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THE podcast for navigating all things midlife with honesty, humor, and heart
Heidi (00:15)
Hey there, you're listening to the Evolving Together Podcast, the podcast for navigating all things midlife with honesty, humor, and heart. I am your host, Heidi Sexton, and today's topic is something that I am fairly certain you are going to relate to, or you know someone who is going through this.
So my question for you: Do you suddenly feel like a switch has been flipped and your body and mind have morphed into someone you don't recognize? Perimenopause menopause, and midlife in general, men you go through midlife too, is a shakeup of astronomic proportions of your body, mind, and emotions similar to when you were a teenager. You ever think about that?
If you can remember that far back, at times it was most likely a nightmare that felt like it would never end.
But now in midlife, the ground that you once stood firmly on, the things that worked in the past to feel good, look good, maintain weight, and even function like a normal human being, has just fallen away and you're left hanging, feeling very isolated at times. I see this time of perimenopause as the shakeup and menopause as the crash course and letting go, both requiring tremendous self-compassion.
First of all, what is self-compassion and self-love? We hear a lot about that. But how do we find that self-compassion and self-love and self-care, whatever you want to call it, and not completely lose your mind trying all sorts of things? How can we find relief, but also come out more secure and more stable, stronger on the other side of all this?
Surprisingly, it starts in one place and that's with you. It all comes back to self-care and the love and compassion that we show ourselves. Yeah, even your insomnia it's all connected.
I'm not talking about bubble baths and pedicures, although those are lovely too. They are not going to fix your hot flashes. So to help us get through these times, I have my friend Jackie Castro Cooper here to talk about why this is happening, other than the obvious that you're in perimenopause or menopause or having a midlife crisis. Today we're going to cover steps to take to start feeling better right now and not in six to eight years after all of this has passed on its own. Because seriously, who has time to wait?
to feel good again.
Heidi (02:43)
So Jackie, if you don't mind giving us a little bit of an overview of who you are for those who don't know you.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (02:50)
All right, I am Jackie Casser Cooper and I am the world's best Latin dancer. Woo!
We're gonna put that Latin
Heidi (02:57)
That's
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (02:57)
music on at the end. So I am Jackie Kester Cooper. I am a holistic alternative physical therapist, one of the first in the country. I specialize in John F. Barnes, myofascia release. I do in intra-oral TMJ. And I also do women's and men's health by doing internal pelvic work. I do emotional freedom technique, so that's tapping. ⁓ I took a course with ⁓ Dr. Dawson Church, who wrote the EFT manual.
Heidi (03:00)
Love it.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (03:26)
This is it right here. I love him. And we do that for my patients who have severe anxiety and pain because most of my patients are chronic pain and lots of other issues like the gut and brain issue. I'm also a registered yoga teacher. I did 10 months of training with River Rock Yoga and it was really amazing. And what else did I do? I love yoga. I love sharing it with everybody. I've been doing yoga since I was in 11th grade.
And I love meditation too. And recently I started doing some more ⁓ some more exploration about the benefits of forest bathing. So that's a little bit about me.
Heidi (04:09)
I love it. I love I
just the just this the term forest bathing makes me want to just be out barefoot in the woods somewhere. I I grew up outside. I never wore shoes until it got really cold. And and I'm from New York, so you know how cold it gets up in New York. We're both New York transplants. We're nearly native, right?
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (04:26)
Yes, absolutely.
Heidi (04:30)
So one of the things that I thought was really cool that you had in your book
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (04:33)
The Power of Self-Care, Self-Love, a Physical Therapist Guide to Evolving Into Your Higher Self.
Heidi (04:40)
you describe the different stages of life as a stanza. And that makes me think of a song, which is what us you know, songs are made up of stanzas. And you know, every song has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and each part is so unique yet essential for the complete effect of the song.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (04:49)
Mm-hmm.
Heidi (05:01)
And I love that. And I and I think everybody listening is in some type of stanza, whether it's midlife or I have some listeners that are actually in their twenties and thirties. So that's a whole other stanza.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (05:07)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And there's breaks there. There's pauses. You know, we forget that. Same as our life.
Heidi (05:21)
Yeah,
that's a good point.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (05:23)
when you used that word evolving in one of your presentations that you did one time, I just fell in love with you because I was like, ⁓ my gosh, it's all about evolution. And ⁓ women and men, we kind of get stuck. We think we're just one person, what one one type of person at this time we gotta say.
Heidi (05:42)
Yeah.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (05:44)
The same, and we don't, and that's part of what you talk about is with the midlife, and I love this beautiful topic of shaking it up, shaking it up during midlife is exactly what you're doing. Heidi, you talk a lot about ⁓ not staying stagnant, and it's like putting oil and mustard and balsamic vinegar, which by the way, I didn't know that there was turmeric in old-fashioned mustard. I never knew that till a couple years ago.
I'm like, where the heck have I been? But if you mix that all up, you make this beautiful concoction and that's what midlife that's what you talk about. That's what midlife is. It's a complete shakeup of everything.
Heidi (06:25)
Absolutely. And I don't think that anyone is prepared for it because we don't talk about preparing for it because we I guess maybe we think it's never gonna happen until it does and you feel like someone slapped you upside the head, knocked ya over. It's anyone that's
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (06:35)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Heidi (06:43)
Going through it or has been through it knows that there's so many different levels to it and every day sometimes feels like a new day. You feel like you're waking what's gonna happen today? What's you know, where where is this taking me? So when we're in these stanzas, I think each one requires a different type of self love and self compassion. But in particular, the midlife stanza is unique as far as
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (06:52)
Right.
Heidi (07:13)
why we need that type of self love. I I think we get to that point where our bodies and our minds just say, I you know, this this isn't working anymore. Or, you know, go ahead.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (07:23)
Right. Mm-hmm.
I call
I call that change ⁓ part of the psycho neuroimmunology. I talk about that in my book on page eighty-eight and eighty-nine. Our thoughts and emotions are not the same when we were twenty or thirty or maybe a little bit like forty. Our thoughts and emotions are completely different. Our ideas are our behavior, everything is different. So PNI or psychoneuroimmunology is actually moving towards I was listening to someone talking, a a scientist talking.
About what it's evolving into, and it's evolving into a new word called psycho-neuroimmunological endocrinology, which basically says it's about your thoughts and emotions and your behavior. But when we're experiencing midlife, there's a confusion, or like we talked about, it's a shakeup. But what has to happen is you have to be still. That's why you and I love yoga and meditation and walking in the woods because it forces you to realize.
Remove your mind, body, and spirit from the stressors, from you know what's hitting you upside the head. It's like woo woo woo. You have to remove yourself. And with my patients, I learn a lot from them. And I've been treating specifically in this way for 20 years. And I graduated ⁓ a little longer, but I didn't really realize that this world of being still was so vital for our psyche and for what I call
Focusing on the self-care and self-love. What is it that you need in this moment in your stanza in life? What is it? And a lot of people ha don't even know at this time. It's not just women. It's like you said, it's also men as well. So yeah, that's psychoneuroimmunology, something to look up. It's kind of fun.
Heidi (09:15)
Yeah, and and
I it's interesting, so when I hear these big terms, I always go from the teacher brain because I used to teach and I taught elementary and high school and so to break it down it's it's psycho, neurological endocrinology and immunology. So we got psycho meaning the brain function, neurological nervous system, endocrinology, which is all of our h hormones. It's not just the estrogen, testosterone, progesterone and
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (09:42)
Mm-hmm.
Heidi (09:45)
Serotonin, oxytocin, you know, the ones we'd hear about, but there's like a whole bevy of hormones that are all connected. And then the immunology, which is our immune system and how we, you know, fight off or let in certain diseases. And so what you said about how all that is shaken up and gets kind of reordered, it's also true then then we have to adjust how we
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (09:51)
Mm-hmm.
Heidi (10:11)
are functioning. So it's like it's we're being forced to function differently. So learning how to function with this new order or disorder menopause, perimenopause midlife, it feels like a lot of disorder. And it and it is, but it's a sort of reordering that's happening. And I think we can help our bodies through this reordering process through a lot of different ⁓
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (10:15)
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Heidi (10:37)
a a lot of different actions and I love what I in fact this morning, this is really funny. So I was a little stressed out. I I was prepared for our talk today, but my mom is she's almost eighty two and she's very self sufficient, but she has ⁓ early stage dementia. And so I I have to keep an eye on her and and check in on her. And then my husband had surgery and so I was feeling exhausted. Like I my
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (10:40)
Yeah.
Who
Heidi (11:04)
My brain, yeah, I was just like, my brain just felt it was just so much. And I had to, you know, like help my husband take a shower because he just had this surgery and he ke you it's a shoulder thing and anyway. So I thought, okay. I usually have like two cups of coffee. I have one in the morning and then I'll have one mid mid morning when if I'm gonna sit down and write. And I I I don't always have that. But I thought I don't have time for a nap and I don't think I really need a nap. So what I did is I got on my yoga mat.
And I did some just whatever my body felt like it needed. It wasn't anything intense, it was just some slow stretches on my back, a few downward dogs. I felt amazing after. And it was it was really ⁓ maybe 15 minutes. I don't even know if it was that long. And I thought, I just proved what we're talking about.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (11:45)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. And so what did
what let's talk about physic because I know your readers are going, Well, I'm not gonna do yoga. I'm not but what is yoga? It's laying down on the floor for twenty minutes and breathing. That's really all it is. Just breathing. You're literally calming down the nervous system. You're getting out of that fight, flight, freeze response. A lot of people are using the terminology self-regulation. Whatever it is, you're slowing everything down. And how is that affecting you? It's because the breath literally moves
moves your diaphragm down into your 25-27 feet of intestines and then pushes your pelvic floor down as well just by one deep inhale.
And then the exhale, so it's like you're doing an accordion when you're breathing in and breathing out. That's why yoga is so incredible, is because you are moving slowly and you are being in the present moment. What does that do as well? It is decreasing your cortisol and your adrenaline.
That goes into the endocrine system. It calms down the hypothalamus, the pituitary, the adrenal glands, the amygdala, everything just calms down. That few minutes. I tell everybody, just do one minute. Just breathe for one minute on the floor. If you can't get on the floor, just take your time. But that literally changes your biochemistry like that. And that's what you did. And that's how simple it is for everybody to do.
Heidi (13:21)
Yeah. Yeah.
I had to just unplug for a minute because there was just so much going on and I you know, plus regular life stuff. I had like an hour conversation with my son who's living in the Canary Islands. You know, he's coming home soon and he's having all these dilemmas and we're trying to figure things out and so
I was just I have nothing left to give. And it it was only eleven o'clock in the morning. So I but I did. I unplugged, I stopped, and when I laid down on the mat I thought, I haven't really been breathing this morning. You know, so I just slowly was taking those deep breaths and I love the visual that you gave of how you're pushing down the intestines and it's like a it's an internal massage. No wonder breathing feels you know, that deep intentional breathing feels so good. And then the exhale for me is like the gold. That's
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (14:08)
Yeah.
Heidi (14:09)
you know,
that long, slow exhale. And I I just listened to my body.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (14:12)
And you probably
prevented a little cold or something from coming on because when you are massaging your twenty-five feet of intestines, the mucosa of your twenty-five feet of intestines, that little ⁓ lining, mu mucosal lining, that's where your immune system is made is is actually housed.
So that's the whole gut and brain connection. You know, your thoughts dictate what's happening in your gut, but then if you can breathe slowly, you can manipulate or move the cortisol and adrenaline out. And what are you doing there? You're decreasing inflammation. So that's beautiful what you did today.
Heidi (14:52)
It's
amazing. And you know, years ago I never would have done that. I would have just kept pushing and pushing and pushing. And and I think now I have that self-compassion. You know, it's like, okay, just stop for a second. Nothing is gonna happen in those fifteen minutes. And here's the other funny thing, you're gonna love this. So when I was getting ready to go do a little yoga session before I took a shower, I said to my mom, I said, I'm going for my active self-time. My ⁓
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (15:16)
Woo! Active cell Time AST baby.
AST.
Heidi (15:20)
A S T A S T. And she had just finished
reading your book and she sort of remembered a little bit about it. She's a she loves reading, but then she doesn't always remember what she read, as a lot of us do. But so ⁓ I said, Well you remember that book that had the flowers on the front and you just couldn't put it down and you absolutely loved it. I said, That Active Self Time I said, I'm gonna go do that right now. So she understood that it was
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (15:29)
Uh-huh.
Heidi (15:42)
I was stepping away and it was for myself and it was just ⁓ it was great. So I just I just had to share that because that is something that I learned over the years and I so many times I hear people say, I know that. I know that. But knowing isn't doing. It's i you can know everything. ⁓ well, not everything, but you can know a lot of things. But unless you're doing it, it's not gonna help.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (15:43)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's
why the health healthcare world is changing a little bit. I think that all of the healthcare practitioners are starting, we're starting to take care of ourselves a little bit more. And so whoever your re your listener's ⁓ healthcare practitioner is, you need to ask, you need to check on them. Are they practicing what they're preaching? You know, are they ⁓ taking care of themselves? What what are their lifestyle? You know, because you want a healthy person that you can ask questions about.
About and I'm a that's what I tell my patients. I said, if you love your doctor, your NP, your physician's assistant, your your anybody.
please ask them questions because it'll help them as well. As the the both of us, healthcare practitioners and patients, we we treat each other all the time. I've I've learned so much from my patients. But back to active self time, it was started. I wrote it in the book. I have I re we raised three children and I was so stressed out. I wasn't able to pass my physical therapy exam and so I was really stressed out. And it was a Saturday morning, my husband was here and I literally just put my sneakers on and I said
I'm leaving the house for some active self time. And and no and I didn't even wait for my kids or my son or my ⁓ husband to say, ⁓ what is that? I just left the house and came back 45 minutes later because my head was exploding. I couldn't take it anymore. And I just walked and came back and I felt so much better. So yes, laying down on the floor doing some breathing or sitting and doing some breathing for just a minute or five minutes, but
Bolting out of your house or your office and just literally leaving for five minutes. That again takes you out of fight flight freeze and it brings back that beautiful breath and that awareness to the present moment. And it also, let's be honest, it gives us our permission to feel. my gosh, I'm so angry. I'm so afraid. What am I doing? I'm so confused. It gives you time to really feel that because a lot of people want to ignore it. They don't want to go. They're no, I
I don't want to be angry right now. I gotta calm myself down. It's like, wait a minute. You can calm yourself down after you feel the anger. At after you cry. Go ahead and cry. I love to cry. I tell my patients, I cry every day. They're like, you do? You seem so happy. I'm like, I'm happy because I cry every day. Yeah.
Heidi (18:21)
Hundred percent, yeah. Feel it. Yeah.
Crying is my favorite pastime. In one of my other episodes,
I talked about that. I'm like, I love cry it is one of the best releases and it's so underused and it's underrated. And, you know, it's not just f crying is not just for women, it's for men too. And I just I think crying is one of the most amazing tools. a couple years ago.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (18:43)
Yeah.
Yes.
Heidi (18:56)
My sister-in-law was very, very sick, and she ended up passing away from a very aggressive and rare cancer. And it was a horrible, horrible time in our lives. And I remember there was a there was a moment where I could feel the stress rising up in my body to a point where I I really felt like I was just going to burst. And I couldn't figure out what it was. and I don't know how I figured this out.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (19:04)
Mm.
Heidi (19:25)
Out, but I had not cried for a few days because I was crying all the time. I was crying morning, night, you know, from the time she was diagnosed until you know past her passing. I cried every day practically. And I had this moment where I wasn't crying for a few days, and I thought, holy crap, I need to cry. I need this is all it was. It was building up. I was having such grief and stress and fear and anxiety and all the stuff, and I just
needed to cry and get it out and I I I did and I felt so much better. I was still devastated and s and grieving, but I did not feel like like my head was literally gonna pop off my my my body. So big fan of big fan of crying. ⁓ so mm
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (19:56)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm I'm glad that you brought up grief.
Because
that is a that's one of the things that my patients hold on to in the chest area, in in the breast area, the breasts are you know, the caring for others and grief. ⁓ so I'm grateful for you bringing that up because first of all I'm so sorry for your loss, but what you experienced was a tremendous amount of healing that you're gonna share with all of your listeners forever. Grief is something that has to be ⁓
address because it's a very low vibrational frequency. for your listeners, the biology of belief ⁓ is really fantastic. It's ⁓ Bruce Lipton and it's just such a powerful book. ⁓ but also the other book don't have it here the ⁓ no I do actually The Power versus Force this so this one and you know him Dr. David Hawkins he ⁓ did the map of consciousness so grief is at the bottom
Heidi (21:04)
Yeah.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (21:12)
Shame, guilt, grief, anger, frustration, fear, all lower vibrational frequencies, and their patterns are very slow and wide, right? It's kind of like ⁓ ultrasound, it's got like slow waves, but
Grief you we can't stay there. And that's what crying does. Crying and screaming, it literally lifts us out of grief into anger and then it w goes into fear and then it can come up to peace. And that's how fast it is when you cry. So thank you for bringing grief up.
Heidi (21:45)
Yeah. I I remember I saw that in your book and I I know that I've
read and learned a little bit about the different vibrations of different emotions and things. And one of the things that surprised me was that apathy was almost at the rock bottom along with grief. They're like really low. And the anger is actually a higher vibration than the other one. Like grief and apathy. I th I was so surprised. And I guess that's also because anger is very active. Although grieving is too, but it's like that low, slow. And it's not that we can avoid everything like that. I mean we're all going to have moments where we grieve.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (22:05)
Yeah.
Heidi (22:18)
And it's not like we can always stay at a higher vibration. But yeah, crying is a fantastic way to to kind of it's an it's another way to pause, honestly. ⁓ you ⁓ talked about this proverb that everyone has a house with four rooms. And I would love for you to share a little bit about this because
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (22:34)
Mm mm.
Yes.
Heidi (22:38)
W when I yeah, it's well, you know what's
interesting. When I was reading that, I thought that is so funny because when I was a teenager and in my early twenties, I suffered pretty significant depression. I didn't know it I had depression at the time. I had it my whole life up until about twenty one, twenty two. And I was always s trying to sort through things and and try to
pull the chaos together in my my brain. ⁓ and again, I did not know I was depressed. I had no idea. I just thought this was how how people function. So I would often write in my journals a plan of how I was gonna get better, how I was gonna function better. And so I would make this list of rituals. I'd say, okay, every day I'm going to, you know, do this kind of exercise and I'm gonna pray this long or meditate. And I'm gonna read this or that and I'm gonna do that. And I would write these things
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (23:10)
Mm-hmm.
Heidi (23:30)
Down so that I could make sense of so that I could just function better. And I when I read the four rooms, I'm like, wow, that is really cool. I'd have to go back. Well, I think I've already burned those journals, but I I just thought it was so cool because it's like committing to yourself.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (23:37)
Wow.
Ha ha ha.
Heidi (23:49)
To tend to each of those four rooms every day is so simple. It just takes that commitment to yourself. So if you don't mind just kind of telling us a little bit about the four rooms.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (23:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yes.
And that's actually my the reason why I created the Power of Self-Care Self-Love Journal workbook because it takes you through that for seven days. It repeats it and then it has a different quote on the very top and then it asks you a question after seven days and then it does something different every fifteen days and something different f every forty days. It's three hundred and sixty-five days. But
Heidi (24:25)
I
love that. I love that.
Jackie Castro-Cooper, MPT, RYT (24:26)
Yes, it's so
awesome. I'm actually doing it again. So I'm doing my own journal workbook again because the first time I did it, it took me I I wanted to have the freedom to pick it up when I wanted to, and not this time I'm being so strict, I'm doing it every single day, and I am blown away because the quotes are very powerful because it took me ⁓ a year and a half with my editor and a another person helping me to really ⁓ hone down on what quote is actually
Going to help everybody, but the proverb is this: you are a house with four rooms: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional, and the spiritual. So that spells out pies, and we all love pie, so you will never forget it. So, what is it? How do you do it every day?
Jackie (25:16)
the first one is the physical. So what I tell everybody is just move your body. If you're in severe chronic pain and you can barely get out of bed, just get out and just walk around the house just for 60 seconds and breathe. That's just a simple thing. Just moving your body, giving your body a signal that it needs to use over 300 joints in our body. Just moving and breathing for 60 seconds.
But if you have no pain, see if you can get out of the house in the morning before 9 a.m. We need 20 minutes of sun. That's all women and men, of course, but women, we get let we start to go after midlife, less estrogen, less vitamin D. So we really need to get that sun ⁓ and and breathing. so that's the simplicity of the physical. But if you are like me and you love to dance, just put on your dance music while you're making breakfast.
⁓ or dinner. Try to move your body to joy. Joy is the secret of the physical room. You really want to be able to do AST, active self-time. Get out and do something fun or stay in the house. Zumba, you know, anything that's gonna get you out of the house, kayaking, whatever it is. And a lot of people do love the gym or spinning. So all that. The second room is ⁓
Heidi (26:35)
Can I can I just ask you s or just touch base on something when you said the physical, so I try to encourage my mom to get outside in the morning for that that morning sun. that also helps with sleep at night, right? That
Jackie (26:48)
Absolutely. Our circadian rhythms are destroyed because we're indoors working all the time. And so the melatonin can't be produced the way it used to be when we didn't have electricity. So now as humans, we're trying to evolve into this new way of living. Indoors, electronic devices all the time, whether we're on their phone, computer. And it's really tough for our melatonin to be created.
Heidi (27:16)
Yeah. I just wanted to bring that in because sleep quality is one of the biggest issues I think with midlife. It's like all those all those cycles get disrupted so easily.
Jackie (27:27)
And I do recommend napping. So ⁓ for women, it will prevent heart attacks by about 31 or 35%. For men, it'll prevent heart attacks by about 61%. So napping is extremely powerful. You can everybody says, I don't want to nap, I don't even know where to nap. I just tell everybody if you're at your computer ⁓ at your break, whatever that is, whether it's 20 minutes or an hour.
Fold your hands over and put your head down in front of your computer because a lot of people are just locked into working all the time. Just take five minutes and close your eyes and rest your head on your hands or remove yourself and go to your car and or go to another room where you're working and just lay down for 20 minutes. It would be wonderful to do that. But napping is extremely powerful for again, ⁓ to give yourself a little bit of energy. Caffeine does not help.
It literally does the opposite. So if you're drinking caffeine in the afternoon, just know that you're doing it out of habit, but it's not helping you get extra energy. That the napping will do that.
Heidi (28:31)
Right. I'm a I'm a big fan of of cat naps. I used to go out into my car before I became an elementary teacher, I was an assistant and I was studying to be a teacher and I would be exhausted and I'd either go to my car to study or to sleep. Even even when it was like 90 degrees out, I was so hot, but I did not care. But it was what I needed to reset and restore. And I I just think it's also an under is underused tool.
⁓ so that's a that's a form of instead of, you know, active self time, that would be inactive self time, which is the pause, like we were talking earlier, taking that pause. So for the physical.
Jackie (29:07)
And since we're in the physical room still, walking while you're doing it take having your meetings. If you're on the phone, please get out of your office or out of your home, wherever you are, and walk outside in the middle of the day. ⁓ here in the south, it's extremely hot to do that, but just do it for three minutes if you can, or longer if possible. You do need to get that outdoor break, and that includes ⁓ the physical movement of the physical room. So
Heidi (29:34)
Beautiful. Beautiful. I love it. Yeah. Okay. What's next?
Jackie (29:38)
The next one room is the intellectual. Now remember, these rooms, there's four: physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. These rooms have to be opened and aired every single day. So whether it's 60 seconds, go out in the morning, or whether it's you know, whatever, you have to open them out every day. So the intellectual is read something that's interesting or listen to Heidi's beautiful podcast. Podcast person.
Heidi (30:04)
Right?
Jackie (30:06)
To learn something new, and it's so easy now to do that. So, YouTube, people are loving YouTube. Instagram, I'm not really into the social media thing to learn, but ⁓ social media does give you a little glimpse of, that's an interesting person. Let me look that person up and listen to that Instagram 10-second thing and go, okay, but later on, look that person up.
But yeah, YouTube again your podcast ⁓ is really quite profound. So learn anything. And I'm gonna hit with the word neuroplasticity. If we're not learning something new, knitting. I want to do a ni a a knitting get together very, very soon. And why is that? Because guess what they're saying? If you do old lady things, you can prevent memory loss and live longer.
What are lady things? It's reading, it's ⁓ petting your animal, it's knitting, it's cooking, it's doing a little bit of like, let me meet someone for tea. ⁓ so doing old lady things, being with children, being with older people, you know, whatever that is. So that's the intellectual. Learn one or two things every single day. That's you, a language, piano. That's a little harder, but I highly recommend it. The third.
Room is the emotional room, and nobody really wants to do go in there. And you and I talked about that because of the map of consciousness from the book Power versus Force. We don't want to really feel bad. So everybody wants to avoid crying or screaming. ⁓ sometimes I'll tell my patients, on your way home, go ahead and roll up the windows and scream. And they're like, Are you crazy? I'm like, You are gonna feel fantastic, especially if you've got.
young kids or teenagers in the house, if you don't scream before you get at the ⁓ before you get to the house, you're gonna be in trouble. So that's the emotional room. but the emotional room can also be journaling, which is highly, highly ⁓ recommended. Again, that's why I created my work journal, but any journal that you want to write, a lot of my patients refuse to journal. So I tell them write something ⁓ that you're feeling anything. You could be feeling joy or telling a story
Write it down, burn it or throw it away. But you have to energetically move this s being stuck feeling in your body that your emotions are gonna explode if you don't ⁓ express it. I mean you had mentioned apathy, right? Right. Something that we don't even realize that we're doing. And ⁓ journaling literally can decrease asthma. That's how powerful journaling is.
And so again, if you don't want to journal, just go ahead and write something down and then throw it out. But the cool thing about journaling and going into the emotional room is that you're going to literally heal your body from physical pain.
Heidi (33:00)
I love journaling and I I actually have recommended to my former students and and I did a one of my earlier podcasts, I also suggested it's not as powerful as taking that pen to paper or typing it out, but you can also do voice to texting or like the voice the voice recordings where you could just kind of blah get it all out, you know, and you listen to it again. You can delete it. You put some there's something in that process of getting it out and go going back over it. But again, it's not
quite as powerful as that pen or pencil to paper or the workbook like you're talking about. So yeah, really powerful stuff. So okay. Next room or final room.
Jackie (33:41)
Yes, the final room is the spiritual room. And spirituality is so different for so many people, but basically it's getting in touch with your higher self, with Heidi. Who is Heidi? What does Heidi want? What does she need? What does she love? What brings her joy? So the spiritual room is sitting down, and literally I like to write down the list. I say, what are 20 things that make me happy?
You know, and it's like, my god, because we talked about midlife being so confusing. And it's like you're getting hit over the head with like, What who am I? What's happening? Who are you that I'm living with? what's going on? And so writing 20 things in the spiritual room that bring you happiness or the length of happiness is joy. Brother David, Rice, I think is his name. I quote him in the book. He says, Happiness.
The lingering of happiness is how you can enter joy, the practice of joy. And no one, Heidi, you and I know this so well. No one can bring you joy but yourself. That's what I learned from my mother and my grandmother. The only person who creates joy is you. Don't expect it from your husband or your kids. Maybe your dog and your cat once in a while. ⁓
Heidi (34:58)
I know, right? They'll give you they'll give you lots of love no matter what, as long as you're feeding them.
Jackie (35:03)
And again, you know, spirituality can also be in the form of worship, you know, ⁓ having a faith that you believe in, of course, that's spiritual. But for me, it's the it's that spirit within me, the Holy Spirit, the divinity, reminding yourself that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. We can't forget that we are divine. So connecting with that every day by
Sitting in meditation. So, what's the difference between meditation and prayer? Meditation is sitting and listening. Prayer is speaking. So, speaking to God, universe, divine loving light, consciousness, self-that is the difference. some people do them together. I love to do it, I love to pray and meditate. It's so beautiful. Centering prayer is what Christianity calls it. ⁓ the Muslims and the Hindus can call it different things meditation.
But it's really important to just sit still and know that I am God, universe, divine, loving light, consciousness, whatever you you feel is comfortable for you, for your spirituality. Every day, four rooms, physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and they spell out pies, cause we love pie.
Heidi (36:14)
I love pie. I love it. I I think it's so important like you bring up that you have to visit those rooms every day. It's not you can't neglect one and expect the others to fill in because there's they're they're separate. They're under the same roof, but they're still separate rooms that need to be cleaned out and taken care of. So that's I love it.
Jackie (36:35)
And that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book is because I deal with so many women and men that overwork and they're addicted to that stress. If I'm not doing this, this, and this every single day, and I'm like, it's okay, go ahead and do this, this, and this. But be a CEO and work out in the morning, go for a walk, get your massage in ⁓ all before 9 a.m. before you start your day, plan your meals.
Be a per be a woman or a man of business. That means take care of yourself first. Or guess what? You're gonna break down and and create illness, which doesn't what doesn't need to happen. If you care and love yourself.
Heidi (37:16)
Yes, a hundred percent. And it takes time to learn that. I wanna touch a little bit on the value of having a community in a tribe and also the value of having spousal support. I call it I call I don't know what else to call it, but that's really what it is, whether you're married or you're in a long term ⁓ partnership. But ⁓ the importance of having
that network of people around you that support you through this time and you know what does that look like and how having that makes our lives more full, but also we can figure things out a little bit easier. we're not meant to go through life alone. We're meant to, you know, be there for each other. if you don't mind sticking around, I'd like to go into those a little bit deeper.
for some bonus episodes or maybe another full episode. I'm not really sure at this point. But before I do that, I do want to ask you, ⁓ what's next? What what are you up to these days, Jackie? I mean, your book came out in twenty twenty. Yeah. Which I for some reason I thought it's so weird because sometimes I'm like, that just came out. Or I'm like, that's been out for a long time. And then I have no concept of time apparently.
Jackie (38:28)
No, after COVID nobody even knows what the heck time is.
Heidi (38:32)
I know, I know. So ⁓ so your work your book came out in twenty twenty and then you followed up with a workbook. Mhm. And then when did the work book come out? That was
Jackie (38:42)
Yeah, that was a year and a half later. ⁓
Heidi (38:45)
okay. I was thinking it was even more recent. So see, I really am lost. But so what so what else what are you working on right now and and what's what's happening? I know you do retreats and stuff like that.
Jackie (38:55)
Yes, I've been doing retreats since two thousand nineteen. I really love them because they create the community. Some people have asked me to do couples retreats and I might visit that in the future. ⁓ because I've been blessed to be married for now, it's gonna be thirty-seven years now. And it's been hoping easy, baby.
Heidi (39:13)
Wow, wow. so it you hung in there. And that's what I want to talk about in in, you know, the next episode because I think you've got a lot of wisdom to share there. So so yeah.
Jackie (39:24)
Me, it would be the newsletter, ⁓ Jackie's Community. I know you'll put that link up. I will be doing private retreats at my house. I have three and a half acres because I want to start really getting a little bit more intimate. I don't mind doing large retreats or going to large events and speaking, but there's something about smaller retreats. And in my home, I have a lot of trees, and so
I've done a couple already where we bring the hammocks out and we do meditations in the hammocks after we do yoga and after we do a little walk in the forest. And I really love that. And I love afternoon tea. That's my thing. I love afternoon tea, just sitting down and being with women, especially. But men, of course, are invited. ⁓ so that's what I'm doing. I'm doing more private routines. I do love my women's health forum. I've been doing that since 2017. And that's where we invite.
all the people in the community to come in and listen to ⁓ healthcare practitioners who are on the cutting edge who are really looking at what's going on out there what what's happening with this ⁓ what's going on with glp ons what's going on with psychoneuroimmunology endocrinology you know all that stuff like what do i need to know that's simple and easy that i really don't get a lot of information about and again a social media is great
But if you can stand in front of a healthcare practitioner live and ask them the questions or afterwards ask them the questions, we just did one in New Orleans this year. Very, very powerful. We did it at the ⁓ the New Orleans ⁓ chamber event. ⁓ it's just great to just share information with everyone.
Heidi (41:00)
I I think that's the first time I ever saw you was at one of the forums. Now that it was in an Ocean Springs library, I or something like that. And it was you and it was a panel of ⁓ I think Betty Sue was there, Dr. Liana and ⁓ Ophelia. Yeah. I think that's the first time I thought, this is cool. I love this. it was packed. Do you ever offer those if somebody's in a different state where they could
watch live or is this just only in person on the Gulf Coast?
Jackie (41:28)
It's hard b because you have to hire somebody to videotape everything. one time we did do a Facebook live and we recorded it and it was live so people could come in. So we might yeah, you have to remind me, I gotta do that.
Heidi (41:41)
Well, it I it's hard because I mean so many people can't get out for one reason or another. I know me taking care of my mom, I I can leave, but I it's like I have to kind of coordinate and things like that. And then there's people that live, you know, across the country that would love to be, you know, a fly on the wall. But but okay, wonderful. So thank you so much for your time. If you don't mind sticking around, we're gonna continue the conversation on ⁓ spousal support and what it means to have a tribe and to have a community.
I hope you listeners will come back and listen to the bonus. I'm not sure if it will be in Patreon I'm not sure what's gonna happen with that. It's a mystery you gotta
Jackie (42:17)
You just take it one little minute at a time and dance the way out.
Heidi (42:22)
That's right. You gotta stick around for the secret. All right. Thank you so much, Jackie.
Jackie (42:28)
Thank you, my darling.
Heidi (42:31)
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