Journey to the Sunnyside

Many people feel exhausted but unable to truly rest. Sleep feels shallow, stress lingers, and the body stays on edge even when life looks “fine” on the outside. In this episode, functional wellness practitioner Zoa Conner, PhD brings a systems-based lens to what’s happening underneath that wired-but-tired state. Drawing on her background in physics, she explains how depletion, nervous system dysregulation, and environmental stress quietly shape how we feel long before we try to change our behavior.
We talk about how mineral balance and liver support affect energy and resilience, why cravings can be signals rather than failures, and how changes in environment or travel can either restore regulation or amplify stress. This conversation isn’t about fixing yourself or following a rigid protocol. It’s about understanding what the body is asking for and learning how support, not force, often creates the relief people are looking for.

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Creators and Guests

Host
Mike Hardenbrook
#1 best-selling author of "No Willpower Required," neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert.

What is Journey to the Sunnyside?

Journey to the Sunnyside is a top 1% podcast, reaching over 500,000 listeners every week. It’s your guide to exploring mindful living with alcohol—whether you're cutting back, moderating, or thinking about quitting.

While Sunnyside helps you reduce your drinking, this podcast goes further, diving into topics like mindful drinking, sober curiosity, moderation, and full sobriety. Through real stories, expert insights, and science-backed strategies, we help you find what actually works for your journey.

Hosted by Mike Hardenbrook, a #1 best-selling author and neuroscience enthusiast, the show is dedicated to helping people transform their relationship with alcohol—without shame, judgment, or rigid rules.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in our episodes do not necessarily represent those of Sunnyside. We’re committed to sharing diverse perspectives on health and wellness. If you’re concerned about your drinking, please consult a medical professional. Sunnyside, this podcast, and its guests are not necessarily medical providers and the content is not medical advice. We do not endorse drinking in any amount.

Speaker 1:

A lot of people feel exhausted but still can't fully rest. Sleep doesn't feel deep, stress hangs around, and the body stays on edge even when nothing seems obviously wrong. Today's conversation is about what's happening underneath that wired but tired feeling. I'm joined by Zoe Connor, who has a PhD in Physics and now works in Functional Wellness, which gives her a really unique systems level way of looking at the body. We talk about things like minerals, liver load, nervous system regulation, and even how environment and travel affect how we feel.

Speaker 1:

This isn't about fixing yourself or following a rigid protocol. It's about learning to listen to the body and understanding why support, not force, is often what actually creates relief. Zoe, thanks for coming on today.

Speaker 2:

Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

Oh, it's gonna be a good conversation. Now you have a PhD in physics, which isn't the usual entry point into functional wellness. So why don't you tell us a little bit of how did you end up working so closely with the body and also with health?

Speaker 2:

So the funny thing about having a PhD in physics is that what I really love to do is to learn things and figure things out that no one else knows. Right? So part of what you do when you work on your PhD is you come up with connections between this piece of information and that piece of information that no one else has seen before. And so I just take that skill and apply it wherever I want. Maybe it's to my permaculture garden, maybe it to making cheese in my kitchen.

Speaker 2:

And when given the opportunity to help my family heal from chronic mold illness, I just applied it to wellness. And so I learned anything and everything that may or may not have been related or connected or helpful or not, and then drew my own lines of things that would work or things that might work, but not right now, and things that could work if this other thing happened. And then that's all what has been, collated together into my business. Because now I do that for everyone else.

Speaker 1:

In some of your work, you talk about this concept of wired but tired. So a lot of people, they feel exhausted, but they can't truly rest. I know that feeling when you're just so tired that it's almost like you can't go to sleep or just relax. So from your perspective, what is happening in the body when somebody feels both depleted and overstimulated?

Speaker 2:

Well, so your biology is designed to keep you alive. This is in general a good thing, but what happens now in our modern world is that so many things trigger this biological system, your stress system. Things that aren't actually a danger to staying alive, but you still respond in the same way. So an argument with your boss, someone cutting you off when you're feeling rushed and already hurried on your way to York's work or school or whatever. Right?

Speaker 2:

All of these things are activating this stress side of the nervous system. And it's designed to keep you safe from things like saber tooth tigers and avalanches. But now the avalanche is just your phone beeping, and it happens all the time. And so what happens is when you are stressed all the time, frequently throughout the day, you never get a chance to go to the other half of your nervous system. The one that's supposed to help you calm down.

Speaker 2:

That's supposed to help you heal the body. That's supposed to help you digest and sleep. And so your designs to switch back and forth between them as needed, but we have so many stimulations of one side that the other side can't ever get a chance to kick in. And so that's when we reach for something that will help us calm down. Damn it.

Speaker 2:

Right? Anything that will help us calm down, which could be a a wide variety of tools. Right? Ideally, something that gets challenged, something useful and helpful. But even things like exercise, you can overdo because then you can hurt yourself or you can wire yourself up even more and still don't get a chance to calm down.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Too much of a good thing. What do you think these days? Because I have this conversation a lot about the nervous system or stimulation, reactions that we have, whether they be in a healthy step, maybe too much of, or an unhealthy. What do you think these days is probably the worst thing that we'll do in response to this fight or flight or just unease that we feel.

Speaker 2:

Well, so I'm not sure there is a single thing, but I know that you can find out information about how to calm your nervous system all over the place on the Internet. Right? And a lot of them are talking about taking away the inputs. Put your phone on, do not disturb. You know, these various things which are affecting your the the flow of information coming to you.

Speaker 2:

This is one of the reasons why when I teach yoga, I have people close their eyes if they're at all comfortable with that. Take away the stimulation to your eyes. It's gonna save you energy in your brain. You're gonna be able to relax. But then you also have to look at what's happening on the inside of the body.

Speaker 2:

What are the internal stresses that you're not necessarily aware of, but that are contributing to your nervous system staying on high alert? And these can be things like a bacterial or viral infection, exposure to mold that you didn't think was a big deal because you cleaned it up, and then you don't you don't realize that your whole body is still responding to it a decade later. Right? So I feel like it's the hidden things, not the obvious things that might be the bigger problem simply because they're hiding.

Speaker 1:

I'm really interested to dig into the mold thing that you commented on because you hear about it. You know how bad it is. I travel a lot, so I'm in different places, and I'm not doing the same due diligence I am on somewhere that be short term as I would long term. What are some things to keep an eye on in that regard that might show up that we might overlook?

Speaker 2:

Because mold is a fungus, and it attacks your mitochondria. So the things that give you energy, the things that keep you alive, they are also environmental sensors. They tell you when you're in a bad place. Right? You just have to listen.

Speaker 1:

Well, of listening and going down this route that you talk about as far as health and inputs and missing inputs, you focus a lot on mineral status. How does mineral depletion actually show up in everyday life, not maybe in your lab results, which, by the way, this morning for anybody listening, I just went and did that. But how does it show up in how people feel?

Speaker 2:

It shows up in so many ways. We don't have long enough for me to list them. So the problem is is that minerals are activating chemicals within the body. So anytime you want a process to happen, digestion, moving blood around the body, using a muscle, processing anything in the body. Minerals are like the spark plugs that get that process to go.

Speaker 2:

So when you are in a stress state, you burn through those minerals faster. You have more things to do to keep you alive. Right? The shift in your vision, the shift in your blood pressure, all those take minerals. So when you don't get to calm down enough, you need a greater supply of minerals to come into the body.

Speaker 2:

So when you're stressed, this is where I often tell my clients, you need to take better care of your stress, but that's not the time that you are taking better care of yourself. Right? You need more minerals to support being able to stay stressed. Right? And so when you look at what does that mean?

Speaker 2:

Well, that means that now my muscles and my joints are not as comfortable. I'm not as strong. I feel more tight. I feel more achy. Right?

Speaker 2:

I don't digest as well. It's not just that your stomach acid production went down. That requires minerals to make it happen. Right? Your brain, you can't think if you don't have the right amount of calcium and magnesium.

Speaker 2:

You don't have strength and stamina without iron. These are all important minerals, and you have to keep them balanced as well. Some of them are antagonists. They fight with each other. They fight for absorption.

Speaker 2:

They fight for use, and you can have problems simply because you have too much of something. Just like you can have problems from having not enough of something.

Speaker 1:

When we're talking about minerals, give is there a usual suspect that you go to when you're talking to somebody that maybe they have symptoms of anxiety? Maybe they just explain it off as stress. Are there are there kind of a universal approach that you take when we're talking about minerals?

Speaker 2:

Well, my approach has to do with trying to get a full picture. Right? Because, yeah, there are some common targets. Magnesium, pretty much every American probably knows something about magnesium that they're supposed to take some, but they don't necessarily know why. Right?

Speaker 2:

But the fact that it's not very prevalent in our diet is why. Right? But it's also used in over 300 processes in the body. But copper and iron is are important. Copper is often tied with a sluggish liver.

Speaker 2:

Your liver's job is to cleanse your blood of anything and anything that shouldn't be there. Right? Including excess hormones. And when your blood can't make it through the liver and to do the job properly, then the toxins and the trash just get sent back into the blood for another shot. Right?

Speaker 2:

And copper is one of those very complicated minerals in terms of it's needed for your the color of your skin, the color of your hair. It's needed for energy production. It's needed to create estrogen so that everyone has a memory center of your brain that function, men and women alike. Right? It's, of course, for women tied to your ability to ovulate and make babies.

Speaker 2:

So it's a very important mineral, and it's very easy to get when you eat plants, whereas zinc is very easy to get when you eat animals. Right? So oftentimes in our quest to be having a healthier diet, we end up imbalanced in these minerals, and then we're agitated and anxious, and we sleep so well. But we're eating all the right foods. But it's not working well at keeping our minerals balanced.

Speaker 2:

There's something that needs to be shifted, usually up with one and down with another. Right? And the first ones that I look at are sodium and potassium, right, which are not the more common minerals you tend to hear about sodium because everyone's supposed to lower their sodium, right, for your heart. But that's not always true because sodium supports your stress state. So sodium so supports your blood pressure staying high enough to do its job.

Speaker 2:

High blood pressure is talked about a lot. Low blood pressure, not so much. But many people with migraines have low blood pressure. Many people with fatigue have low blood pressure. And so we have to look at the sodium to potassium balance in order to keep everything working well.

Speaker 2:

And that ratio is so important that when we talk about it in the context of doing a hair mineral analysis to get your full picture of your minerals, it's called the life and death ratio because it's that important. You can tell from your sodium and potassium ratio, are you struggling to stay alive but being successful, or are you struggling to stay alive and sailing?

Speaker 1:

Now is this something that many doctors or health professionals are checking for?

Speaker 2:

Doctors and health professionals. Keywords there. So this is the sort of analysis or thought process, which is not common in Western medicine. So if you go to a traditionally Western medicine trained doctor, they're gonna scoff at the hair test idea. Means nothing.

Speaker 2:

Right? Blood work. Let's go with blood work. Okay? But the problem is is that within the body, your blood work is, first of all, a snapshot in time.

Speaker 2:

The very, very moment that they're taking the blood out, that's the picture you get. Two two hours later, three days later, six months later, totally different picture. Right? Because the body changes all the time. Also, because it's a snapshot in time, it's easy to make changes that are only temporary.

Speaker 2:

Oftentimes in the wellness and health space, we're looking to make long term changes. So we'd rather have a long term assessment tool. And that's where the hair analysis can come into play because it's typically going analyzing the last six to eight weeks of the state of your body because it takes that long to grow the edge of hair that you send off to the lab. Right? And so it's more of a time averaged picture than an instantaneous picture for right now.

Speaker 2:

And I usually give a good example to my clients for there's a recipe that I can give you to raise your cholesterol right now. Right? You have a fight with your spouse. You get into an accident on the way or almost an accident. Right?

Speaker 2:

You don't drink any water before you go for your blood test. Right? Through a three step process. Dehydration, stress, and emotional stress. Right?

Speaker 2:

And that will raise your cholesterol through the roots because that's part of the stress response. Right? Which means if you wanna reverse that, you can go the opposite way to lower your cholesterol. Right? And that's just a good example where blood tests are not always a good descriptor of this overall wellness state of your body.

Speaker 2:

It's a picture of what happened right now. And the question is how often throughout the day does that happen? Is that representative of you? Does that make sense?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. It does. And more and more as I'm as I'm aging, I'm getting into more of a wholeness, holistic approach to health. And while those, of course, are essential, I'm always looking to branch out, and so this is really interesting to me. Now one thing that you said about copper and liver, I wanna dig into that a little bit about liver support and Mhmm.

Speaker 1:

As you talk about liver support in a very practical way, so what changes do people actually notice when their liver is actually better supported on a day to day, and what are some signals going the other way?

Speaker 2:

Okay. So liver has a variety of jobs, one of which is to send its fluid bile into your digestive tract. Well, that bile acts like a laxative. So one connection might be constipation to a sluggish liver. Right?

Speaker 2:

We tend to think, ah, the constipation is the problem. We don't always backtrack it to it's actually a liver congestion issue. Right? Another thing is the 2AM wake up. Right?

Speaker 2:

When your sleep is disturbed, you wake up between two and 3AM. Can't get back to sleep for a while, and maybe you can, but you still woke up. Your sleep is still bothered, and you didn't feel quite as good in the morning. Well, on the traditional Chinese medicine clock, that's liver time. Because each part of the day has a active more active organ system, and they rotate around.

Speaker 2:

So that morning time where most people are waking up to go to work or farm or whatever it is that they need to do, that's large intestine time. That tends to be when you need to go to the bathroom for your morning pool. Right? But that 2AM is liver time. So that's another way you can connect.

Speaker 2:

I have this symptom, but it might be related to the state of my liver. Right? So those are, like, two common situations which you can bring back to the liver. But then, okay. So what do you do about it?

Speaker 2:

Well, there's the need to keep blood flowing through it. And so think about what would you do if you had a car engine that was getting all kinda gunky and fludgy. How would you clean it out? There would be some kind of fluid, smooth oil to kind of brush all the jock out. Right?

Speaker 2:

So that's something that you can easily do with your liver as well. And it's as simple as applying castor oil to the skin above your liver, which means where is your liver? Right? So if you take your hands and put them on the bottom of your rib cage, your hand on the left side is your stomach. Your hand on the right side is your liver.

Speaker 2:

Right? And so you rub the castor oil over the skin on that right side of the abdomen and rib cage, cover it up with some cloth because otherwise, you're gonna end up with a pretty oily shirt. And sometimes I have clients that have to start out with five minutes at the most, and then they're wiping it off because otherwise, they're gonna spend the next twenty four hours in the bathroom. Right? Other people, it's more of a maintenance thing than a solving this big liver congestion problem thing.

Speaker 2:

And so then there, they put it on, go to bed. It they they keep it on all night. They wash off in the morning. So there's a progression of how you might implement this. Right?

Speaker 2:

But that's a super easy task. The other thing would be to make sure that you're getting enough oils and fats into your diet. In our American diet, it's pretty easy to get sugars. Pretty easy to get carbs. Right?

Speaker 2:

So many things have them added. And, also, in terms of your stress response, you love the energy that sugar brings. Right? And sometimes it makes you happy, sometimes not. So we tend to need to focus on healthy fat.

Speaker 2:

I know that whenever I work with a client and I'm like, we need to work on increasing fats. There there there's this dichotomy of, oh, I'm trying to avoid them. I'm worried about my weight or woo hoo. I now have free rein to go have fats. And then we have to talk about which fats will help.

Speaker 2:

That does not mean go to Chick fil A every day for lunch. Right? That means nuts and avocados and olive oil and those things which have good health benefits and make you feel good when you eat them, which is really important.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. One thing that you said there is especially relevant to the audience here is that so many of us probably think about the liver in terms of alcohol, and many probably overlook the impact that sugar has on it. Like, oh, I'm not drinking. So, you know

Speaker 2:

But in your liver's department, they're kinda the same.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Right? Yeah. Very much so. Anyone listening to pay as much attention to your sugar intake as you probably are already with your alcohol intake.

Speaker 1:

Now I wanna talk about

Speaker 2:

If if you're balancing the the beer or the glass of wine with the donuts, put them both away.

Speaker 1:

There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's a very common thing for many people, especially when they're cutting back. And I know that I did many years ago is that, oh, well, I do have a sugar cravings that are gonna come up when you start cutting back or eliminating alcohol. But you have to realize that that's not just a treat to give yourself because that can have a equally damaging impact on your health. And so if you're making these decisions for your health, keep that in mind.

Speaker 2:

Oh, and speaking of decision making in the sugar realm, it's important to think about who is making the request for that sugar. Is it your brain? Because you're trying really hard to think. Is it your muscles? Because you have a lot of muscle activity that you're about to do.

Speaker 2:

Or is it the candida overgrowth or the other bacterial overgrowth in your gut microbiome going feed me. Right? And it's not really supporting anything in the body that you are trying to support. It's supporting something that most people would rather get rid of because it would help them eat more healthy overall.

Speaker 1:

Tell me about that. Is there is there a difference to notice when that happens? Like, do the signals feel different?

Speaker 2:

Well, so here we get into body awareness. So with you being a male, I'm gonna go with no. They probably don't. Only because most of my male clients I have observed have a hard time understanding and well, recognizing first and understanding and processing those small differences in earned internal signals. I would tend to go with, if you're feeling like you have a sugar craving, then what do you feel if you have something that's a little more tart and vinegar?

Speaker 2:

So grab the pickles or something of that nature. Does that satisfy you? Right? Or what if you have some fat instead? That is also energy, although it needs your liver to convert it a bit.

Speaker 2:

Right? Does that satisfy you? Are you craving a doughnut or a banana? There's a difference there. Right?

Speaker 2:

Because the banana comes with other things, other minerals, some vitamins, and some quick sugar because fruit is nature's fast food. So if you are desperate for energy because you cannot get to the protein, right, then here you are hunter gatherer, cave woman, caveman. You grab the berries off the tree or you stick your finger in the honey, right, in order to get to the meat. Right? And so you have to kinda look at, here's what I feel.

Speaker 2:

If I do this, does that help? And if I do this, does that help? And that helps you understand what is that craving asking for.

Speaker 1:

It's really interesting how cravings can change and evolve. So for example, I don't eat sweets by and large almost my entire life, but I do know that they can come in when my kids would have the bags of candy at Halloween. There were a few years where I would start dipping into it like I was a little kid, and then all of a sudden, had a sweet tooth. But what's really and then you remove that, and it sort of goes away. But what's really interesting that I found is that for I'll resist wanting to have salads, for example, in in one period of my life.

Speaker 1:

But then when I start adding them in all the time, like a nice kale salad or whatever it is, then all of a sudden you start craving that when when it becomes part of your routine.

Speaker 2:

Right. But that's because you are now since food is information, you are informing your body, and you are supporting certain bacteria within your gut and certain processes within the body because now you have the nutrients on board to deal with that. Right? So you eat the doughnut, you feed the candida, guess what you want tomorrow? Another doughnut.

Speaker 2:

Right? It that that process doesn't support, I'm gonna alternate donut and kale salad. Right? So making the shift and the change is difficult to get started with. But for many of these wellness practices, once you do get started after a couple of days, sometimes longer, right, then you need to then you have some reinforcement to keep going.

Speaker 2:

Right? But you're likely to fall off your your path, your selection of choices, right, every so often. And the question is, what do you do when you do have the thing that you've been trying to avoid? Right? Do you berate yourself?

Speaker 2:

That's not helpful. Right? Do you do it again because, well, hell, that was not really good. Right? Or do you go, oh, okay.

Speaker 2:

Let's just regroup and recenter ourselves. And so here is where you need your thinking power on board. Right? You need that prefrontal cortex of your brain, your reasoning, your logic to help you make those choices, not the emotional parts of the brain that are just gonna go with, well, I like this, so I'm gonna do it anyway.

Speaker 1:

A 100%. And we talk about cravings so often here. Course, usually, it's centered around alcohol, but also just realizing in my own trial and error that cravings can be swapped. Cravings go away fast, and new ones, healthier ones come in. For me, my alcohol cravings went away, and more of a craving is for coffee in the morning.

Speaker 1:

And I'm okay with that craving. Like, I'm totally if if I'm gonna think about simple pleasures in life, if that's my my advice, I'm totally fine with that. And sometimes those cravings support passing on the previous ones. So for example, alcohol in the evening gives way to cravings for coffee in the morning because that coffee is not good if I drink the night before. Just it's not the same.

Speaker 1:

And same with, like, sweets. You can replace sweets with, believe it or not, to somebody who's listening and can't imagine it, replace that with a craving for actual a green salad, a green smoothie, or something else in that realm.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Right? And there are certain things that become part of your new normal, And then those are no longer necessarily cravings, but you notice when you don't do them.

Speaker 1:

For sure. So I wanna talk about one thing here because it's very relevant to a lot of people that are listening, especially around alcohol, but also just around habits altogether. And that is you work with retreats and also travel. So let's talk about why does changing environments help some people maybe reset quickly, while others, it might throw them off to feel dysregulated?

Speaker 2:

Well, I like to use the nervous system to explain this concept. So let's imagine that you are a city dweller. Right? And so your environment is a small space that you live in and lots of metal and shiny things around you, lots of noise and cars and people, and that's gonna put many nervous systems into a stress state. And that has nothing to do with anything that you've done or chosen or put yourself around except for the fact that you happen to live Right?

Speaker 2:

And so if you don't sleep so well, if you are easily distracted, right, if you're constantly looking for anything that will help you calm down, what happens when you take that nervous system and you put it out in the woods? Does it calm down and go, you for taking me here? Or does it go, oh my gosh. There's nothing going on here. You know, the worst part of the scary movie is when the chick walks into the dark forest and there's no sound and no one around.

Speaker 2:

She's about to get axe murdered. Right? So some nervous systems get more agitated when you take away their stimulation. So travel can either help or hinder. And being aware of what your current environment is and how you respond to it, and then what happens when you take yourself someplace else, that guides you as to where and how should you travel.

Speaker 1:

That's really interesting. So I think many people by default, let's say, we all think of going out in nature as being the right natural choice and that if something like you just described there where it's causing agitation is something that's signaling that something's off. And I need I think our default is to try and force it or keep doing it until it gets to where we think is normal. But it sounds like that's not the case from what you're saying.

Speaker 2:

Well, not the way that I look at the body and how we respond to the world and travel. So let me give you a specific example. A family goes hiking and they, maybe, they go to this favorite park that they always go to. And today, when they go hiking, they happen to pick a place in the park where it's more new growth than old growth. It's also hot and muggy and buggy.

Speaker 2:

And here they are walking, and the person who begged to go could wait to get to there and go hiking, all of a sudden is agitated and constantly, like, and the bugs and the heat and everything. That is not a good trip. Right? So that's a good opportunity to choose a different place in the park that maybe has more shade, less water, less people, less bugs, even if that place on a different day would be okay. Right?

Speaker 2:

It's not the nature's fault. It's the nature in combination with how you are responding right now today.

Speaker 1:

So when somebody is going on travel, how do you suggest that they approach it or think about it so that they get the most balanced, enjoyable time?

Speaker 2:

So this is exactly why I created a delightful little quiz. It's your wellness plus travel profile quiz. So based on your answers, I give you seven tips of what can you do to plan and take future trips that match you and your needs better. Right? So an example is someone who has a hard time getting settled for sleep in general.

Speaker 2:

And now they're planning a trip to Australia, right, just because it's very far away from The United States. Right? And they're like, I'm just gonna fly all in one shot. It's gonna be one really horrible day, really long. Like, I'm not gonna sleep on the airplane, but it's okay.

Speaker 2:

Once I get there, it'll be fine. Right? And that works for one kind of person. But maybe a different kind of person's like, I'm gonna choose to break this up into pieces. So I'm gonna first fly from the East Coast Of The US to California, and I'm gonna spend a couple days with my friend.

Speaker 2:

And then I'm gonna fly to Hawaii. Right? And maybe just, like, an overnight or two just because that way I break it up. And then I'm gonna keep going from there. Do I go directly to Australia?

Speaker 2:

Do I hop to New Zealand first? So, yes, time and money, but it's also your wellness. So how you approach it depends on you.

Speaker 1:

I am definitely the latter. I am not a drive through the night kinda guy. I've done it. And in fact, I'm I have to go back to Spain to pick up some articles that we left in our house there, go with my daughter, and I'm looking at flights where it looks crazy. It's, like, thirty five hours.

Speaker 1:

But at least, like, I stop in Munich for twenty hours, and I get off the plane, and then we can kinda recharge and get back, see a new city for free, and then get back on the plane the next day and then move on. And, yeah, it's a lot but but some people would be like, nope. I'm doing a straight shot. That's a really interesting that's a really interesting point that you bring up there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Because these these are important things. Right? If we're gonna travel, which I think that we should because it's a fabulous experience in all kinds of ways, but it should add to your wellness. It should not detract.

Speaker 1:

Yes. And I think what I'm drawing from what you're saying is that listen to yourself. Listen to what you want. Don't listen to what other people say that works the best. Because, like,

Speaker 2:

that drive thing is And what we get into is a difference between you and your spouse or you and your kid or you and your work co collaborator. You're trying to travel with people, and then you've got different personalities. Who wins? Who gets to decide how many days it takes you to do that drive? Or all those things.

Speaker 2:

It's a tricky thing. And if you don't even really have a clear idea of what your needs are and what optimizes your wellness, you can't stick up for yourself.

Speaker 1:

Knowing yourself definitely makes for a makes for a better easier time. So, well, Zoey, this has been amazing. I'd love for you to share anything that you're working on. Probably that quiz that you talked about where people find that, and anything else you'd like to mention.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So the quiz is easily found. My retreat website is intentional-vitaly.com, and you just just slash quiz on there, and you can get your travel profile. And you can opt into getting those, seven tips that I give you for your profile. And my next retreat is in Santa Fe, New Mexico coming up in March.

Speaker 2:

So if you want more on travel and wellness and hair minerals and all the wellness lifestyle things, a retreat is a great way to give you, that 10,000 mile view looking down at everything, but also you take home the detail oriented plan of what do I do and how do I phase this into my life. The other way that you can find out a little bit more about me and my work is through the book that I have, which you can get either through me, intentional-ofvitality.com/book, or you can get it on Amazon. It's called wellness in motion, sustainable travel and embodied practices for the midlife earth conscious woman. Because, of course, that's also me.

Speaker 1:

Very exciting. Love Santa Fe. That's a great place to do a trip. Thanks so much for coming on again.

Speaker 2:

Thanks.