coping, I'll be having a conversation with them and they're doing okay, and then something flashes across their mind that reminds them of the loss, and the joy in that moment is lost and it's like they lose the energy. They lose the motivation. Lara:So, it's an emotional reaction. They may have been dealing with it fine, and it might be even a year or two down the road, but something triggers it. I'm sure that there will be triggers for the rest of someone's life after a traumatic event or witnessing something, or losing a child, I would suspect. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. Lara:Yes. Dr. Nathan White:Or you can see just in the moment emotionally, but also even physically, because emotions take on physical manifestations. It can change. Lara:I don't think a lot of our listeners… I talk a lot about that, I want to listeners to really understand that emotionally that stuff can get stuck in our bodies, and we can hold it. That's one of the things that I work a lot with clients on is clearing that energetic imprint of emotions, even from when we were children that are stuck in there, even from when our parents were pregnant with us. That gets stuck in our own bodies. Do you work with clients with that that have that happen? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I have an interesting case, a little more expansive than that one. This was a lovely woman in her 40s from Eastern Europe who came to see me, and she had been well all her life. No family history of depression, anxiety — none of her own — and she couldn't even think of anything that was going on in her life that bothered her. [00:20:02]She was having severe anxiety, bad depression. It just came on like a snap and she couldn't function at home. She was this worker and this housewife and had two grown sons, just terrific and happy. She and her family had moved here to the Sarasota area a couple years before and she says, "We've never been happier." She said, "We love it here. I don't understand. I'm just feeling the best ever."             I couldn't find… often you find something. You can find some reason that something has gone awry, and I just couldn't, and I was scratching my head. I knew her for several months, and she had an accent from her country. As I got to know her over the months, I said, "I was just talking to a friend of mine in another city where I used to live, and her voice reminds me so much of yours. You have such a similar accent." They were from nearby countries.             She said, "Oh, they had a terrible war." It was Bosnia-Croatia issues and it turns out this woman, 20 years ago, had experienced the same war. They were living there and they escaped, and fled, and had all sorts of horrible things happen to them. They got out. They moved to another state. I believe they were in New York for many years rebuilding their lives, working hard, and they were happy to be able to move here. This was many, many years later.             So, she was probably in her 20s when they fled. I said, "I get it." I said, "You have post-traumatic stress disorder," and this is why it's called post. After the trauma and typically when you're "safe," you feel "safe," you're not in crisis mode, you're not in survival mode… that's a whole other level of anxiety and focus. But here she was just fine. Everything was really lovely and then the body decided, "It's time to let it out," and it just came out in a vengeance. [CHUCKLE] She's done, but she had one meltdown. She did well on medications to begin with. Then she had a little bit of a meltdown. This is even before I knew about her, the history of the war that she went through, and she's really doing great. This has made quite a bit of difference. I mean she's not only doing medication, therapy is really, really important. Lara:Absolutely. I do want to talk more after the break all about PTSD and what happens, and what the trauma does. So right after break, we'll be right back. [BREAK] Lara:I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome back. You can find me here at wsrqradio.comor larajaye.com. Right before break, we were talking with Dr. Laura and Dr. Nathan about trauma and grief and PTSD. Dr. Laura, that was an amazing story, and PTSD, the post-traumatic stress disorder, and how it can show up years later, and we may not even know that it's sitting in us, but it finds its way that it wants out, right? When it's ready to come out. [LAUGHTER] Are you finding that? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah. It needs to come out. Lara:It needs to come out. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:It really does need to come out and I think our bodies tell us when we're ready. They often do. Lara:Sometimes we're not paying attention. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Or sometimes we suppress it. Lara:Sure. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Or put it aside, I imagine. We see those people… well, we see all levels. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:But more often than others, perhaps we see people who are really ready to feel better. They might just be feeling bad and not know why. Lara:That makes sense. So, PTSD. That could happen from losing a child, from the war. That was a great example. Just pretty much any kind of trauma. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Any loss. Lara:Any loss. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Any loss. Lara:Any loss. So, we talked about physical reactions. We talked about emotional reactions. What are some helpful coping strategies for those who are going through an actual trauma right now? What could our listeners do if they have been just slammed with some kind of trauma and cannot even breathe? Like breathing is the most difficult thing right now. Dr. Nathan White:Well, to go along with what you just said, learning to breathe so that you can then talk. To follow up with what Dr. Laura said, we can store things in our body and our minds. Having that place, whether it's therapy, whether it's with a trusted friend, or someone to be able to have that time and dialogue to make sense of what's happening. You mentioned before we want to know why. Why can sometimes be helpful, but sometimes just talking it through can be very helpful and a first step in dealing with what… Lara:Is it possible to make sense of it, of a loss like trauma? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:That's a big, big question and the older I get — I'm the oldest one in this room — this life becomes more mysterious to me, and I personally don't ask why as often as I used to. Why did this? Why me? Why is this happening? I try to reframe for me, not my patients so much, and I won't impose that on them, but what can I learn from this? Is there meaning in this? Where am I going with this? What do I do with it? The whys are hard, hard questions. I don't know how often we… maybe when something goes well in our lives, "Oh, this is why it happened." That's easy, right? Dr. Nathan White:Right. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:But the tough stuff. I do try to stay away from the whys in practice, but you have to allow patients to empty as well. Dr. Nathan White:Sure. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Sometimes in the office, as you talked about breathing with a patient, they'll be sitting there talking. I'll say, "Just breathe. Exhale." Lara:You can tell they've forgotten to. Lara:They're holding everything in. Yes. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah. Dr. Nathan White:You can't process if you're not breathing. [LAUGHTER] Lara:Right. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:You think? [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Are you kidding? Lara:Right. I like that not asking the question why. Years ago when I was really, really depressed, I was in my counselor's office and I saw a book sitting there, and it said something about what is your depression trying to tell you? That got me journaling about what is my depression? Why is it here? What does it want to tell me? It was just a weird way to ask it, but I still remember that from years later, and I try to do that with other things, too, that pop up. It's like, "Why are you here? What do you want?" [LAUGHTER] Lara:"What am I not hearing?" Dr. Laura d'Angelo: Especially as we get older, right? [LAUGHTER] Lara:Exactly, exactly. I'm like, "I don't want you in my life anymore. Why are you here?" Dr. Nathan White:Yeah, and like you said, the why question can sometimes be helpful and sometimes do need to give voice to that. But questions are really important because they steer you in a certain direction. Sometimes, why questions can steer you into getting stuck because you don't always know the answer to a why question. But questions like some of the other ones doctor posed of, "What can I learn? Where am I?" Lara:More empowering questions. Dr. Nathan White:Exactly. That gets your eye on what direction can you move so you don't get stuck. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah, I just want to say one small thing about the use of medications at these times. Medications are just one tool, and sometimes they really can be very helpful when used properly and safely, and the medications we typically use are not addictive to help you sleep, to help you eat. Lara:Just the basics right now. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:If you are sleep deprived, nothing is going to heal. If you don't eat well. The three things to being well are proper sleep, proper nutrition, and proper exercise. If you don't have those three things functioning, you can't even heal well in therapy. Lara:When you've just had a traumatic event, your body is shutting down and is numb, and you can't sleep. You can't eat or, like you said, you sleep too much or eat too much. It's like we need the balance, and so that makes sense. Then coping strategies, you just have to take it moment-by-moment, day-by-day, right? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah. I think our bodies are always trying to heal. I think we'd heal through these things even without medication, but I think medication can help jumpstart you just to get you back to a level of a clear mind and helping you clear your heart too. But none of this healing is possible without proper… I'm not saying that therapy is not for everyone, but all sorts of other remedies that would help people. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. I would say in addition to some of those things my observation is also that structure can be really important. Because people who have a lot of free time when they have a lot of bad things or a lot of bad thoughts that they're dealing with, if you have 12 hours of just you're stuck with your thoughts, that can be overwhelming. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah, right. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Nathan White:Oftentimes when people have a structure, places they can go, people they can see, people they can help, that adds to their ability to kind of get through the week. Lara:And gives them purpose and meaning again when they feel like their life was sucked out of them. Dr. Nathan White:Right. Lara:That's a really good point. I hadn't thought about that with the mind taking off if you have too much time. That is important. What about for the people around you? So something traumatic has happened to you and let's say our listeners are trying to support someone who's going through a trauma, and there are just no words. What can they say? What can they do? Dr. Nathan White:The first thing that pops in my mind is we feel pressure to do so much, to fix.[00:30:04]But sometimes, really, the simplest, the most helpful, just being there. Just making yourself available, giving people space. But if they don't need a lot, then just… Lara:Because some people want space. Others don't. Dr. Nathan White:Exactly. Lara:They want a hundred people around. Others just want to be alone. So, you have to honor with they want, right? Dr. Nathan White:Exactly. "Hey, I'm thinking about you. I'm here if you need me." Sometimes less is more. Lara:Less is more. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I think listening. Listening. To just be there to listen. Lara:How about some non-judgmental listening? [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Because listen. People will tell you what they need or what they want. Lara:That's true. They will. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:It's really true. Dr. Nathan White:They will. Lara:If you listen. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Then sometimes I've had, in my personal experience, two instances with friends, with girlfriends who were going through loss, divorce — I think it was mostly around divorce — and I was just there. One I was calling. One I had coffee with, and just chatting and chatting and chatting, whatever. Years later each of them said to me, "Oh, my gosh! You saved my life. You had no idea what you said to me." I said, "What did I say?" They told me what I said and it was so meaningful to them, and I was like, "I don't even remember saying that." So sometimes what we think is so helpful means nothing to someone, and something so casual or heartfelt as well, in both of these cases, I'm like, "I'm really glad I asked," because I had no idea. So, you never know. I keep that in mind. You never know how you're going to affect someone, good or bad. I tread very cautiously. I've learned in my old age I'm learning to listen more and more, even though I talk whole heap. [LAUGHTER] Lara:That's really funny. I think people do. They want to reach out and they want to help. Sometimes they maybe say the wrong thing and then it upsets the person who's traumatized, and that makes things worse. So, it's just honoring… we might think — or that person who's trying to help — that's how they want to be held if they were traumatized, but that's not necessarily what that person needs. Again, it's being aware of what they need. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah. It might be hard when a person is really suffering and in the midst of loss to realize that Suzy meant well. Her intentions were so good. Sometimes you can't rise to that and say, "Her intentions were right," because you're just hurting so much. Lara:Right, that makes sense. I say that in times like this sometimes people just say stupid things, and they don't mean to. They really want to be there for you and be loving, but they don't know what to say. They don't know what to do. It might come out, and if you're going through the trauma, you're very sensitive right now. Everything is like Ping Pong balls. Maybe you're tired of hugs. Who knows? [LAUGHTER] Lara:Don't tell me you're sorry! I just want my child back. Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I had a girlfriend who was going through very difficult medical issues and this went on for a few years. She was laughing was just, "Please don't even pray anymore." She said, "I'm not even going to pray to God. He's so busy." He or She, whatever it is. But she was laughing about it. Lara:I'm glad she was laughing. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah, that was the good part about it. She said, "Don't do that anymore. We've been doing this for years now." [LAUGHTER] Lara:We'll get through it all. That's great. We are going to take a break and we will be right back with The Zen Leader. [BREAK] Lara:I'm Lara Jaye with The Zen Leader. Welcome back and in the studio is Dr. Laura and Dr. Nathan. Again, where can we find you? Dr. Laura, you're moving to a new office. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I’m moving to Center of Revitalizing Psychiatry next week. Lara:Here in Sarasota? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:In Sarasota, mm-hmm. Lara:Yeah, awesome. Dr. Nathan? Dr. Nathan White:I'm going to be moving to 1751 Mound Street. Should I give the phone number? Lara:Sure, go for it. Dr. Nathan White:(480) 323-9742. Lara:We will ring up the phone lines for you. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I'll give you my number which it will rollover. Lara:Yeah, go right ahead. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:(941) 315-6895. It will rollover to the new number. I'm in transition. I'm in loss. Lara:Yay! You're in transition. That's right. That's right. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:It's a little bit of loss and gain. Lara:Loss and gain. A little bit of both. Right before break, you were telling a story and you mentioned divorce, which I had completely forgot about that traumatic event. That was nothing today compared to… Dr. Laura d'Angelo:That was nothing, right? Lara:It was a big deal before this. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Right. Lara:Big day, big, big deal. And so many people. What is it? The percentages keep going up and up on divorce, and it is traumatic. Now, it's a slower traumatic versus a sudden car accident or whatever. But let's talk about that. Let's talk about the slower boil. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Right. [LAUGHTER] The slow boil. What's the particular question? Lara:Trauma, trauma. [LAUGHTER] Lara:What do we do with that? Could I have PTSD from a divorce? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Oh, I think so. Lara:Okay. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I think the process of a divorce, marriage… I mean I think by the time people decide to divorce it's a foregone conclusion. It's a formality, okay? But it doesn't mean… you have emotions during a marriage that's not working, when you're deciding to change, when you are divorced, when you're post-divorce, years down the road. I mean, you've got the entire chorus line there going on. [LAUGHTER] Lara:Yeah. Really it could have started five, 10 years before when you finally decide, "Let's fill out some paperwork." Is that what you're saying? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah. I mean, I have a patient. Oh, she's been wanting and she's disliked her marriage. It's been 30+ years. She's hated it, hated it, hated it, hated it. Then finally, "I'm doing this. I'm divorcing." It goes pretty quickly in Florida, compared to other states I've lived in, and a month after she's crying and sobbing, "I've sold the house and I miss my house." Lara:Then everything hits her. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:She's like, "Who is this man? My husband has been so nice to me." Then she's sobbing and sobbing. It was whole other context. So… [LAUGHTER] Lara:Wow! So again, that's a traumatic event, and I mean I remember my own divorce, unraveling it, and the pain. It was very slow. Whereas when I hear about the death of a loved one, it's just this quick my body freezes. The slow boil, but it still builds up. It still gets stuck in you unless you talk about it, which a lot of people don't want to talk about it, especially a lot of men don't have anyone to talk about, or they don't think they need to. Would you say that? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I don't know. What I've seen with the men… well, I've seen more women talk about divorce. Have you Nathan? Dr. Nathan White:Yeah. Lara:Right, that's what… I think the men need it. The men need it, but they're not coming in for help. Dr. Laura d'Angelo: I see the men. I'm thinking of one. He really misses his wife. I think he wants to be back with her, and there's a combination of anger and frustration. It's a very different dynamic talking to a man than a female. Is that your impression? Dr. Nathan White:Yeah, I mean I think everyone is going to be different. Yeah, everybody is going to be different. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:That's what's so hard is that as many people as there are divorces is as varied as there are how they're married, and they're individual. Wow! There's each person and then there's the two of them together. That's another entity. So, you have so many levels and at different times. Dr. Nathan White:Factors, mm-hmm. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:There can be relief after the divorce, and then is it statistically five years later how much happier are people after a divorce? Not necessarily, or unhappy in different ways. Lara:Oh, so they're unhappy in different ways. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Yeah. Lara:Well, that's not good news, Dr. Laura. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Laura d'Angelo:No, I was told this by another therapist. Lara:Okay. Well, I'm not going to believe that. No, just kidding. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:No, other ways. Lara:Other ways, other ways. I have a male friend right now who is a few months out of a divorce, and he still is, "She was my best friend." He doesn't want to go back with her. It's over. But she was my best friend and the mother of my children, and that's just beautiful. But still trying to heal himself and move on. It's hard when you're tied like that. But to unravel the divorce, when you've had a slow boil of this traumatic event, we still all need to do that. The clients that come in for you guys for divorce, Dr. Nathan, you see a lot of anxiety and depression. Dr. Nathan White:Sure. Lara:Which probably comes maybe a year or two after the traumatic event. Dr. Nathan White:Sometimes, and then sometimes it immediately shows up. Lara:Sometimes it'll immediately show up. Okay. How do you start by working with them? Dr. Nathan White:Are we talking about divorce or are we talking about…? Lara:Either way. Dr. Nathan White:Either way. I think, as we were talking before, giving someone that space to process what's going on, to try to make sense of it as best as they can. Lara:A safe space. A safe space. Dr. Nathan White:Right. And to think about how are you going to start to move forward. There's processing, but then there's also that piece of, "Okay, this is the new reality. What are you going to do?" in that gentle way. Obviously, you can't just move to that place. Lara:Right, right. [LAUGHTER] Dr. Nathan White:But you have to start thinking about if you don't have that purpose, how are you going to find that purpose? What is meaningful? How do you use skills and talents that you have? [00:40:00] Because oftentimes I see… one of my observations is that when people are using their skills and talents to help others, it can be an incredibly meaningful experience. Lara:Especially back to the beginning, taking something traumatic and transforming it into something that is helping others I think is what you were saying. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Being of service to others. Lara:Being of service to others. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:That's one of our purposes, really. I think that's one reason we're here. Dr. Nathan White:That's right. Doing the most good for as many as we can. Lara:Do you know of any other examples — I'm sure you do — of clients or people that you know that have taken something that traumatic, even if it was a divorce or something, and turned it into helping others? Can you think of any other examples that are listeners might be able to get ideas when they're in the midst of something? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Particularly around divorce, per se? Lara:Anything, anything. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I have a patient who wrote a book about a fat little girl that people made fun of, and she was fat herself as a child she said. I mean she's completely buff, but this was a real trauma for her through her childhood. Lara:Absolutely. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:People made fun of her. Actually, the book was stolen out of my office. [CHUCKLE] I don't recall the character being fat, but that's what it represented for the girl who wrote it, the woman who wrote it. But these kids were making fun of her, of this child. At the end of the book, of course, it had a happy ending. It was a child's book and it was resolved. But she did a lot of work with kids and fitness. She's still quite young, but she was doing that early on. That's how she turned her self-image… Lara:That's a great transformation story and she's an adult now probably helping kids. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Mm-hmm. Lara:Wonderful. I love hearing those kind of stories. That's great. So, Dr. Laura, for your clients who come in with a trauma event, are they dealing with symptoms or they say, "I lost my child?" Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Well, both. I mean, a child… well, a child loss, I don't think there's any… I mean, I was taught this in my residency and I have to agree with this. I don't think there's any loss greater or more difficult. It is not normal to lose a child through life. It's normal to lose older people, older generations, right, to say good-bye. So, I don't think people ever get over it. I don't know what that means, even though we use that term. It's with you all the time.             As that patient I said who came in with symptoms, but I didn't even know and she didn't know it was from war trauma, I always say we're detectives. We're detectives. What is going on here? We do ask ourselves all the time, "Why is somebody coming here now?" We ask the patient. If they're coming in with just symptoms as opposed to a story, we'll say, "What is bringing them here now?" We ask that, "What brings you here now?" Try to get that. Because really in our business the story, the history, gives us all the answers.             There's this other thing, a quote from George Washington Carver. I'm sounding so poetic today if I get this one right. He dealt with plants. But it was about how much we love. We don't have the right words in English, but how do we love our patients? How do we care for them? The quote from George Washington Carver is, "Anything will give up its secrets if you just love it enough." I think that talks about trust, if a patient has trust in the therapist or the doctor, they'll eventually reveal, and this is what intimacy is about. Opening and sharing yourself. That's where the healing comes in. That's where if we listen long enough and love the process, and love the person long enough, we're given the answers and I think it helps them heal. Lara:That's lovely. For people who have been through a traumatic event, they need that trusted, safe person to be able to go in. It might not be the week it happens, but it might be a month down the road or six months down the road, but I think it's really important that they do reach out for support. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:I think people who've had deep trauma… I don't know how to measure a trauma. I don't want to do that. Lara:Right. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:But we've seen all levels, whatever levels of trauma, just for the sake of discussion. The deeper, the longer it goes, sometimes it takes several years to trust the doctor you're working with where things come out. We've both had those experiences. Dr. Nathan White:Yes. [LAUGHTER] Lara:Amazing. It has been such a pleasure to have Dr. Laura and Dr. Nathan in the studio today. Thank you so much for coming. Dr. Nathan White:Thank you. Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Thank you. Lara:I invite our listeners to call these guys, either one of them. If you're going through something right now, they can help you get help and breathe. [LAUGHTER] Lara:Deep breaths, right? Dr. Laura d'Angelo:Exhale. Lara:Deep breaths. And take this trauma and see what you can do to transform it. Thank you for joining me on The Zen Leader. Have a great weekend.   END OF TRANSCRIPT [00:45:10]