Episode 98
Navigating Parenting & Mindfulness: A Conversation with Mahur-Nain
Heather Hester welcomes Madar Nan, a seasoned psychotherapist, to explore the intersection of meditation, mental health, and parenting. The conversation begins with an emphasis on the importance of mindfulness in daily life, particularly for parents navigating the challenges of raising children. Hester shares her experience of meditating and how various methods can help individuals find calm amidst chaos. Nan, who integrates Eastern and Western philosophies in her practice, discusses her journey from international business to psychotherapy, underscoring her commitment to helping others through the power of meditation and breathwork. The duo highlights how meditation can serve as a tool for self-regulation, especially for parents dealing with stress and anxiety.
A significant part of the discussion revolves around the benefits of Kundalini Yoga and its unique practices, such as chanting and breathing techniques, which can aid in achieving mindfulness. Nan elaborates on how these practices not only help individuals manage mental health challenges but also strengthen familial bonds. The conversation flows into the complexities of parenting teenagers, where both Hester and Nan reflect on the profound lessons learned from their children. They agree that parenting is a journey filled with simultaneous joy and challenges, where self-awareness and communication are paramount. Ultimately, the episode encourages listeners to embrace their parenting experiences with curiosity and compassion, fostering a safe space for both themselves and their children.
Takeaways:
- Mindfulness practices, such as meditation and chanting, can significantly reduce stress and anxiety levels.
- Understanding the difference between healthy stress and toxic anxiety is crucial for mental well-being.
- The journey of processing grief and trauma is non-linear and varies for everyone.
- Building self-esteem and self-worth is essential for effective trauma processing and healing.
- Incorporating breath work and movement into your routine can help release pent-up stress.
- The importance of pausing and checking in with yourself before tackling trauma is vital.
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Email: hh@chrysalismama.com
About our Guest:
Madhur-Nain Webster is a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in the integration of eastern and western philosophies for mental health. For over 20 years, she has empowered clients to connect with themselves and others through mindfulness and psychotherapy interventions. She applies her profound understanding of the importance of open communication at her successful private practice in Napa, California. Her first book, The Stressless Brain (2018), makes a scientific argument for the positive influence meditation has on the psyche; she is currently working on her second book. In addition to releasing over 60 meditation singles, Madhur-Nain maintains international outreach by appearing on podcasts and holding meditation workshops.
Due to a lifelong experience with, and knowledge of, yogic technology, Madhur-Nain’s therapeutic approach includes empowering clients with the ability of introspection so they can better connect with themselves and others. By developing the skill of self-observation, she believes an individual can understand and accept polarizing thoughts no matter their source. “It is not what happens to you,” she asserts; “it is how you make sense of it.” For over 20 years, she has helped people discover and build their self-trust with excellent results.
Aspiring to reach an international audience, Madhur-Nain has continuously held yoga and meditation workshops worldwide (virtually and in-person), appeared as a guest speaker on numerous podcasts, and released over 60 meditation singles. Her chants include a variety of religious prayers and psychological affirmations, making them an inclusive form of mental health healing. Her first book, The Stressless Brain (2018), is an accessible scientific argument for the positive influence meditation has on the psyche. She is working on her second book with an intended release in 2023.
Madhur-Nain currently runs a successful private practice in Napa, California, where she lives with her husband. In addition to her marriage of 27 years, her greatest accomplishment is being a mother to her two amazing adult sons. Her hobbies include traveling and expressing her creativity through clothing and jewelry design.”
Transcript
Welcome back to Just Breathe.
Heather Hester:I am really happy you are here today that you have chosen just to spend a little time, whether you are on a walk or getting some chores done or just taking a few moments for yourself.
Heather Hester:Welcome.
Heather Hester:I'm really happy you are here, and I'm really happy to share today's interview with you with someone who is absolutely certain to just make you feel super calm and give you some really, really wise insight and certainly some things that you will walk away thinking.
Heather Hester:I'd like to.
Heather Hester:I'd like to try that out.
Heather Hester:I certainly had a fantastic time interviewing her and talking with her and learning so much from her as well.
Heather Hester:So just to give you a little background on today's wonderful guest, Modern Ann Webster is a licensed marriage and family therapist who specializes in the integration of Eastern and Western philosophies for mental health.
Heather Hester:For over 20 years, she has empowered clients to connect with themselves and others through mindfulness and psychotherapy interventions.
Heather Hester:She applies her profound understanding of the importance of open communication as her successful private practice in Napa, California.
Heather Hester:Her first book, the Stressless Brain, makes a scientific argument for the positive influence meditation has on the psyche.
Heather Hester:She is currently working on her second book.
Heather Hester:In addition to releasing over 60 meditation singles, Madre n maintains international outreach by appearing on podcasts and holding meditation workshops.
Heather Hester:I am really, really thrilled to bring this conversation to you today, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Heather Hester:Welcome to Just Breathe Parenting, your LGBTQ team, the podcast transforming the conversation around loving and raising an LGBTQ child.
Heather Hester:My name is Heather Hester and I am so grateful you are here.
Heather Hester:I want you to take a deep breath and know that for the time we are together, you are in the safety of the Just Breathe nest.
Heather Hester:Whether today's show is an amazing guest or me sharing stories, resources, strategies, or lessons I've learned along our journey, I want you to feel like we're just hanging out, out at a coffee shop, having a cozy chat.
Heather Hester:Most of all, I want you to remember that wherever you are on this journey right now, in this moment in time, you are not alone.
Heather Hester:Welcome back to Just Breathe.
Heather Hester:I am so happy you all are here.
Heather Hester:And I'm really, really happy for this conversation that I get to have with Madar Nan.
Heather Hester:And it is just going to be fascinating, I think, for all of us, especially those who are curious about meditation and the psychology behind it and how all of this works.
Heather Hester:So welcome, welcome to the show.
Heather Hester:I'm so happy you're here.
Madar Nan:Thank you, Heather.
Madar Nan:It's great to be here.
Heather Hester:So I'd love to start out just kind of with a broad, broad question of who are you and how did you get into this really, really unique work?
Madar Nan:So I'm a psychotherapist of about 22 years, and I live in Northern California, Napa county, and I love working with people.
Madar Nan:And I actually, interestingly enough, I was in international business marketing when I first was in college.
Madar Nan:Many studying Japanese.
Madar Nan:I spoke fluent German and English and.
Madar Nan:And I just kind of decided it wasn't for me.
Madar Nan:And so, like, two years in, I switched majors and completely went a completely different direction.
Madar Nan:And.
Madar Nan:And it really was around.
Madar Nan:I really love helping people and supporting people and holding that space.
Madar Nan:And I've been on a journey of doing that ever since.
Madar Nan:I'm.
Madar Nan:I'm a mother and wife of 28 years, mother of two sons, 18 and 20, and the good ages.
Madar Nan:Every age has a blessing and a thorn.
Heather Hester:Yes, it is very, very true.
Heather Hester:Yes.
Heather Hester:I say that having teenagers as well and thinking they're so amazing and they also are just a different level of awesome learning.
Madar Nan:For sure.
Madar Nan:They're my greatest teacher.
Heather Hester:Oh, my goodness.
Heather Hester:I could not agree more.
Heather Hester:And I think that's such a gift to be able to actually look at them that way.
Heather Hester:Right?
Heather Hester:Because I don't know, I mean, you maybe did, but I didn't always look at it that way.
Heather Hester:And now that I do, I'm like, gosh, this is so fascinating.
Heather Hester:I'm always just kind of fascinated by the way their brains work and how they come up with these thoughts that they have and.
Madar Nan:Oh, for sure.
Madar Nan:I remember when my older son was 4 and saying something super wise and deep and being like, I knew my children were going to surpass me, but age four, really, like, I'm gonna have to, like, step up my game.
Madar Nan:That's right.
Heather Hester:Exactly.
Heather Hester:Oh, my goodness, yes.
Madar Nan:That.
Heather Hester:I love that happens all the time with my.
Heather Hester:Both of my daughters.
Heather Hester:I mean, all of my kids really.
Heather Hester:But like, they too, like, recently have said things and have done things that I've been like, oh, they have so far surpassed me and like, emotional intelligence and just the way that they understand things.
Heather Hester:I was, I mean, light years away from that when I was their age.
Heather Hester:So I always think, oh, this is like, so great that you are entering the real world like this.
Heather Hester:You know, I'm just so happy.
Heather Hester:So it is kind of wonderful and fascinating.
Heather Hester:So the.
Heather Hester:My one.
Heather Hester:I had so many questions about meditation, because I am.
Heather Hester:I do love to meditate, and I'm always kind of playing with different.
Heather Hester:Whether it's different modalities.
Heather Hester:Or do I sit in a chair?
Heather Hester:Do I sit in the floor?
Heather Hester:Do I, you know, am I supposed to have thoughts?
Heather Hester:Am I not supposed to have thoughts?
Heather Hester:Is it, you know, all these different questions and you do a very specific, and teach a very specific kind of meditation, which is from Kundalini Yoga.
Heather Hester:And then that transfers or translates into the meditation.
Heather Hester:So I'd love if you could talk about that a little bit because I think that's so interesting.
Madar Nan:Yeah.
Madar Nan:So Kundalini yoga and meditation has been very active in the world, if you will, for about 52 years.
Madar Nan:And it does come out of an organized religion slash cult.
Madar Nan:Like anytime you kind of get a group of people can get a little narrow minded and you get culture involved and egos and control.
Madar Nan:And yet the idea of the word kundalini has to do means awakening, aware, awareness.
Madar Nan:And actually Carl Jung and other philosophers brought the concept of Kundalini energy to the west in many, many years, even before this organization grew as the technique as well.
Madar Nan:And what I really love is that there is, there's a couple things I'm gonna tie in some mental health stuff and that, you know, a lot of people have anxiety and stress and let's say you don't have anxiety and stuff.
Madar Nan:Let's say you have a lot of, some like functioning depression, which means that you go to work and you go home and you have a family, but you worry a lot.
Madar Nan:And that can be like anxiety and depression.
Madar Nan:Depression.
Madar Nan:And what I love about breath and chanting, meditation and movement.
Madar Nan:Meditation is that it gives your mind to do while you're going into that process of aware of self awareness and mindfulness.
Madar Nan:For many people with mental health issues, which all of us have to some level, if it's zero, if it's a one or a ten, we all have, we're on that, that, that trajectory or that, you know, space.
Madar Nan:And what I love about chanting and breath and movement is, is that it gives your mind something to do.
Madar Nan:So you kind of get your neuroses out of the way to be able to connect to the.
Madar Nan:And the feeling of being in centeredness.
Heather Hester:Oh, I love that.
Heather Hester:Which really, that's one of the biggest things that people who are like, oh, I know meditation would be great, but I can't get my mind to be quiet.
Heather Hester:I can't, I can't be still.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:Like whether it's mentally or physically.
Heather Hester:So this is a really great form of meditation for someone like that.
Heather Hester:And really anybody, right?
Madar Nan:It is anybody.
Madar Nan:I mean if, if you break it all down, I believe that prayer in different religions were, was the original meditation.
Madar Nan:So being in your synagogue or in your church or in your community center and reading from a holy scripture as.
Madar Nan:As a whole congregation out loud, that is a form of meditation.
Madar Nan:You're tuning into a frequency altogether, and that naturally relaxes us.
Madar Nan:There's actually SC Scientific research that shows that when you chant or read scriptures or do out loud affirmations or even talk in tongues and do all that kind of more stranger meditation stuff, it actually activates a certain part of the brain, which is the top part of the brain, which is the partial, the upper partial part of the brain.
Madar Nan:And it increases more white matter.
Madar Nan:And science research has found that white matter helps us to emotionally process what we're going through in that moment.
Madar Nan:So when you're having a really hard time, I tell people meditation doesn't have to be like this quiet serenity space with an altar and quietness and the perfect sitting stool or blanket.
Madar Nan:No, sometimes it might be you doing dishes and reciting a prayer or a poem out loud.
Madar Nan:It might be singing a hymn or a chant.
Madar Nan:And I find that our brains are so incredibly powerful.
Madar Nan:We're able to do multiple things at once.
Madar Nan:We can drive from work and in our heads and all upset, and we don't even know how we got home because we're so preoccupied with our thoughts.
Madar Nan:So if you throw in chanting out loud or singing a prayer, even this, like, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.
Madar Nan:Like, it seems so simple and maybe even silly or religious, but it's that idea of when you, your mind is, is in like a cycle of just like, and then this happened, and then this happened, this always.
Madar Nan:And it never.
Madar Nan:When you bring in that frequency, it's like a little bit of a, like, like a bleep.
Madar Nan:And.
Madar Nan:And then you do enough of the bleeps, your brain starts to rewire how you're processing your trauma drama in the moment.
Heather Hester:Oh, that's so cool.
Heather Hester:So it's like a pattern interrupt, really.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:So it really could be, I mean, whatever, like, find what works for you.
Madar Nan:Yeah, 100%.
Madar Nan:And I actually have a very cute story that I share quite frequently.
Madar Nan:When I was driving in the car and those, you know, the parents listening.
Madar Nan:When you have your kids in the back and they're having a complete meltdown and you're driving, you're like, I just gotta get home.
Madar Nan:I just gotta get home.
Madar Nan:And my older son's having a meltdown.
Madar Nan:He's screaming, he's yelling, he's probably trying to hit his brother simultaneously, who's across on the other end.
Madar Nan:End of this seat, in his car seat.
Madar Nan:And I'm just like, I'm trying to convince him, like, just, you know, like, stop talking, you know, stop crying.
Madar Nan:I'm saying, look outside.
Madar Nan:Look at the tree.
Madar Nan:I'm like, I'm trying to distract him.
Madar Nan:Nothing's working.
Madar Nan:And I can just feel this like, anxiousness starting to rise in my body.
Madar Nan:And I just started chanting out loud.
Madar Nan:And I was just like, I was just chanting.
Madar Nan:There's an old chant, a Sikh prayer, which is Guru, Guru Wahe.
Madar Nan:Guru.
Madar Nan:Guru Ram Das.
Madar Nan:Guru.
Madar Nan:And I'm just chanting out loud.
Madar Nan:And my son's like, stop chanting.
Madar Nan:Chanting.
Madar Nan:And I said, I'm chanting for myself to calm down.
Madar Nan:And it goes totally silent in the car.
Madar Nan:And he goes, mama, will you chant for me too?
Heather Hester:Oh, stop.
Madar Nan:And so it's, it's that piece of.
Madar Nan:It's like you said, it's interrupting a pattern.
Madar Nan:And it allows us to go in that frequency.
Madar Nan:Because being a parent, it's.
Madar Nan:It's tough.
Madar Nan:Like we.
Madar Nan:We have so many things happening and, and nowadays, like the pressures to be.
Madar Nan:The pressure to be this perfect parent for our children, all the responsibility to raise these healthy, whole individuals is.
Madar Nan:Is.
Madar Nan:Is so tough.
Madar Nan:Like, it's overwhelming.
Madar Nan:Like, no one's perfect.
Madar Nan:And so by doing something like that, you can interrupt the.
Madar Nan:The like locked in space that we get in our thoughts with our partner, with our children, with our parents, with our neighbor, with our coworker.
Madar Nan:And it's that simple thing and it's silly.
Madar Nan:And at first when people do it, they're gonna be like, oh my God, this feels weird, but it does work.
Heather Hester:That's.
Heather Hester:I mean, you can.
Heather Hester:I.
Heather Hester:Now that you're saying it, like just like this, I can totally see how that works.
Heather Hester:And just the other thing that I know happens for me, and I imagine happens for a lot of people, is that when you are in that space of like, like your example where you feel yourself like getting more and more anxious, like you feel that and you.
Heather Hester:If that continues, you eventually get to a place where everything just kind of goes blank, right?
Heather Hester:So you completely lose all self awareness.
Heather Hester:All like, awareness.
Heather Hester:And so being able to do that, like, also kind of reconnects you with self.
Heather Hester:And that's so huge, right?
Madar Nan:I mean, you know, part of parenting is children want connection.
Madar Nan:They always.
Madar Nan:And as a child develops, they pull more and more away, which is appropriate.
Madar Nan:But what happens is it is our job as parents to keep holding that space.
Madar Nan:And I tell parents I do A lot of parenting support.
Madar Nan:And there's.
Madar Nan:There's five basic needs that every child needs, which is to feel heard, to feel seen, to have boundaries, to have unconditional love, and to feel safe.
Madar Nan:Those are the five basics.
Madar Nan:I mean, like, they're big, but they're.
Madar Nan:Those are the things a child needs.
Madar Nan:And none of us get all of them now.
Madar Nan:And so part of it is like the boundary piece and the meditation piece.
Madar Nan:It's that piece of who am I and who is my child?
Madar Nan:And when they're little, we're in, like, the same orbit.
Madar Nan:And as they grow and develop, they have to come out of.
Madar Nan:They have to start creating their own orbit.
Madar Nan:And then they sometimes don't want to, you know, like, they have unconscious and conscious reactivity to building their own orbit, or the parent has unconscious and conscious reactivity of the child pulling away, finding their own identity or, you know, their own voice or whatever it is.
Madar Nan:And so there is that piece of meditation and chanting and breath work and doing that mindful practice every day, even three minutes.
Madar Nan:Research has found that three minutes of meditation lowers your blood pressure, so it is meaningful.
Madar Nan:You don't have to do an hour.
Madar Nan:You don't have to do 20 minutes.
Madar Nan:It could be three minutes.
Madar Nan:It could be one minute.
Heather Hester:Right?
Madar Nan:And.
Madar Nan:And so it's a piece of, you know, life is like, you know that saying, the one constant in life is change.
Heather Hester:Right?
Madar Nan:So meditation brings us to our, you know, the source within us, our self, our capital S self.
Madar Nan:And it allows us to navigate the changes, at least.
Madar Nan:Easier doesn't always fix.
Madar Nan:It makes it just a little, little bit easier, which is.
Madar Nan:Can be a lot sometimes.
Heather Hester:It really can.
Heather Hester:Oh, my goodness.
Heather Hester:And I think just that helping to reconnect.
Heather Hester:Reconnect, right.
Heather Hester:And get kind of grounded and be like, okay, this is what's going on.
Heather Hester:Instead of, like, floating and frenetic and.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:And I think, you know, going back just a little bit.
Madar Nan:What.
Heather Hester:I love those, the five.
Heather Hester:And I know for me personally, the boundaries was the most difficult.
Heather Hester:And a big reason is because I never learned what boundaries were.
Heather Hester:I never learned how to set them.
Heather Hester:And so I was kind of learning at the same time I was teaching my kids.
Heather Hester:And I was also like, I.
Heather Hester:You know, what I was taught was that we're here to essentially, like, program our kids and put them into the world.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:Well, you know, that isn't.
Heather Hester:We all know that now.
Heather Hester:But if you're trying to do that, like, the whole.
Heather Hester:That kind of blows up everything else.
Madar Nan:Right.
Heather Hester:And so you're feeling like, all this panic and stress because your child is doing what they're supposed to be doing by, like, doing the separation and trying to, like, create their own orbit.
Heather Hester:I love that visual.
Heather Hester:Thank you.
Heather Hester:And just kind of step into their own.
Heather Hester:And if we don't have a good understanding of boundaries and we don't have a good understanding of what our purpose is as a parent, then that's really hard to give them the space to be able to do that and to know what they're doing.
Madar Nan:Yeah, right.
Madar Nan:Yeah.
Madar Nan:I mean, interesting.
Madar Nan:We actually all have two boundaries.
Madar Nan:And this comes out of the work of Terry, Real relational life therapy, which is a couples technique.
Madar Nan:But I do it with my family therapy as well, with parents and children and adult children and parents.
Madar Nan:And it's like an orange peel.
Madar Nan:So the orange peel has the orange part on the outside, and then it has the white peel on the inside.
Madar Nan:Those are two boundaries.
Madar Nan:And we all humans have two boundaries.
Madar Nan:We have the inner one and then we have an outer one.
Madar Nan:And so the outer boundary, which is what most of us talk about in our culture, which is, you're too standing too close to me or you're.
Madar Nan:You're impacting me or you don't, you know, I don't want to go or I don't want to be with you.
Madar Nan:These are all these external boundaries, which.
Madar Nan:An external boundary is us protecting ourselves from the world.
Madar Nan:An internal boundary is us protecting the world from our stuff.
Heather Hester:Oh.
Madar Nan:So.
Madar Nan:So if you think about parenting is.
Madar Nan:It is our responsibility as best as we can.
Madar Nan:I mean, it does go through our DNA to some extent.
Madar Nan:That's another whole conversation.
Madar Nan:But it's keeping our neuroses and not dumping them on our children.
Madar Nan:And that is an internal boundary.
Madar Nan:An external boundary would be the, you know, maybe an external boundaries, like, and they can go up and down.
Madar Nan:They don't have to always be up.
Madar Nan:But, like, boundaries are not always.
Madar Nan:You don't want always.
Madar Nan:If you have your boundaries up all the time, you'd be alone.
Heather Hester:Right.
Madar Nan:You have to know.
Madar Nan:You got to learn how to, like, oh, my internal boundaries up, but my outside boundaries down.
Madar Nan:I want to engage, but I'm going to, you know, I'm going to hold like.
Madar Nan:Like, with, you know, I'm in a bad mood and my child wants a hug.
Madar Nan:If I have both boundaries up, then that child's going to feel abandoned.
Madar Nan:They're going to feel like you're not there for them.
Madar Nan:They're going to feel like they don't understand.
Madar Nan:They're going to wonder, like, what did I do.
Madar Nan:If not depending on the age of the child.
Madar Nan:But sometimes you might have to lower your outside boundary, which is you're allowing the child to step in because you're their boundary to some extent, you're their security, but you're holding an internal boundary that you're not dumping your energy or, oh, my God, did you know what your dad did or your mom did or what grandma did?
Madar Nan:Like, you're holding that in that you don't put that on your child.
Madar Nan:So that would be outside boundary down, inside boundary up.
Madar Nan:But let's say you're with your partner and you're having a heart, you know, hard conversation.
Madar Nan:You want them a little bit down, but also up when they're.
Madar Nan:If they're reactive.
Madar Nan:Got to put your boundary up, but still have your inner down so that you can still be vulnerable and connect.
Madar Nan:I mean, it's complicated.
Heather Hester:It is complicated.
Heather Hester:But I think it's one of those things that is so good to know and to understand.
Heather Hester:Because, I mean, just like everything, once you understand it and you can conceptualize it, then you can actually do it.
Heather Hester:And not successfully all the time, but at least.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:Like, no.
Heather Hester:And, I mean, I think it's tools that are available to you, right?
Heather Hester:So if you don't know that they're there, or if you don't know what you're feeling, right.
Heather Hester:You might be feeling all these things and, like, having it, you know, just an innate feeling that, oh, I.
Heather Hester:I should be doing this.
Heather Hester:I shouldn't be doing this.
Heather Hester:But not really understanding why or what.
Madar Nan:To do, what to change it.
Heather Hester:Correct.
Madar Nan:No, this is not healthy, but I just don't know what else to do.
Madar Nan:And you may not even know.
Madar Nan:Know that intellectually or cognitively, it's just a feeling, right?
Heather Hester:Yeah, it's a lot of that.
Heather Hester:Like, I feel it here, or I feel it, you know, in the gut, and you're like, I just can't articulate it.
Heather Hester:And so.
Heather Hester:So very helpful.
Heather Hester:Now you have your second edition of your first book, Stressful.
Heather Hester:The Stressful Brain.
Madar Nan:Stressless Brain, Stress.
Madar Nan:Stressless Brain, stress Less, not stressful.
Heather Hester:We're gonna take the stress out of the brain.
Heather Hester:Okay, so you're.
Heather Hester:The second edition is coming very, very soon.
Heather Hester:Do you talk about this and is this part of.
Heather Hester:Okay.
Madar Nan:I don't talk about the boundary piece or the five basic needs of a child that will come in another book that maybe in a year or two.
Madar Nan:I kind of have a few in the lineup that I love.
Madar Nan:My goal is to write a book a year for 10 years.
Madar Nan:By the time I'm 60, my goal is to write 10 books.
Madar Nan:So I'm about one and a half down, so.
Madar Nan:Or one and a half in.
Heather Hester:That's impressive.
Madar Nan:So that's my goal.
Madar Nan:But the book, the Stresses Brain does have the meditation.
Madar Nan:It has all the psychology and meditation philosophy in there.
Madar Nan:It also comes with 26 downloadable meditation tracks that comes free with the book, plus instructions.
Madar Nan:And I really talk about how the difference between stress and anxiety and that they are normal to some extent.
Madar Nan:The problem is our culture has gotten to a place that it's really normal to hear people say, like, how are you?
Madar Nan:Oh, my God, I'm so stressed.
Madar Nan:Oh, I'm so stressed, too.
Madar Nan:You want to go get a cup of coffee?
Madar Nan:And it's like.
Madar Nan:But it's like, well, what does that mean?
Madar Nan:Or I'm just so anxious.
Madar Nan:And so the book really talks about the difference between them and how some is.
Madar Nan:Some is normal and some becomes unhealthy.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:Could you just add to that, like, just a really high level a little bit?
Heather Hester:Because I think that is something that is so common.
Heather Hester:I mean, you totally hit the nail on the head there, where it is.
Heather Hester:It's like one of those things that we used to say, I'm fine or I'm busy.
Heather Hester:I'm busy.
Heather Hester:Such a big one.
Madar Nan:Right.
Heather Hester:What does busy mean?
Heather Hester:So I think stress is another one.
Heather Hester:Like, I'm so stressed.
Heather Hester:Well, a lot of times I'll like, say that, and then I'll be like, well, actually, I'm not.
Heather Hester:Why am I saying that?
Heather Hester:Right.
Madar Nan:I mean.
Madar Nan:I mean.
Madar Nan:I mean, that's not mean.
Madar Nan:I can analyze that.
Madar Nan:Right.
Madar Nan:Not you necessarily, but just our culture.
Madar Nan:And I think that there's.
Madar Nan:I think that people saying, I'm so stressed.
Madar Nan:It is another way of saying, I'm so busy.
Madar Nan:I have so much going on.
Madar Nan:And it gives an underlying.
Madar Nan:It's a message.
Madar Nan:I'm important.
Madar Nan:Unfortunately, I think that.
Madar Nan:That if you break it.
Madar Nan:If you kind of like, break it down, break it down, come to the core.
Madar Nan:It is a sense of.
Madar Nan:There's a certain sense of, I must be important if I'm so busy.
Madar Nan:And then if I'm so busy that I'm stressed.
Madar Nan:The big thing to think about with stress is stress is part of life.
Madar Nan:We can't avoid it.
Madar Nan:So the difference is when it's healthy, stress versus it becomes a toxic stress that turns into anxiety, is that when you're stressed about something and that something happens and your stress does not go away.
Madar Nan:So let's say you're Giving a speech at work, or let's say you're in a play, or let's say you're gonna propose to your partner, or let's say you have this event happening, you're preparing for it, you're thinking it's appropriate to be nervous, it's appropriate to be a little stressed.
Madar Nan:Like, how's it gonna work out?
Madar Nan:Am I gonna say the right thing?
Madar Nan:Am I gonna do I understand what I'm saying?
Madar Nan:Or what are they gonna think?
Madar Nan:That's normal to some extent.
Madar Nan:When the event happens and you open your mouth and you're in five minutes into it, the stress should be going down every handful of five minutes.
Madar Nan:And when you're done with it, the stress should be gone.
Madar Nan:That is healthy stress because it's anticipation.
Madar Nan:We just don't know what, what, what it's going to be like, and we want to do a good job where we want it to work out.
Madar Nan:Unhealthy stress, when it starts becoming more of anxiety, which is unhealthy, toxic stress is when we're worried about something, the event happens and we're still worried.
Heather Hester:So does that translate into something else then?
Heather Hester:Like, does that.
Madar Nan:Because if the event is over, it becomes anxiety.
Madar Nan:It means, I mean, there's plenty of people who live in a constant state of anxiety.
Madar Nan:It's almost like one thing ends and they're like, oh, my God, oh, yay, my kid graduated, you know, from middle school, or, you know, oh, my God, now there's high school.
Madar Nan:It's like instantly, like they just go.
Madar Nan:And they're always in that state of worry, worry, worry, worry.
Madar Nan:That is one kind of stress and anxiety.
Madar Nan:And that's the piece where some people unconsciously think, feel and think.
Madar Nan:Worrying means that I am taking care of things, that I'm going to get in front of it, that I can anticipate what's going to happen.
Madar Nan:But what happens physiologically?
Madar Nan:What happens in our body and our brain is our amygdala, our adrenals, our glandular system are in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze and fix.
Madar Nan:We're constantly like, do I run?
Madar Nan:Do I stay?
Madar Nan:Do I fix it?
Madar Nan:Do I freeze?
Madar Nan:Maybe they don't notice me.
Madar Nan:And when we do that, we it like tons.
Madar Nan:All health problems, most health problems, not all, but most health problems come from that state.
Madar Nan:There's a really great documentary on.
Madar Nan:You can go, I think it's on YouTube, or you can Google it, called Stress by National Geographics.
Madar Nan:I actually mentioned this research.
Madar Nan:It's a professor from Stanford, and he talks about how stress affects.
Madar Nan:So this is a little tip for our listeners.
Madar Nan:If you have a really stressful experience and you have that cortisol release in your body and the best thing to do is to walk or dance.
Madar Nan:So if you can't leave the house or the office and you can't go for a 20 minute, 40 minute walk because there's they he found in the research is that whole motion of walking is that you're actually releasing the cortisol out of your body and we don't store it.
Madar Nan:So a good negative example is oh my God, I'm late for work.
Madar Nan:I got another red light.
Madar Nan:Oh my God, I have a presentation at work.
Madar Nan:Oh my God, I got another red light.
Madar Nan:So all that cortisol is pumping.
Madar Nan:Your amygdala does not know that this is not danger.
Madar Nan:It's just stress.
Madar Nan:It's, it's not danger, but your amygdala thinks we're being attacked by a cyber tooth tiger.
Madar Nan:Oh my God.
Madar Nan:Fight, flight, freeze.
Madar Nan:Fix fight, flight, freeze.
Madar Nan:You get to work and what do you do?
Madar Nan:You sit down in your desk for eight hours and all that cortisol goes to your stomach, goes to your hips, goes into your organs and then you do repeat.
Madar Nan:Oh my God, I'm late to get home for work.
Madar Nan:Oh my God, my kids.
Madar Nan:I got to pick up my kid at the school.
Madar Nan:Here we are again, right?
Madar Nan:So if you can't do the walk, go in your office, go in the bathroom, close the door, put on some music and shake your whole body.
Madar Nan:Shake, shake, shake.
Madar Nan:It helps to release the cortisol.
Madar Nan:Have a good old dance party by yourself.
Heather Hester:That is awesome.
Heather Hester:That is really, really great advice.
Heather Hester:First of all, because we've all been there.
Heather Hester:I mean all of us.
Heather Hester:Meet me every.
Heather Hester:Yes.
Heather Hester:I mean it's just kind of part of being human, right?
Heather Hester:I'm wondering how much of this response like the using stress as kind of almost a coping technique or letting it, allowing it to get to that 10 toxic and then anxiety stage, how much of that originally started as also a coping technique?
Heather Hester:Like, and what I'm thinking is like if you were in situations where to in your mind survive, you needed to like know what all the potential outcomes of whatever situation we're going to be.
Madar Nan:I mean, I mean this is when we can kind of get into a little bit unfortunately how our ancestors impact us.
Madar Nan:I mean there's one study I read or research paper many years ago that says that when the mother is pregnant and she's under a tremendous amount of stress, she's not only Taxing her own adrenal.
Madar Nan:She's taxing the adrenal of her unborn child in her, in her belly.
Madar Nan:So the baby comes out already at a deficit and.
Madar Nan:Not that again.
Madar Nan:No shaming out there.
Madar Nan:Please don't take it on.
Madar Nan:We all.
Madar Nan:It just happens.
Madar Nan:There's a book called It Didn't Start with youh which talks about how our trauma drama is passed through our DNA.
Madar Nan:And there's another research study I actually read recently that found that grandchildren of grandparents who were in concentration camps in Germany had the same digestive problems as their grandparents who were born and raised in New York City with normal diets.
Madar Nan:So part of it is in our, it's in our DNA a certain, like if we have a disposition to depression or anxiety.
Madar Nan:Now the good news, I don't want to leave it on the bad news, the good news is we can change it.
Madar Nan:We can change it through our diet, we can change it through supplements, we can change it through meditation, we can change it through exercise, we can change it through doing our own mental health work.
Madar Nan:Because that supports.
Madar Nan:I tell adults, parents that are adults in my office, you working on yourself is going to benefit your children, even if they're 30.
Madar Nan:Because when they see you shifting in your, your, your anxious approach or your depressive approach or your anger approach or whatever your disposition might be, you create a change inside of you.
Madar Nan:And that has a ripple effect into your family.
Heather Hester:It does.
Madar Nan:And even when I have children whose parents won't go to therapy or won't work on themselves, adult children, it's like you doing the works.
Madar Nan:Not that it's your responsibility necessarily, but doing the work does have benefits.
Heather Hester:Oh my goodness.
Heather Hester:It absolutely does.
Heather Hester:It absolutely does.
Heather Hester:Well, even like you mentioned earlier, doing that if you can.
Heather Hester:20 minute walk, right.
Heather Hester:I love the idea of a dance party.
Heather Hester:I mean, who is for a dance party even in your car.
Heather Hester:I was saying this to somebody earlier, like if you love music and you're in that, that space, like flip on your favorite, you know, pull up your Spotify playlist and car dance and sing and who cares who sees you, right?
Madar Nan:100%.
Madar Nan:And that, that is going to help, will fix everything.
Madar Nan:No, but it does make a huge difference.
Madar Nan:And it's not about.
Madar Nan:There's a great.
Madar Nan:I said this to a client many weeks ago.
Madar Nan:I said, it's not the finish line, it's the journey there.
Madar Nan:The finish line is our last breath.
Madar Nan:Not to be morbid.
Madar Nan:Our finish line is when we die.
Madar Nan:It's all about the journey there.
Madar Nan:There's a Great quote.
Madar Nan:I can't remember who said it, but I love it.
Madar Nan:It's not the life you live, it's the courage you bring to it.
Heather Hester:Oh, that's good.
Heather Hester:Yeah, that is a really good one.
Heather Hester:It's so true.
Heather Hester:I mean, it's going to be messy.
Heather Hester:That's what I say all the time.
Heather Hester:It's just all.
Heather Hester:It's all messy.
Heather Hester:But it's beautiful.
Madar Nan:There's.
Heather Hester:It's both, right?
Heather Hester:I mean, it's just.
Heather Hester:It is both and we, we are all works in progress.
Heather Hester:So, you know, it's never too late to start working on yourself, to start trying some of these things and seeing what works for you and what you connect with and what just.
Heather Hester:Holy cow.
Heather Hester:One step at a time.
Heather Hester:Yeah, I want to shift a little bit here because we were talking before we started recording and I just want to touch on this question, but this is something that I was asked recently and we'll will kind of touch on down the road a bit.
Heather Hester:But talking about.
Heather Hester:It's talking about trauma and then grief.
Heather Hester:So in this specific question was handling and processing the grief that comes when you come out after a loved one, whether it's a parent, grandparent has passed away and how to deal with that, you know, not either not being able to tell them or having waited to, to, you know, come out until after the, you know, why that happened.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:So how does one kind of.
Heather Hester:And it goes into like the bigger overarching, like how do we process grief?
Heather Hester:But I think that is a very specific scenario that would be.
Heather Hester:Speak to my audience for sure.
Madar Nan:Well, there's a couple things.
Madar Nan:One is there's a great saying that I also share that I got the concept from Gabor Monty's work, which is it's not what happens to you, it's how you make sense of it.
Madar Nan:So in that, in that concept of, of how you make sense of it.
Madar Nan:So when, when a person chooses to not tell a parent about, about your identity or your grandparent, there's one that's like the logistics of it.
Madar Nan:What's hurting us is how we make sense of us choosing to not share or choosing to wait.
Madar Nan:What meaning are you giving that what you're.
Madar Nan:What you're.
Madar Nan:What you chose to do and that the meaning that you give yourself why I did something or didn't do something, that's going to be more of the tug, I call them hooks, that might be more of a pulling and stuck feeling that maybe I wait for to do.
Madar Nan:You know, tell my grandparents until they pass.
Madar Nan:And now I come Out.
Madar Nan:And I just.
Madar Nan:I still don't feel, like, a sense of relief.
Madar Nan:And that's when we want to look at, well, what's the meaning I'm still holding that I give to this choice I made?
Madar Nan:Not about good or bad, right or wrongs.
Madar Nan:Not talking about that.
Madar Nan:We're talking about the meaning each individual person gives to the choices you make.
Madar Nan:Now, we don't always know that cognitively.
Madar Nan:We don't always know.
Madar Nan:Well, I know I did this because of this.
Madar Nan:If that's where spending some time to really sit with, wow, I'm still feeling hurt, pain, anger, confusion in this choice I made or didn't make.
Madar Nan:What meaning am I giving it that's allowing me or holding me stuck in the journey of why of doing it.
Heather Hester:I love that.
Heather Hester:That's such a great question.
Heather Hester:That's a question that you can ask yourself.
Heather Hester:Like, you don't need someone to hold yourself.
Madar Nan:Yeah.
Madar Nan:You can go journal.
Madar Nan:You go for a walk and you ask it multiple times.
Madar Nan:If you're still holding it, then you say again, what meaning am I giving it now?
Madar Nan:That keeps me from letting go.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:Oh, that is so great.
Heather Hester:That is something that we all can do.
Madar Nan:Yeah.
Heather Hester:Right?
Madar Nan:Yeah.
Madar Nan:And grief has multiple.
Madar Nan:Multiple steps.
Madar Nan:And grief is not linear.
Madar Nan:It's all over the place.
Madar Nan:So the steps are in.
Madar Nan:No.
Madar Nan:And they.
Madar Nan:This is the order they are.
Madar Nan:But you go in and out of different ones.
Madar Nan:So it's shock and denial, anger, sadness, depression, acceptance.
Madar Nan:And then you throw in there every once in a while.
Madar Nan:You throw in there.
Madar Nan:Wishful thinking, numbing.
Madar Nan:And we bounce around.
Madar Nan:Like, one.
Madar Nan:One moment we're angry, and anger can.
Madar Nan:There's lots of different kinds of anger.
Madar Nan:And then we're just in denial.
Madar Nan:Well, I'm still gonna think about it.
Madar Nan:And then we're just like.
Madar Nan:And then three days later, three weeks later, we're just kind of sad.
Madar Nan:God, I wonder why I'm feeling melancholy or wonder.
Madar Nan:Well, okay, come back to like.
Madar Nan:There's something I'm processing and I'm still.
Madar Nan:And we're working towards acceptance.
Madar Nan:And there's a great sharing from the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.
Heather Hester:It's very good.
Madar Nan:And he talks about that.
Madar Nan:One of the things that I'm paraphrasing just this.
Madar Nan:I'll be writing about this in my next book, hopefully comes out in December.
Madar Nan:That part of how we get out of anger and sadness and shock and denial, part of what gets us out is the idea of wonder.
Madar Nan:I wonder what it would feel like, be like if I wasn't feeling sad, depressed, angry.
Madar Nan:I wonder.
Madar Nan:I wonder what my life would be like if I wasn't holding on to this.
Madar Nan:I wonder what my life would transform if I were to grieve the loss of X, whatever that is.
Madar Nan:When you can start wondering, it opens up a space for new growth to happen.
Madar Nan:But as long as the wondering is closed, you're more likely to unconsciously or consciously be bouncing around these other steps.
Heather Hester:That makes so sense.
Heather Hester:So much sense.
Heather Hester:And I love, too, that this is something that you can really process, like, take upon yourself to process.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:And if you need the help of a professional therapist, then absolutely.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:But it's something that you can spend time journaling or you can, you know, walk and just kind of let it.
Heather Hester:But opening up that.
Heather Hester:I mean, that makes so much sense to just open.
Heather Hester:That's like the idea of parallel to just being curious.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:Which I use a lot so that I had forgotten I read that book 100 years ago.
Heather Hester:It feels like.
Heather Hester:And that's such.
Madar Nan:It's so good.
Madar Nan:I had to do it in, like, stages because it is heavy.
Heather Hester:It is.
Madar Nan:So I had to, like, do it and then take a little break, read something else, and then read it and then take a little break.
Madar Nan:And.
Heather Hester:Yeah, I think it's one of those books that if you.
Heather Hester:You kind of have to have a little life under your belt to read, because if you read it too young, it doesn't make any sense or you miss a lot of.
Heather Hester:A lot of it.
Heather Hester:Right?
Madar Nan:Yeah.
Heather Hester:Oh, my goodness.
Heather Hester:So I have just.
Heather Hester:I'm trying to decide here.
Heather Hester:I have a couple more questions, and maybe we'll touch on this one, because I think it'll be a good parallel to my audience.
Heather Hester:So it's a little bit about trauma, talking about trauma and when.
Heather Hester:When is good to acknowledge it, to work on it, and when we shouldn't do that.
Heather Hester:When it.
Heather Hester:When.
Heather Hester:How do we know when it's not the right time?
Madar Nan:Yeah, well, I'll start with the latter.
Madar Nan:I think it's not the right time.
Madar Nan:When you have.
Madar Nan:When you have something that you're really trying, like you're in college or you're really trying to get through college, then you want.
Madar Nan:And you want to be able to say, okay, I'm going to work on this.
Madar Nan:When I'm not so focused on something, or let's say you're trying.
Madar Nan:You're focusing on something else.
Madar Nan:When we unpack trauma and we have other things going on simultaneously, it can feel like Pandora's box.
Madar Nan:And we can feel a sense of we're treading water in our life, which can bring us into depression or we can feel like nothing ever works out for me, and we can get into that mindset.
Madar Nan:And I also think that, and I say this very gingerly, gently, is when you're younger, like when you're from birth until 30, your brain is not fully developed.
Madar Nan:And so the idea of self awareness, I mean, you have it.
Madar Nan:But who I was that we were talking about this earlier, who I was at 20 is not the same person I was when I was 30 or 40 or now in my 50s.
Madar Nan:Like, it's not the same.
Madar Nan:And it's not about better or worse.
Madar Nan:It's different.
Madar Nan:And that's the part of.
Madar Nan:When you're in your teens and your 20s, it's really about cultivating experiences.
Madar Nan:You are a sponge and your brain is developing so much.
Madar Nan:They say that you can learn the most in these ages.
Madar Nan:But then when you're older, you have the ability to reflect a little bit different because you have more experience.
Madar Nan:So when you're younger, you're really gathering information and experiences.
Madar Nan:So that's.
Madar Nan:One second is how to do our trauma.
Madar Nan:Part of it, again, comes to that concept I was sharing earlier.
Madar Nan:It's not what happens to us, it's how we make sense of it.
Madar Nan:So when you have, let's say you have two siblings in yourself and a family, and there is a traumatic or dramatic experience in the family system, all three of the children are going to have a different kind of trauma or pain.
Madar Nan:And one is not better or worse than the other.
Madar Nan:They're just different.
Madar Nan:And so part of it is when you want to do some work.
Madar Nan:You know, there's lots of books out there that can kind of guide you through, but it's really coming to the idea of what are the parts that come up in me when I think about this trauma, because that will be an example of how you've made sense of it.
Madar Nan:I'm not enough.
Madar Nan:I'm too much.
Madar Nan:Things never work out for me.
Madar Nan:I never get what I want.
Madar Nan:People don't see me.
Madar Nan:I never understood, like, all of those, always and nevers, those are.
Madar Nan:That's our hooks, right?
Madar Nan:And.
Madar Nan:And it's being able to really sit with that and give your time, yourself time, set up a time.
Madar Nan:Maybe it's weekly that you're gonna reflect on it and then you're gonna say, like, okay, I'm going back to my life.
Madar Nan:And it sounds kind of corny, but you say, like, whatever.
Madar Nan:Like, is it the inner parts work?
Madar Nan:Like, hey, my four year Old self.
Madar Nan:I love you.
Madar Nan:I'm gonna be back.
Madar Nan:And then the next week on that dot, you got to be back.
Madar Nan:It's got.
Madar Nan:It's really important because that's building internal trust inside of ourself.
Madar Nan:And that is when healing.
Madar Nan:That's when the click, click, click, shifts into that shifting of healing.
Madar Nan:And remember wonder so we can get to acceptance.
Heather Hester:Exactly, exactly.
Heather Hester:And interesting.
Heather Hester:The parallel between processing grief and processing trauma.
Heather Hester:And they are intertwined, for sure.
Heather Hester:But that is, that is interesting.
Madar Nan:And.
Heather Hester:And just also the awareness piece and having, you know, a fully formed, fully developed brain, right?
Madar Nan:Yep.
Madar Nan:It does make a difference.
Heather Hester:Oh, my goodness.
Madar Nan:Difference.
Heather Hester:I even think, you know, the work that, you know, my son has done that all of my kids have done.
Heather Hester:I mean, obviously they're all under the age of 30, and he's still only 23, but has already done, you know, work.
Heather Hester:And I often think about this, like, what.
Heather Hester:Where will he.
Heather Hester:How will he be processing this 10 years from now?
Heather Hester:Because it'll be so different, right?
Heather Hester:And my hope is just that they know what their tools are, right?
Heather Hester:They know these different little pieces that while it may not make sense or it makes sense in a very different way than it's going to 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from down the road, right?
Heather Hester:That they can do that.
Madar Nan:I think a big piece of it is when any of us are working on trauma drama or feelings or memories, it's just pausing, like, what do I need right now?
Madar Nan:Which is different than what do I need in my life?
Madar Nan:Like, you're not going to know what you need in 20 years.
Madar Nan:So it's really about, what do I need right now?
Madar Nan:And maybe it's like, you know what?
Madar Nan:I don't want to deal with this right now.
Madar Nan:Write a letter of the trauma drama and go put it somewhere in your, you know, and say, I'll come back to you and put a date, put a reminder in your calendar for three years from now, if that's what you choose.
Madar Nan:And then you go back and look at the letter.
Madar Nan:I mean, like, it's okay to say, I'm going to pause, but the thing is, don't just pause and then sit there.
Madar Nan:Go remember, it's bringing in experience, bringing in knowledge, bringing in learning.
Madar Nan:Like, that's where that's building self esteem and self worth.
Madar Nan:And self esteem and self worth is an antidote.
Madar Nan:It is one of the most important tools to being able to do the work.
Madar Nan:So if you can't yet because you're too sensitive, you don't feel you're Enough then put a pin in it and go do the work to build your self esteem and your self worth so that you have, you have the capacity to hold uncomfortable feelings and self reflect the past, yourself, other people.
Heather Hester:Right.
Heather Hester:Well, I think there's so much power in that being able to just pause.
Heather Hester:I need to pause, I need to shelve it whether it's for you know, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year.
Madar Nan:Right.
Heather Hester:And, and come back to it when you know there are different pieces in place.
Heather Hester:So.
Heather Hester:But that just that gift to yourself in another, you know, to not should on yourself all the time.
Madar Nan:Right.
Heather Hester:So.
Madar Nan:And I think it's really important to do things that uplift you and make you feel whole and make you feel.
Madar Nan:Because when we do nothing, I always tell people like nothingness is not a good thing because it makes us complacent and complacent makes takes.
Madar Nan:We take steps back.
Madar Nan:Yeah, it's really.
Madar Nan:And that's that piece of.
Madar Nan:And you know, inside, outside boundaries.
Madar Nan:It's like I gotta protect my partner or my children or my co workers from my whoosh feeling.
Madar Nan:Like you never.
Madar Nan:And you always.
Madar Nan:It's like, well I gotta look at that.
Madar Nan:I can't plop that on the other person.
Heather Hester:No, no, that alone is, you know, such wonderful just knowledge to have.
Heather Hester:And on that note, I'm watching our time and so I want to just really quickly end with a thought on meditation because that's where we started and wonder if you could just give a really quick.
Heather Hester:Whether it's a recommendation or point everyone to, you know, where you.
Heather Hester:I know that you have a number of things on your website that are wonderful.
Madar Nan:Yes, I.
Madar Nan:So I have like probably over 50 or 60 meditations on my website and they do come.
Madar Nan:Most of them come out of the Kundalini technology space.
Madar Nan:And I've started creating.
Madar Nan:I have a Christian album coming out for those of you who are listening, who are Christian or I have a Jewish ones coming out because I just want to be able to have something for everyone and they can connect to.
Madar Nan:So it's on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, they're on all the streaming spaces.
Madar Nan:And one thing I'll leave listeners with is that singing, chanting or breathing in a sequence like where you're having a pattern, like a pattern breath, any of those things stimulate your body, stimulate the vagus nerve, which when you stimulate the vagus nerve you actually naturally can calm yourself from the inside out.
Madar Nan:So.
Madar Nan:So if you sing in your car, like you were saying, if you do a chant or you do a breath where you're some people that there's like a box, box breathing.
Madar Nan:But you want to be really.
Madar Nan:You gotta create a little pulse with your breath.
Madar Nan:It can't just be long, deep breathing.
Madar Nan:It needs to be like a pulse where you're stimulating the lungs, which then which is your vagus nerve, is in the center of your chest and connects to all your organs and glands except for your adrenals.
Madar Nan:So by stimulating it, by doing those things, you're able to create a relaxation, starting from the inside out.
Madar Nan:That's my sharing.
Madar Nan:I love it.
Heather Hester:That is the perfect, perfect way to end.
Heather Hester:Thank you so much and it's such an honor to have you here.
Heather Hester:Thank you.
Madar Nan:Thank you so much, Heather.
Madar Nan:I really enjoyed our conversation.
Heather Hester:Me too.
Heather Hester:Thanks so much for joining me today.
Heather Hester:If you enjoyed today's episode, I would be so grateful.
Heather Hester:For a rating or review, click on the link in the show notes or go to my website, chrysalismama.com to stay up to date on my latest resources as well as to learn how you can work with me.
Heather Hester:Please share this podcast with anyone who needs to know that they are not alone.
Heather Hester:And remember to just breathe.
Heather Hester:Until next time, Sa.
