September 10, 2024 • 28 mins
Hey, No Problem Parents!
Today's episode is all about becoming a more intentional and confident leader—both in your home and at work. Whether you're navigating challenging conversations with your kids, managing stress at the office, or balancing both worlds, learning how to respond instead of react can make all the difference. We're breaking down practical ways to lead with purpose, no matter where you are or who you’re with.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
All right, welcome back to the No Problem Parenting podcast,
where we choose to deal with and overcome the emotional and behavioral challenges within our homes.
And you know, guys, No Problem Parenting is all about helping you become the
confident leader your kids crave you to be.
And in order to do that, oftentimes we need to do a little bit of self-reflection.
And so I have a really remarkable guest joining us today, Daniel Blackburn,
(00:23):
an author, a speaker, an executive coach, and a yoga therapist.
Therapist Daniel's journey is nothing short of inspiring
and impressive 28 year tenure as
an award-winning leader and executive in the natural foods industry
he decided to shift careers take on
a new adventure start his own company and his wealth of experience spans various
(00:44):
facets of life making him an invaluable resource for our conversation today
I talk a lot in No Problem Parenting about remembering the pause and how that
is often a first step before responding or more often reacting to our kids'
behavior, the curveballs and things that our kids send us.
And so today we're going to talk about how to remember the pause,
(01:05):
go a little bit deeper into what that means, and start with self-awareness.
And we're going to learn about what self-awareness means to Daniel and its significance.
Hey there, parents. Thanks for listening to the No Problem Parenting Podcast.
Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be?
Are you losing your crap on your kids, yelling, giving in, and exhausted at the end of every day?
(01:27):
You can start building confidence in your parenting immediately,
whether your child is a toddler or all grown up and still living in your house.
Don't make this parenting gig harder than it needs to be. Register to become a No Problem Parent.
It comes with an app so you can listen to the tips and tools just like you're
listening to this podcast.
Click the link in the show notes or go to noproblemparents.com.
(01:48):
Become a No Problem Parent today.
Daniel, thanks so much for taking the time to be with me today. Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. I read your book, Lost and Found. It's a journey of self-mastery.
I read through it and now I'm halfway through it again.
It kind of felt like you were spying on me in the last six or seven years of
(02:12):
my 20-year career that I left 10 years ago.
Do the math on that, people. Because I had many of the same,
I don't know, situations or challenges maybe that you had being,
you know, one of the leaders in the organization towards the end,
kind of always feeling like I had to be busy. I had to constantly be working.
I was just like, hey, this is me. He's writing about me. But I really love,
(02:36):
love, love the book and the way that you kind of walk people through your revelation
into self-discovery and self-awareness.
And so let's just start with what inspired you to write the book.
And I also want to talk about the RARE acronym. And then we're going to really
focus on that, remembering the pause and that importance.
(02:57):
Yeah. So what inspired me to write it, when I started my business as an executive
coach, many, many, many of the people that I was getting were going through
the same thing that you just described was going on with you, that I had gone through.
There was so many similarities, and it really started to spark some memories of my process.
(03:18):
And I got a little creative with it, obviously, but remembering everything that
I've been told and actually put them into place, Nice.
And so that's really what sparked the interest for me to even write the book.
And I mean, when I did start to write it, it came out really fast from my first
word until I had the book in my hand. It was 18 months.
(03:40):
So I had some great editor partners and I had a lot of fun with it.
And hopefully the book would help people go back and peek that that kind of
memory of where you are or were and what could be done about it.
I think what I most appreciate about the book is your authenticity in it.
(04:02):
And you kind of you spill your guts on, you know, maybe your deficits or your
faults as a executive or as a leader, you know, in the food industry.
You get pretty raw in there about some of the ways that you behaved or discovery
as your mentor River, known as River in the book, kind of helped walk you through
and notice your own behavior.
(04:24):
How instrumental was having that mentor and how long of a process was that from
the time you met, you know, River to where you were like, okay, I'm ready? Yeah.
So there were many rivers. I just combined them into one.
Otherwise, I'd have been introducing a lot of people.
But when I started to really kind of think about all the people that had helped
(04:46):
up to that point, even still today, there's, you know, we all have mentors every
day that come into our life.
We just maybe aren't ready to listen to them.
So the process during that period of time took me a couple of years to get up
in the morning as this kind of new version of myself that I had been wanting to bring online.
(05:07):
But I think the biggest issue with a lot of us, at least in my opinion,
is we have these habitual ways of being.
And we are really nothing more than our habits. That's what people come to view us as.
That's what we view and trust others as is their habitual way of being.
And so shifting your habitual way of being can be really hard,
(05:29):
not only with your own getting up in
the morning habit, but everybody else expecting you to be a certain way.
And suddenly those expectations don't work anymore. more.
So there is some distrust or mistrust when we start to recreate ourselves.
And that took several years to start to really get people to trust where I was
(05:53):
going and what I was doing, as well as to trust myself.
So clearly there is some mistrust of myself going through this because I was
well aware of what my habit would have had me doing.
And to your point, You know, creating those pauses and really changing that
habit or transforming that habit into something that lined up with who I was
(06:15):
becoming. That took a while.
And, you know, in The Power of Habit, they talk about how many weeks it takes to break a habit.
In my opinion, it takes a lot longer to break a habit like that or to form a new one.
Understanding that self-awareness, I believe, is crucial for parents to pause
and reflect on their emotions, their reactions before responding to their kids.
(06:36):
Let's introduce the RARE acronym for the listener.
Yeah, so the RARE exercise for me, I mean, it meant something because it was
not something I was doing.
It was a pretty rare thing for me to stop, pause, and think like,
okay, what just happened?
And even more importantly, what's going on in my body here?
And how can I start to shift this kind of thing? So RARE is a reflection,
(07:00):
awareness, response exercise. eyes, then it really is, to your point, is taking that pause.
Doing some reflection on what just happened, being aware of what's going on,
what is the response of the body and the mind and those habitual ways of being,
and then pausing, doing that breath exercise, allowing the diaphragm to really
(07:24):
do the work of the body or that it needs to do to calm the brain down.
And, you know, you do that heart and belly with the hands, which is awesome.
It gives yourself that much more presence of mind or, you know,
you're intentionally connecting the body and the mind and getting them to be on the same page.
(07:44):
I say to parents, put your hand on your heart and your hand on your stomach
and then breathe. Take that breath in.
And breathing in means belly out.
And you're going to hear a little bit more about that as the yoga master.
It's one thing to pause. It's another to actually physically pause,
calm that central nervous system, turn off that amygdala that's saying,
(08:05):
warning, warning, warning, incoming danger.
You know, you need to react or you need to shout or you need to stop this.
You need to be in control.
Taking six seconds, just six seconds to pause is a game changer.
Absolutely free to take a breath, a couple breaths, right? Absolutely free.
And yet people will kind of dig their heels in and not do it.
(08:26):
It's almost like too simple or too easy.
And then I always say for an extra charge, put your hand on your heart,
your hand on your stomach, take that breath.
I can't help but taking that breath. But the breath in means stomach out.
Why is that so important?
Yeah, because if we're drawing our stomach in as we inhale, we're actually preventing
(08:47):
the diaphragm from doing the work. We're kind of locking ourselves in.
And I think it's important to understand that this diaphragm,
which is kind of like a giant umbrella, is the thing that's drawing down,
creating pressure or negative pressure, which brings the breath into the lungs.
If we're holding the diaphragm up here and drawing our belly in,
(09:09):
then we're using our upper shoulders and upper chest and even our neck muscles,
which means we're actually creating more pressure, more hypertension. tension.
We're actually diving more into the amygdala and reinforcing its conditioning
to be in the fight-flight-freeze rather than letting it go.
So what we call it is surrendering to the breath and allowing it to come in.
(09:33):
If we force it, and you could probably even sit there and think about it like,
I want to force my breath down into my lower ribs and belly.
Then you're doing the exact opposite. You're kind of locking it up.
So there is the surrender of letting it come
into the body and then slowly letting it
go and you know having your
hand on your heart or your upper chest and your belly awesome
(09:55):
you can also just notice what the the temperature and even the humidity of the
breath coming into your nose and into your lungs and then comparing it as you
exhale which is interesting or you know which nostril is more present because
you switch off every 90 minutes to two hours.
It's part of our, yeah, it's part of our self-regulating temperature.
(10:19):
When we're trying to cool ourselves down or heat ourselves up,
often our nostrils will start to switch.
So there's a, there's a, there's a lot that can happen with the breath.
The left nostril really works with the right side of the brain and the right
nostril works with the left side of the brain.
(10:40):
Interesting. So you learned that through eventually your journey took led you towards yoga.
And the way that you even talk about yoga or describe yoga in the book is much
different than what I had learned.
Curious about that. And that's again, why I'm going back and reading the book
again, because it's a different, I don't know, it's just maybe a different type
(11:04):
of yoga. I'm sure there's all kinds of types.
Tell us a little bit about the model. There's a lot of, there's just many, many families of yoga.
And you can do the really hardcore, really active aerobic style yoga.
You can do more of the long stretching kind of yoga.
The yoga that we teach is more of a therapeutic version of therapeutic style.
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And we call it soma yoga because the initial piece of it is somatics.
And so it's really releasing that external tension that's kind of holding you in place internally.
So we go through an infinity symbol, if you think about it. We've got this figure
eight laying on its side.
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And the way we look at it is way off to one side is your mobility.
Way off to the other side is your strength. And through the middle is stability.
And often we find that
people are trying to be really really mobile and they
start to lose strength because they don't have stability in
the middle or they're being really really strong and they
(12:08):
start to lose mobility again they're not stabilizing they're just strong which
doesn't necessarily mean they're stable right it just means that they're physically
strong and if the muscles aren't actually long and and mobile then we actually
start to lose that strength.
It's kind of a stubbornness of it all. So what we look at is what kind of a
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pattern are you looking at?
And I'll give you a really brief overview.
So we'll look at things in three ways.
Red light, which could be, you know, if you ever have your cell phone and it's
down here on your lap and you're curling your shoulders forward,
you're kind of drawing your navel in, hunching your back.
If we look at our teenagers these days, that's kind of their posture.
(12:53):
Well, Well, that brings us to certain chemicals.
It's kind of a depressive state. And our brain creates chemicals to keep us
healthy in that state because that's where we choose to be. Creates a whole other pattern.
Or that anxious state, right? The military neck, your chest is open,
your shoulders are back. It's like, come and get me. I can do anything you want.
(13:15):
That's more of a green light, anxious state.
And our brain creates chemicals for that, too. So we'll look at those two primary
ones. And then in between is, you know, if we hurt ourselves,
like say we stub our toe, we pull our foot back and twist away.
So we get this kind of a twisting cringe pattern in the middle where most of
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our kind of trauma resides in that twisting piece of our right through your abdomen.
So we look at all those things, figure out what do we need today so we can start
to create some mobility through somatics.
Then we'll stabilize and then we get up and do some more asana the strengthening
(13:56):
piece that most people are familiar with i'd imagine it could be pretty vulnerable
it is as they're going through it,
Yes. So depending on if you're one-on-one, which is in a really safe environment
that can bring up some more vulnerability and people choose to process however
(14:16):
they process their pain and vulnerability.
If you're in classes, which we also do, obviously, the way that we talk about
things is to hopefully get people to really become more self-aware of what parts
of the body are doing at that specific time.
And it's an invitation to really
become more aware of the self it's interesting
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if you're laying on your back on the floor for example and we say that do a
little arch some people especially the people that are used to curling the shoulders
forward will curl the shoulders forward and push the back into the floor because
they can't generally speaking draw the shoulder the blades back,
they have lost that neuromuscular connection.
(15:01):
So we help people define those things, which creates more freedom and movement,
more mobility, but it also creates more strength.
Sometimes I think we, when we're tense, we're stressed, under pressure, we're frustrated,
all the things, both at work and then at home, I think we often think,
you know, we can work things out or work things through just with talking and
(15:24):
processing and all of that.
But so much of this is stored in our body, which of course I love.
I was mentioning to you earlier, Dr.
Bessel van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps Its Core is one of my,
I call it one of my Bibles for use in my work.
But it is so true that so much of what is happening, our emotions,
and they're stored in the body.
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And a lot can be resolved with the self-awareness of that and really learning how to calm.
It's not just about being calm. I like the term calm, maybe serene or present
or something. It's kind of a blend of all that.
And for me, I describe it in the book. River asked me when the first time I
(16:08):
felt this way, you know, it's just trying to survive.
And it really brought back like, oh, my God, whenever I get to this point,
my body responds a certain way.
My mind does as well. But I can't really let those two go.
Right. and so when I finally start to become aware of what is my body doing
(16:29):
to prepare for the stress and how is it kind of locking my mind and my whole
response into this particular way of being.
And so I had to and I think everybody really needs to pay attention to the body
and part of the reflection awareness response exercise is that how is your body
responding to your point is to what's going on with the breath.
(16:51):
Can we settle ourself down?
Can we? And we can, right? We just need to have that patience.
And I think another really valid point that you brought up is there's so much resistance to it.
And part of that, I believe, is like the ego saying, but if,
you know, I've gotten you this
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far by doing this with the, by not allowing you to engage in that way.
And now you're saying that's not good enough. Well, I'm going to tell you that's all you get.
So there's this like internal fight going on.
And we have to really, we have to be, I hate to say bigger than that,
(17:33):
but we really do have to acknowledge that this is what's going on in our body
and our mind and give ourself the time, the six seconds, right?
The patience to start to recreate or to create a new habit.
I like that point of, you know, your body kind of saying, hey,
I've gotten you this far. It's worked all these years.
But it does take intention and bravery, I think.
(17:56):
Yeah. The courage to be vulnerable with yourself, which you wouldn't think would
be so hard, but to really acknowledge the emotions.
How does a parent even begin to kind of change those old patterns of behavior
and that mindset of just holding it together?
What are some things that we can give the listener today to start taking action on?
(18:21):
So the first thing I think is really, really important is to understand that,
or at least acknowledge that this is present.
If we can't do that, then there's nowhere else we can go.
So we're starting at the beginning and then we can start to find a different practice.
And for me, and I think for everybody, One of the easiest things they can do
is really sit up in the chair, you know, or if they can't sit up to at least
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be present of how they're sitting.
And then recognize what's going on, like what is happening.
Reflect on what's going on in the environment around you and how is it impacting your body right now.
So that's the reflection and the awareness.
And then how are we responding? Are we responding really quick? Are we shutting down?
(19:08):
All those things. But so really just a quick, if we can sit up or sit back and
even close your eyes and really tune into the breath, notice whether the breath
is coming into the shoulders and chest.
Notice to your point, if the breath is coming in all the way down into our belly,
notice even if the ribs are getting a little wider down at the bottom as you're
(19:32):
inhaling and allow yourself to be with that for a moment.
So it's like you're settling down, so to speak.
To your exercise of bringing your hand up to your chest and your other hand
down into your belly and really practicing that breath,
which I love this too, because you can really then feel if the hand on your
(19:52):
chest is feeling the breath come in,
then we need to just maybe relax a little bit more so that we can start to feel
it in the lower, the belly hand.
There's another part of this exercise you can do if you'd like,
which is to start to count, which will take your mind off of your thoughts,
count the inhale and count the exhale.
And when we can start to make the exhale just a little bit longer than the inhale,
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we can slow our heartbeat just a little bit more, which calms us back down and not forcing it.
But literally we can do, you know, 10 cycles of breath.
If you were doing a four count inhale, six count exhale, you could do 10 of
those and And it'd only be a couple of minutes and boom, you've got a fresh start.
You can literally feel when you do that, even when you just do six seconds.
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But if you do, you know, a couple of minutes of intentional breathing,
I mean, some people will even get almost dizzy at first when it's not common
for them to do that. And they're like, wait, I don't like that feeling.
That's a good indicator that you're pretty stressed out.
Exactly. So in heart rate variability, it's the stress response.
Response it's how fast can or how comfortable i should say can we go from being
(21:05):
high stress to low stress and how easy is it for our body to do that so when
we are going from that high stress,
into a low stress which you know using our breath to do it we're changing the
pressure in our body we're changing a lot of things and if to our previous point
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of you know your body doesn't want that to happen.
It's trying to keep you up in that habit of, you know, go, go, go, or wherever you are.
And now we're slowing back down and changing all that pressure in our body.
It can feel like you're faint and we need to start to, it's a good indication
that this needs to be done even more.
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Because the response could be healthier and your ability to heat up and cool down, so to speak.
Interestingly, just a quick aside, there's been studies on, let's say you're
talking to your kid or you're a leader and you're talking to somebody that's
employed with you and it's kind of stressful.
Stressful, the leader being the person that can kind of sit back and allow that
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breath in, there's a mirror effect with the person who you're talking to who
will also then start to do the same thing.
And it calms everything down.
So it's not just us that we're affecting.
We're affecting everything around us by either being up and almost in a panic
mode, like we got to get this done.
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Or slowing down, having that calm presence, being aware of what's going on and
being able to make the best response.
Let's say you've got a disgruntled employee or somebody just not pulling their
weight and they're maybe on their third written warning and you know you've got to deal with this.
It's like the first thing that hits you, you know, 7.30 in the morning.
(22:53):
Yeah. And then you're going to go home that night and your partner,
your spouse has already sent you a text message saying one of your kids got
in trouble at school and did something completely like you kind of knew the
kid has been misbehaving for a while and up in the ante and,
you know, doing having some behaviors.
But now, yeah, testing. Exactly. And now this this thing happens.
(23:17):
So now you've got there's a lot going on.
Let's walk people through that rare acronym, the reflection,
awareness, response, and exercise. What would you suggest?
So the things that I practice or learn to do, A, to be aware enough that you're
not getting hooked by the employee who's going to blame, you know,
maybe you, maybe other things.
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Often it's never about, you know, I can't be wrong, right?
It's everything else around me. So not being hooked by that,
allowing the person to blow off whatever steam they need to without being hooked.
Taking that breath, almost making it visible so that we can both calm down.
And then we can start to move forward with some presence of mind,
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like, okay, what are we going to do now?
Are you done? You know, can we move forward and not being hooked so much that
you have to either defend yourself or defend the action or defend the company?
Once we get into defensive, you know, we're in it to win it. Right. Yeah.
And so letting it go, first off, then on the way home, one of the things that
(24:23):
I would always, if I couldn't take a walk on the way home, I would sit in the
chair or in the car and practice one of those moments before I ever walked into the house.
Cause I already knew the story. If my, my, my partner's already texting me or
giving me a call and messaging, I know what happened.
I know what my response is now. Like what I, Oh, you know, I can let all that go.
(24:46):
Yeah. Maybe not completely, but enough to be able to walk in the door and not
have my reaction set off a chain reaction back again with my,
my teenager or whoever else is out there.
So those are two moments, which I practice a lot.
I mean, just coming home. Sometimes
(25:07):
you have enough on the highway doing whatever driving home can set you
up right you don't want to bring that into the house
so take that you know six seconds
to sit in the chair of your in your car do a rare moment put your hands on your
heart and your and your you know upper chest and set your intention for walking
(25:29):
in cleanly i should you know maybe there's a better word than cleanly but more
present more aware of what's going on without being,
you know, without having the reaction to past events.
Yeah, I was just going to say that without the reaction, the resistance or the defense.
And you give several examples of using rare, that reflection,
(25:50):
the awareness, the response, and then the exercise.
And a lot of times it's thinking about like kind of playing out the conversation
or the interaction before you actually have the conversation or the interaction.
And the examples in the book are just wonderful. They're very relatable.
And I love that you You also say, you know, like, first of all,
I call it don't take the bait.
(26:10):
So whoever is, you know, in trouble, whoever's on the hot seat,
whoever's had the issue is geared up for defense.
They are vulnerable and they need to protect themselves. You don't need to own any of that emotion.
That's just, that's a fact for them. It doesn't have to be for you.
So you can be noticing, you can be observing, you can be aware,
(26:33):
you know, and be present for them, but you don't have to jump in with defense and resistance.
And that's, again, all I teach in No Problem Parenting, helping parents become the confident leaders.
I say our kids crave us to be, we are the models. They are sponges to us.
We can set the tone in the stage.
We can be more calm, present, thoughtful.
Thoughtful and so dan i just highly
(26:53):
recommend this book to parents as a
way to even go deeper with the remembering the
pause and and taking that six seconds to learn more about that self mastery
that self-awareness there is so much that can be prevented with our relationship
with our kids when we're more self-aware so i just really am grateful to have
(27:14):
been connected with you i I thank your brother, Sean,
who I know who said, Hey, Jackie, you need to meet my brother,
Dan. And I'm truly grateful for that.
This has been wonderful. And I appreciate your work. And the book is called
lost and found a journey of self mastery.
We're going to have a link in the show notes for people to go grab a copy.
Thank you very much. You've been a wonderful host. And it was a pleasure being on the show.
(27:37):
And it's great to see people who are on the same path that you are.
And so I recognize that in you and it's been a real pleasure.
All right, that's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast.
Hey, thanks guys for tuning in. If you found value in today's episode,
click the subscribe button and share it with other parents who might need a little boost.
(27:57):
Stay connected on our socials by following at No Problem Parents for more parenting
tips and get your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without
losing and you're cool, go to NoProblemParents.com.
Until next time, remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks.
So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this.
(28:19):
Music.
All right, welcome back to the No Problem Parenting podcast,
where we choose to deal with and overcome the emotional and behavioral challenges within our homes.
And you know, guys, No Problem Parenting is all about helping you become the
confident leader your kids crave you to be.
And in order to do that, oftentimes we need to do a little bit of self-reflection.
And so I have a really remarkable guest joining us today, Daniel Blackburn,
(00:23):
an author, a speaker, an executive coach, and a yoga therapist.
Therapist Daniel's journey is nothing short of inspiring
and impressive 28 year tenure as
an award-winning leader and executive in the natural foods industry
he decided to shift careers take on
a new adventure start his own company and his wealth of experience spans various
(00:44):
facets of life making him an invaluable resource for our conversation today
I talk a lot in No Problem Parenting about remembering the pause and how that
is often a first step before responding or more often reacting to our kids'
behavior, the curveballs and things that our kids send us.
And so today we're going to talk about how to remember the pause,
(01:05):
go a little bit deeper into what that means, and start with self-awareness.
And we're going to learn about what self-awareness means to Daniel and its significance.
Hey there, parents. Thanks for listening to the No Problem Parenting Podcast.
Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be?
Are you losing your crap on your kids, yelling, giving in, and exhausted at the end of every day?
(01:27):
You can start building confidence in your parenting immediately,
whether your child is a toddler or all grown up and still living in your house.
Don't make this parenting gig harder than it needs to be. Register to become a No Problem Parent.
It comes with an app so you can listen to the tips and tools just like you're
listening to this podcast.
Click the link in the show notes or go to noproblemparents.com.
(01:48):
Become a No Problem Parent today.
Daniel, thanks so much for taking the time to be with me today. Welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. I read your book, Lost and Found. It's a journey of self-mastery.
I read through it and now I'm halfway through it again.
It kind of felt like you were spying on me in the last six or seven years of
(02:12):
my 20-year career that I left 10 years ago.
Do the math on that, people. Because I had many of the same,
I don't know, situations or challenges maybe that you had being,
you know, one of the leaders in the organization towards the end,
kind of always feeling like I had to be busy. I had to constantly be working.
I was just like, hey, this is me. He's writing about me. But I really love,
(02:36):
love, love the book and the way that you kind of walk people through your revelation
into self-discovery and self-awareness.
And so let's just start with what inspired you to write the book.
And I also want to talk about the RARE acronym. And then we're going to really
focus on that, remembering the pause and that importance.
(02:57):
Yeah. So what inspired me to write it, when I started my business as an executive
coach, many, many, many of the people that I was getting were going through
the same thing that you just described was going on with you, that I had gone through.
There was so many similarities, and it really started to spark some memories of my process.
(03:18):
And I got a little creative with it, obviously, but remembering everything that
I've been told and actually put them into place, Nice.
And so that's really what sparked the interest for me to even write the book.
And I mean, when I did start to write it, it came out really fast from my first
word until I had the book in my hand. It was 18 months.
(03:40):
So I had some great editor partners and I had a lot of fun with it.
And hopefully the book would help people go back and peek that that kind of
memory of where you are or were and what could be done about it.
I think what I most appreciate about the book is your authenticity in it.
(04:02):
And you kind of you spill your guts on, you know, maybe your deficits or your
faults as a executive or as a leader, you know, in the food industry.
You get pretty raw in there about some of the ways that you behaved or discovery
as your mentor River, known as River in the book, kind of helped walk you through
and notice your own behavior.
(04:24):
How instrumental was having that mentor and how long of a process was that from
the time you met, you know, River to where you were like, okay, I'm ready? Yeah.
So there were many rivers. I just combined them into one.
Otherwise, I'd have been introducing a lot of people.
But when I started to really kind of think about all the people that had helped
(04:46):
up to that point, even still today, there's, you know, we all have mentors every
day that come into our life.
We just maybe aren't ready to listen to them.
So the process during that period of time took me a couple of years to get up
in the morning as this kind of new version of myself that I had been wanting to bring online.
(05:07):
But I think the biggest issue with a lot of us, at least in my opinion,
is we have these habitual ways of being.
And we are really nothing more than our habits. That's what people come to view us as.
That's what we view and trust others as is their habitual way of being.
And so shifting your habitual way of being can be really hard,
(05:29):
not only with your own getting up in
the morning habit, but everybody else expecting you to be a certain way.
And suddenly those expectations don't work anymore. more.
So there is some distrust or mistrust when we start to recreate ourselves.
And that took several years to start to really get people to trust where I was
(05:53):
going and what I was doing, as well as to trust myself.
So clearly there is some mistrust of myself going through this because I was
well aware of what my habit would have had me doing.
And to your point, You know, creating those pauses and really changing that
habit or transforming that habit into something that lined up with who I was
(06:15):
becoming. That took a while.
And, you know, in The Power of Habit, they talk about how many weeks it takes to break a habit.
In my opinion, it takes a lot longer to break a habit like that or to form a new one.
Understanding that self-awareness, I believe, is crucial for parents to pause
and reflect on their emotions, their reactions before responding to their kids.
(06:36):
Let's introduce the RARE acronym for the listener.
Yeah, so the RARE exercise for me, I mean, it meant something because it was
not something I was doing.
It was a pretty rare thing for me to stop, pause, and think like,
okay, what just happened?
And even more importantly, what's going on in my body here?
And how can I start to shift this kind of thing? So RARE is a reflection,
(07:00):
awareness, response exercise. eyes, then it really is, to your point, is taking that pause.
Doing some reflection on what just happened, being aware of what's going on,
what is the response of the body and the mind and those habitual ways of being,
and then pausing, doing that breath exercise, allowing the diaphragm to really
(07:24):
do the work of the body or that it needs to do to calm the brain down.
And, you know, you do that heart and belly with the hands, which is awesome.
It gives yourself that much more presence of mind or, you know,
you're intentionally connecting the body and the mind and getting them to be on the same page.
(07:44):
I say to parents, put your hand on your heart and your hand on your stomach
and then breathe. Take that breath in.
And breathing in means belly out.
And you're going to hear a little bit more about that as the yoga master.
It's one thing to pause. It's another to actually physically pause,
calm that central nervous system, turn off that amygdala that's saying,
(08:05):
warning, warning, warning, incoming danger.
You know, you need to react or you need to shout or you need to stop this.
You need to be in control.
Taking six seconds, just six seconds to pause is a game changer.
Absolutely free to take a breath, a couple breaths, right? Absolutely free.
And yet people will kind of dig their heels in and not do it.
(08:26):
It's almost like too simple or too easy.
And then I always say for an extra charge, put your hand on your heart,
your hand on your stomach, take that breath.
I can't help but taking that breath. But the breath in means stomach out.
Why is that so important?
Yeah, because if we're drawing our stomach in as we inhale, we're actually preventing
(08:47):
the diaphragm from doing the work. We're kind of locking ourselves in.
And I think it's important to understand that this diaphragm,
which is kind of like a giant umbrella, is the thing that's drawing down,
creating pressure or negative pressure, which brings the breath into the lungs.
If we're holding the diaphragm up here and drawing our belly in,
(09:09):
then we're using our upper shoulders and upper chest and even our neck muscles,
which means we're actually creating more pressure, more hypertension. tension.
We're actually diving more into the amygdala and reinforcing its conditioning
to be in the fight-flight-freeze rather than letting it go.
So what we call it is surrendering to the breath and allowing it to come in.
(09:33):
If we force it, and you could probably even sit there and think about it like,
I want to force my breath down into my lower ribs and belly.
Then you're doing the exact opposite. You're kind of locking it up.
So there is the surrender of letting it come
into the body and then slowly letting it
go and you know having your
hand on your heart or your upper chest and your belly awesome
(09:55):
you can also just notice what the the temperature and even the humidity of the
breath coming into your nose and into your lungs and then comparing it as you
exhale which is interesting or you know which nostril is more present because
you switch off every 90 minutes to two hours.
It's part of our, yeah, it's part of our self-regulating temperature.
(10:19):
When we're trying to cool ourselves down or heat ourselves up,
often our nostrils will start to switch.
So there's a, there's a, there's a lot that can happen with the breath.
The left nostril really works with the right side of the brain and the right
nostril works with the left side of the brain.
(10:40):
Interesting. So you learned that through eventually your journey took led you towards yoga.
And the way that you even talk about yoga or describe yoga in the book is much
different than what I had learned.
Curious about that. And that's again, why I'm going back and reading the book
again, because it's a different, I don't know, it's just maybe a different type
(11:04):
of yoga. I'm sure there's all kinds of types.
Tell us a little bit about the model. There's a lot of, there's just many, many families of yoga.
And you can do the really hardcore, really active aerobic style yoga.
You can do more of the long stretching kind of yoga.
The yoga that we teach is more of a therapeutic version of therapeutic style.
(11:27):
And we call it soma yoga because the initial piece of it is somatics.
And so it's really releasing that external tension that's kind of holding you in place internally.
So we go through an infinity symbol, if you think about it. We've got this figure
eight laying on its side.
(11:48):
And the way we look at it is way off to one side is your mobility.
Way off to the other side is your strength. And through the middle is stability.
And often we find that
people are trying to be really really mobile and they
start to lose strength because they don't have stability in
the middle or they're being really really strong and they
(12:08):
start to lose mobility again they're not stabilizing they're just strong which
doesn't necessarily mean they're stable right it just means that they're physically
strong and if the muscles aren't actually long and and mobile then we actually
start to lose that strength.
It's kind of a stubbornness of it all. So what we look at is what kind of a
(12:31):
pattern are you looking at?
And I'll give you a really brief overview.
So we'll look at things in three ways.
Red light, which could be, you know, if you ever have your cell phone and it's
down here on your lap and you're curling your shoulders forward,
you're kind of drawing your navel in, hunching your back.
If we look at our teenagers these days, that's kind of their posture.
(12:53):
Well, Well, that brings us to certain chemicals.
It's kind of a depressive state. And our brain creates chemicals to keep us
healthy in that state because that's where we choose to be. Creates a whole other pattern.
Or that anxious state, right? The military neck, your chest is open,
your shoulders are back. It's like, come and get me. I can do anything you want.
(13:15):
That's more of a green light, anxious state.
And our brain creates chemicals for that, too. So we'll look at those two primary
ones. And then in between is, you know, if we hurt ourselves,
like say we stub our toe, we pull our foot back and twist away.
So we get this kind of a twisting cringe pattern in the middle where most of
(13:36):
our kind of trauma resides in that twisting piece of our right through your abdomen.
So we look at all those things, figure out what do we need today so we can start
to create some mobility through somatics.
Then we'll stabilize and then we get up and do some more asana the strengthening
(13:56):
piece that most people are familiar with i'd imagine it could be pretty vulnerable
it is as they're going through it,
Yes. So depending on if you're one-on-one, which is in a really safe environment
that can bring up some more vulnerability and people choose to process however
(14:16):
they process their pain and vulnerability.
If you're in classes, which we also do, obviously, the way that we talk about
things is to hopefully get people to really become more self-aware of what parts
of the body are doing at that specific time.
And it's an invitation to really
become more aware of the self it's interesting
(14:38):
if you're laying on your back on the floor for example and we say that do a
little arch some people especially the people that are used to curling the shoulders
forward will curl the shoulders forward and push the back into the floor because
they can't generally speaking draw the shoulder the blades back,
they have lost that neuromuscular connection.
(15:01):
So we help people define those things, which creates more freedom and movement,
more mobility, but it also creates more strength.
Sometimes I think we, when we're tense, we're stressed, under pressure, we're frustrated,
all the things, both at work and then at home, I think we often think,
you know, we can work things out or work things through just with talking and
(15:24):
processing and all of that.
But so much of this is stored in our body, which of course I love.
I was mentioning to you earlier, Dr.
Bessel van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps Its Core is one of my,
I call it one of my Bibles for use in my work.
But it is so true that so much of what is happening, our emotions,
and they're stored in the body.
(15:45):
And a lot can be resolved with the self-awareness of that and really learning how to calm.
It's not just about being calm. I like the term calm, maybe serene or present
or something. It's kind of a blend of all that.
And for me, I describe it in the book. River asked me when the first time I
(16:08):
felt this way, you know, it's just trying to survive.
And it really brought back like, oh, my God, whenever I get to this point,
my body responds a certain way.
My mind does as well. But I can't really let those two go.
Right. and so when I finally start to become aware of what is my body doing
(16:29):
to prepare for the stress and how is it kind of locking my mind and my whole
response into this particular way of being.
And so I had to and I think everybody really needs to pay attention to the body
and part of the reflection awareness response exercise is that how is your body
responding to your point is to what's going on with the breath.
(16:51):
Can we settle ourself down?
Can we? And we can, right? We just need to have that patience.
And I think another really valid point that you brought up is there's so much resistance to it.
And part of that, I believe, is like the ego saying, but if,
you know, I've gotten you this
(17:12):
far by doing this with the, by not allowing you to engage in that way.
And now you're saying that's not good enough. Well, I'm going to tell you that's all you get.
So there's this like internal fight going on.
And we have to really, we have to be, I hate to say bigger than that,
(17:33):
but we really do have to acknowledge that this is what's going on in our body
and our mind and give ourself the time, the six seconds, right?
The patience to start to recreate or to create a new habit.
I like that point of, you know, your body kind of saying, hey,
I've gotten you this far. It's worked all these years.
But it does take intention and bravery, I think.
(17:56):
Yeah. The courage to be vulnerable with yourself, which you wouldn't think would
be so hard, but to really acknowledge the emotions.
How does a parent even begin to kind of change those old patterns of behavior
and that mindset of just holding it together?
What are some things that we can give the listener today to start taking action on?
(18:21):
So the first thing I think is really, really important is to understand that,
or at least acknowledge that this is present.
If we can't do that, then there's nowhere else we can go.
So we're starting at the beginning and then we can start to find a different practice.
And for me, and I think for everybody, One of the easiest things they can do
is really sit up in the chair, you know, or if they can't sit up to at least
(18:46):
be present of how they're sitting.
And then recognize what's going on, like what is happening.
Reflect on what's going on in the environment around you and how is it impacting your body right now.
So that's the reflection and the awareness.
And then how are we responding? Are we responding really quick? Are we shutting down?
(19:08):
All those things. But so really just a quick, if we can sit up or sit back and
even close your eyes and really tune into the breath, notice whether the breath
is coming into the shoulders and chest.
Notice to your point, if the breath is coming in all the way down into our belly,
notice even if the ribs are getting a little wider down at the bottom as you're
(19:32):
inhaling and allow yourself to be with that for a moment.
So it's like you're settling down, so to speak.
To your exercise of bringing your hand up to your chest and your other hand
down into your belly and really practicing that breath,
which I love this too, because you can really then feel if the hand on your
(19:52):
chest is feeling the breath come in,
then we need to just maybe relax a little bit more so that we can start to feel
it in the lower, the belly hand.
There's another part of this exercise you can do if you'd like,
which is to start to count, which will take your mind off of your thoughts,
count the inhale and count the exhale.
And when we can start to make the exhale just a little bit longer than the inhale,
(20:16):
we can slow our heartbeat just a little bit more, which calms us back down and not forcing it.
But literally we can do, you know, 10 cycles of breath.
If you were doing a four count inhale, six count exhale, you could do 10 of
those and And it'd only be a couple of minutes and boom, you've got a fresh start.
You can literally feel when you do that, even when you just do six seconds.
(20:40):
But if you do, you know, a couple of minutes of intentional breathing,
I mean, some people will even get almost dizzy at first when it's not common
for them to do that. And they're like, wait, I don't like that feeling.
That's a good indicator that you're pretty stressed out.
Exactly. So in heart rate variability, it's the stress response.
Response it's how fast can or how comfortable i should say can we go from being
(21:05):
high stress to low stress and how easy is it for our body to do that so when
we are going from that high stress,
into a low stress which you know using our breath to do it we're changing the
pressure in our body we're changing a lot of things and if to our previous point
(21:25):
of you know your body doesn't want that to happen.
It's trying to keep you up in that habit of, you know, go, go, go, or wherever you are.
And now we're slowing back down and changing all that pressure in our body.
It can feel like you're faint and we need to start to, it's a good indication
that this needs to be done even more.
(21:46):
Because the response could be healthier and your ability to heat up and cool down, so to speak.
Interestingly, just a quick aside, there's been studies on, let's say you're
talking to your kid or you're a leader and you're talking to somebody that's
employed with you and it's kind of stressful.
Stressful, the leader being the person that can kind of sit back and allow that
(22:10):
breath in, there's a mirror effect with the person who you're talking to who
will also then start to do the same thing.
And it calms everything down.
So it's not just us that we're affecting.
We're affecting everything around us by either being up and almost in a panic
mode, like we got to get this done.
(22:31):
Or slowing down, having that calm presence, being aware of what's going on and
being able to make the best response.
Let's say you've got a disgruntled employee or somebody just not pulling their
weight and they're maybe on their third written warning and you know you've got to deal with this.
It's like the first thing that hits you, you know, 7.30 in the morning.
(22:53):
Yeah. And then you're going to go home that night and your partner,
your spouse has already sent you a text message saying one of your kids got
in trouble at school and did something completely like you kind of knew the
kid has been misbehaving for a while and up in the ante and,
you know, doing having some behaviors.
But now, yeah, testing. Exactly. And now this this thing happens.
(23:17):
So now you've got there's a lot going on.
Let's walk people through that rare acronym, the reflection,
awareness, response, and exercise. What would you suggest?
So the things that I practice or learn to do, A, to be aware enough that you're
not getting hooked by the employee who's going to blame, you know,
maybe you, maybe other things.
(23:38):
Often it's never about, you know, I can't be wrong, right?
It's everything else around me. So not being hooked by that,
allowing the person to blow off whatever steam they need to without being hooked.
Taking that breath, almost making it visible so that we can both calm down.
And then we can start to move forward with some presence of mind,
(24:01):
like, okay, what are we going to do now?
Are you done? You know, can we move forward and not being hooked so much that
you have to either defend yourself or defend the action or defend the company?
Once we get into defensive, you know, we're in it to win it. Right. Yeah.
And so letting it go, first off, then on the way home, one of the things that
(24:23):
I would always, if I couldn't take a walk on the way home, I would sit in the
chair or in the car and practice one of those moments before I ever walked into the house.
Cause I already knew the story. If my, my, my partner's already texting me or
giving me a call and messaging, I know what happened.
I know what my response is now. Like what I, Oh, you know, I can let all that go.
(24:46):
Yeah. Maybe not completely, but enough to be able to walk in the door and not
have my reaction set off a chain reaction back again with my,
my teenager or whoever else is out there.
So those are two moments, which I practice a lot.
I mean, just coming home. Sometimes
(25:07):
you have enough on the highway doing whatever driving home can set you
up right you don't want to bring that into the house
so take that you know six seconds
to sit in the chair of your in your car do a rare moment put your hands on your
heart and your and your you know upper chest and set your intention for walking
(25:29):
in cleanly i should you know maybe there's a better word than cleanly but more
present more aware of what's going on without being,
you know, without having the reaction to past events.
Yeah, I was just going to say that without the reaction, the resistance or the defense.
And you give several examples of using rare, that reflection,
(25:50):
the awareness, the response, and then the exercise.
And a lot of times it's thinking about like kind of playing out the conversation
or the interaction before you actually have the conversation or the interaction.
And the examples in the book are just wonderful. They're very relatable.
And I love that you You also say, you know, like, first of all,
I call it don't take the bait.
(26:10):
So whoever is, you know, in trouble, whoever's on the hot seat,
whoever's had the issue is geared up for defense.
They are vulnerable and they need to protect themselves. You don't need to own any of that emotion.
That's just, that's a fact for them. It doesn't have to be for you.
So you can be noticing, you can be observing, you can be aware,
(26:33):
you know, and be present for them, but you don't have to jump in with defense and resistance.
And that's, again, all I teach in No Problem Parenting, helping parents become the confident leaders.
I say our kids crave us to be, we are the models. They are sponges to us.
We can set the tone in the stage.
We can be more calm, present, thoughtful.
Thoughtful and so dan i just highly
(26:53):
recommend this book to parents as a
way to even go deeper with the remembering the
pause and and taking that six seconds to learn more about that self mastery
that self-awareness there is so much that can be prevented with our relationship
with our kids when we're more self-aware so i just really am grateful to have
(27:14):
been connected with you i I thank your brother, Sean,
who I know who said, Hey, Jackie, you need to meet my brother,
Dan. And I'm truly grateful for that.
This has been wonderful. And I appreciate your work. And the book is called
lost and found a journey of self mastery.
We're going to have a link in the show notes for people to go grab a copy.
Thank you very much. You've been a wonderful host. And it was a pleasure being on the show.
(27:37):
And it's great to see people who are on the same path that you are.
And so I recognize that in you and it's been a real pleasure.
All right, that's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast.
Hey, thanks guys for tuning in. If you found value in today's episode,
click the subscribe button and share it with other parents who might need a little boost.
(27:57):
Stay connected on our socials by following at No Problem Parents for more parenting
tips and get your free download of the 60 ways to respond to your kids without
losing and you're cool, go to NoProblemParents.com.
Until next time, remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks.
So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this.
(28:19):
Music.
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