14 | Ways to Calm Stress and Anxiety with Dr. Alyssa Runyon

I am so excited to share with you today’s interview with Dr. Alyssa with the Reset 3 program.  She is a chiropractor, is able to provide acupuncture, and the developer of the Vagus Nerve Treatment Protocol where she can help you to begin easing your chronic pain, stress, and anxiety by focusing on your Vagus nerve.  Whether you are just now moving back into school and the workplace with this new normal or you are already back into this constant state of go go go, we are at a point in time where we are all dealing with so much stress, anxiety, and added fear of not knowing everything that is happening in our world right now.  Dr. Alyssa is here to provide us with so many great takeaways on how we can work on flipping our stress and anxiety responses for ourselves and our children and move more into this, much needed, relaxed state.  So join me now as we learn more about Dr. Alyssa and her Vagus Nerve Treatment protocol.

Time Stamps:
(1:20)-Dr Alyssa explains how she came up with the Vagus Nerve Protocol
(4:05)-Discussing our current culture and people showing more signs of pain
(5:25)-Fear shuts down the vagus nerve
(7:00)-How do we start to move through this time of the world opening back up
(10:45)-Dealing with cortisol and the sympathetic state
(11:45)-First thing you can start to do to help calm yourself down
(14:05)-Breathing and your fight or flight response
(16:30)-Recommendations on calming down
(19:15)-Helping your kids with stress
(20:45)-How food affects your vagus nerve
(21:15)-How are brain handles stressors we see on TV
(24:45)-Diaphragm and the Vagus Nerve
(27:00)-Our biofield and how other's affect us
(29:30)-The Importance of being calm around our children
(33:00)-Earthing can help to calm our children
(33:55)-The environment in our home
(36:40)- Things you can do to start flipping the 80/20
(41:00)-Information about the Reset3 Program
(42:15)-An exercise for you to practice
(45:00)-Introverts and the Vagus nerve


So I hope you enjoyed learning from Dr. Alyssa as much as I did.  She provided us with a wealth of information on how we can not only practice getting into a more relaxed state but also how so many things we are doing in our own household has an effect on our children's stress and anxiety and how we can help alleviate some of it for them. 
https://reset3.ca/

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Transcript

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Episode 14, helping families ease stress and anxiety. I am so excited to share with you today's interview with Dr. Alicia with the reset three program, she is a chiropractor is able to provide acupuncture and the developer of the vagus nerve treatment where she can help you to begin easing your chronic pain, stress and anxiety by focusing on your vagus nerve. Whether you are just now moving back into school in the workplace with this new normal, or you are already back into this constant state of go, go go. We are at a point in time, where we are all dealing with so much stress, anxiety and added fear of not knowing everything that is happening in our world right now. Dr. Alicia is here to provide us with so many great takeaways on how we can work on flipping our stress and anxiety responses for ourselves and our children and move more into this much needed relaxed state. So join me now as we learn more about Dr. Alicia and her Vegas nerve treatment protocol. So what got you into developing the Vegas nerve treatment program? Yeah, so I have been in practice for six years practicing Chiropractic and acupuncture. And what I started to notice fairly early on was that people under stress, like didn't get better no matter what I did. And at first as a new graduate, you think it's you, obviously. So then I would try different methods, different combinations of treatments. And it was just like mind boggling that people didn't get better when I was taught that they would if I did x, y and z. So I started delving into my own research on kind of what controls healing, and it all comes back to the nervous system. So I did a deep dive into the nervous system. To figure it out. Obviously, I learned this in school, but just sort of like refreshing myself and really, really diving deep into the current literature. And so really deciphering between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic state in our autonomic nervous system. So that branch of our nervous system is all the automatic stuff that we don't have to tell our body to do. So heart rate, digestion, emotions, that it just happens, it regulates us. And so I kind of started to notice that people in that sympathetic fight or flight state when they came in for treatment, or if it was, like chronically happening in their life, they would come in wanting to be fixed, and there was nothing I could do to make them better long term, they'd be back in my office. So kind of switching my practice gearing towards getting people into the parasympathetic state first into that self healing mode. And then I provided a couple treatments and people were getting better, like way better, they weren't coming back that old myth that once you go to a chiropractor, you have to keep going. It just doesn't exist when you treat people's Vegas nerves. So I kind of developed this protocol to treat the vagus nerve itself and activate it if it's gone dormant, so to speak, because of chronic fight or flight and started working on activating that and people and then providing like the traditional chiropractic treatment that people sort of like already know about, and people get better. So all of this stuff to activate the vagus nerve has existed since the 60s. But no one's really like combining it into a treatment protocol and doing it. So I'm the first one that I know of that's combining all these different things. I kind of put it into this proprietary method. And I've been doing it on people and measuring their heart rate, variability, and it's just been amazing. Wow, that's great. Um, do you have you noticed over this past year that things have been changing? Are you seeing more people with pain? or? Yeah, you're noticing due to everything that's happening? Yeah, well, I'm seeing a lot of repetitive strain in younger people. So children, like I'm used to treating children just like you know, sports injuries, kids are so resilient, they get better. It's like one or two treatments and their sports injuries fix, but now I'm treating like, postural issues. And like, kids are coming in with anxiety and you know, not like just not knowing what to do with their day to day, just these problems that kids shouldn't have. And then on top of that, you have all the adults that they're surrounded by, sort of in the same boat, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of stress. And the Vegas nerve is all about self regulation. So no matter what's going on In your external environment, or what I call the biofield, you should be able to self regulate. And so we're losing that, because we're so worried about what's going on around us. And we just feel out of control of our own self because of our external environment. That's what I've seen in the last year. Okay? Do you feel that fear affects the vagus nerve as well? Is that just shuts it down, for sure shuts it? So yeah, we are through evolution, we've been wired to, to have negative emotions affect us more strongly, because a negative emotion is what's going to trigger fight or flight, and that's going to save our life immediately. So if you think someone's hiding in a bush, and you're, you know, in the dark, that fear is going to kick on fight or flight, the Bloods going to shunt to your arms and legs, you're gonna be able to run away. And that's essential for survival. But what's happening is, we're not scared of someone jumping out of a bush at us, we're scared of a virus that we can't see. So it could be anywhere, right? And then we're scared to go to school, we're scared to do something wrong. We're scared to touch anything. You know, there's lots of other stuff going on. But that's just sort of applicable to the last year. Right, right. And how do you feel that people can start to work through this on their own? Because one thing I've noticed for myself, and I know you are in an area, you're in Canada, right? So yeah, Toronto. Okay, so y'all are more still in a closed state? Correct? You are. Okay, so I'm in Florida. So it's definitely more open. And what I noticed over the past year, we went from 2020, were where we were completely shut down and not able to do much of anything. And then the world opened back up. And when the world open, or our area open back up, it was one of those things where, even though we knew slowing down was important, I feel like we it was like when the when everything opened back up here. It was like this switch flipped. And we went back to the way it was. And I noticed for myself a lot more anxiety because we didn't kind of slowly ramp up back into it was from off to on. So right, what would you recommend to people as we're starting to move into? Going back? I know some people are, you know, just now starting to go back into this new way of living? Is there anything that you would recommend for them? Yeah, I think what we need to do first and foremost is like reverse the percentage of our autonomic nervous system and how its functioning. So in a roundabout way, you should be in the parasympathetic or vagus nerve state for 80% of your day. So 80% of 24 hours. So that includes sleep, right? So if you're up all night, like overthinking, or you wake up super early, and you can't get back to bed. That's fight or flight, right. So you should be spending 80% of 24 hours in a parasympathetic rest digest repair state, the 20% is a reserve like it's it's that reserve when something jumps out of the bush or like you have to fight for your life, what we've done is reversed that, like we've been doing it for a very long time, in line with our sort of like society, but it's really been accelerated last year. So right now, majority of my patients, I've noticed my friends and family are living in fight or flight chronically 80% of their day, and maybe resting for 20%. But not even I know a lot of people that can't get to sleep, they wake up through the night, they wake up early, and then just kind of sit there, kick it back to sleep. So switching that ratio, that percentage to try and get yourself back and self regulate back to that parasympathetic state. So how would you recommend so I'm thinking about myself in my day, My day starts really early 530. And if I think about clients of mine, or really, most of us out there, we go into high intensity workouts. We're pushing hard, working fast. And then we go straight from that and we're rushing around, whether it's rushing to then get off to work, or rushing around to get the kids ready and out the door. And then it's go, go go all day long. Then you're dealing with media, news, media and the stress and the fear and that type of thing. And then the end of the day, you're rushing around again, trying to get dinner on the table or kids activities and things like that. And then it's like you said bedtime. You And we're supposed to go to bed but then many of us have yet. Oh, and don't even add technology into that. Yeah. You have to go there, right? Because then you're just constantly in this state of overwhelm. And then and then we're supposed to just shut it off and go to sleep. And that does not follow your 8020 rule at all. No, that's not at all. Yeah. So really the 20% like you said, it's completely flipped. The 20% is sleeping, yet. People aren't getting a good night's sleep because they've been in this the sympathetic state for so long for fight or flight. Yeah, they've been in the sympathetic state for so long throughout the day. That Yep, they can't shut it off. Yeah, and it's important to keep in mind, like cortisol is what like your body uses to get you into that sympathetic fight or flight state. And when your brain shuts off that signal, just to keep releasing cortisol, like say, you're no longer feeling danger, let's shut the cortisol down, it takes 20 minutes minimum for that to actually dissipate in your body. So even though your system stops to creating it, it's still in your blood, and it's still going to your tissues for 20 minutes. So you actually have to make an effort to get out of fight or flight for at least 20 minutes before you come down from fight or flight. Oh, wow. So imagine that, like roller coaster? I'm stressed. So you're having dresses? Yeah, yeah, you're having stresses throughout the day? And if they're not, if they're happening, and like quicker than 20 minutes, then you're never getting out of fight or flight. Right? And so is there one thing that you recommend people the most like, what if, if you had five minutes to say, this is what you need to do? What would be that first thing that you would recommend to people? Well, sure, it would be breathing, because I've seen it in my Vegas nerve treatments, when I have people hooked up to an HRV monitor, which, which is essentially a measure of how much Vegas nerve activity there is. We can do all these things that I know activate it, and the second I get them into a good breathing pattern, their HRV just skyrockets. So that is what I've seen from my own eyes to be the most potent and powerful. You have to remember, our system is set up. So we're perceiving things. So we have neuro ception and perception. And that's how our body's always gauging what's going on in our environment. And whether or not we're safe. So neuro ception is your nervous system, detecting safety or not, perception is your brain's interpretation. So if something like bad happens in a traffic jam, and you trigger a memory of a car accident that happened five years ago, and it makes you more stressed, that's perception that's happening in the brain, but you can alter your neuro ception. So the feedback coming in by tricking your nervous system. And that's where breathing comes in. So say you're experiencing something really stressful, we tend to get shallow, rapid breathing, or you might not even be there you might be like stressed in your mind, and you just need a way to calm down. If you focus on deep, extended exhales, you will trick your body into thinking everything is cool and calm. Because your brain when it detects stress, it detects danger, it wants to kick on fighter flight to save your life. But if you are constantly giving it feedback to override that, by breathing deeply, slowly and extending the exhales, your brain starts to go. Okay, we think we're in under stress, but we're obviously not like you wouldn't be able to hold a long, slow exhale if you are running from a predator. So it's sort of like it's calibrated to sort of pick up that neural feedback and override your perception. Right. One thing that you mentioned with exhaling, breathing forcefully out. One thing I noticed is when you tell someone to take a deep breath, what do they first do they got? So they take that deep breath in and they're most of us are chest breathers, so we then lift up and we're going and does that then immediately put your body back into that? Yeah, because Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That happens. You're taking a giant inhale. But what matters is the exhale because if you think about it, if something jumps out and scares you, and then you have to run from it, the first thing you do is go. So that's like fight or flight, right? If that's the thing you do to try and calm down. It's definitely counterproductive. So you have to go like like longer than you want to. I used to tell I used to work in a gym and people would be running on a treadmill. And we would be doing all outs I worked in an orange theory. So if you know that if you know that workout. There's a lot all out. Yeah, yeah. So people will be running As fast as they could, and I would tell them, okay, guys, we're doing a one minute all out. It's the longest all out you'll ever do here. Make sure you are exhaling for a very long time longer than you're inhaling, I know you think you need oxygen, but you need to blow off that co2, you need to trick your body into thinking everything's okay. Because most people what I noticed working at a high intensity interval training facility, it attracted people who had high intensity lives. And there's no balance, right? So they'd be an office stressed all day, they throw together a dinner for their kids, and then they hit the gym, do a hit workout. And I'm going like, Where's the balance, like, your body doesn't know that this is exercise, it doesn't know the difference between your stressful day and your stressful workout. It's just stress your brains inside your skull, it doesn't. Like it doesn't have anything except the feedback you're giving it. So it's just stress, stress, stress. So your sleep at night is basically exhaustion. It's not rest, right? No, my supervisors hated me. Because I would tell people you need yoga, you need to knock your gym membership bag, like come once a week, because I know you love this interval workout. But you really need a balance. Yeah, well, in their feeding, everybody's feeding off this constant. Go go go go. And you're relaxing as much we're not. So how can we move towards that? How can we start to other than the breathing like any recommendations for us to help us start to calm down and flip that at 20? I know we can't all at the same time. That's I mean, we've we're already back. So back, yeah, how can we start work on that. So you want to constantly be like, changing how you're viewing things going on. So I teach people to do like a 30,000 foot above view of what's going on. So when you imagine that, you take yourself out of the immediate situation, and your brain and body perceive that as like not as vulnerable. So you're not as fearful of what's going on when something stressing you out because you're removed away from it. And then kind of taking that stress out of the equation by activating your vagus nerve. So you're changing the way you you perceive the stress that's going on. And you can do that through many ways, right? Like you can, you can physically activate your vagus nerve, or you can change the perception in your brain. And that's you can do that through neuro pathway rewiring. And that's we could talk about my program, that's what I do in my reset three program. Okay, you're basically imagine your neurons in your brain, and they have tentacles attaching to it's like a spider web of attachment. So you're constantly associating things with each other. So say you have like stress at work. And it has to do with like your work shutting down in the last year. And then you get an email from your kids school about something happening that's pandemic related, well, that the neurons that are now the memory of your stressful event at work, other ones grab a hold of that. And so there's, it's this intricate web of associated memories. So what you can do with neural pathway rewiring through a specific meditation process is eliminating, like pulling away those tentacles. And so you're disassociating memories from one another, so it's less threatening, okay, but you can't get into that deep meditative mode unless your vagus nerve is activated. So I find with people, they're not even ready for the neural pathway, rewiring until they switch that dominance back. And that's just sort of you have to look at your life as living in a parasympathetic state. So you actively try at first, to constantly be activating your vagus nerve. soon as you get a stressful thought, you go right back, no, I'm going to start breathing, or you splash your face, we talked about the diving reflex, or we talked about it earlier. You could splash water on your face, you can rub your ears, this all activates your vagus nerve, and you can do it to your kids to when they're stressed. You can rub their ears any part of the ear, like we can get into the technical innervation. It's more of like the floor of the ear before you go into like your ear hole in the lobe and sort of like in behind. You can rub that and that sensory feedback. That's your vagus nerve detecting that. Okay, so you can calm yourself and your kids down in that respect. You can also like imagine laughing, smiling, being happy interacting with people, that's also our vagus nerve. So that's our social engagement system. Imagine you're not going to be engaged with your community. If you do Don't feel safe, to have to get out of fight or flight feel safe. And then social engagement keeps your vagus nerve activated and more dominant. Okay. And when you said a few things for children, so as they are going back into school, there, many of these children have a lot of fear and anxiety going back into school. So now you've mentioned breathing, this is something they can work on as well. Correct? Yep. Yep. Okay, so breathing, teaching them to breathe out, deep, long, massaging or rubbing the ear. Yep, you're in here. community. So having them be with other children. And yeah, that type of thing. One of the main things too, that your vagus nerve gets feedback is the food that's coming in, it's basically it's responsible for detecting your environment. So think of all the ways that your environment comes into your body. So it comes in through the eyes, comes in through the airway, and it comes in through the digestive system. So when your say your kids come home from school, and you have like CNN on while you're eating dinner, that's a big No, because you can see something going on, say on the other side of the world, like an explosion or something. Again, your brain is seeing this explosion. we're wired for, like 200, living 200 years ago. So our brains can't tell the difference between something happening on TV and something happening right in front of us. So if you're watching something stressful while you're eating, you're not in a rest and digest state, you're in a fight or flight state. And that is storage, storage storage, you're shunting blood to your arms and legs. So you have no blood for digestion of whatever you're eating. I'm, as you're saying this, it's making me think I have a child that is much more anxious than the other siblings. And I'm thinking about this whole thing with electronics and playing video games. And what you just said, I mean, we already know the effects of playing these video games and stuff. But yet where the mind doesn't realize that this is, especially now because it's so realistic, what they're what they're watching what they're totally, and they're like shoveling it in their faces as they're eating it. There's also the vagus nerve innervates, our epiglottis. So that's the little flap that covers our windpipe when we swallow so that to make sure food goes into our Sophos, there's a little tastebud receptor on that that the vagus nerve is in control of and it's not detecting taste, it's, it's detecting your macronutrients. so that it can quickly send a signal to the brain and say, lots of carbs coming in, activate the carb enzymes in the liver. So it's just detecting protease, lipase, those types of enzymes that break down the macronutrients. So if you're eating fast, you're shoveling it in and you're going through fight or flight. One of the really cool autonomic, like adaptations is that hiccups so if you shovel something down, and your vagus nerve misfires, because it didn't get the proper information, you'll get the hiccups. Like a lot of people say I'll get the hiccups. If I eat too fast, that's your vagus nerve trying to bring it back up because it missed the information. That is fascinating. That is, yeah, so slowing down eating would be something else that we need to work on. Totally making eating an experience. Because we don't everyone listening to this podcast probably doesn't live in a food scarcity state. So it's not a matter of shoveling down our food. Because we don't know when the next time we're going to eat, we have to slow down and make food and experience and that we will eat less, because if we slow it down, we'll get that signal to our brain that were full, more accurately, instead of eating, eating and eating and kind of suppressing that, that signal to the brain to say we're full, and then your vagus nerve will detect the proper enzymes to release your digestion will be fired up, your microbes in your gut will digest it properly. All very important. Yeah. Another thing that I was thinking about, as you were mentioning, this is with the breathing, I'm very posture focused with my program. And I'm thinking about I know for myself when I breathe, I am someone I'm that common slouched position, I grip my ribs. So I am creating not a lot of room for my diaphragm, to be moving through the system. Do you have any recommendations because I'm not sure if this is correct information, but I feel like I remember reading something about how the diaphragm it affects the Vegas nerve. Is it like massaging the Vegas nerve or what is that connection between? Yeah, so the Vegas the vagus nerve travels Down below the diaphragm, so somewhere it has to sort of like go through it. So I do a lot of diaphragm release, like muscle release in my practice for sure, so it can definitely choke it off. But another thing too, is your accessory breathing muscles or like your upper traps your scalings and your intercostal muscles. And so those are that like, reserved for when your diaphragm shuts down. So like your diaphragms, nerve innervation comes from your neck. So if you break your neck, your accessory muscles can keep you breathing, possibly. So your your system always has like a backup for when something goes wrong. But when you have to keep in mind if you're you if you're not using your diaphragm and you're breathing with your accessory muscles, you're tightening your neck, your vagus nerve travels down the front side of your vertebrae like imagine in behind your esophagus, in your windpipe, but on the front side of your vertebrae. So if you have tech neck, and you're spending your whole day like this, and then you're breathing like this and tightening the muscles, you're not getting movement through so your vagus nerve is like sticking to the fascia. So if you've ever heard if anyone's done physio they've probably done like nerve flossing. If they have impingement in the shoulder, Vegas nerve and getting pinched, too. I always tell people, I usually actually recommend the Bikram yoga series, because there's a lot of extension. And a lot of people are afraid to extend, but we sort of are living our lives like that. So there's this our spine is built for extension in certain areas. So I call it like a vagus nerve flossing. Yeah, well, and like you said, We are always here. So extension is good. Just to bring us back to neutral. Like we need to get back up, right? And how it's affecting so much more than we even realize so much kowtow. Yeah. In your program, you talk about the biofield. So and you had mentioned it a little bit earlier, this sensing the energy of what's going on around us. And I was I was just speaking to a friend about this the other day, how we both feel like we feed off of other people's energy. And unfortunately, there's a lot of negative energy that we might be getting from others, is there anything that we can do to kind of protect ourselves so that we're not taking in all this energy? Yeah, if the the vagus nerve is called, like the autonomic self regulation, so it basically it's like building a strong foundation on your house, so that you're not waking up every day worried about the weather. That's like, that's the simplest explanation I can give. But we're also born because we're a species that's completely dependent on our mothers, when we're born. We have something called empathetic resonance. So empathetic residents, every mom is going to understand this. It's, it's the energy you like, bring as your presence to your baby that can calm them, your baby doesn't speak you're like written language yet. But you can still offer a calming effect. Or you can do the opposite. I bet you a lot of mothers know like the stressful energy that they bring, and then the infant won't calm down. That's empathetic resonance, and the more we connect to our mothers, and that's our neuro ception. That's our nervous system, detecting safety before we can form the words before we have the memories and that perception of safety. So we're gradually building as we're infants, that's why babies sleep so much, because they're just like storing memories. And they're trying to sort of orientate themselves to the world. And it's all directed around finding a sense of safety. At the end of the day, it's you're safe and you'll survive, or there's danger, you need fight or flight. If your fight doesn't work, you're dead. That's what it all comes down to. Now, if, as you're saying this, I'm thinking again, about like our children, is there anything so if we get into this state of responding to them, because now we're creating that response within them, how do you take it down? because like you said, it's once the cortisol hits, you still have to bring it you've got 20 minutes before? Yeah, like is there there's no like speeding that up, right. So we really have to take a few minutes before we even allow ourselves to get there. Yeah, and just know that your child's neuro ception is taking in everything you're offering. So the tone of your voice, your body language, everything. I've I've watched parents it's so heartbreaking to have watched them say super sarcastic things to their child when their child doesn't feel safe, like, oh, you'll be fine. Oh, you know, they just brush it off. But that's your child trying to feel safe in their environment. And so and that's what I've noticed, actually, with the generational change with the cell phones and being online, like we were in school, and we were bullied, our safe space was coming home. And now kids don't have that safe space, if they don't turn off their computer. And then heaven forbid, their home doesn't feel like a safe environment, because their parents are always sarcastic with them. Or we're always trying to search for a sense of safety, through what we're seeing through what we're eating, through our breathing rate. And through what people are saying to us, no pressure parents. I know everything you're saying, I'm like, Okay, I need to fix this. I need to Yeah, it's just, yeah, you can also be that it feels overwhelming. But you can also be that be that safety while you're in the same room as them. So just be cognizant, like, say you're unloading the dishwasher while your kids studying. Don't be slamming dishes, like you know, if you've had a rough day, and you don't really have time to unload the dishwasher, but you still have to do it. Don't do it in that stressful way, make an effort to just make everything feel like chill and calm and cool. Because that vibration, and that frequency of energy is traveling through your home. And it's we pick up on that we're electromagnetic, our nervous systems, our electricity, and our nervous systems are what is detecting everything in our environment. So you can't have a stressful frequency and then expect it to just dissipate and your child to be fine and happy. And I'm thinking like one thing when you say that with slowing down, I'm thinking like, turn on some slow calming music to kind of help. Yeah, it's the energy you bring behind everything you do everything you eat everything you say, what's the energy behind it? Because you know what it's like, when you're talking to someone, I feel like the words condescending, like they're saying words, but their energy is speaking a different way. Or someone walks into the room and you feel the energy of the room shift. Like that's a resonance, and that's the biofield of that person. That's the biofield of your words. That's, that's our electromagnetic systems interacting with the electromagnetic fields around us Earth thing is a really great example of this. So I think the Schumann resonance is like 7.83 or something like that. It's like when I tell people this, they're like, oh, no way. Well, if you know anything about batteries, if you put a car battery on the ground, it goes dead, because the Earth's electromagnetic field is pulling everything out of that battery. And so that's the extra electrons in our body that cause inflammation and cause like our frequency to be a disharmonious. If you step your feet on the ground, that Earth immediately starts doing that. So maybe moving your kids outside to do their homework and not having their feet on, like concrete going out onto the grass. And most kids nowadays are like afraid to touch the grass because there's bugs and everything. But everything is carrying that Earth frequency. And that's what we're moving further and further away from by living in high rise buildings and wearing our shoes inside and never going outside and wearing our shoes outside. Yeah, letting the feet touch soil, like how much we're losing with that. They're just never interacting with anything and the feet to know they're a sensory organ. So we need to go out there and moving more totally. So in regards to our environment, in our home, I know you have a program on your home. Right? Okay, is there anything that we can do, just to kind of help with that, for sure, if you think like every item in your home has an associated memory, whether it's good, bad or indifferent. That's an like, that's a neural pathway in your brain, that's a tentacle taking up space. So if it's not helpful, then it's not helpful. So if you have a bunch of stuff that's associated with a vacation and the vacation, the All you think about was the crappy plane ride and like the food poisoning that you got while you were there, and like those are all associated negative things that will trip your nervous system. And you'll you'll think of that constantly and that's what creates chaos in our mind. So in function way, it's it's, your mind is reflected in your home because it's where you spend the most amount of space so if you have clutter everywhere, and Your eyes are constantly having to focus on different things because you either have meant to put it in order and you haven't, that sort of triggers you of like, Oh, I'm stressed out, I haven't got to this yet. Or it's just it, it's just the way it is. It's always cluttered. And you're constantly looking at all these things that have associated memories that are triggering your perception in your mind. And so you can never focus, you can never slow your brainwaves down because they're constantly analyzing and thinking. So it's very important to have a decluttered, like non chaotic home, especially the front entrance way and function way is like one of the most important if not the most important areas, because you want to imagine your home as your sanctuary and your front door or wherever you come in first is a reflection of what the entire home is going to be like. So if it's the most chaotic, that's what you'll trigger with everyone who walks into your, your home, imagine the energy bouncing off of everything and being chaotic. So you want to just have a clean, simple front entrance way, where if your job is stressful, you at least get to walk into your house and feel calm, safe environment, the program goes into details of like colors, and an energy flow and positioning and stuff like that. But decluttering is like the number one function a tip that probably anyone that knows anything about function y would give, can you give the listeners a few things that they can work on? You've already given them? A few. But is there say your top three or three things that you would recommend that they can start to do to start flipping that 8020? And yeah, even if it's just going back over the points that you've already mentioned, yeah. Okay, for sure. So when we talked about neuro ception versus perception, I just want to say, with the perception point, make sure you're allowing your child to have their own life experience, and you're not projecting your memories onto them. Now, as parents, obviously, we're trying to keep them safe. We don't want them to climb on the monkey bars, because they might fall, but you have to allow their nervous system to determine for them what's safe. And in doing that, you won't trigger your own past memories that might be traumatic or negative. So just allowing everything in your environment, including your children, your spouse, everything that's not you just allowing it to be allowing everything to have its own experience. And that will make you feel safe, because you won't constantly feel like you have to control and then activating your vagus nerve. Whenever you think about it, it can start in the morning brushing your teeth. When you're brushing your say you brush your tongue for sort of like the back sides, that gag reflex that can be activated, that's your vagus nerve. So you can start in the morning. And then you can hum or sing put some soft music on. Vegas nerve controls the vocal cords. So humming, singing, that activates it, you can smile at strangers, because seeing in smiling at a stranger on the street gives you a sense of safety in a foreign environment. So constantly activating that vagus nerve, turning off the TV turning off anything stressful while you're eating. And then using the breath to trick your body into thinking everything is safe, when it might not be. So really taking an active approach like starting before. And I think that's what you're mentioning here is like the key start before you get yourself because I think most of us, the minute we get into that stressful situation, we start thinking we need to calm down. But if we can start this, this whole process before we even deal with stress, we can work on helping yourself with that. Yeah, and that the 20% fight or flight mode. The reason it gets extended is because after something stressful happens, we continue to talk about it, we rehearse in our mind, what we should have done, how we could do better or like I can't believe that happened. And then we tell people about it, we just perpetuate that stressful moment. And again, your brain thinks that it keeps happening. That dangerous thing that kicked you into fight or flight. Your brain is like oh my god, it's not going away. It's like it's still here. So you have to keep in mind, were built to handle stress. But in an acute scenario, we can't keep extending it for that 20% Reserve will just be gone. So shift that so basically, you have at first you have to actively do things to get your vagus nerve switched on and to get yourself to tip the scale. Once you're there. You'll start to notice when you kick into fight or flight because now that's not your normal anymore, your new normal is to be rest and digest, flow. Totally chill, calm and relaxed, not caring what's going on outside of you not feeling threatened, internally by every single thing that's going on in the world. So once you recalibrate your nervous system to be in that mode, you can tip into fight or flight. And it's not a big deal, because you'll come right back out of it. And in fact, the people I've seen who who have that skill for themselves, they don't like that fight or flight state, because you also get like that Sugar Rush feeling. And they get so stressed out, and they can feel themselves just vibrating. And so they're like, Whoa, I don't like being here. And to pull myself out of it, as you said that all these people that are then feed that sugar, like they're just increasing it more, because they're feeding themselves with sugar, which is just going to continue to Yeah, they get go more totally. I do want to respect your time. So if you wouldn't mind, is there anything you want to let us know about your reset three program? Yeah, it's, it's a 12 week program. There's one on one coaching. And it's basically to reset those old traumatic memories that are changing your perception. And that at the same time, we're teaching you how to upgrade your neuro ception. So that you can modify the incoming things in your life while you're changing the old like childhood stuff. So we've seen some, like pretty dramatic changes in people. It started off as a chronic pain program, reprogramming pain patterns, but what I've realized is it's mostly parents saying, Oh, my God, this is changing the way I'm raising my children. Because it's all about teaching neuro development. And that happens before the age of 14. So it's really valuable for for parents, for sure. Oh, and you can find it at welcome dot reset three dots to it's totally online, too. So you don't have to be located in Canada to take it. Okay. Perfect. If I could just ask you for one last thing in regards to this. Is there anything that we can do any type of exercise that we can do for ourselves to kind of do you have an exercise that we could go through with you? Yeah, so we could I could show you like a breathing pattern. Okay. Yeah. So I like to, I don't really know what it's called, like, sort of flutter the lips like, because that also sparks up the vagus nerve. So if you do three counts, inhaling, and then six counts, exhaling, but doing as you exhale, so we can go through that. Okay, so yeah. Sorry, I show like my lips before. I know, I was gonna say I get stuck. Yeah. So lick the lips, inhale. 123. Exhale. Oh, that's a long time. It is it's longer than you want to do. Right? Like, just intuitively, okay. But and that's, I mean, that's how you can sort of gauge whether or not like how that sort of like, balance in the autonomic nervous system because your brain wants to inhale again, because it has that like cyber flight. We need oxygen again, right? You just want to chill out, you're not going to starve yourself with oxygen. by extending that exhale, you actually do more? You're able to actually take in more oxygen on your next breath. If you do get that exhalation. Yeah, that's right. And the honestly, the the actual count doesn't matter. So the three and six, that those numbers don't matter, you want the ratio to matter. So whatever you can comfortably inhale, Mitt some, for some people, it'll be two. For some people, it'll be five. You just want to double the exhale. Okay. And are you looking to extend that over time? Are you trying to get longer inhales and exhales? Is that like a goal that you're? Yeah, because because the slower I mean, you'll open your ribcage up with breath practice. But the longer something takes to do the more your brain goes, Okay, we have the time to do it. There's nothing unsafe about our environment if we can stop and do this for so long. Okay, perfect. Yeah. So much great information. I just I'm thinking about myself and how I handle my household how I deal Yeah, very anxious person. So this spoke to me so much because I'm not at 20 I'm definitely I've gotten better. I used to be very much a person of relaxation and you As I'm thinking about it with, do you notice that some people need more like those of us that are introverts? Do we need more of this, everyone has their own, like absolute or sorry, relative, like amount, everyone's going to take a different amount of relaxation time to actually be relaxed. It's just like falling asleep. Some people fall asleep soon as they hit the pillow, some people are up for three hours. So we're all very different. And usually that's based on our environment that we've been living in, and how we perceive it. So those of us who fall asleep the minute we hit the pillow, that means that we're pretty much relaxed, or is that mean that we've been run? So? Yeah, it's it's usually that sympathetic burnout because you that 20% fighter flight is a reserve. So that's like your, you know how like glycogen in the muscle, there's, there's, there's only so much of it. And we tend to say our fat stores are unlimited, you can think of it like that. So fight or flight is limited, you only have so much sugar that you can send to your muscles to run away, you only have so much time that you can run away from a predator before you give up and you shut down. And that's actually I didn't get into this. But a lot of reptiles do the freeze. So it's fight flight or freeze. So they'll freeze and they'll they'll play dead. That is a massive sympathetic fight or flight state. Because they are, they're like, Okay, I'm going to pretend I'm dead, or I'm dead. So that that translates to today, cases of like domestic violence where the women don't leave. Third shut down. So it's like a continuum of like, freeze, fight or flight, rest and digest social engagement. So social engagement is where you want to be if you're in rest and digest, you're still so exhausted, that you don't feel like being social with people. So it's kind of a continuum. This, this is fascinating. I'm thinking because my husband, he works in law enforcement. So he is one of those where it's like ride high for so long. So then he comes down, and he then veges in front of the TV, and doesn't like that social engagement. So yeah, he's constantly going back and forth. And it's probably because he's so high. But he's never getting he's never going back to the middle. Yeah, we never reach a social engagement. He's like, stuck in this continuum of like highs and lows, highs and lows, highs and lows, he might, you know, people can someday go into that freeze mode where they turn into a procrastinator, or, like the domestic violence example type thing. It's just a nervous system. It's a total nervous system, neuro ception of your environment, it's trying to protect you. So if not leaving, feel safer, then you'll go into that free state. And that's why like the grieving stage, the grieving, there's denial, well, that's your free state. And then there's the anger that's your fight or flight, then there's acceptance that's rested, digest, then social engagement. You're over it, you're through it. That's great. Yeah, they should teach this in, like in public school, high school, right? Like, we don't even know our own bodies. It's crazy to me. Yeah. And then social engagement creates its own stressors for people now. Yes, so it's this. It's this constant. situationally? Yeah, we're not we're, like, huge, like humans are designed to be in tribes. So we're like, we're isolating people. And we all needed that rest and digest mode when the pandemic first hit, like it was glorious, for say, Oh, my God, like, you know, and it was awesome. But now we're losing that social engagement. We're fearful to engage with other human beings, because we're being told that they're, like, Don't go near them type thing. Right. Right. Well, I definitely want to respect your time. I don't want to take up any more of it. But it has been so wonderful to be able to speak with you. I've enjoyed this so much. And I hope to, to learn from you. And yeah, I'm watching your Instagram. I'm like, this is so good. I love it. Oh, thank you. So I hope you enjoyed learning from Dr. Alicia as much as I did. She provided us with a wealth of information on how we can not only practice getting into a more relaxed state, but also how so many things we are doing in our own household has an effect on our children's stress and anxiety and how we can help alleviate some of it for them. Please make sure to head to welcome dot reset three.ca to receive a free downloadable along with valuable Mind Body biofield information through emails from her and also may Make sure to follow her on Instagram at reset three. For more great information and tips. I truly hope you enjoyed this interview with Dr. Alicia as she provided us with so many great actionable steps that we can begin taking today to help raise healthier humans. Make sure to also join us over in our form fit mom community, where we share more information from our podcasts, provide movement tips, and dive deeper into all things healthy living. Check out the show notes for direct links to all of the above. And I hope you'll have a wonderful, wonderful week.