Your Vitality Coaching with Zoe

Burnout doesn't happen overnight—it's the culmination of pushing ourselves too hard for too long, masking problems until our bodies finally demand we stop. This wisdom comes from Zoe of YourVitalityCoaching.com, whose journey from high-powered policy work to holistic wellness coaching began with her own five-month battle with anxiety and depression.

From Yorkshire, England, Zoe shares how the universe delivered a perfect irony: she was assigned to a mental health project at NHS England just before experiencing her own breakdown. This forced pause became transformative, revealing not only workplace stress but deeper issues she'd been avoiding, including an unhappy marriage. "We mask things because it's less painful than unpicking and dealing with them," she explains, "but at some point, it catches up."

What makes Zoe's approach powerful is its accessibility. True wellness doesn't require complicated regimens or hours of practice. Three deep breaths can dramatically lower your heart rate after intense exercise. Visualizing roots growing from your feet into the earth for just two minutes can restore clarity amid chaos. These simple techniques trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, calming our bodies and minds while providing perspective.

Her holistic offerings combine physical fitness with energy work—a crucial element often overlooked in Western health approaches. "If our subtle energy body is well, our physical body doesn't get sick," she notes. Her website features everything from cardio workouts to yin yoga, along with breathwork, meditation, and fascinating sound therapy using instruments tuned to 432Hz, the healing frequency. These sound waves help realign cellular frequencies, addressing imbalance wherever it's needed most.

The beauty of Zoe's work lies in its personalization. Different bodies respond to different approaches, which is why she offers various modalities on a pay-what-you-can basis. Her free "7 Days to Calm Challenge" provides daily emails with simple practices anyone can implement immediately.

Ready to transform your relationship with stress and reclaim your vitality? Visit YourVitalityCoaching.com and discover how small, intentional practices can create profound shifts in your wellbeing—physically, mentally, and energetically.
Source: https://yourvitalitycoaching.com/Free 7 Days to Calmhttps://yourvitalitycoaching.com/free-7-days-to-calm
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Let's talk midlife Crisis. I'm Ashley and I'm Tracy.
We're your go to hosts for all things midlife, menopause
and moments of pure Mayhem. And today we have Zoe
with your vitality coaching dot com coming to us from Yorkshire, England.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome Zoe, Welcome, Hi, thank you for having me. I'm
really excited to chat with you. We're excited to have you.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
We kind of talked a little bit before and I
was saying I was kind of reading up on all
of the things that you do and that you're certified
in and the help that you provide people.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
And I was saying, you're a superstar, you do it all.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah, and we just really wanted to share your journey
with our guests on how you got to be where you.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Are right now. Sure, yeah, coose, sir, we stop. I
trained as a secondary school teacher when I finished university
and that was what at that point I'd always wanted
to do it. We'd always wanted to teach, and quickly
realized that it wasn't quite what I thought it was

(01:13):
going to be. Loved being in the classroom, loved being
with the kids, but I hated the bureaucracy that went
with it, so I moved over into local government and
then into policy work, particularly around building workforce development in
adult social care, and moved from local to national work
in that arena, ending up working for the Department of

(01:37):
Health writing a white paper and then after that NHS England,
so the sort of central part of the NHS in
England working on policy in mental health and choice in
mental health. And it was at that point I remember,
I remember when I landed on that project for choice
in mental health. I remember having a conversation with my
boss in which I told him that I didn't really

(01:59):
know much about mental health, and he suggested that I
find out quickly, and so I was getting to grips
with the project and we were getting into the work.
And it was during that time, sort of maybe eight
months later, when I knew quite a lot more about
mental health that I then went off work for five
months with anxiety and depression. So ironically I ended up

(02:23):
knowing as significant about more about mental health than I'd
ever really planned to. So that gave me a chance
to step back and reflect on life a little, because
my career had progressed rapidly and I am a very
driven and ambitious person, and so I sort of naturally

(02:45):
pursued that and embraced it, but completely neglected myself in
that process. And so it wasn't until I reached that
point where my body said, right enough, you're not doing
any more, just stop, you need to stop. And I
took that five months break to really rediscover who I was,

(03:06):
what I actually wanted, and it was a very liberating
experience that we don't do that enough, and actually we
should be doing that on a really frequent basis rather
than waiting until our body says stop, we should be
doing it pretty regularly, checking in with ourselves, making time
for ourselves. But society, pace of life, media, social media,

(03:34):
it's all directed towards progress having things now, fast paced life,
the disesses and strains and you know, like bringing up kids.
We don't get time to do that anymore. We're supposed
to do that around a full time job, and you know,
juggling all of those priorities is really hard in modern

(03:56):
life before you even think about the sort of financial
elements of it all. But if we just make a
little bit of time every day or a few times
a week just to step back, even just for half
an hour, ten minutes, just to take that time and
reflect and pause. It can have such profound effects on

(04:20):
our mental health and then on our physical health, and
on our success in life and how we cope with it.
And so I learned that the hard way, and it
took a lot longer after that for me to fully
embrace that, you know, I had to learn that lesson
in different ways.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Again, do you feel that it was your job that
was giving you the anxiety and depression or was it
kind of just life in general?

Speaker 2 (04:53):
It was a combination of things, because it's never just
one thing. It's always things build up, don't they. And
so there was a lot of stress in my job,
and there had been for a long time, But then
that had masked other issues in my life that I
hadn't technology And it was when I took that time
to step back that was then when I realized there

(05:13):
was a lot of other things going on that weren't
serving me and that I wasn't happy with. So I'd
been married for quite a number of years, thought that
that was fine, but actually when I stepped back and
looked at it, it wasn't fine. And there was other
things you know, I'd really just invested every spare minute
of time that I had into something, whether it was

(05:36):
my career, whether it was I've always been a part
time personal trainer and fitness instructed teaching classes, so I
was always doing qualifications for that, and I was teaching classes,
and you know, there was just always something else to
be doing, and I filled every minute of every day.
And in the end, my body just said, Yeah, that's

(05:57):
what we do. We masked things, don't we Yes, because
it's less painful to mask it than it is to
unpick it and deal with it. Right, And at some
point it catches up to you. Yes it does. Yeah, no, no,
and it grows. The longer we leave it, the more

(06:20):
it grows within us. And then it starts within us.
But then we start to inflict our pain on those
around us if we're not careful, because we have made
ourselves so miserable that we then offload that our energy
sort of inflicts the same pain on other people. So

(06:42):
it's so important for us to get to the bottom
of an and it's so simple to do it when
you actually stop and make the time. Some of the
practices that I use with my clients are just so basic,
no equipment needed, takes five to ten minutes done, and
the effects of that. I have clients who walk out

(07:03):
of my yoga class on a Monday morning saying that
they will face the week so much better having had
that one hour of yoga. I teach a yin class
on a Sunday evening and people say, oh my god,
that's going to set me up for the week. Now.
I just feel so calm after a busy weekend. And
so that's a slightly longer example that that tics an hour.

(07:25):
But within those classes, I also do a breath work section,
and you know, there's so many breath work activities that
we can do that literally can be eight or nine
rounds of breathing that's like less than five minutes, and
it shifts your whole mindset because it's triggered that parasympathetic
nervous system, which helps to regulate our nervous system, calm

(07:48):
us down and bring us back to ourselves, and then
gives us a clearer perspective in the mind. So there's
just so many different ways. But I'm really an interested
in energy and I didn't discover that part until a
lot later after I'd had the anxiety and depression. And

(08:10):
yet now when I look back, I realize I was
working with energy at that time. I just didn't understand
what I was doing. And I think we learn so
much about our physical bodies, but we don't learn a
lot in the West about our subtle energy body. But yet,
if our subtle energy body is well, then our physical

(08:31):
body doesn't get sick. And if we're looking after our
energy and keeping it flowing, then there are no blocks.
And again, something so simple but yet so profound, and
that can make such a big difference.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
I've noticed for me when when I've been most stressed,
generally due to work, but it could even be personal
life as well, and I pushed myself really hard, that's
the time where I end up getting sick almost time.
So that makes complete sense. And I've always done some
breathing exercises in through the nose, out through the mouth

(09:09):
to calm myself when I'm anxious for whatever reason or
whatever causes me to have that anxiety. Just those simple
breathing exercises too, it does provide some relief, instant relief.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
So yeah, yeah, it's amazing, isn't it. I teach a
spin class on Sunday morning, and I always start and
finish the class with three deep breaths in through the nerves,
out through the mouth. And I think some people when
they come to my spin class for the first time, think, oh,
what's she doing. I'm not into all that, and they
just sort of sit there and don't do the breaths,

(09:45):
and I think that's fine, it's optional, and then we
do it again at the end, and I say to
them after we've done it at the end, just notice
what that's done to your heart rate. And then the
ones that didn't do it, you can see them thinking, oh,
what should it have done? Should I have been doing that?
And the ones who did do it, you can see
them just like, yeah, yeah, because it just it regulates

(10:06):
your heart rates so quickly. Three deep breaths. That's all
it takes. And you've been working out for forty five
minutes heart rate up here, you know, sweating out of breath.
That triggers your quarters all you know, it puts you
into fight or flight because you're stressing the body with
that intense exercise. But those three deep breaths are bringing

(10:27):
your heart rate back down. And I think that for
me is a really powerful demonstration of just what three
breaths can do, because you can really feel your heart
rate coming back down a lot faster than if you didn't.
If you didn't if you just sit there and you're recovering,
it'll come down, of course it will, but it takes longer.
So yeah, it's amazing what the breath can do. Wow.

Speaker 3 (10:48):
The journey of reflecting and focusing on your mental and
emotional wellness, you decided to help others, obviously, what kind
of what sparred that for you?

Speaker 2 (11:05):
I'd been working at a national level and across the
UK managing some big policy projects for quite a number
of years, and I kind of felt removed from it.
So I was developing and implementing policy, were never seeing
the effects of what I've developed, And so after I

(11:26):
took the five months off, I retrained as a mental
capacity advocate and I went to work with people with
dementia and learning disabilities who had been assessed as lacking
capacity to make decisions about their lives, and then to
support them to make those decisions. I did that, and
then that sort of naturally led into them managing a

(11:46):
home care service, and then I became a full time
pet and eventually went abroad for a bit and taught
and taught in China. But I think, well, I believe
everything happens for a reason, and I believe that every
experience we have leads towards our purpose. We just don't

(12:10):
don't always see it that way at the time. And
so I think I came down to grassroots level because
I wanted to actually make a difference to people's lives,
instead of talking about making a difference, and instead of
implementing policies that may or may not work, but never
seeing whether they did or didn't, or or from what
I saw they did in some areas and didn't in others.

(12:31):
And so I chose to retrain so that I could
actually make a difference and organically in a way that
I could have never really sat and plan the time.
It's just all come together to where I am now.
So every experience that I've had has led to one
of the therapies or treatments that I offer. So within

(12:55):
your Vitalitycoaching dot Com, we offer different fitness classes and
I've deliberately targeted arranged so there's some cardio in there
to be tailored to any level. There's some strength and conditioning.
There's three different types of yoga. There's breath work, meditation,
and sound therapy as well. So the idea behind that

(13:17):
is that it's a holistic well being approach. So if
somebody would struggle with intervals, for example, interval training or
weight training, then they can skip that and do the yoga.
And there's three types of yoga, So if it's somebody
with a long term condition and they struggle to get

(13:39):
up and down off the floor, they've still got the
yin yoga option, which is all on the floor at
their own pace, and then obviously the breath work, the
meditation and the sound therapy as well. Whereas if somebody
is perhaps a little fitter and they want to improve
their cardiovascular fitness, then there's fitness classes for them. But

(13:59):
there's equal the mind body side of it too that
they may never have tried before. And I believe from
my own experience, we need it all. If we can
do it, if we can physically do it and our
body will allow it, we need it all because the
cardioside of it gets our energy flowing, It helps to
remove the blocks. The path of yoga does that too.

(14:23):
The conditioning work keeps our muscles strong, and the yoga
keeps our muscles and tendons and connective tissues flexible and supple.
And then the meditation and the breath work and the
sound therapy help with our mind, keeping our mind calm,
calm in our nervous system, and regulating our breath and

(14:43):
our heart rate and all of that. So collectively they
help to keep us well. And then there's other practices
that we can interweave amongst that. I really advocate essential
oils and using essential oils, so like.

Speaker 4 (15:02):
In aroma therapy, if you will, yeah, yeah, Can you
tell me a little bit more about the sound therapy?
Is that simply just playing happy music.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
So sound therapy is using different sound instruments and minor
all tune to four hundred and thirty two hertz, which
is known as the healing frequency. There's actually a lot
of different healing frequencies, but four three two is the
most appropriate for me to use with a big collection
of people because it will heal more. If you like,

(15:37):
if I had a client who had a specific need,
then I might choose to use a different frequency with
that client for that need. But the tune to four
three two and our bodies as human beings are about
sixty percent water, give or take, and sound frequency travels
faster through water than it does through air. And all

(15:58):
of our cells are aligned to a particular frequency, depending
on the type of the cell. So when our body
is at disease in any way, when it's not aligned,
when we've got energy blocks and it's not flowing, the
cells are not fully aligned to their correct frequency. So
the sound waves help to pull them back to their frequency.

(16:19):
And it works because the sounds are so relaxing. It's
using instruments like I've got a wind gone, I've got
crystal sound bowls, I've got two different tongue drums and
all different percussion and so those It puts you into
a relaxed state. The waves all sort of wash around you,
and depending on your particular body, your body's particular needs

(16:42):
that day depends where the healing then goes. Once you're
in that deeply relaxed state, which is the theater state
of relaxation, that's the state you know when you go
to bed at night. You get into bed and you
lay there and you think about going to sleep, and
then you sort of drifting into sleep, but you're still awake.
If somebody in your bedroom door, you'd know they were
there and you'd open your eyes. It's that kind of

(17:04):
state you're like deeply relaxed. You're nearly asleep, but you're
not quite and that's when the body can then heal itself,
and so the healing then goes body, mind or so
wherever it's needed most. And so sometimes people can experience
that sound bath as a really relaxing, rejuven it in experience.

(17:25):
Sometimes I've had I've had clients where they've come with
blocked sinuses and part way through the sound bath, the
sinuses have just released and unblocked. But it could be
an uncomfortable experience on occasion, because if it's healing emotions
or triggering something within you, then we all know that
sometimes when we're healing, it doesn't always feel good, and

(17:47):
so sometimes it can trigger a healing experience that doesn't
feel very nice. But every single time you have a
sound bath, you will feel it in a different way.
So if you have an uncomfortable experience on one occasion,
that is not to say that every time will be uncomfortable.
It's most likely a one off, and the next time

(18:10):
you have a really deeply relaxing experience. But I just
think of it as being something magical because you can't
predict how it's going to go, but everybody always gets
something amazing out of it. So I do those online,
but I also do them based to face in the community,
and I do them every floortnight and they're really popular. Wow,

(18:31):
that's amazing. It sounds yeah, it does, it does. Yeah,
I think we try that. Yes, definitely relaxing. Like just
you know, we were joking.

Speaker 3 (18:45):
I was talking to someone that was experienced a hypnotist.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
It was, you know, in public.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
It was a big group, and I was like, I
can never I don't know if it works, but it
doesn't for me. I can never just like relax enough
and like enough. Like that's such a hard.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
Thing for me.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Even getting a massage, I have to remind myself like, Okay,
loosen up.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
I just do you really struggle? Yeah? Yeah, And I
do hypnotherapy as well, and some people really do struggle
to switch off. But there's always something, there is a
method for all of us that will help to just
switch off our brain. And I think the sound therapy

(19:27):
a lot of people find with that it's easier because
they're not having to listen, you know, if you're doing
a guided meditation and you're listening. I find often if
I'm doing a guided meditation, then I'll often switch off
after a while, and then I come back to it
and I'm like, oh, oh, I forgot to listen, or
I just can't switch off. But with the sound, you're
not having to listen to anything. You just let the

(19:48):
sounds wash over you. And it works really well for
people with ADHD. It's been shown like scientifically too, because
the brain is so scattered with ADHD, there's nothing that
they have to think about, so they can just detach
and switch off. So yeah, it's been amazing for that. Wow.

(20:09):
Yeah that sounds great. Yeah, yeah, and it's fine. It
is like I've got I've got a lady who comes
quite often and every time she'll have a healing experience.
I do think with any of the alternative therapy is
if your mind is open to it, anything's possible. But
if there is any doubt in your mind, or if
you say to yourself, I'll give this a tribe, but

(20:31):
it probably won't work, then it absolutely won't work because
you've already told yourself it probably won't, right, it's an
element of that as well. Yeah, if there is a
big element of that. I do hypnotherapy. If I've had
clients who've wanted to stop smoking or wanted to stop vaping,

(20:51):
and I say to them, like, we can do so
much in the session, but the hard work is down
to you. And you can't go home and put cigarettes
on the table and expect not to want one, because
if they're right in front of you, is still going
to want one. But what we've done is put things
in place to help you cope. And if you make

(21:12):
sure when you go home there are no cigarettes, no lighters,
no no reminder, it'll make it so much easier. Right, Yeah,
it's mindset. It's huge.

Speaker 4 (21:21):
Yeah, I one hundred percent agree with that. One hundred
percent agree with that.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Just curts.

Speaker 4 (21:26):
How might we pause meaningfully in our busy lives? What's
one ritual that anyone can start today?

Speaker 2 (21:39):
I like a quick grounding technique. Sometimes if i feel
like I'm scattered and I can't focus, then I'll just
sit somewhere, put my feet flat on the floor, and
just if I can, I'll shut my eyes. It's better
if you can shut your eyes because you can zone
into your body much more so feet on the floor,
and then I'll just sort of take a few deep breads,

(21:59):
and as I'm breathing in, I'm imagining roots coming up
from the earth into my feet, pulling me down into
the earth and pulling me back down to myself, like
anchoring and grounding, and I'll take a few deep breaths
like that, and then once i can feel myself grounded,
then as I'm breathing in, I'll inhale light through the

(22:21):
roots up through my body out through the top of
my head. And it only takes a couple of minutes,
but it's amazing the difference that that makes. It just
makes you feel you're pulling yourself back to your center
and you feel anchored to earth. And then as you
get up to carry on with your day, suddenly you've
got some clarity back. You've got rid of all those

(22:42):
scattered thoughts. And because you're having to think about and
visualize as you're doing it, you can't be thinking about
the five hundred emails and what you need to buy
the tea that evening. You've got to actually be in
the moment. And then simple breathing exercises can be really
good and sometimes just journaling. You know, sometimes when you

(23:04):
feel really anxious or if you just feel scattered and
you can't collate your thoughts, I just take a piece
of paper and write everything in my head on that
piece of paper, and then I'll draw circles round it
to group it into particular themes, if there are any,
and then I look at them and look at what

(23:24):
I can change now and what I have no control over,
and then that helps me sort of again think, Okay,
I can change this, this and this and the rest
of it as I've got nothing to do with and
wasting my energy worrying about things that will never happen
or might never happen. And so that's quite a good one.
That's a great one.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
I like that note a note taker like writing lists
of things that I want to do short term, long term,
and I just I love scratching them off. But I
have a tubal habit of rewriting those lists. Yeah, so
it's like, no, I need to focus on this one,
but I like the grouping and circles. That's great.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
Yeah, yeah, and grounding for me. I often will go outside,
take my shoes up and walk in the grass. That's
something that helps me as well. So I really love
those suggestions.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
That's a nice one, isn't it. Feeling in contact with
the earth.

Speaker 4 (24:22):
Yeah, And it's funny how like you mentioned, something so
simple that only takes a few minutes can really bring
your anxiety level down. I think there's you know, a
multitude of benefits from you know, just taking five minutes
to do that.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's we just take our physical body for granted.
As long as we're not sick and we're not having
to go to see the doctor, we just take it
off for granted, don't we. We know we should dat healthy,
we know we should do some exercise, we know we
should do water, we know what we should be doing,
but the pace of life is fast and we don't

(25:00):
always pay attention to those things. But our body carries
on and it's early when we get sick that we
really stop and think, okay, what should we be doing differently?
And yet just something so quick keeping our nervous system
calm has such a massive impact on our physical health.
And it's just so simple. Yeah, And that's where some

(25:23):
of the other techniques come in so well, because they
get you into that meditative state without the sort of
striving for it, and sometimes and your brain is already
full and your body is already frazzled, striving for a
meditative state is an extra thing to do, and really
we don't want an extra thing to do. We just

(25:44):
want to sit down, chill out and relax. So sometimes
some of these practices can be so much better. I
really want it.

Speaker 4 (25:53):
Yeah, I really want to try the sound therapy. I've
never heard of that before. It's so intriguing to me.
For me, that would be in the past, like just
turning on happy music right if I was upset or
stressed out, And definitely want to try that. So again,
your Vitalitycoaching dot Com is your website and because you

(26:17):
are in England. The beauty of this is is that
you can actually help people globally, right.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I set it up differently to try
and help people. I because I've traveled, I've got friends
all over the world, and I wanted to be able
to work with as many people as possible and to
help as many people as possible. So there's I teach
live classes every day and those classes are pay what

(26:46):
you can off free, and then there's two different types
of membership so if you wanted access to the classes
outside of the Life Times, then you can join a
membership and then the videos are uploaded and people can
download them, pay for them, rending them for a week
if they wanted to do that as well. So there's
loads of options and there's loads of different tools and

(27:06):
tips on there. I've got a seven day, seven Days
to Calm challenge that's on there, that's free. You can
sign up and you get an email every day for
seven days with loads of different tips and tricks and
challenges for you to just find a few minutes of
calm that day and sit down and try something new.
And there's loads of tools in there to try. So

(27:28):
it's a really good way of just gathering some new tools,
trying different things and figuring out what works for you.
So that's all the fabulous.

Speaker 4 (27:36):
That's fabulous. Thank you so much Zoe for joining us
today and sharing We're all of the information about Zoe
and your Vitalitycoaching dot Com can also be found in
at the description of our show for all of our listeners.
Just thank you so much for joining us and sharing this.
It's fabulous.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Thank you Zoe. Well, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
Well That wraps it up for today. Thanks for joining
us on Let's Talk Midlife Crisis. We hope you got
some laughs, a little inspiration, and maybe a few new ideas.

Speaker 5 (28:10):
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Send this episode to a friend who could use a
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Speaker 1 (28:22):
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