Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: What'S worthwhile healing Mind, body and spirit. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. I choose peace of mind, vitality of body and joy of spirit over stress, exhaustion or overwhelm. Together, let's explore and pursue the many ways to build holistic health and wellness.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: So it's like, okay, where, where do we start? What's baseline and kind of how we, we like to work with clients is all right, what are the biggest offenders going on right now from a nutrition lifestyle, movement, nervous system regulation, you know, and then bigger root causes that we, we can have going on and based on where someone's starting from, what are some things that we can do? What, what can we add to our lives? What can we pair with existing habits? What can we share? Easily kind of start to shift and how do we kind of build those up as we go along to make this process?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Hey there, it's Ramsay here. That was Megan Abbott. Megan is the founder and owner of Trifecta Collective, a holistic health practice that focuses on finding and addressing the root causes to chronic health issues.
She is a nutritional therapy practitioner, functional blood chemistry specialist, personal trainer, and energy healer. Megan is a fount of useful and helpful information.
The list she rattled off of her own health issues earlier in her life was extensive and daunting. But her deep understanding and wealth of ideas today to help people regulate their nervous systems and reclaim their health was downright inspiring. We talked about many ways to deal with the effects of stress, including finding and correcting nutrient deficiencies, getting effective amounts of exercise, and addressing and releasing suppressed emotions. I learned a ton from Megan and I think you will too. Let's get started.
Hey Megan, how are you doing today?
[00:02:03] Speaker A: I am doing great. Thank you so much for asking and thank you so much for having me on.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Thank you for joining me today on what's Worthwhile. You know, you have such an amazing content packed podcast of your own called Trifecta Collective Finding the Root. So I really just wanted to invite you in and pick your brain about things that we sort of both think about it seems like.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Can't wait to dive in.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool. Well, let's, let's introduce you just a little bit for the audience.
You are a nutritional therapy practitioner and a functional blood chemistry specialist.
Also a personal trainer and an energy healer among I'm sure many other things naturally. So have you have been at this for a while? It seems like you have a lot of training and I understand you also had personal interest that got you into this place in the first place. So can you tell us some more about that?
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. So I've been in the health and wellness space for a little over a decade now. And I originally got into it because I started my career after college, as in the, in the sales and business field and got burnt out by the age of 25 and had struggled with my mental.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: I'm sorry, that's a pretty quick burnout.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Yeah, working 80 to 100 hours a week at 21 to 25. Yeah, that'll do it pretty quickly.
And so, yeah, I had already struggled with my mental and emotional health for, for the majority of my life and was on Medicare, all kinds of medication for that. I have a long trauma history coming into that childhood trau, early adulthood trauma.
And I found fitness and fitness really helped me get off of my medications and feel, I won't say great, but good enough to stay off of them. And so that's really my original. I fell in love with the fitness industry and then health and wellness kind of overall with that. And then a few years after I was already in this space, I got into a car accident that it was a minor car accident, I just got rear ended and it set off a whole host of issues in my body that started with chronic lower back pain and then I lost feeling in my right leg for a year. And then when that feeling came back, it was pain and like nerve pain, sharp shootings, sciatic kind of pain. Then I developed bursitis in my hips and then I had all kinds of gut issues and then I was sleeping eight to ten hours a day and then I also needed a nap. On top of that, cognitive function declined.
You know, my hormones were all over the place, inflammation. I started gaining weight all over the place. My hair, I mean, I had almost no hair at one point in time and just very grateful that it is back now. And I, you know, I just had these whole host of issues and western medicine failed me pretty quickly and so I turned to functional medicine and functional medicine also failed me pretty quickly within a couple of years here. And I, I mean I. Every elimination diet under the sun, it got to the where I was eating chicken and steak and white rice and I was still reacting to those foods.
And I, I mean at the most I was on 33 supplements. I took every test under the sun. I took five stool tests, three of which were darn near perfect.
And I still had chronic constipation issues and bloating and the food sensitivities and all of gas and acid reflux and all of these things.
And so I finally got fed up and I took my own education and decided to go through the nta. And that was kind of my. My starting point here. And that made a big difference. And then I started digging into bigger root causes and getting familiar with actually the testing and what does this actually look like and why my elimination diets not be the best for me anymore. And bigger picture, what is going on? Why do I have an autoimmune disease? Why do I have thyroid issues? Why do I have gut issues? Why am I perimenopause before the age of 30? Like, I started figuring all of these things out and started to heal and got into the nervous system regulation piece and trauma healing and realized how big of a deal that was for me and how can movement and exercise complement and also hurt me and what does that need to look like for me and all of that kind of stuff. So that's kind of really how I got into this space and fell in love with holistic health, holistic healing.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Well, clearly there's a lot there, so a lot was happening.
Do you think in retrospect, that the car accident sort of set off a chain reaction because things were sort of ready to.
Ready to blow, ready to break, and they sort of got set off? Like I want to hear. The detective in me wants to hear more of sort of what some of the answers were and sort of what happened.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, if I look back now with all the education that I have and I've looked at all my labs from when, even before the car accident in my early 20s and then even early on and things that were missed and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it really the. I do like the analogy of the autoimmune disease where it's. The gun was loaded, loaded with trauma, loaded with over exercising, under eating and, you know, body dysmorphia issues and the trauma and fight or flight and not sleeping well and chronic constipation and toxin overload issues and, you know, all of these things were already there. And then it was the car accident that pulled the trigger and just set everything 100%.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm.
I'm pretty interested these days in stress and specifically kind of what stress does to a person and also how we can respond differently to stress than what we have or what we would sort of naturally. And I wrote this whole book, Stress Response, about that.
But kind of the point is that, you know, our bodies were, you know, designed or evolved to deal with mostly physical challenges.
But today it seems like mostly we have Mental, emotional and virtual challenges, you know, on the other side of a screen.
And so we have just as much, if not more stress.
It comes in a different form and, you know, how we respond to what we do with it and do about it and how we sort of deal with chronic stress is sort of a, you know, completely different thing now than it was, you know, let's say, before the Industrial revolution.
So, you know, you've got all of these different, you know, sets of training and different perspectives.
I think it'd be fun to talk about sort of stress from the different perspectives.
What do you think? Is that a good way to spend some time together?
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. And I love this topic and you know, I think most people think about stress and you know, I have, I'm stressed at work, I have financial stress, I have family stress, I have too many things to do and all of these things. And I think that's just such a narrow view of stress. Yes, of course, those are stressors and a lot of those, some of those are not controllable. And so we have to kind of pick and choose our battles. But then if we also expand that view of what is stress, I think that helps us start to put some of these pieces together. You know, I think low stomach acid production. Not absorbing nutrients, not fueling our body with the right nutrients. Enough nutrients. Not moving, Moving too much. Moving in inappropriate ways for our body.
Sleeping. Not sleeping enough. Sleeping too much. Not getting good quality sleep. Breathing. How are we breathing? Are we breathing enough? Are we not breathing enough? Are we breathing only through our chest? In which case we're not maybe getting enough oxygen. Oxygen. Are we, you know, are we stuck in a chronic state of fight or flight? What is our brain thinking? What is our brain telling our body all day? Are we telling our body that we're not good enough? I. I'm not doing enough. I need to be productive in order to be loved and I need to do all these things and if I rest, there's going to be consequences and I'm lazy and all of these things. Like what is going on with that? What about toxin load? What is our environment giving into our bodies? How many times have we taken antibiotics? What, what kind of support have we done around that? How many surgeries have we had? Have we had organs removed? Whatever, you know, I just. And I think if we expand this, this concept of what is stress, this gives us such a more comprehensive path to healing.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Well, it sounds like what I'm hearing you say is that not only are there things that we can do to alleviate stress.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: But.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: But when we're not doing all the foundational things that we ought to be doing or that we're not experiencing all the things that our body should experience in order to be healthy, then that is just racking up stress. What I hear you is sort of defining all of the things in our environment, in our lives, in our diet, in our, you know, the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the electromagnetic fields that we bathe in constantly. All of those things are also stress.
And not only would sort of turning the tables on all those things to, you know, do the right things help our stress response, but the fact that we're getting it all wrong is just adding to our stress load.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Exactly. And I also think so many people, and especially women I see when we start having this concept, then there's this sense of overwhelm, of, oh, my goodness, I need to be doing all of the things all of the time. And then that could also add in another.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Well, it was quite an overwhelming list that you just rattled off for us a minute ago.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's like, okay, where. Where do we start? What's baseline and kind of how we. We like to work with clients is what are the biggest offenders going on right now from a nutrition, lifestyle, movement, nervous system regulation, you know, and then bigger root causes that we. We can have going on. And based on where someone's starting from, what are some things that we can do we add to our lives? What can we pair with existing habits, what can we easily kind of start to shift, and how do we kind of build those up as we go along to make this process a little less complicated and overwhelming?
[00:13:13] Speaker B: Right, Right. Well, let's start with nutrition.
Nutrition and eating.
I think eating is a lot. Is pretty complicated for a lot of people, you know, either from, you know, the perspective that we think about eating all the time and it's kind of all that we think about, or it's the exact opposite, which is that I'm so busy doing all the things and rushing from one place to another. I don't, you know, think about eating. And when I do, it's just grabbing something and eating it immediately. So what's the.
What are, you know, how does stress impact our eating patterns, like, negatively? And how do you sort of help your clients to sort of come to terms with that, wrap their arms around it and begin to sort of get into a healthy eating pattern? Rhythm?
[00:14:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's a lot of pieces that go into this, and I think, you know, the first thing that we need to understand is if we're constantly in a sympathetic, stressed out state, our digestion is not going to work. And so it's finding ways to help our body take a deep breath, take a few deep breaths before eating and being mindful and not trying to sit in front of your computer and eat and try and do all these other things while you're also eating, in which case, yeah, your digestion is not gonna be great just to begin with. Stomach acid production goes down. It's just your ability, you're not gonna chew your food. You might just chug some water or chug other forms of liquid, which case, chewing is a huge piece of that whole puzzle too, let alone the actual food. Food and food quality is a big piece of this.
So I, one of the biggest things that we focus on is, okay, can we take just like a few deep breaths before we go to start eating? When we're eating, can we focus mostly just on eating and we don't expect production? And I think if we try and be perfect in all of these things, that's also adding to our stress. And we're just doing this but to the best of our ability. Most meals, ideally, we're sitting down, actually spending time eating and taking a few deep breaths, chewing our food, trying not to drink a ton of liquid with our meals and just focus on eating. And I also think having a plan, it doesn't. Some people go, I mean, really hardcore. And I used to be one of those people too, where I was in the bodybuilding space before my car accident and planning every single little thing and macro and all the micronutrients and all that, that's also too much for most people as well. But having a generalized plan, you know, do we have some food on hand? How can we have some food on hand? That one thing, when life gets busy, which it's gotta get busy at some point for all of us, how can we have some things prepared, ready to go? And this is where I love, like, can we just have some, like shredded chicken, some ground meat on hand that we, in a pinch we can just kind of grab that. Having protein, we're really big on protein.
Once again, we work mostly with women and we just see women, so I mean this is across the board, but especially women way under eat protein and that's an essential nutrient. And so focusing on good fats, good protein, not going too low carb for most women, especially menstruating women, super important.
But also, once again, like, how can we just eat in a way that is supportive. And how can we have a plan? How can we have things, tools and resources? And we're not big on like snacks, but, like small meals. How can we have, like, meals planned? Whether that's small meals or, and, or larger meals. And what does that really look like?
So I think those are some basics.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like if you're not sort of in this headspace all the time that we're in, I feel like it would be easy to be like, does that really make a difference? I mean, what's the, what's the big deal? Like, if. Is it really, like, for me to just sit down and like, you know, breathe three times?
Is there like a little magic word that I'm supposed to say? Like, I can, I can feel a lot of sort of pessimism or like a little bit of wondering if that's really such a big deal. Like, is that really a big deal?
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Yes. And it will catch up with you. It's just a matter of when.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: And real quick, sort of briefly, without going into like a semester's worth, should we talk about, like, tell us like, why and how? What's going on in the body that makes that a difference?
[00:17:48] Speaker A: So I think, I mean, first and foremost, cortisol plays a role here and quarter increase in cortisol. And cortisol is a stress hormone that is good and very beneficial. It helps with our energy cycles throughout the day.
And if we're stressed all the time, that takes up our adrenals, end up sucking up a lot of nutrients. So just based on that, we can end up with nutrient deficiencies.
As stress increases, it also decreases our stomach acid. And almost everyone who has acid reflux, heartburn issues, gerd, low stomach acid is absolutely playing a role. And stomach acid helps to not only.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Break down food, and let's pause there for a second because I think a lot of people, like, associate those kinds of symptoms, reflux and stuff. Oh, I have too much acid, I need to pop some more Pepcid or whatever and do these proton pump inhibitors like that. That's just the way to go. But often it's low acid. It's not actually you have too much acids that you don't have enough and.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: Or you're producing at the wrong times, which that can also be really either one. Yeah.
And so stomach acid is so important one. We could have those acid reflux, heartburn, GERD type symptoms which don't feel good.
And stomach acid's so important when it comes to breaking down food. And if our food isn't properly broken down. That leads to a lot of, like, leaky gut, intestinal permeability, food sensitivities, kills pathogens. A lot of people with gut issues have bacteria, yeast, fungus, and or parasitic overgrowth issues, which. Stomach acid plays a big role in limiting that and keeping these things where they're supposed to be in the quantities that they're supposed to be so we don't end up with all those gut issues. It also helps to kill things, things like toxins, things that really shouldn't be going in the rest of our body that also feed and fuel. Gut overgrowth issues, hormone imbalances, cognitive issues, mental and emotional struggles. I mean, stomach acid is so important, and our poor little stomachs don't get enough credit. I'm also a big fan of the liver. I don't think our liver gets enough credit for all the things that it does either.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: That's right. We need to have like, Liver Appreciation Day and Stomach Appreciation Day.
I mean, don't forget the kidneys. Kidneys are pretty important, too.
[00:20:08] Speaker A: They're all. They all have really big drops here. No, no one organ is. Well, there's some more important than others, I think, and they're all pretty darn important. We were born with all of them. We should try and keep all of them as best we can.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I'm generally a fan of keeping my organs.
Do you feel exhausted before your day even starts, or do you struggle to balance demanding work and family with everything else? Do you wonder how to say no without guilt or set boundaries when everyone needs things from you? Does burnout feel inevitable no matter how hard you try to push through? Then check out my new book on Amazon, Stress Response. Manage your response to stress in order to reduce anxiety, avoid burnout, and find calm and steady focus. Now available on Amazon.com so another area of your expertise is blood chemistry.
So let's talk a bit about that. Like, we've mentioned cortisol a couple of times, but what else is going on when we're in sort of a chronic stress state?
What else is going on with our blood chemistry? And. And also what can doing things like testing really tell us?
[00:21:18] Speaker A: So I love blood chemistry so much because when you actually understand the physiology in the body, how things actually work, you understand what is actually being tested in each individual blood test. And then you also know how to put all of this together and understand the story that our body is really trying to tell us from a cellular perspective.
Man, can we get so much information, even from the most simple and basic Blood test, I mean, a CBC with differential, a metabolic panel, a lipid panel.
You know, I think western medicine gives those tests almost a bad rap because they come back normal, quote, unquote normal for most people. And unless you have something really, really out of range, they're not going to do anything for you.
But when I look at blood chemistry and I look at even just these basic labs, you know, I, I can see things like blood sugar dysregulation, low stomach acid production. Is your liver struggling a little bit? In what ways may it be struggling? Is it a bile flow, bile duct health issue?
Are we having, you know, oxidative stress, cellular oxid going on? Do we have toxin overload issues? You can see those in these basic. What's the gut doing? What's the immune system doing? What are red blood cells doing? What are our white blood cells doing? What, you know, inflammation levels? What is this telling us about systemic versus localized versus acute versus long term inflammation? Where is that information, inflammation coming from? You know, we get all of that, let alone, you know, thyroid health. We can get information about hormone health even without doing direct hormone testing through blood, which is not my preferred way of testing hormones, or cortisol for that matter. And we can get insight into all kinds of nutrient deficiencies.
It's just western medicine doesn't look at blood work this way. And they don't even understand. A lot of these labs, they don't understand thyroid labs, they're just not taught. They don't even understand for the most part. Some hematologists do, but some even don't. And when we look at this, we can really get insight into, you know, people think about anemia. It's like, okay, well, there's actually three types of anemia. And sometimes you don't need iron. And some forms of iron aren't good for some people, depending on symptoms, depending on what else is going on. And so it's understanding all of these things and getting, and peeling back all of these layers. And that's why I love blood chemistry so much, because we can peel back so many layers on a test that, you know, simple test, their insurance is going to come.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: And when you get all that information, what are you able to do with it? Because I think if people have, you know, a sort of typical allopathic doctor, you, you go and you get your blood test and, you know, like you said, well, this is normal, this is normal, this is normal.
You know, I don't, I don't know that I've ever been normal. Like, I never Consider myself normal. I've never hung out with normal people. Like, I, I like, am I like interesting, strange, weird people? And I'm kind of that way myself. Although, you know, I try to look normal.
But like, what even is normal? Right? And, and is normal healthy? You know, because I is the normal sort of means a lot of times average or, you know, with or adequate. Right?
So, like, I think those tests are basically saying it's like, well, you're either sick or you're not sick.
Well, I don't feel good.
Well, if you're sick, I can give you pills, I can give you medicine, but what you're doing is something completely different. You're looking for specific things and then you're going to do specific things. So, you know, tell us more about why or tell us more about the kinds of things that you can learn and that like the kind of interventions. What kinds of interventions can you take as a result of that?
[00:25:19] Speaker A: I think it's important. Obviously there's a big difference between normal, which these lab ranges are based on general population.
General population is sick. So we should keep that in mind.
And even with an optimal, you know, even when I look at my optimal ranges, I'm looking, are you on the higher end or lower end? Are you right in the middle? And also, what are your symptoms and health history telling us too?
I will never interpret blood work for anyone if I don't know a list of symptoms, if I haven't talked to them about health history.
All of that matters. Context matters.
So it's really like those three things altogether. So blood work, symptoms and health history.
With all of that information, then we can really start to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
And for us, you know, obviously it kind of depends on the person and what we're seeing and what symptoms we're dealing with. But largely we're looking, ok, what are big offenders going on in the body based on labs, based on symptoms, based on, based on health history.
Toxin load is a big one that we look at.
Gut health is a big one that we look at.
Nutrient deficiencies, liver health, detox pathways, all of these things we, we take priority because those are big offenders. You know, we work a lot with mold, mold illness, mold toxicity, clients, histamine issues, mast cell issues, and those are big things. And so if we see someone come to us with mold illness, mold toxicity, it almost doesn't matter what else is kind of going on, because that is such a big offender that it impacts the body. So systemically, that's where we have to Start now. That can look different person to person depending on what these labs show and what they're really struggling with and what might be the most supportive things.
Same thing with gut, you know, like what is their, their blood work showing us? And we're not huge fans of stool testing. I'm TR in GI map and Gut Zoomer and I'm not a big fan of those.
They don't show us the full picture. I'm a big fan of an organic acids test if we are thinking mold, because that does give us insight into the gut along with the blood work.
So it's really pegging and choosing what, what is the story that someone's body is showing us and what are the biggest offenders and kind of what do we need to start with? That downstream is going to help everything else, including the thyroid and sex hormones and cortisol and nutrient deficienc and all these other things.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: Good.
And you have been a personal trainer for a long, long time.
What about, let's talk about movement for a while because, you know, when we're stressed out and we're feeling lousy and we don't have time and you know, all these other things are happening, I think a lot of times that trip to the gym doesn't get the high priority. What do you think stress does to motivation to people who, you know, have something of a routine perhaps, but it's not a high priority.
So what happens to movement? And you know, that's pretty tragic actually, because I think movement and exercise is probably one of the best ways to burn off or to respond to that stress because that's really what cortisol is good at. Right. Amping us up for physical things. So tell me more about that.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Yeah, so movement is, I think, a huge piece of stress and can be a huge stress reliever. And it can also add to someone's stress. And I think women in particular need to be very mindful of this. And I, I am, I do operate. There are very few things that I think everyone should be doing.
Strength training or resistance training is one of those.
And, or working up to a place to do that. We just, especially for women, once again, like, we lose muscle mass, we lose bone density starting at 30.
And strength training, resistance style training is one of the only natural ways to really prevent that. Now there's also a lot of other things that impact that, but strength training, we can build up bone mass. We can build up, you know, muscle mass, bone density, joint health. It also is very regulating for hormones and for blood sugar. And as we enter into perimenopause. Insulin resistance is one of the things that naturally tends to happen to us. And there's a variety of mechanisms that can lead to that. And strength training can help prevent that or limit that.
And so I am a big fan of that. And you can way overdo it, you can underdo it, you cannot progress it appropriately. And so for some people, if their body is so stressed out, maybe a five minute walk once a day is where they need to start, and that is what is appropriate for them.
And I think one of the big things that most people don't do or know how to do that I do think is a strength and something that we talk to a lot of our clients about is learning how to listen to your body, learning how to connect to your body and what is going to be supportive right now. You know, I, for me personally, I love strength training. I love the gym. That is not everyone's favorite place. It is a happy place for me and I really enjoy it. I've been consistently strength training for well over a decade at this point in time. And I think it's highly beneficial for a variety of reasons. And I went through really significant stress this year. And when I would go work out, even doing 20 minute, what I would not consider a hard workout at all, it was too much. And so I had a back off. And so for me, my movement routine for a while was walking and some gentle mobility work, and that was what was supportive for me. And as I come out of that, okay, let's get back into strength training. And also, what does that look like? And also I need to check my own ego and not go back to where it was originally. And so that's something that's very challenging and takes some time to really develop. But movement is amazing and we could also overdo it. And that's a big piece.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Well, and for those of us who, you know, do some exercise but we're not really organized about it or we're, you know, headed into, you know, getting back to the gym is like an annual sort of thing.
How do you tell the difference between it really is too much versus of course I'm sore, You know, I just started working out again.
You know, where do you. How can people sort of understand that line between I need to push through it, you know, no pain, no gain, versus actually no, you're hurting yourself.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: So there's three areas that I really like to look at. One is, how do you feel after you work out? Now if you feel really tired and you're like, I need a nap right now. It was too much. You should feel good after a workout. You also should not be overly hyped up after a workout. And a lot of women get into this place of, oh, I'm going to go do a hiit class, and that's going to feel really good. And I feel amazing afterwards. And then about two hours after you have that cortisol drop and then you feel awful, and it's like, okay, you're just a cortisol junkie right now, which is okay. I've been there too.
And this is not the best form of working out for you at this moment. Not saying you can never go back to it yet. It's probably not the most supportive. So how do you feel after a workout? 2. How do you sleep that night? This is always the telltale sign for me if I've overdone it. I will not sleep very well. I'll be very restless. I might have a hard time falling asleep. I'm just tossing and turning a lot and don't get that deep, good quality of sleep that I normally get. And that's always the one for me. Number three is you should not be that sore. Some soreness, you know, if you, like, move around and you're like, you know what? I did work out yesterday. Like, I can feel it. Like, you know, just feel it when I'm moving a little bit. But if you can't walk up the stairs or comfortably sit down to go to the bathroom and stand back up, you probably overdid it and we probably need to back off.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: Hmm. I'm now remembering all those times when clearly I overdid it.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: And it's easy, especially if you have a long history of it.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, so another area of. Of your expertise and topic that I'm pretty interested in is just this whole notion of energetics and energy healing.
I think for those who sort of are not kind of thinking about that all the time, their. Their first question might be, what do you mean energy healing? What's that all about? Like, let's start with kind of the basics. Like, what are we talking about here?
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Yeah, so I'd like to compare it to acupuncture, because more people are familiar with acupuncture. And if we look at the concept of acupuncture, we're looking to essentially remove blocks, energetic, emotional blocks that can then lead to physical symptoms so that the body can flow in a better and the body's in a better place to heal itself. And that's kind of the approach that most acupuncturists kind of the, the generalized philosophy behind, I think, energy healing largely the same. It's about removing blood and opening up this, this quantum physics. You know, we all, all of our cells are vibrating at all points in time. We all have a frequency, we all have a vibration. We, we know that to be 100% sure. We have quantum physics that tells us that, that proves that to us. And so most energy workers are working around that kind of concept. Now, my energy works just a little bit different where, yes, I am doing that. I'm also highly intuitive in just how I do my energy healing. And so a lot of times what will come up for me, I'm very message heavy in my sessions in that, you know, I, and once again, it took me a while to believe this. I, I started doing energy receiving energy work and I was like, this is full of crap. And then I got proven quite a bit and then also dug into the, the science of quantum physics and what this looks like.
And you know, they'll be like, I.
You're dealing with a lot of upper gi. Bloating because you're holding on to a lot of fear in that upper part of your belly, which, if we look at, at, you know, the energy systems that would be your solar plexus, a lot of fear. Just you live your life in fear, which can then lead to bloating or holding onto weight. And that upper part of your belly can also cause some breathing problems. So it's like, how do we shift that? How do we move that kind of energy? And also, what is it trying to tell us?
What do we need to know about fear? What, what might be coming up around fear? Is there something specific around fear? Is it health? Health fear, health anxiety? Is it something totally unrelated to that? What does that really look like? And how support the body that way?
[00:36:44] Speaker B: Okay, so when you talk about fear, like that's an emotion.
And I feel like energy comes in many forms, right? So, you know, energy sort of manifests in light and in sound and in heat, electricity. Like those are all forms of, I think sort of manifestations of energy.
Is emotion kind of related to that? Is emotion a manifest manifestation of energy?
[00:37:22] Speaker A: And me for sure, especially, because most of us, especially, you know, I think like millennials and older for most of us were never taught how to feel our emotions and how to process them. And so most of us have just pushed them all down, just buried them. And when we start going through this healing process, a big piece of that Is feeling our feelings and allowing them to be felt and to be expressed and to be moved. And there, there's a lot of ways to do that. Energy work can be a piece of that for many and can be beneficial for many.
And we know emotions get stored in certain organs. You know, if we look at like Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic type medicine medicine, you know, if we think about anger and frustration, well, that's stored in the liver.
So why do so many people have liver issues? Well, certainly toxins and stomach acid and removing gallbladders and you know, there's a lot of pieces that go into that. And what was your childhood like? What was your early adulthood like? And do you feel, and maybe not actively feel, but push it down? A lot of, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, a lot of resentment, in which case we're probably going to see that come up in the liver. What about, I mean, for me and you know, however you want to dig into this, but I've talked about this a lot. You know, a lot of women with hormone imbalances.
Well, there's a sexual trauma piece to that that we often see in our sacral chakra in the lower part of our belly. A lot of women have this, you know, lower belly fupa or just lower belly belly fat that they can't get rid of. And cortisol can certainly play a role in that and so can sexual trauma.
And you know, like, what was your sexual history like? Did you feel loved in a non sexual manner? What does that look like for you? What if your relationships really look like? Do you feel like you have to earn love? Do you feel like you have to perform?
And I mean that in a very broad spectrum, to receive love, to receive gratitude, to.
Do you feel emotionally fulfilled? Do you feel emotional connection, intimacy? What does that look like for you? Do you know how to do that? Do you have so many walls up that you don't let anyone in, including a partner of whatever, you know, form or fashion that might look like? And that's a big deal. And that's, you know, and we can see that. I've never met anyone with thyroid issues who didn't have issues expressing themselves verbally especially and pushed down a lot of emotions. They were told they're too much, don't say a lot of what they feel or what they believe.
I've never not seen that and I'm throwing myself in that category too.
So these emotions can really impact our physical health in ways that sometimes aren't quite so obvious.
And I'll tell you, it makes a big, big difference. This was the thing that took me the longest to understand.
And this has made kind of in. I felt pretty good after I did all my physical work. But really, the deeper I dive into regulating my nervous system, healing a lot of my trauma, the better I feel and the more resilience I have when stressful events come up.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: So in a, in a practical sense, how do you or others, or how do you work with others to release those emotions that. And that energy that needs to be addressed?
[00:40:42] Speaker A: I think the first thing is you have to learn how to connect with your body.
And most of us are not. I, I can't tell you the number of women who just, like, they're basically a floating head on top of their body and there is no connection to anything else. And so the first part is, okay, can we learn how to breathe into our heart? Can we learn how to breathe into our belly? Can we just learn to connect? And maybe that's just one of the exercises I really like, is just squeezing different parts of our body to no one to know and understand what that feels like. Like, you know, even just like squeezing your arms. Like, what does that feel like for you? How do you do that? What about your legs? What about your belly? Like, what does that feel like? And starting to get that mind muscle and kind of mind body connection in there. The second is, how do we feel about feeling feelings?
Most people feel not so good about feeling their feelings. So I, I mean, I go real basic. And some people don't need this. I needed this. I printed out a feeling wheel and I started at the center with the real basic stuff, anger, sadness, joy, happiness, and started learning how to identify those. And just I would need to sit by myself in silence and just take a few deep breaths, close my eyes and like, what am I feeling right now? And that is extremely uncomfortable for most people.
And then looking at this feeling wheel of, okay, what am I feeling? Okay, and that's a good kind of first couple steps to. We have to be able to feel into our body. We have to be able to identify these emotions that we're feeling. And then we can tap deeper into, okay, what does my body need to express this, to feel this? Do I need to cry? Do I need to scream? Do I need to go for a run? Do I. Do I need just some space? Do I need to, you know, throw a pillow down under my bed a few times? So I need to go to a break room and just break a bunch of stuff like what needs to happen to start feeling and expressing, to move these emotions out of our bodies?
[00:42:46] Speaker B: Well, I have to say this has been a really terrific conversation.
You know, you really.
Not only did you comprehensively cover how we can respond to stress, but you also pointed out the fact that stress is far more than just sort of the annoying stuff that we have to deal with on a daily basis. It's all of the things in the environment and in our diet that either are there, that should not be or that are not there, which we need.
And we talked about how, you know, there's simple behavioral things like addressing how and the way that you eat.
And, you know, we talked about how there's so much that we can learn from, you know, our blood chemistry and what's happening inside of our body.
We talked about, you know, how important it is to respond by moving, but, you know, not overdoing it and not doing too much.
And, you know, that fits right in with that idea of understanding and feeling what our body is actually experiencing. And, you know, looking back and seeing how and where these emotions that we've had even over different parts of our lives, you know, where they are stuck and stored up, and, you know, how and where and when we might need to release those in order to actually have our body functioning again. So thank you so much. This was a great conversation. I learned a ton. If people want to learn more, if they want to get hold of you, if they'd like to find out more and see if they can work with Trifecta Collective, how do they find you? Megan?
[00:44:42] Speaker A: Yeah, so we are just about everywhere that you could find us. So we're on all the socials. We're at Trifective Underscore Collective. Our website is trifecta collective.net it is.net and then we also have a podcast, Trifecta Collective, Finding the Root. And we're on all major podcasting platforms.
[00:45:01] Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, hey, thank you so much for coming on and hope you continue to feel well.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: Looking for more? Visit what's worthwhile.net to listen to podcast episodes, learn from books and articles, and live better by choosing healthy products and practices. I'm now offering services through worthwhile advisors for personal coaching, professional advising, speaking, and group facilitation. If you or your team are ready to reduce stress and anxiety, build vitality and momentum, and accomplish your goals without burning out, then please contact me, Ramsey Zimmerman, through the website or on social media like Instagram X or LinkedIn. Thanks.
