S2 Episode 14: Unraveling the Mystery of Anxiety: A Transformation Journey with Savannah Blake
Oct 19, 2023Season 2Episode 14
Christina Smith
Ever felt trapped by the invisible grips of anxiety? Meet Savannah Blake, a yoga and meditation teacher who turned her 23-year struggle with anxiety into an empowering journey of self-discovery. Savannah, once rendered mute by her anxiety, unraveled that her panic attacks weren't solely because of social situations but also due to unexpected health issues and food allergies. Join us as Savannah narrates her transformation story, a mesmerizing tale of evolution from hiding behind screens to basking in the glow of newfound freedom.
Recall those sleepless nights spent worrying about things that never happened? Or those uneasy feelings in the pit of your stomach before a big event? That's anxiety for you, and it comes in various forms - postpartum, trauma-based, food-related, and more. In our riveting conversation, Savannah sheds light on the importance of recognizing the type of anxiety you're dealing with. From self-awareness and acceptance to reaching out to the right people, we discuss a range of strategies that help keep anxiety at bay.
Have you ever wondered if you could manage your anxiety with just deep breathing or a simple walk? Savannah walks us through some practical tips for dealing with anxiety. She also shares her wisdom on using methods like yoga, meditation, and essential oils for self-healing. The importance of understanding your body, treating yourself with compassion, and being present cannot be understated. So, tune in to our episode and let Savannah’s inspiring journey guide you towards a peaceful state of mind.
ABOUT Savannah:
Savannah Shea Blake is a Yoga & Meditation Teacher and podcast host of Align, Vibe, Flow. She spent her first 23 years of life unable to speak due to crippling fear and anxiety.
Now, by guiding others though the chakra system, she helps them overcome the emotional and mindset obstructions brought on by society and culture that's held them back from being their true vibrant and confident selves.
Through healing the individual, we heal the world.
Ever felt trapped by the invisible grips of anxiety? Meet Savannah Blake, a yoga and meditation teacher who turned her 23-year struggle with anxiety into an empowering journey of self-discovery. Savannah, once rendered mute by her anxiety, unraveled that her panic attacks weren't solely because of social situations but also due to unexpected health issues and food allergies. Join us as Savannah narrates her transformation story, a mesmerizing tale of evolution from hiding behind screens to basking in the glow of newfound freedom.
Recall those sleepless nights spent worrying about things that never happened? Or those uneasy feelings in the pit of your stomach before a big event? That's anxiety for you, and it comes in various forms - postpartum, trauma-based, food-related, and more. In our riveting conversation, Savannah sheds light on the importance of recognizing the type of anxiety you're dealing with. From self-awareness and acceptance to reaching out to the right people, we discuss a range of strategies that help keep anxiety at bay.
Have you ever wondered if you could manage your anxiety with just deep breathing or a simple walk? Savannah walks us through some practical tips for dealing with anxiety. She also shares her wisdom on using methods like yoga, meditation, and essential oils for self-healing. The importance of understanding your body, treating yourself with compassion, and being present cannot be understated. So, tune in to our episode and let Savannah’s inspiring journey guide you towards a peaceful state of mind.
ABOUT Savannah:
Savannah Shea Blake is a Yoga & Meditation Teacher and podcast host of Align, Vibe, Flow. She spent her first 23 years of life unable to speak due to crippling fear and anxiety.
Now, by guiding others though the chakra system, she helps them overcome the emotional and mindset obstructions brought on by society and culture that's held them back from being their true vibrant and confident selves.
Through healing the individual, we heal the world.
Well, welcome back shifters. I am so glad that you're here, because in midlife, something happens to women that maybe you didn't really have a problem with before, and that is about anxiety and stress and this like anxious feeling that comes up. And I think a lot of that is also from our hormones. But even if you've never had it before, I have clients that are like, wow, I don't know why I'm feeling all this anxiety. It's crazy. I've never been like this.
Speaker 1:
Well, this is the episode that we're going to talk about. How do we manage that? How do we deal with the stress that comes from all that anxiety? And we're doing this from a place of self love, not that place where I used to go to, which was like, damn it, what's wrong with me? Why do I feel this way? And today we have the lovely Savannah Blake on to help us talk about this. She's got some really great tips about how we can start managing and seeing our anxiety. So thank you, savannah, for being here. Absolutely Thank you for having me. I know that we had such a lovely conversation on your podcast, though I wanted to make sure that you came online because I just love talking to you. So tell us a little bit about you and who you are and what it is that you do.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so I am a yoga and meditation teacher, and I do that both online and offline.
Speaker 2:
And then that's just developed all kind of together. It started my platform. My website has turned into a podcast, has turned into a lot of different just kind of spotter webbed out right. It just kind of started spreading. But I started it all because I was trying to overcome my anxiety issues Somewhere around in my early 20s.
Speaker 2:
I was like you know, because we put so much pressure on teenagers to figure out, okay, what are you going to do for the rest of your life, what are you going to do? Let's do it, let's figure it out. And I didn't know, because honestly, it's really unfair and we get on a tangent on that forever. But you only know a very small portion of what is available to you at that point in time in life. And asking a kid to figure out what they want to do for the rest of their life is not really fair at all when they only know, like, okay, I have, like what, five choices. But so all I knew at that point in time was that I wanted to be successful and I wasn't really sure what that meant. I just knew that I couldn't get it in the anxious state that I was in, Because if you start researching because that's what I did. I just started researching how to be successful in the beginning, like okay, and all I came up with was characteristics right.
Speaker 2:
And so you had to be bold and like, confident and put yourself out there and ask for what you want. You know, you got to walk in and ask for the raise and well, I couldn't even talk to a cashier at Walmart. It was. It was bad. I struggled ordering food at a restaurant. Heaven forbid, I needed some extra ranch or something. I was not asking.
Speaker 2:
I was almost completely mute for the first like 23 years of my life because of anxiety. Not that I was mute, I could do one on one conversation really well, but that was it, and even then only if I was comfortable with that person. Otherwise, have you ever seen the Big Bang Theory? Yeah, raj, he can't talk. That was me. Could not make words come out of my mouth. I would just like choke on them. They wouldn't come out. And so I started building this platform.
Speaker 2:
My blog became because I've always journaled, I've always written and I always carried notebooks around with me back.
Speaker 2:
You know, before the internet was a thing and then so it just kind of naturally progressed from carrying these journals around to an online blog, and because I found a lot of solace in my teenage years behind a computer screen. I was man. I found a lot of comfort there. So that's pretty much all it did was stare at my computer screen for like 15 years. Well, I guess I'm still doing it so, but anyway, yeah, my blog turned into this online journal of anxiety, you know, trying to figure out why I had it, trying to, which, at the time, I thought was interaction based. I thought it was social anxiety due to how I had been bullied my entire life by everybody in my life and because I remember when I was itty bitty being a talker and I remembered, you know, people rushing me through my, my stories, you know, as we do with children a lot of times, and because of that I just shut down and stopped talking all together because I didn't know how to get to the point.
Speaker 2:
You know I didn't know how to spit it out. I had to tell you all of the details. You know you needed to know what color the shirt was. It comes in later so and I started stammering over my words, really bad in an effort to get them out. And then I still do that sometimes and but I just I just stopped talking because that was the only solution that I could come up with per who I was.
Speaker 2:
So I thought that all of this anxiety that I accumulated was from that. You know, being bullied, being, rushed, being. But then I got into my late 20s. Well, I started remedying it a little bit at a time in my early 20s, because that's when I started doing the research and trying to figure out how to. And then in my late 20s, I had a series of events happen.
Speaker 2:
That was a health event, so it was a series of health issues, and I ended up being put on this elimination diet. So we cut out like everything from my diet except for like five things, and I was just living off these five things for a month or two and we found out, for the first time in my life, every bit of my anxiety dissipated, it was all just completely gone. So we found out through that that most of my anxiety was food allergy based, which was insane. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows that food allergies can cause anxiety, and it made complete sense to me at the time because I would have panic attacks so bad that I would end up in the ER because I thought I was dying. It literally felt like I was dying and if you know, you know.
Speaker 2:
But if you don't experience that, then people really make it worse. They really tell you you know, what are you so stressed about? What are you so anxious about? They think it's overthinking, based solely, and I, over and over and over again, told people like it's not me, it's my body, my, there's something wrong with my body. My nervous system feels electrified, it feels like I am going to just pixelate, like, just burst into pixels. That's exactly what it felt like. So finding out that it really was my body was so validating and so just this. It was an aha moment, I guess, from lack of a bitter analogy- yeah, beautiful, I mean that's.
Speaker 1:
That's amazing because and I think that that you know, I have no doubt that part of what we eat and how we treat our bodies is definitely related to how our anxiety flares or not. And then we go through this like second adolescence is what they call, like perimenopause is like this changing of the hormones, and I don't know about you, but when I think back to my teenage years, I'm always like sweating in the armpits and like I like I cringe a little bit, just because you know it was adolescence and it just feels so uncomfortable. And so I think a lot of our anxiety today, at least for midlife women, those of us who did not grow up on a computer we tend to not only get uncomfortable but we start thinking about it, right. So there there is a body, mind kind of connection, in that those of us who maybe didn't experience this anxiety, or at least at the level that we are experiencing it today, we start feeling it and then we start coming up with all these stories about it, right, which is I so relate to your like when I'm feeling anxious.
Speaker 1:
My husband, when we first got together, he used to ask me all kinds of Well, what are you thinking about? What are you so anxious about and what do you think we should do about that? And it was, like you know, with somebody who has had anxiety, that like trying to answer that many questions when you're feeling anxious is like I just I just wanted to punch him, like I was like no, you can't, you can't do that, you can't ask me all those questions and it would make me crazy. So I guess the point I'm getting to you is one of the things is to, for me at least, is to manage my thoughts around my anxiety, because if it is something going on in my body, maybe it's food related, maybe it's stress related, or I haven't had enough sleep, whatever the damn thing is.
Speaker 1:
For me, it's really like controlling my mind and not making it into a huge thing, right? Because the more that I overthink it and the more I go. Well, why am I anxious? Well, my brain's going to pick up like the 5000 things in my life that could possibly make me anxious and we're going to replay that like suffering spiral is what I call it and we're going to start making stories and once we make up the stories, then the emotion gets worse, right, like I mean, it's like the worst thing to do to somebody in a panic attack is try to get answers from them, because they're just like I need my body to calm down and this is very much a nervous system thing, which I think is amazing that you went into yoga and meditation, because I'm assuming that was like related, like you wanted to find a way to calm down your body.
Speaker 2:
Well, it was unintentional, they were two completely separate things in the beginning, and then I got into yoga and realized that they go hand in hand, which is kind of a. There's lots of different styles of yoga, so it really depends on which one you go towards once you get in there. Now, I got into yoga because I came across a blog post one day that said it is entitled how to exercise if you're lazy, and I was like yes, absolutely that's me, yeah, and then.
Speaker 2:
So I've been stuck with it ever since because I got into it and I realized that it did help me a lot with my anxiety, because it allows you to create space and just exist a little bit and learn how to slow down and process, because anxiety is your body's alarm system that something's wrong.
Speaker 2:
The problem is is that it's the same alarm for everything across the board, and I think I've tried out every flavor of anxiety there is. We had trauma based and then not just from like bullying and stuff. But I had two ricks and a total two vehicles in one weekend. Wow, yeah, it's a little impressive. And then didn't drive for six years after that and every time I got behind the wheel I would have a panic attack so bad that I would have to pull over because I would black out.
Speaker 1:
Wow.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and then my son was born and I tried out postpartum anxiety, which is a fun one. So and then and then, after a couple of years down the road, is when we found out that had food related anxiety. So you know there's a lot of different kinds and there's some are more manageable than others, and step one is definitely figuring out which flavor you have so that you know how to address it, because trauma based anxiety is going to be about unpacking and reworking those stories and redoing them in a positive manner that you can move forward with.
Speaker 2:
And then, of course, food anxiety food allergy related or toxin based. You can have anxiety from too many toxins in your body. It's accumulated in your body can't process, so that is going to be more of like cleaning up your lifestyle based. So there's lots of different types and step one is always about figuring out which type is your top, because all if you have like toxin or food allergy based anxiety no, no amount of the tools available to help manage your anxiety are going to help it. You just kind of have to ride it out until you get to the other side, and that comes into just having a bunch of tools, that and the self awareness. It's like, oh, here we are again. Well, this is going to ruin the next two hours of my life. Let's see what can I do, let's. And then you start pulling tools out of the toolbox to ride it instead of fight it, and that's a big thing to. You don't want to try to fight against the anxiety, because then you have all that resistance and it's just really going to make it worse.
Speaker 2:
But if you can find a way to flow with it to ride it to work with it, then you can get through to the other side a little easier. Again, it's just about having the self-awareness that this is temporary, it's going to end. It's like, man, I must have got a hold of some soy again and we can go into that, but we won't, because it's a whole episode on its own. But just you know, okay. So this is happening, what can I do? All right, and then you come into like checking in with your senses, checking in with your body, because, no matter what kind of anxiety you do, you really want to get out of your head and into your body, because the head's just going to blow everything out of proportion and make it worse, make it worse, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
Then we're straight into panic attack land right, absolutely, and that's how you end up in the ER, right Like.
Speaker 1:
I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 2:
I'm having a heart attack. I might die. You're 28 years old and completely healthy. What are you talking about? But you know it happens and the important thing is to not beat yourself up about it. You're completely valid. You are feeling sensations that you don't usually feel and they feel like something's wrong, because something is wrong. It's your body trying to communicate with you that something requires your attention. It doesn't always tell you what needs your attention, which can be really frustrating, but it is temporary, it is going to end, so having people around you helps. So you know, call somebody, somebody you trust. Not anybody is going to make it worse, Okay.
Speaker 1:
Nobody's going to get a little bit of a question. That's not the one.
Speaker 2:
No, no, I made the mistake one time of calling my sister. I was like I'm having chest pain and I was hoping that she'd be like look, you're fine. Okay, I was like 25 at the time. I was like there's, you're probably fine, it's probably just a panic attack?
Speaker 2:
No, she just kicked me off the side of the cliff. She was like oh my gosh, what? If you're dying, you should go to the hospital, okay, so that's what happened. I went to the hospital. I was completely fine, it was just anxiety.
Speaker 2:
But having people that are not going to make it worse, people who are like, okay, let's sit with this, what do you think can help? Do you need a hug, do you want to go for a walk, do you want to turn on a show? And essentially it's just. You know, when you have a baby, like under a year old, they start crying. You don't know why, right, and when my kids were babies, people, they'd be crying. My gosh, my son cried constantly. He didn't have call like he was just whiny, but you know he'd be screaming and crying and people would be like what's wrong with him? I don't know. He doesn't talk, he doesn't tell me Like Well, what do I do? I don't know.
Speaker 2:
You just start throwing things at the wall and see if something sticks, and it's essentially the same thing your body's crying, you're having a panic attack. So you know, just like a baby, you know, you bounce them for a little bit. Does that work? No, okay, let's feed it. Nope, that didn't work either. All right, let's change the diaper. And it's the same thing with yourself, and that's an analogy that we could carry on into all sorts of directions of personal growth and self help is that you have to parent yourself, and the same thing is here, you know. So take care of yourself.
Speaker 2:
You start having this anxiety come up and you're like, okay, let's see if you need some water. Do you need some water? Did that help? No, and water always helps, you know, but only like at the moment you're drinking it. Usually, as soon as you like put it down, you're like, okay, now what? Let's go for a walk, let's do some yoga, let's do some stretches, let's turn the TV on, let's turn the TV off, you know, let's minimize distractions completely, let's turn off all electronics, let's.
Speaker 2:
Maybe we're overstimulated, maybe we need some silence, because then we can get into like neurodivergency and how we're more prone to panic attacks because we have that emotional dysregulation issues, and so overstimulation becomes a thing, and sometimes we just need silence or sometimes we need loud music. It's just a matter of figuring out what tools that you need to put in your toolbox so that you can pull them out when you need to, and it's important to note that it's really hard sometimes in the moment of a panic attack to figure out what are my tools. I don't know what are my tools. Someone help?
Speaker 1:
I don't remember any of my tools Somewhere.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah. So I always. You know we're all about doing vision boards, right, and we do vision boards for our goals, but there are a lot of other things that we can use vision boards to that are beautiful, which in one being a list of anxiety tool. You know your tools so that all you have to remember in the middle of an anxiety attack is okay, where's my board? And you go, look at your board and you're like, okay, let me try this, Let me try that. And then you know what, if nothing else, it gives you a distraction away from your anxiety so that you can better ride it out, because you feel like you're actively working towards getting to the other end. And if you have 50 things on your board and you go through every single one of them, you're probably you know that took like two hours, that took like three hours. Now the anxiety attacks over. Did one of them work? I don't know, but you feel better now.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I love that analogy of the one-year-old, because no one in their right mind would just start screaming at that one-year-old going you shouldn't feel like this, don't feel like this, just get better. Just put your big boy pants on, let's go.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
And yet that's how some of us can treat her, at least in Gen X. We're very warrior, specific, want to get things done, want to be productive, and so my mother was always like my feelings didn't matter. So when my anxiety came up, I was like, oh, we'll just shove that down, we'll just ignore that. But the thing is, it never went away. It just got worse and worse, because once your nervous system is stimulated in that way, it's really hard to bring it back down if you don't have these tools. So I love that, because what are we going to do with a one-year-old? We're going to try to take care of them in a calm way, because screaming at them is certainly not going to get them to stop screaming back. So I love that analogy. That was so great and just a really good example of how we can better care for ourselves, and I really love that. You were like we have to ride it out, which I think is really where I stand with it we have to be super compassionate to ourselves. I know on the days where I have anxiety last week was Mercury retrograde. We might still be there, but I'm trying to pretend we're not. And during that week, oh, it was like I had technology issues, I had health issues, and I can go into this place where everything's wrong and I just keep trying to push ahead and yet I have tears as I'm trying to do my work and instead what I've really learned is the practice of slowing down, like you said. Okay, we're feeling we're having an off day, so that means I'm probably going to get less done than I expected to. It probably means that I'm going to have to take extra time and it's going to be harder for me to focus. And so, if I can get into that compassion of slowing down, which is just unlike most GenX, it's really a gift and I've gotten much better at it. Like I was just like, ah, technology issues, I'm taking Thursday and Friday off. I don't care, I'm not dealing with this and, like even today, I've had some anxiety over the weekend, so, or yesterday, especially when I went back to work. So I'm like you know what, I'm going to re-record that podcast and do a couple other things, and then the rest of the day I'm going to step into that inner little girl of mine and go have some fun rather than, you know, working my butt off. And I'm actually going to go paint this afternoon, because that's what brings my stress down, that's one of my tools.
Speaker 1:
I also love that you were like we need to have this list of tools or a vision board or somewhere where these things are put that we can refer to, because so often when we're in our sane mind, we're like oh yeah, I can try breathing, I can try yoga, I'll just go drink the water, I'll eat some fresh food, I'll do something right. But then when we're in that panic state or in that anxious state, it's so hard to remember those things. I mean, for me, it's hard enough to get my like inner teenager to calm the hell down and be like we're doing this, we're taking care of ourselves. So, in order to remember those tools as well, I think that that's so essential, and I often have my clients. I'm like just have that list nearby of things that you can do.
Speaker 1:
And the other thing I think is in Alcoholics Anonymous, I believe is where this came from. Is the HALTS Hungry, angry, lonely, tired, sick, iodine, paramanipause, pms, whatever it is that makes you really uncomfortable. When we're in that spot, we have so much more access to getting into an anxiety state because often our brain's not working right, our body's really uncomfortable and I know, at least personally for me, when my body's uncomfortable, my anxiety can shoot up really quickly because my brain starts going why am I feeling this way? I shouldn't feel this way, I should feel a different way, and you know what's going on. And then I can get into that panic state, right, and then my brain is like feeding that stress and anxiety to my body and my body's reacting to it. So I think that it's really important for us to understand that there could be some physical discomfort that's going on that we are not paying attention to. I love that so much because, yeah, go feed yourself, go get a little rest, go have some water, whatever it is that you need, try all of the things and then come back to it.
Speaker 1:
But I think the one biggest thing that we talked about was this permission to slow down, like allowing ourselves the permission to be like okay, I know I maybe had 110 things planned for today, but maybe three are going to get done and that's going to be okay.
Speaker 1:
And I'm just going to sit here with us, because I think that the one thing that people do is we often think like happy is the only way that we're supposed to feel and if we feel any other way, we start getting anxious about it, like if I'm angry or I'm sad especially angry, a lot of us weren't allowed to be angry when we were little, so like we feel shame when that comes up. And so really getting in tune with what am I feeling? And this is a process that has taken me like 10 years to really sit into and go, wow, what is going on for me right now, without trying to explain it away or justify it or whatever, and I can just be like, yeah, my body's feeling anxious today. That is so interesting, and just being curious about it rather than judgmental. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Surrendering to whatever is given to you today.
Speaker 1:
I love that Surrendering.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah. So I think that's something that we can never have. We can make plans all day long, but we have to really step back from the attachment of. That's how things have to go, because rent, as soon as you get comfortable in a situation, a rent is going to be thrown in there anyway. So the only constant is change, and things are oftentimes going to change in a direction that you weren't expecting.
Speaker 1:
So, being adaptable, and that doesn't mean it's bad, though, right. No, it's just our body that's reacting to it. I mean, a lot of times things don't go my way and they actually go better than I better for me in the end. So it's really sitting in that too. So let's review some of these tips that we have so far. Just so in case people haven't started taking notes, we're going to have them start taking notes right here, because one thing that we can do is, in the moment, right, we know that it's gonna be helpful to figure out where is this anxiety coming from, but in the moment when we're having the anxiety, it's probably not the moment for us to start questioning you know, where is this coming from? Could it be this, could it be that, could it be that? Because then we start like bringing up even more nervousness and anxiety. So, in the moment, what we can do is, I always say take a breath, breathe. After you do that, what is it that you do to manage your anxiety?
Speaker 2:
Most of the time, I just get irritated.
Speaker 1:
There's the honesty.
Speaker 2:
Yep, no loud music helps me a lot and going for a walk. So I put, because I am neurodivergent and that overstimulation gets me a lot and for a long time I was going to get so irritated. People are like you can't handle too many people, like someone talking and they're being the TV on and then the fans on, like you can't handle all of these things. But you can blast loud music in your ears and be just fine. I'm like, yeah, I don't get it either, but that's what helps me. That's one thing. Yeah, I completely get that.
Speaker 1:
When I go to a bar and there's so much noise around, or a restaurant where it's like open and it's very loud, I can't even decide on something, and I don't know that I'm neurodivergent, but I can't even decide on food.
Speaker 1:
We've left places without ordering, because it becomes so overwhelming to my senses to have all of that going on. And then and I also have some food issues, especially in the past, and so it's like I already have this issue with food and now I'm trying to decide what I'm going to eat and there's like all this overstimulation going on. So, yes, I love that. You're like so honest and you're like I get irritated with myself and I do too. I mean, I really do too, and that's like almost a flag to me is like why am I getting so mean to myself? Why am I getting so irritable and like angry at my body? And that's usually my, my clue to go okay, something's going on here and you need to just take a breath. So, after you get irritated with yourself, then what?
Speaker 2:
I usually put my headphones on and play some of my favorite songs. I have a specific playlist that is only positive, upbeat, energizing, top things that I can also sing to, so that kind of like helps me distract myself and recalibrate my energy levels. And then I'll get my dog and I'll go for a walk.
Speaker 1:
Oh, animals definitely help too, I think, at least for me. So that is beautiful. So that's another thing that you've prepared for yourself is this playlist of things that are going to make you feel good in the moment, to help you kind of shift up your energy, yep, and then go for a walk, which I think is you know. I always think activity is helpful, especially for us in midlife. A lot of us don't do a lot of activity and we really need to, because it helps push those hormones through our body and out the liver and everything.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I figured out about five or six, something like years ago, that I could literally run from my anxiety. So anytime my anxiety got bad I would go for a run and I understand most people can't. A lot of people can't do that Like. I even can't do that for a long period of time. In the the weekend I totaled the two vehicles. I busted my knee in one of those. So it does fine usually for the most part, but I can't run for more than like X amount of time, x amount of days without it flaring up. And then I have to like wear a brace and stuff.
Speaker 1:
So you know, it's just about.
Speaker 2:
You have to figure out your body and what works best for you. There's mountains of tools that you can use and you're definitely not going to need every one of them. You may only need three, you may need 50, you know and just, and even then it may be more of a just getting to the other side rather than anything helping with it or lessening it.
Speaker 2:
But just for the most part, really, you just have to surrender to the feeling and be compassionate with yourself and be like there's nothing wrong with me. This is just how I'm built and it's okay. There's just some people are built like this. And is it irritating? Yes, but every single one of us on this planet has something built into us that's irritating, right? Something that we have to deal with, something that we have to live with and learn how to manage. And if anxiety is yours, then you can always be like well, at least it's not XYZ.
Speaker 1:
You know, right, there are a million worse things it could be. And like I truly believe that what you're just saying is like the key is to slow down and be kind to ourselves and just be like, yeah, this is what's going on for me right now and that's okay, and I can try these things. They may not help. They may at least be a five minute distraction, right, so that I can give myself a little space between me and the feeling. But yeah, having things prepared that you could at least try, right, it at least distracts our brain from thinking about our anxiety and like, okay, let me try this.
Speaker 1:
And that, for me, took so much permission, like I had to give myself permission to be kind to myself today. I know I had things to get done, like last Thursday and Friday. I know I have a pile of things to do, and is anyone going to die if I do not do these things? No, no one's going to die if these things get done next week instead of this week, and it's all going to be fine. But it took me a long time just to get to that point, and so I really encourage people just to be able to sit with it, not overly question yourself, not try to solve it while you're in anxiety, like that's non anxiety time.
Speaker 2:
Well, I'm sure sometimes, sometimes it can be helpful for people to question it, because, especially if it's like trauma based, but you're not aware that it's trauma based, so what triggered this is always the first thing that I do tell my clients to ask themselves in the moment because in the moment's the best time to trace it back. Because if you're out of it and a lot of us, honestly when we're out of it we don't want to think about it, we don't want to go there, we're out of it, it's not something we deal with right now.
Speaker 2:
That's uncomfortable, I don't want to be there. But if you're in the moment you can be like, okay, what set this off? And then you can kind of back step and back trace the sequence of events and then start asking why and stuff. But, If you can't answer any of those questions, is a pretty good inclination that it is toxin or food related. Maybe you're like my body's doing it. I don't know my body's doing it. It's not me. I'm telling myself to chill out like nothing's wrong.
Speaker 2:
I'm aware that nothing's wrong, we're fine, but also, yeah, on the other side of the scale, though, definitely being present in the moment as much as you can. So engaging all of your senses, that's something getting into your body, grounding your energy.
Speaker 2:
It's essential oils, something to smell, it really helps a lot because that is directly tied to our olfactory system, which is directly tied to our emotions, which can help calm the body. So, yeah, it really just depends Some people it definitely may make them more anxious, but then maybe we can just slow down and focus on one question at a time and creating space around it so we're not overwhelming the system.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I get like 100 questions going on and I feel like I need to have the answer to each single one of them. But what I love about what you just said is this using essential oils is really great, and it's because it's like using one of our senses. And whenever we use our senses, we become more present because we become more in our body, which I think is really important. That's why they do that thing where like can you see?
Speaker 1:
five things Can you hear three things or whatever, but that's all about getting into our body, which is why I love like what you do is like yoga, and meditation is one way If I can calm myself down to go actually sit and do it. It's one of the ways, because it's about again getting back into my body and out of my brain. If I'm moving my body, and especially with yoga and there's specific poses and everything, I'm more focused on how my body is showing up than asking myself a lot of questions. So I love that you're like. Well, for some people like questioning it in the middle might actually be helpful.
Speaker 1:
As long as we're here's the tips that I heard from Savannah was, as long as we're to focus on one question at a time and if we're getting overwhelmed by the questions, then we can go. Okay, maybe I should think about this later. For me personally, my brain just doesn't feel like it comes up with any good answers when I'm in anxiety, so I have to go away. I might review what just happened, because for me, I think it's a lot of. It is food triggered as well, because I can go oh yeah, you ate that gluten pizza and now you're feeling all ratchety inside right.
Speaker 1:
Like, yeah, now it's all that's going to your brain and so we're just going to have to ride this out.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's why you need to pair it with being present, because our brain does start coming up with all sorts of things that are wrong, right, it's like you start questioning, you're like, oh, oh, there's this other thing that I was totally trying not to think about today, but that's bothering me too. That's, you know, stress related. And so, coming into the present moment, so shutting everything else out, is like we're not talking about tomorrow, we're not talking about yesterday, we're talking about right now, in this moment, not an hour from now, not an hour ago, right now, in this moment, am I safe?
Speaker 2:
Am I cared for? Am I? Is everything around? Is there any? Is there a burning building? Is there, is there someone?
Speaker 1:
drowning that needs to be rescued. Safe or uncomfortable is what I always ask my clients.
Speaker 1:
Okay, I'm just uncomfortable, this anxiety is really uncomfortable, I can deal with that, but like that helps our brain at least start separating that because I don't know the whole reason is because, like, our brains have this really beautiful feature of like seeking out right, seeking out what is at risk, and the thing is like we don't have bears chasing us anymore, we don't have like lions, and so our lives are pretty safe physically, and so whenever this discomfort comes up, our brain kind of flags it as the same thing and it's like discomfort is often growth, maybe not an anxiety, but in life this comfort is often growth.
Speaker 2:
Yeah well yeah, we're designed to focus more on the negative than the positive, because focusing on the negative helps keep us alive. So that's why the news works the way it does, that's why we pay so much attention to it the way we do, and the positive kind of slips through the cracks. You know, you think back to your past, where we can detail you all the trauma that happened. We can detail you all the bad things, all the things people did to us, what they said, how they said it, what they were wearing. You go towards the good, though, like tell me some good things from your childhood. It's very generic, it's very overlay. It's like oh, you know, we camped a lot. That was fun.
Speaker 1:
Exactly because our brain doesn't log those things the same way. I think that that's so important. I know that this could go into another hour long conversation, because I already have all these thoughts and I also want to make sure that our listeners can tune in to another week. But tell us a little bit about your podcast and then tell us about this gift that you have for us.
Speaker 2:
Sure. So the podcast is called Alon Vibre Flow and the overall thing, because I kind of moved on from it, didn't move on from anxiety, it expanded, it turned into healing all sorts of things, because anxiety again is the alarm system, it's something wrong, it's the tip of the iceberg for all of this other stuff that needs to be healed. So our focus is healing the individual for the purpose of creating a better world, because when we heal the one, it vibrates out of us and touches everybody in our lives. And that's how we heal the world. Because that's exactly how we messed up the world, right In the opposite direction, when trauma pattern got passed on to another person, got passed on to another person, and now we're all traumatized and hurt and need healing.
Speaker 1:
Hurt in each other.
Speaker 2:
You know, hurt people hurt people. So, healed people heal people, and that's the focus of the podcast, and I offer coaching consultations and I do that through the chakra system. So we walked through the chakra system because, you know, there's so many facets that we could focus on and people get really overwhelmed. They're like I know that I need to heal things, but there's so many areas that I need to heal and I don't know where to start. Well, the chakra system helps us. It gives us a place to start and gives us a step by step place to go. So I offer a free online chakra course and it's through emails and they're really in depth, and I have both audio, video and written content in that so that you can. It's really in depth. So if you want to DIY, I'm all about DIYing everything. If you don't want to book a consultation, call I have all of the tools laid out in this course that you can at least get yourself going.
Speaker 1:
Start with some tools. Yeah, beautiful, and all those links to her podcast and to this free gift is going to be below, so go check it out, Go follow Savannah and her content and she is going to help you bring that anxiety down and also work through some of these other things that need to be healed. Thank you so much for being on today. I really appreciate everything that you had to say, because I needed a slightly different perspective of anxiety as having it your entire life so, or at least since your 20s.
Speaker 2:
I was still pumped up from time to time. Oh no, it definitely was from the get go, I don't remember. Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Because usually when I have clients that tell me that they stop speaking, when they were a child, there was some kind of anxiety going on, whether that was trauma or otherwise. Yeah so, but thank you so much for being here. I just love having you on. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And thank you, shifters, for tuning in. I appreciate you too. We'll talk to you next week.
