January 19, 2023 • 35 mins
Do you feel like your brain is half asleep at times? Well, it might be!! Amy’s neurofeedback therapist, Sheri Rowney, is on to talk about our brains!! Sheri is the owner of Harmonized Brain Center and is one of the most experienced & knowledgeable LENS therapists in the country. Sheri talks about: what LENS is (low energy neurofeedback), why water is so important for our brains, how “covid brain” is putting our brains to sleep, ADHD, the impact of positive thinking when it comes to rewriting the brain, foods that are good for your brain and more! Sheri also does ‘4 Things Gratitude’ with Amy!
Link to Sheri's website HERE!
Best places to find more about Amy: RadioAmy.com + @RadioAmy
Send emails for the '5th Thing' to 4ThingsWithAmyBrown@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Okay, cass up roAP, little food for you. So life.
Oh that's pretty, it's pretty beautiful. Thank you for laughs
A little month you're kicking with four Happy Thursday four Things.
(00:34):
We were talking brains today, Amy here, and I'm with
my neural feedback therapist, Sherry Rownie. She's well here, like
I said, talk about our brains. She's the owner of
Harmonized Brain Center and is one of the most experienced
and knowledgeable lens therapists in the country. And before we
get into all the brain talk, I'm just gonna give
(00:54):
y'all a little heads up. You're getting an advanced heads
up if you download and listen to the podcast on
Thursdays when it comes out, because this isn't getting announced
until Friday officially, but my next live four Things event
is going to be Saturday, March in Nashville. Those are
the details you need to know. Now we'll start rolling
(01:16):
out more, but make sure you check out my Instagram
at Radio Amy tomorrow. I'll be putting stuff up. But
if you're wanting to just make a little note in
your calendar and you want to be a part of
a really special evening, which actually I think we're gonna
end up doing two shows just because of the seating
at the theater, So we may have a three pm
showing and then a seven pm showing on Saturday March,
(01:40):
a special night of community connection, coming together knowing you're worthy.
It's gonna be magical. It's my rainbow year. I'm all
about it. It's gonna be a fun night too, and
just very special and memorable. So I hope you can
make it. Those are the details for now. But now
we're going to get back to brain's which share. I
think a good place to start would be explaining LENS
(02:03):
and what it is in Layman's terms. So low energy
neuro feedback, which is what LENS is, was created with
the idea that if you have a heart that's out
of rhythm and you go in and you shock it,
it puts itself back into its own rhythm. So what
would happen if we could stimulate the brain? Would it change?
And what we have found out is that the brain
(02:24):
actually will find its new rhythm all by itself. It'll
find that new pathway all by itself. So I'm not
training the brain, I'm just stimulating it and getting it
to change back to something different. It does it on
its own. Sessions are only fifteen minutes. I just sit there,
zero effort on my part, so it seems. And you
always say to me, drink a lot of water after
(02:46):
the session, And we all know that water is good
for our bodies, but why the brain specifically after a treatment,
but also in general. First of all, your brain is
about water, so it needs it. But second of all,
is a muscle just like any like if you go
to the gem and you work out, your muscles hurt. Afterwards,
you've got to replenish the fluids. The brain is the
(03:07):
first thing to dehydrate, and it's the first thing to rehydrate.
So when I'm in there pushing on those brain waves
and stimulating them to move, it's a workout to the brain.
So it's dehydrating. So that's why I say, drink more water.
Drink more water. The more water you drink, the quicker
it comes back to where it needs to be. In
addition to drinking more water on the days that I
see you, I also feel like I sleep better the
(03:30):
night of a session, which is awesome because at this
point in my life, water and sleep are my main priorities.
And you know, speaking of sleep. When I first came
to see you, my brain map said that half of
my brain was asleep. So what puts a brain to
sleep like that? The biggest one that we're seeing right
(03:50):
now is COVID. Before COVID, the only time that I
would see a really sleepy brain, as if there had
been a significant brain hit to the head, or if
you had been sick for a really long time. But
in November of twenty I had COVID. I do this
to myself every two weeks just for clarity and just
to stay on focus. So I had a really good
view of what my brain looked like. And after I
(04:12):
did it in November or in December, everything had gone
into delta, which is the sleepwave, and I thought, well,
that can't be right. Did it against the next day,
same thing. I thought there was something wrong with my machine.
I sent it off to have it recalibrated, and they said, no,
there's nothing wrong. What I saw was other people were
coming in fine, but mine was staying in delta. And
(04:32):
then about that January or February, I started seeing more
and more people coming in with that delta brain and
I just started taking notes. Wait a minute, I had COVID.
You had COVID, and I started realizing, Hey, there's a
pattern going on here. I had a client that came
in who was a cardiologist, and he was telling me
that he was seeing four or five patients post COVID
(04:53):
a week that were coming in with those same symptoms.
He had done blood work on them, chest X rays
on them, they couldn't figure out what was wrong. So
he sent a few of them over to me. So
now I had their medical records, we knew exactly what
was going on, and so sure enough they were in DELTA.
So for the last three years, I have seen a
significant amount of DELTA. I never tested positive for COVID,
(05:16):
so I'm unsure if I ever had it. And I
took a lot of tests I had to for my job,
so I could have had it at some point, maybe
when I was in between tests and I just was asymptomatic.
But I don't know if I had it. Could other
things like if you have a lot of stress or
certain emotionally traumatic things, can that shut certain parts of
(05:36):
your brain down. It's not that's like how the brain
repairs itself is for sleep, and so the brain just
goes down into that delta wave. You're still walking around,
you're still doing your job, you're still being a mom.
You're doing all the things, but you're not doing them
with the clarity and the focus that you wanted or
the energy. A lot of times you'll sleep for eight
hours and wake up and still feel tired or not
(05:57):
feel as motivated to do things. It's typically because brain
is in delta. Well, my delta brain is waking up.
I definitely feel more awake and alert. I have more
clarity and focus, which is honestly huge for someone like
me that's had a d h D since I was
a kid. I have lots of people that bring their
(06:17):
kids in and even adults that will say, you know,
I'm really struggling with attension and focus. I don't want
to be on the medication. Is there any hope otherwise? Yes,
there is. So if we can go in and stimulate
those brain waves and get them working more efficiently, again,
all of a sudden, the brain wakes up and it
no longer needs any outside stimulation to work. So that's
(06:37):
why you're feeling a little bit more awake and alert.
I know you're big on positive thinking and having a
good attitude. Why is that important if we want to
build new neuropathways and change our brains. Because your attitude
and because the way that you think is stinking thinking
is how when it goes to the negative way. But
(06:57):
when you have a positive attitude you're looking for a change,
you can find change. When you get stuck in that
thought process that I can't change, there's nothing out there
that's going to help me. I don't care what you do.
I can't make it change. So you have to have
the idea that I can and I will and I
and it will move forward and you can. I've seen
it happen over and over again. That's good encouragement because
(07:21):
I think to the stink and thinking, I've never heard
that before, by I like it. You get in a
negative pattern and it becomes this loop and then you
comes a habit. And when you create a habit, it's
really hard to get out of the habit. So it
takes thirty days to make a habit. It takes sixty
days to break a habit. So while you're creating a
(07:42):
new habit, you're breaking another habit. So it takes a
long time. So if you start thinking, no, I'm gonna
change my ideas change my way of thinking. I tell
some people sometimes, if you put a rubber band around
your wrist, and when that thought comes in, I can't
or this is too hard, pop it on the inside
of your wrist. What it does is it sends a
(08:03):
signal back to the brain which changes the complete shifting
of what was going on. And the brain is reacting
to pain, so it stops that thought of the negative thing.
It happens all the time. Why have you never told
me this before? I need to share it with you today,
Like you should hand out a rubber yes that sits down.
(08:23):
And then anytime we have stinking thinking, we're about ourselves.
Because that's the thing that I was really struggling with,
was looping, and not even just negative thoughts, which my
looping has gotten so much better, but my looping was worried.
It was creating scenarios that may or may not be true,
trying to mind read certain situations which we know we
(08:44):
can't do, but we all we all do it. But
then mine would loop and loop and distract me from
my job, distract me from other conversations with people, to
where I couldn't be in tune with what was happening
because I was in age and I felt like I
was engaged, but my brain was looping something else. Correct.
It's like I couldn't make it stop, and then it
(09:06):
would keep me up. It was your peas Amy, by
what It's one of the spots on the brain that
we work on, the pridle lobe, and that's where you
do your best thinking when you're When it's working well,
you can really figure things out. You can find the
solution to a problem. It's your cognitive processing. When it's
not working well. If it's really tight and there's not
a left flexibility in the wave, your brain will just
(09:29):
loop and you'll keep thinking something over and over again.
The brain is trying to find an answer and I
can't find it, and you just want to say stop,
I don't want to do this anymore, but it can't
do that. You'll find it happens when you're sleeping. You'll
wake up out of a dead sleep and go into
a thought process and not be able to stop it.
That's that peas back there on the brain on the
risk will help. Okay, Well, I think you need to
(09:50):
make harmonized brain center rubber band snappers and have people
do that because Yeah, I didn't know you could almost
train your brain, and that wigh we use it with
um eating disorders. If you when you start getting into
that thought process, you pop that first and then it'll
shift it back over which heads up, Sherry is actually
gonna be on my Outweigh podcast this Saturday, so make
(10:13):
sure to listen to that if you're interested in eating
disorder recovery, breaking disordered eating patterns and negative body image thoughts.
It was actually during my eating disorder recovery through a
book called Brain over Binge, that I learned more about
my brain and that I could rewire it, which was
super cool. But I mean, gosh, our brains are so
(10:34):
complex with so much going on at all times. What
parts of the brain, Sherry, are you focusing on during treatments?
(10:55):
What parts of the brain, Sherry are you focusing on
during treatments? There's twenty one places on the brain that
we're specifically working on. There's hundreds of thousands of UM
neurons that are in pathways that are going on, but
we're working on specifically twenty one different places on the brain.
Each one of them has a specific purpose, but they
(11:16):
all work together so information comes in through your eyes
and your ears, but it actually starts in the back
of your head right towards the base of your spine,
and it moves forward. In the perfect brain, perfect world,
that information would be coming forward to the same speed,
same direction, going through those twenty one different places, you'd
be making great decisions. Life would be pe keen. When
(11:36):
there's been trauma to the brain, and trauma can be
one of two things. That can be physical trauma where
you've actually had a hit to the head, COVID something
like that, or it can be emotional trauma. There's no
one that's escaped emotional trauma. We've all had it. What
our brain records at the time that it happens is
what it retains. So when small things that you look
(11:57):
back on now you're like, I don't know why that
bothered me so much or why it was such a
big deal. The brain recorded it that way, and if
it doesn't get processed, it sits in there and the
brain has to reroute around it so you don't have
to think about it all the time. So when we
go in and we start stimulating those brain waves and
getting them moved back into more efficient patterns, those stuck
(12:20):
things will move out and they're no longer there. So
the brain starts working more efficiently, so depression starts to
go away, anxiety starts to go away. Focus becomes better.
A lot of times I hear sleeping definitely becomes better.
Just everything feels easier to do well. And I know
you've worked with different people in town where their job
is literally to be creative, and creativity all of a sudden, yeah, creativity.
(12:44):
I've got an author right now who was supposed to
get a book done by October and he said, Sherry,
I've got three done by the end of November. That's huge. Yeah,
that's that's amazing. Just unlocking different parts that are asleep
or shut off for some reason or just not working
as efficiently as they need to as as possible. So
(13:04):
what age can kids start this. I've worked with children
as young as four months. That was somebody that were months. Yeah,
they were having um seizures and we actually were able
to move beyond the seizure, so that was a good thing.
But typically I've seen on an average, I'll see kids
come in about four or five. They're starting to have
behavioral issues in preschool or they might have hard time
(13:26):
staying on task with things um and then all the
way up, what about E M. D R. Is that
something different that's happening with the brain. Because I did
that once in therapy and never went back because I
didn't really vibe with the therapist. But we did do
a session where we went deep into some time capsule
in my brain a childhood experience, and we went back
(13:48):
in and she had me share with her what I
was seeing, but we almost retold the story. I guess
to give my brain, like you were saying, a new memory.
And then now I do picture it that way, and
I think back on that memory, I picture that happening,
and then when I really try to think about if
that really happened or not, it's weird because I'm like,
I don't know, I don't think that happened. But what
(14:11):
if it really did happen and we just unlocked that
or did did we just recreate it like the goal
was and recreated the different memory. It's wild to think
about because I was a kid and it was honestly
a traumatic moment for me as a kid. It was
a day that my dad left, and it was at
the back door when he was leaving, I didn't know
(14:32):
if we really hugged or not. I know, I ran
back to my room and got him a Teddy Bear
and went and took it to him. I don't know
that he had the words or knew what to say,
but what we re wrote in my head was that
he embraced me and told me I was safe and
I was going to be okay, which I know he
definitely didn't say that. He didn't have a language, so
that part I know he didn't do. But like, the
(14:54):
hug feels so real that it happened, and maybe he
did hug me. I can't imagine. I'm not hugging me.
I just had no memory of him hugging And she's like, cool,
your childhoodself probably really needed your dad to hug you
in that moment, and we need your brain to at
least think that your dad hugs you in that moment,
and that's how you move beyond trauma in that moment.
M d R is really useful for a lot of
people in a lot of different ways. But it's taking
(15:16):
you back to a trauma and then you relive the
trauma and then you recreated, like you said, which there
are a lot of people that will come to see
me that have either done a m d R or
ly in the middle of m d R, or brain spotting,
or any of the other ones. But they don't like
going back to the memory. The memory scares them. Lens
is not something where we go back to a memory.
It doesn't really matter when we release. When we're working
(15:39):
on those brain waves, sometimes memories will come up, mostly
with adults. It tends to be more feelings than it
is memories, So it's typically anger, fear, sadness. So what
I tell people is if you all of a sudden,
I see you on Tuesday, and on Thursday, all of
a sudden, you just feel this incredible amount of anger
come up out of nowhere, and you look around you think,
(16:00):
why am I angry? That's an old suppression that's lifting
up and moving out. I call it the emotional flu
It doesn't feel good, but once it's out, it feels
so good afterwards because it's clear it's not there anymore.
We've literally moved that out of the way. That barricade
is no longer in the brain anymore. So a lot
of times people that come in that are in talk therapy,
(16:21):
it makes their therapy so much better because now they
can actually talk. I've had numerous people that have said,
I've been in talk therapy for eight or ten years
and we're just not getting anywhere, and all of a sudden,
we do a few sessions with Lens and the conversation
can start. Because if you're really good at suppressing and
you knew how to push it down really, really hard,
then I can ask you till you're blue in the face,
(16:42):
tell me how you're feeling. You can't tell me because
you've pushed it down so far, So when Lens picks
it up and moves it out of the way, conversation
can happen. So whether you're continuing with talk therapy or
doing a M d R any of those other things,
this is going to enhance it. Wow. Yeah, No, I
mean I think it's a great thing to do in
addition to therapy. At least it has been for me.
(17:06):
And it's wild. But you don't always have to have therapy.
I have people that just come in right and that's
all they do, and that's they're fine with it. Yeah,
And I think that therapy too, can be different seasons.
And you know, I'm about to do my twelfth and
I don't know. You might do my latest brain map
and be like, Okay, Amy, you're good for a little bit.
But I may want to come back for some maintenance.
Or I may have COVID, I may have hit my
(17:29):
head somehow, I may just be in a stressful situation exactly,
And so I love that I could come back and
we can sort of take that fifteen minutes and and
move on. I know we were talking about positive thinking,
but what about gratitude? Do you see that playing a
role in how our brain responds to things I do?
(17:50):
And I see I tell people all the time, or
I recommend to them that they start a gratitude journal,
just writing down five things every day that you're happy for.
And sometimes it's really hard, when you're really struggling with
depression or anxiety, it's hard to come up with five things.
But it can be as simple as I woke up today,
or I had clean sheets on on the bed, or
whatever it was. If you write that and you're already
(18:14):
putting your mind into the state of I do have
something to be grateful for. There is something positive in
my life. And on the days when things are really struggling,
you can go back and read them and realize I
do have a lot to be grateful for, so I
highly encourage a gratitude journal. So some of the positive
thinking and I don't know, sometimes can seem a little
woo woo to some people, but it's scientific. It is scientific.
(18:40):
It changes the dopamine and the serotonin and your that's
the chemical part of your brain. But it also helps
shift the the electrical which is what we're working on.
We have a four Things Gratitude journal that we made
to support Haiti. We just put out our third version,
three point oh that actually has two cute color options.
But Mary and I, who created it, we weren't big
(19:02):
journalers at all. In fact, like you said, journaling was intimidating.
So it's not that we didn't have things to be
grateful for, we just didn't know how to write about them,
and that seemed overwhelming to sit down, pin to paper.
Like you said, it really can be as simple as
I woke up today, or it can be a one
word thing. Or we included cute little stickers in the
(19:22):
back for the days you don't have words, Go find
a sticker that matches something that you're grateful for and
PLoP the sticker down. Everybody needs this journal, Well, yes,
let's do it, and yeah it's in Haiti is near
and dear to our hearts, so yeah, all the proceeds
go to that. But it's four things, which I know
you encourage people to do five, but it could be.
(19:45):
You know, sometimes I'm sure it's just good to take
note of one thing that you're thankful for, and that
can be progress. So I would love to know from you, Sherry,
four things that you're currently thankful for. And sometimes I
give people acific so we can learn more about their personalities,
like I would love to know a TV show, a
book of food, and an Instagram followed that you like,
(20:20):
sometimes I give people specifics so we can learn more
about their personalities, like I would love to know a
TV show, a book of food, and an Instagram followed
that you like. The Crown is probably my thing for
TV right now. I am an angliophile one oh one.
My husband's from England, so maybe that's why. But I
love the aristocracy, I love the traditions. I'm a family
(20:44):
kind of person, so I really love that A book
A thousand Gifts. A thousand Gifts is my favorite book
right now? Boss, Yes, I love her book, and in
reading that book, she talks a lot about joy, and
I started thinking about joy. What is joy? Where do
you find it? It's not really happiness, And so I
decided to start a joy journal last year and I
(21:07):
was on a journey for joy, and I decided that
I would journal every time I found joy. I found
joy in the most bizarre and amazing places. Probably it
was in nature, but I want to talk about gratitude
when you have joy and you're looking for joy. It's
really hard to be in a bad mood when you
find joy. And I'm really strong in my faith, and
I think that where I found joy was always where
(21:30):
God had his touch and where he had his hand
and me and my eight Yeah, that's the joy of
the Lord is my strength. That was my mom's verse
through cancer, and that's where her joy and pimp and
joy that all came from. And she was like, don't
let people forget pim and joy. The joy came from
the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength.
And so that was very important to her that it
(21:51):
wasn't just this flippant joy. She knew where her strength
was coming from. And I get what you're saying. Like
when you're looking for it, especially in nature, you see it.
My therapist was encouraging me to sort of do something similar,
and I was on a walk and would look down
and you'd be surprised how many leaves are shaped like hearts.
(22:13):
And you can stop and just notice them and be like, oh,
that's so cute and shape like a heart, and take
a picture of it and send it to a friend
or do whatever that. Enjoy it, or if you find
a rock that looks like a heart. Are seeing different,
you know, animals that are really cool to see. I
like to hike here in Nashville around this water and
sometimes there's these cute little beavers and I love seeing them,
(22:36):
and there's owls and there's deer, and it's just taking
the time to be in awe of them. And that
was really taking the time. The first time that I
found it when I started the Joy Journey was I
was I live out in the country and I was
coming home from work and I'm on the same road
every day and it's spectacularly beautiful. But I came around
this corner and the sun just happened to be hitting
(22:58):
this hill on the right time, and it was just
glittery and gold, and there was cows walking down at
Red Barn White Silo. It was so beautiful that I
literally went when I came around the corner and I thought,
there's joy. And then I went, wait, I'm going sixty
miles an hour and I just flew by it. I
asked God for joy. He gave it to me, and
(23:20):
I flew by it. So I stopped the car. Felt
like a fool turnaround, and I went and sat on
the side of the road and just absorbed the joy
for probably five minutes. And it was spectacular. What about
a food that you're thankful for? Speaking of joy, food
can bring us a lot of joke. I love a
(23:42):
lot of different kinds of food. I am a mom
of five kids, so I love to cook. I love
to have big, big gatherings. But if I were to
say a favorite food would probably be Florida stone crabs.
That is my gig. I'm from Florida, so that's kind
of a home food for me. I'm on the west
coast of Florida, between Fort Myers and Arizoda. Okay, yeah,
so we have a lot of Florida listeners given a
(24:04):
shout out. I like Susie Florida. Go, let's go. What
about an Instagram follow I love a lot of different ones.
I love dr Aymon. He's probably my favorite. Um. He
has great snippets. He's probably the leading brain specialist in
the in the world. And so what is it the
type of brain therapy that he does, because I see
a lot of celebrities go to him, and I do
(24:26):
actually think I follow him, but I'm not sure that
I always see his stuff. But I'll even see his
him pop up on news articles because some celebrity went
to him. Right, He's amazing. He does like the spec
scan um, which he's able to go in and actually
see which part of your energy and your brain is
hotter and and more quiet and more busy, and he's
able to come up with a plan based on that um.
(24:47):
He also uses medication, he uses neurofeedback. He has a
whole variety of different things that he uses. But his
snippets on Instagram are amazing. They really set you for
the day. He'll talk about drugs on your brain, alcohol
on your brain, happiness on your brain, depression on your brain,
what those kinds of things do. So he's always just
really good for for kind of setting my day, but
(25:09):
also for me to share with my clients when they
come in during the day. So he's definitely one. There's
another one, the holistic psychologist. She's amazing for delving back
into why we are the way we are and why
we think the way that we think. And she also
puts out these little snippets that go, Okay, here's where
I can change, Here's where I can make a positive change.
(25:29):
So I love seeing things that can help me and then,
like I said, move it forward to help clients. What
are your thoughts on social media and the brain and
our impact, Like, do you huge impact? Huge impact? First
of all, just being on the computer, the your phone, whatever,
there's blue lights, there's all kinds of things that are
happening to your brain physically just watching it. But also
(25:53):
the amount of comparing ourselves as soon as we see
how everybody else is living on Instagram or living on Facebook,
which is, you know, literally a minute out of their
day and we assume that that's who they are the
rest of the time. I think it can really be detrimental. Now,
there's some great things that happen on there, and we'll
never We're never going to be without it, So we've
(26:13):
got to learn to live with it. But moderation is key.
I see a lot of kids that are really really
struggling when they come in, and it's almost always down
to video games that they play and the social media
that they're on, and that's that's incredibly hard for me
to see. Well, I mean, and you've probably had to pivot.
I don't know how many years have you been doing this.
(26:34):
We've been doing this for I've been doing it for
almost eight years now, and so I'm sure just as
time has gone on, has gotten it's just increased a lot.
Because even as a parent, I mean, I get it,
sometimes there's so much going on, they're just like, Okay,
here's the tablet, or here, just go play your video game.
Oh you ran out of time on that. Here's your
Nintendo switch, because we have time limits on everything. But
(26:55):
then if the timeline runs out on one, we just
moved the next just to survive the day. And everybody's
doing that. And it's not you're not a bad parent
now you're doing those things. You're just doing the best
that you can. But it's just being aware of what
that is. Um people that come in with sleep problems,
I'll tell them no blue lights, no computers, no phones,
(27:16):
no anything. A half hour before you go to bed.
It just gives your brain time to desensitize from what's
going on. Um, sleep with your phone six ft away
from you, because there is radiation coming off of that
that is effective. Obviously it's small, but it's still there.
I have my phone completely silenced. I think that starts
(27:37):
it around eight PM for me, maybe even seven, so
I don't have any notifications lighting up my phone in
any way. And then, yes, I started sleeping with it
in the bathroom, which the way my room is set up,
that works for me, but it's helped just having it
out of the way so I don't even think about it.
And then I got one of those amber light bulbs
(28:00):
and I put that in the nightstand lamp and that
is what I turn on. I'm still trying to find
my groove because it's very difficult to not be around
any light thirty minutes before bed, but I try at
least to do my best. And I'll turn off all
my lights and I'll turn my lamp on, and then
I'll get into bed and read or do whatever I'm
(28:22):
going to do to try to or some breathing exercises
to try to wind down. What about breathing huge oxygen
into the into the body and where you don't breathe enough.
If you look and see when you take a good
deep breath and take it in for four seconds, hold
for four seconds and let it out, it feels so good.
(28:43):
I work with people with a lot of anxiety, and
we'll talk about doing that five times before you make
a decision, before you let that anxiety run away from you,
and in that time period, the brain just settles back
down again. Amazing. Tell me a food that I for
sure need to be eating for my brain. Cold water fish,
cold water fish, Omega is amazing. Omega three's are amazing
(29:06):
for your brain. So I'm taking in Omega three capsule
every day. Is that that's certainly helping. That's but you
ask for food. But if I had to do something
specific for my brain, it's a Mega three. Get a
good Omega three in your brain. So salmon, yes, and
salmon um, any of the antioxidants are really important for
your brain. This is a really interesting fact about the brain.
(29:26):
It doesn't have a filter like your kidneys or your liver.
So what happens when you go to sleep. It washes
itself with a synovial fluid. It goes in and washes
it and takes all the toxins from the day and
puts it into your bloodstream and takes it out. If
you don't get a minimum of six to eight hours
of sleep, that never finishes the cycle. So it's like
(29:48):
a dishwasher that doesn't finish the cycle and you've still
got little bits of things on the forks. That's what
happens when you're not getting a significant amount of sleep
and water. So you need that to be able to
function well to get rid of those toxins. Okay, and
since you mentioned sleep, we'll go back to that. You
say six to eight hours minimum minimum. So as an adult,
(30:10):
you know, sometimes I think we may if it's a
Saturday and we slept ten or eleven hours, we might
wake up and be like, ah, I've I'm so behind,
or I've wasted the day or what you know, But actually,
is that good for your brain? So it's permission to
sleep in. Yes, every once in a while you can ever,
well that how does our brain? So because for me
(30:32):
on a Saturday and Sunday, I'm not going to wake
up and my weekday hours like I do for work.
It's just not going to happen. I have zero desire
to do that. But you hear that it's good to
stay on the same routine and get your body into
rhythm and try to wake up at the same time
every single day. And I'm like, well, it's not happening
Saturday and Sunday. You don't want to get up at
four am? No, I do not. Is that okay? It
(30:54):
is okay, Okay, it's okay. Now, a lot of times
people will think, well, I'm only going to get four
hours of sleep or five hours for the next three
or four days, but I'll catch it up on the weekend.
Catching it up takes a lot longer. For every hour
that you're deficit on that six to eight hours, it
takes three to four hours to catch out. Okay, So
that's not gonna happen. There's no catch up. I'm just
(31:16):
thinking of questions that people might have in their head
about lens therapy, and one popped in that somebody would
be like, do you feel it? Does it hurt? And
I mean I can say as a client, no, Now, um,
all I'm doing is sending in a radio wave at
one and a half hurts that's about six hundred times
less than your cell phone, so you're not going to
feel it. I do have some people that will say, oh,
(31:38):
I feel a little tingle or I just felt something happening.
That's the actual brain waves moving shifting around. But that's energy.
There's no possible way for us to hurt you with
one and a half hurts. That can't happen. Most people
will leave feeling really really chill. Some people will leave
feeling excited. Like you said, it's either wired or tired.
Kids typically will leave really sleepy. They'll sleep in the
(32:01):
car all the way home, and parents are always thanks,
thank you um. But for adults, you just might feel
just really chill for a little bit. Usually that first
night you sleep really well, and then it takes about
forty eight hours for the brain to find that new
pathway and then it'll stay there until I see you again. Well,
I have enjoyed coming to you, and again, multiple people
(32:22):
had talked about harmonized brain center. Like I said, you
hear about it, and my friend Bobo had texted me
your number months before I ever reached out to you,
and I had taken a break from my other type
of neurofeedback and that was no longer going to fit
my schedule. Anyways, I adored her, that was great, but
I thought, okay, well, I'm just gonna shift and go
(32:43):
ahead and give this a try. And it's funny how
many people I run into in your waiting room that
I know or that I you know, I don't come
up in conversation and they'll be like you go there too,
and I'm like, yep. And then actually, my friend Kelly
just texted me today and said, I'm still wanting to
get in with Sherry, hopefully she'll see me, and I said,
I'm actually seeing her today, so I'll connect y'all again.
(33:05):
So you've got uh, you're highly sought after in town,
but you do have others practitioners therapists that do it
for you as well, or that administer the lens therapy.
So Harmonized Brain Centers dot com is the website that's
where you can get all of the information. But again
you could look up if there's lens therapists in your area.
(33:28):
And what was that website again, OAKS Labs o c
h S Labs dot com. And I'm actually Harmonized Brain
Swenters t N dot com. And my brother has the
Harmonized Brain Center in Colorado and he's Harmonized Brain Centers
dot com. So that's his website. Okay, I'm done, Tienne
at the end. Okay, So t N. I love that
you and your brother are both in this and I
know he started it first. Got ten years ago his
(33:52):
son was hit in the head with a baseball, went
into a coma for a few months, and when he
came out out of the coma, had to relearn everything.
They put him in rehab where he had to learn
how to walk and talk and eat and do it all.
And then they handed him back to my brother and
his wife and they were like, now what do we do?
So they spent years trying different therapies, looking for the
(34:13):
best that they could do for their son. And he
did amazing. He graduated from high school, he holds down
a full time job. But they were always on the
quest for how much more can we do for him?
Eight years post coma, which is a long time, the
longer time you're away from a head injury. They heard
about Lens and Austin made huge, huge strives was able
to actually start speaking really well where you could understand
(34:35):
him easily. Huge change for the family, so much so
that my brother decided that's what he was going to do.
So he went out to Colorado from Florida and he
started him and I his brain centers out there. I
was a school principal in Florida. I owned a school
down there, loved kids, loved working with kids, and so
when we moved up here to Tennessee, after listening to
(34:56):
the stories that he was telling me and the successes,
I just fell like this is where God wanted me
to be so happy to be here and passionate about
what I do and look forward to seeing lots and
lots of people because I really love it. We're definitely
helping so many people and like I said again, so
many people that I I know. So if you're curious
about it, look into it and have the day that
(35:20):
you need to have, breakwater and don't forget look for
the joy, and then you practice gratitude because it's definitely
good for your brain. And four things dot com is
where you can find our four Things Gratitude Journal. Thank
you Sherry for joining me. Samy, it was such a
fun time. Thank you and then again Sherry will be
on with me this Saturday, on our way
Okay, cass up roAP, little food for you. So life.
Oh that's pretty, it's pretty beautiful. Thank you for laughs
A little month you're kicking with four Happy Thursday four Things.
(00:34):
We were talking brains today, Amy here, and I'm with
my neural feedback therapist, Sherry Rownie. She's well here, like
I said, talk about our brains. She's the owner of
Harmonized Brain Center and is one of the most experienced
and knowledgeable lens therapists in the country. And before we
get into all the brain talk, I'm just gonna give
(00:54):
y'all a little heads up. You're getting an advanced heads
up if you download and listen to the podcast on
Thursdays when it comes out, because this isn't getting announced
until Friday officially, but my next live four Things event
is going to be Saturday, March in Nashville. Those are
the details you need to know. Now we'll start rolling
(01:16):
out more, but make sure you check out my Instagram
at Radio Amy tomorrow. I'll be putting stuff up. But
if you're wanting to just make a little note in
your calendar and you want to be a part of
a really special evening, which actually I think we're gonna
end up doing two shows just because of the seating
at the theater, So we may have a three pm
showing and then a seven pm showing on Saturday March,
(01:40):
a special night of community connection, coming together knowing you're worthy.
It's gonna be magical. It's my rainbow year. I'm all
about it. It's gonna be a fun night too, and
just very special and memorable. So I hope you can
make it. Those are the details for now. But now
we're going to get back to brain's which share. I
think a good place to start would be explaining LENS
(02:03):
and what it is in Layman's terms. So low energy
neuro feedback, which is what LENS is, was created with
the idea that if you have a heart that's out
of rhythm and you go in and you shock it,
it puts itself back into its own rhythm. So what
would happen if we could stimulate the brain? Would it change?
And what we have found out is that the brain
(02:24):
actually will find its new rhythm all by itself. It'll
find that new pathway all by itself. So I'm not
training the brain, I'm just stimulating it and getting it
to change back to something different. It does it on
its own. Sessions are only fifteen minutes. I just sit there,
zero effort on my part, so it seems. And you
always say to me, drink a lot of water after
(02:46):
the session, And we all know that water is good
for our bodies, but why the brain specifically after a treatment,
but also in general. First of all, your brain is
about water, so it needs it. But second of all,
is a muscle just like any like if you go
to the gem and you work out, your muscles hurt. Afterwards,
you've got to replenish the fluids. The brain is the
(03:07):
first thing to dehydrate, and it's the first thing to rehydrate.
So when I'm in there pushing on those brain waves
and stimulating them to move, it's a workout to the brain.
So it's dehydrating. So that's why I say, drink more water.
Drink more water. The more water you drink, the quicker
it comes back to where it needs to be. In
addition to drinking more water on the days that I
see you, I also feel like I sleep better the
(03:30):
night of a session, which is awesome because at this
point in my life, water and sleep are my main priorities.
And you know, speaking of sleep. When I first came
to see you, my brain map said that half of
my brain was asleep. So what puts a brain to
sleep like that? The biggest one that we're seeing right
(03:50):
now is COVID. Before COVID, the only time that I
would see a really sleepy brain, as if there had
been a significant brain hit to the head, or if
you had been sick for a really long time. But
in November of twenty I had COVID. I do this
to myself every two weeks just for clarity and just
to stay on focus. So I had a really good
view of what my brain looked like. And after I
(04:12):
did it in November or in December, everything had gone
into delta, which is the sleepwave, and I thought, well,
that can't be right. Did it against the next day,
same thing. I thought there was something wrong with my machine.
I sent it off to have it recalibrated, and they said, no,
there's nothing wrong. What I saw was other people were
coming in fine, but mine was staying in delta. And
(04:32):
then about that January or February, I started seeing more
and more people coming in with that delta brain and
I just started taking notes. Wait a minute, I had COVID.
You had COVID, and I started realizing, Hey, there's a
pattern going on here. I had a client that came
in who was a cardiologist, and he was telling me
that he was seeing four or five patients post COVID
(04:53):
a week that were coming in with those same symptoms.
He had done blood work on them, chest X rays
on them, they couldn't figure out what was wrong. So
he sent a few of them over to me. So
now I had their medical records, we knew exactly what
was going on, and so sure enough they were in DELTA.
So for the last three years, I have seen a
significant amount of DELTA. I never tested positive for COVID,
(05:16):
so I'm unsure if I ever had it. And I
took a lot of tests I had to for my job,
so I could have had it at some point, maybe
when I was in between tests and I just was asymptomatic.
But I don't know if I had it. Could other
things like if you have a lot of stress or
certain emotionally traumatic things, can that shut certain parts of
(05:36):
your brain down. It's not that's like how the brain
repairs itself is for sleep, and so the brain just
goes down into that delta wave. You're still walking around,
you're still doing your job, you're still being a mom.
You're doing all the things, but you're not doing them
with the clarity and the focus that you wanted or
the energy. A lot of times you'll sleep for eight
hours and wake up and still feel tired or not
(05:57):
feel as motivated to do things. It's typically because brain
is in delta. Well, my delta brain is waking up.
I definitely feel more awake and alert. I have more
clarity and focus, which is honestly huge for someone like
me that's had a d h D since I was
a kid. I have lots of people that bring their
(06:17):
kids in and even adults that will say, you know,
I'm really struggling with attension and focus. I don't want
to be on the medication. Is there any hope otherwise? Yes,
there is. So if we can go in and stimulate
those brain waves and get them working more efficiently, again,
all of a sudden, the brain wakes up and it
no longer needs any outside stimulation to work. So that's
(06:37):
why you're feeling a little bit more awake and alert.
I know you're big on positive thinking and having a
good attitude. Why is that important if we want to
build new neuropathways and change our brains. Because your attitude
and because the way that you think is stinking thinking
is how when it goes to the negative way. But
(06:57):
when you have a positive attitude you're looking for a change,
you can find change. When you get stuck in that
thought process that I can't change, there's nothing out there
that's going to help me. I don't care what you do.
I can't make it change. So you have to have
the idea that I can and I will and I
and it will move forward and you can. I've seen
it happen over and over again. That's good encouragement because
(07:21):
I think to the stink and thinking, I've never heard
that before, by I like it. You get in a
negative pattern and it becomes this loop and then you
comes a habit. And when you create a habit, it's
really hard to get out of the habit. So it
takes thirty days to make a habit. It takes sixty
days to break a habit. So while you're creating a
(07:42):
new habit, you're breaking another habit. So it takes a
long time. So if you start thinking, no, I'm gonna
change my ideas change my way of thinking. I tell
some people sometimes, if you put a rubber band around
your wrist, and when that thought comes in, I can't
or this is too hard, pop it on the inside
of your wrist. What it does is it sends a
(08:03):
signal back to the brain which changes the complete shifting
of what was going on. And the brain is reacting
to pain, so it stops that thought of the negative thing.
It happens all the time. Why have you never told
me this before? I need to share it with you today,
Like you should hand out a rubber yes that sits down.
(08:23):
And then anytime we have stinking thinking, we're about ourselves.
Because that's the thing that I was really struggling with,
was looping, and not even just negative thoughts, which my
looping has gotten so much better, but my looping was worried.
It was creating scenarios that may or may not be true,
trying to mind read certain situations which we know we
(08:44):
can't do, but we all we all do it. But
then mine would loop and loop and distract me from
my job, distract me from other conversations with people, to
where I couldn't be in tune with what was happening
because I was in age and I felt like I
was engaged, but my brain was looping something else. Correct.
It's like I couldn't make it stop, and then it
(09:06):
would keep me up. It was your peas Amy, by
what It's one of the spots on the brain that
we work on, the pridle lobe, and that's where you
do your best thinking when you're When it's working well,
you can really figure things out. You can find the
solution to a problem. It's your cognitive processing. When it's
not working well. If it's really tight and there's not
a left flexibility in the wave, your brain will just
(09:29):
loop and you'll keep thinking something over and over again.
The brain is trying to find an answer and I
can't find it, and you just want to say stop,
I don't want to do this anymore, but it can't
do that. You'll find it happens when you're sleeping. You'll
wake up out of a dead sleep and go into
a thought process and not be able to stop it.
That's that peas back there on the brain on the
risk will help. Okay, Well, I think you need to
(09:50):
make harmonized brain center rubber band snappers and have people
do that because Yeah, I didn't know you could almost
train your brain, and that wigh we use it with
um eating disorders. If you when you start getting into
that thought process, you pop that first and then it'll
shift it back over which heads up, Sherry is actually
gonna be on my Outweigh podcast this Saturday, so make
(10:13):
sure to listen to that if you're interested in eating
disorder recovery, breaking disordered eating patterns and negative body image thoughts.
It was actually during my eating disorder recovery through a
book called Brain over Binge, that I learned more about
my brain and that I could rewire it, which was
super cool. But I mean, gosh, our brains are so
(10:34):
complex with so much going on at all times. What
parts of the brain, Sherry, are you focusing on during treatments?
(10:55):
What parts of the brain, Sherry are you focusing on
during treatments? There's twenty one places on the brain that
we're specifically working on. There's hundreds of thousands of UM
neurons that are in pathways that are going on, but
we're working on specifically twenty one different places on the brain.
Each one of them has a specific purpose, but they
(11:16):
all work together so information comes in through your eyes
and your ears, but it actually starts in the back
of your head right towards the base of your spine,
and it moves forward. In the perfect brain, perfect world,
that information would be coming forward to the same speed,
same direction, going through those twenty one different places, you'd
be making great decisions. Life would be pe keen. When
(11:36):
there's been trauma to the brain, and trauma can be
one of two things. That can be physical trauma where
you've actually had a hit to the head, COVID something
like that, or it can be emotional trauma. There's no
one that's escaped emotional trauma. We've all had it. What
our brain records at the time that it happens is
what it retains. So when small things that you look
(11:57):
back on now you're like, I don't know why that
bothered me so much or why it was such a
big deal. The brain recorded it that way, and if
it doesn't get processed, it sits in there and the
brain has to reroute around it so you don't have
to think about it all the time. So when we
go in and we start stimulating those brain waves and
getting them moved back into more efficient patterns, those stuck
(12:20):
things will move out and they're no longer there. So
the brain starts working more efficiently, so depression starts to
go away, anxiety starts to go away. Focus becomes better.
A lot of times I hear sleeping definitely becomes better.
Just everything feels easier to do well. And I know
you've worked with different people in town where their job
is literally to be creative, and creativity all of a sudden, yeah, creativity.
(12:44):
I've got an author right now who was supposed to
get a book done by October and he said, Sherry,
I've got three done by the end of November. That's huge. Yeah,
that's that's amazing. Just unlocking different parts that are asleep
or shut off for some reason or just not working
as efficiently as they need to as as possible. So
(13:04):
what age can kids start this. I've worked with children
as young as four months. That was somebody that were months. Yeah,
they were having um seizures and we actually were able
to move beyond the seizure, so that was a good thing.
But typically I've seen on an average, I'll see kids
come in about four or five. They're starting to have
behavioral issues in preschool or they might have hard time
(13:26):
staying on task with things um and then all the
way up, what about E M. D R. Is that
something different that's happening with the brain. Because I did
that once in therapy and never went back because I
didn't really vibe with the therapist. But we did do
a session where we went deep into some time capsule
in my brain a childhood experience, and we went back
(13:48):
in and she had me share with her what I
was seeing, but we almost retold the story. I guess
to give my brain, like you were saying, a new memory.
And then now I do picture it that way, and
I think back on that memory, I picture that happening,
and then when I really try to think about if
that really happened or not, it's weird because I'm like,
I don't know, I don't think that happened. But what
(14:11):
if it really did happen and we just unlocked that
or did did we just recreate it like the goal
was and recreated the different memory. It's wild to think
about because I was a kid and it was honestly
a traumatic moment for me as a kid. It was
a day that my dad left, and it was at
the back door when he was leaving, I didn't know
(14:32):
if we really hugged or not. I know, I ran
back to my room and got him a Teddy Bear
and went and took it to him. I don't know
that he had the words or knew what to say,
but what we re wrote in my head was that
he embraced me and told me I was safe and
I was going to be okay, which I know he
definitely didn't say that. He didn't have a language, so
that part I know he didn't do. But like, the
(14:54):
hug feels so real that it happened, and maybe he
did hug me. I can't imagine. I'm not hugging me.
I just had no memory of him hugging And she's like, cool,
your childhoodself probably really needed your dad to hug you
in that moment, and we need your brain to at
least think that your dad hugs you in that moment,
and that's how you move beyond trauma in that moment.
M d R is really useful for a lot of
people in a lot of different ways. But it's taking
(15:16):
you back to a trauma and then you relive the
trauma and then you recreated, like you said, which there
are a lot of people that will come to see
me that have either done a m d R or
ly in the middle of m d R, or brain spotting,
or any of the other ones. But they don't like
going back to the memory. The memory scares them. Lens
is not something where we go back to a memory.
It doesn't really matter when we release. When we're working
(15:39):
on those brain waves, sometimes memories will come up, mostly
with adults. It tends to be more feelings than it
is memories, So it's typically anger, fear, sadness. So what
I tell people is if you all of a sudden,
I see you on Tuesday, and on Thursday, all of
a sudden, you just feel this incredible amount of anger
come up out of nowhere, and you look around you think,
(16:00):
why am I angry? That's an old suppression that's lifting
up and moving out. I call it the emotional flu
It doesn't feel good, but once it's out, it feels
so good afterwards because it's clear it's not there anymore.
We've literally moved that out of the way. That barricade
is no longer in the brain anymore. So a lot
of times people that come in that are in talk therapy,
(16:21):
it makes their therapy so much better because now they
can actually talk. I've had numerous people that have said,
I've been in talk therapy for eight or ten years
and we're just not getting anywhere, and all of a sudden,
we do a few sessions with Lens and the conversation
can start. Because if you're really good at suppressing and
you knew how to push it down really, really hard,
then I can ask you till you're blue in the face,
(16:42):
tell me how you're feeling. You can't tell me because
you've pushed it down so far, So when Lens picks
it up and moves it out of the way, conversation
can happen. So whether you're continuing with talk therapy or
doing a M d R any of those other things,
this is going to enhance it. Wow. Yeah, No, I
mean I think it's a great thing to do in
addition to therapy. At least it has been for me.
(17:06):
And it's wild. But you don't always have to have therapy.
I have people that just come in right and that's
all they do, and that's they're fine with it. Yeah,
And I think that therapy too, can be different seasons.
And you know, I'm about to do my twelfth and
I don't know. You might do my latest brain map
and be like, Okay, Amy, you're good for a little bit.
But I may want to come back for some maintenance.
Or I may have COVID, I may have hit my
(17:29):
head somehow, I may just be in a stressful situation exactly,
And so I love that I could come back and
we can sort of take that fifteen minutes and and
move on. I know we were talking about positive thinking,
but what about gratitude? Do you see that playing a
role in how our brain responds to things I do?
(17:50):
And I see I tell people all the time, or
I recommend to them that they start a gratitude journal,
just writing down five things every day that you're happy for.
And sometimes it's really hard, when you're really struggling with
depression or anxiety, it's hard to come up with five things.
But it can be as simple as I woke up today,
or I had clean sheets on on the bed, or
whatever it was. If you write that and you're already
(18:14):
putting your mind into the state of I do have
something to be grateful for. There is something positive in
my life. And on the days when things are really struggling,
you can go back and read them and realize I
do have a lot to be grateful for, so I
highly encourage a gratitude journal. So some of the positive
thinking and I don't know, sometimes can seem a little
woo woo to some people, but it's scientific. It is scientific.
(18:40):
It changes the dopamine and the serotonin and your that's
the chemical part of your brain. But it also helps
shift the the electrical which is what we're working on.
We have a four Things Gratitude journal that we made
to support Haiti. We just put out our third version,
three point oh that actually has two cute color options.
But Mary and I, who created it, we weren't big
(19:02):
journalers at all. In fact, like you said, journaling was intimidating.
So it's not that we didn't have things to be
grateful for, we just didn't know how to write about them,
and that seemed overwhelming to sit down, pin to paper.
Like you said, it really can be as simple as
I woke up today, or it can be a one
word thing. Or we included cute little stickers in the
(19:22):
back for the days you don't have words, Go find
a sticker that matches something that you're grateful for and
PLoP the sticker down. Everybody needs this journal, Well, yes,
let's do it, and yeah it's in Haiti is near
and dear to our hearts, so yeah, all the proceeds
go to that. But it's four things, which I know
you encourage people to do five, but it could be.
(19:45):
You know, sometimes I'm sure it's just good to take
note of one thing that you're thankful for, and that
can be progress. So I would love to know from you, Sherry,
four things that you're currently thankful for. And sometimes I
give people acific so we can learn more about their personalities,
like I would love to know a TV show, a
book of food, and an Instagram followed that you like,
(20:20):
sometimes I give people specifics so we can learn more
about their personalities, like I would love to know a
TV show, a book of food, and an Instagram followed
that you like. The Crown is probably my thing for
TV right now. I am an angliophile one oh one.
My husband's from England, so maybe that's why. But I
love the aristocracy, I love the traditions. I'm a family
(20:44):
kind of person, so I really love that A book
A thousand Gifts. A thousand Gifts is my favorite book
right now? Boss, Yes, I love her book, and in
reading that book, she talks a lot about joy, and
I started thinking about joy. What is joy? Where do
you find it? It's not really happiness, And so I
decided to start a joy journal last year and I
(21:07):
was on a journey for joy, and I decided that
I would journal every time I found joy. I found
joy in the most bizarre and amazing places. Probably it
was in nature, but I want to talk about gratitude
when you have joy and you're looking for joy. It's
really hard to be in a bad mood when you
find joy. And I'm really strong in my faith, and
I think that where I found joy was always where
(21:30):
God had his touch and where he had his hand
and me and my eight Yeah, that's the joy of
the Lord is my strength. That was my mom's verse
through cancer, and that's where her joy and pimp and
joy that all came from. And she was like, don't
let people forget pim and joy. The joy came from
the Lord. The joy of the Lord is my strength.
And so that was very important to her that it
(21:51):
wasn't just this flippant joy. She knew where her strength
was coming from. And I get what you're saying. Like
when you're looking for it, especially in nature, you see it.
My therapist was encouraging me to sort of do something similar,
and I was on a walk and would look down
and you'd be surprised how many leaves are shaped like hearts.
(22:13):
And you can stop and just notice them and be like, oh,
that's so cute and shape like a heart, and take
a picture of it and send it to a friend
or do whatever that. Enjoy it, or if you find
a rock that looks like a heart. Are seeing different,
you know, animals that are really cool to see. I
like to hike here in Nashville around this water and
sometimes there's these cute little beavers and I love seeing them,
(22:36):
and there's owls and there's deer, and it's just taking
the time to be in awe of them. And that
was really taking the time. The first time that I
found it when I started the Joy Journey was I
was I live out in the country and I was
coming home from work and I'm on the same road
every day and it's spectacularly beautiful. But I came around
this corner and the sun just happened to be hitting
(22:58):
this hill on the right time, and it was just
glittery and gold, and there was cows walking down at
Red Barn White Silo. It was so beautiful that I
literally went when I came around the corner and I thought,
there's joy. And then I went, wait, I'm going sixty
miles an hour and I just flew by it. I
asked God for joy. He gave it to me, and
(23:20):
I flew by it. So I stopped the car. Felt
like a fool turnaround, and I went and sat on
the side of the road and just absorbed the joy
for probably five minutes. And it was spectacular. What about
a food that you're thankful for? Speaking of joy, food
can bring us a lot of joke. I love a
(23:42):
lot of different kinds of food. I am a mom
of five kids, so I love to cook. I love
to have big, big gatherings. But if I were to
say a favorite food would probably be Florida stone crabs.
That is my gig. I'm from Florida, so that's kind
of a home food for me. I'm on the west
coast of Florida, between Fort Myers and Arizoda. Okay, yeah,
so we have a lot of Florida listeners given a
(24:04):
shout out. I like Susie Florida. Go, let's go. What
about an Instagram follow I love a lot of different ones.
I love dr Aymon. He's probably my favorite. Um. He
has great snippets. He's probably the leading brain specialist in
the in the world. And so what is it the
type of brain therapy that he does, because I see
a lot of celebrities go to him, and I do
(24:26):
actually think I follow him, but I'm not sure that
I always see his stuff. But I'll even see his
him pop up on news articles because some celebrity went
to him. Right, He's amazing. He does like the spec
scan um, which he's able to go in and actually
see which part of your energy and your brain is
hotter and and more quiet and more busy, and he's
able to come up with a plan based on that um.
(24:47):
He also uses medication, he uses neurofeedback. He has a
whole variety of different things that he uses. But his
snippets on Instagram are amazing. They really set you for
the day. He'll talk about drugs on your brain, alcohol
on your brain, happiness on your brain, depression on your brain,
what those kinds of things do. So he's always just
really good for for kind of setting my day, but
(25:09):
also for me to share with my clients when they
come in during the day. So he's definitely one. There's
another one, the holistic psychologist. She's amazing for delving back
into why we are the way we are and why
we think the way that we think. And she also
puts out these little snippets that go, Okay, here's where
I can change, Here's where I can make a positive change.
(25:29):
So I love seeing things that can help me and then,
like I said, move it forward to help clients. What
are your thoughts on social media and the brain and
our impact, Like, do you huge impact? Huge impact? First
of all, just being on the computer, the your phone, whatever,
there's blue lights, there's all kinds of things that are
happening to your brain physically just watching it. But also
(25:53):
the amount of comparing ourselves as soon as we see
how everybody else is living on Instagram or living on Facebook,
which is, you know, literally a minute out of their
day and we assume that that's who they are the
rest of the time. I think it can really be detrimental. Now,
there's some great things that happen on there, and we'll
never We're never going to be without it, So we've
(26:13):
got to learn to live with it. But moderation is key.
I see a lot of kids that are really really
struggling when they come in, and it's almost always down
to video games that they play and the social media
that they're on, and that's that's incredibly hard for me
to see. Well, I mean, and you've probably had to pivot.
I don't know how many years have you been doing this.
(26:34):
We've been doing this for I've been doing it for
almost eight years now, and so I'm sure just as
time has gone on, has gotten it's just increased a lot.
Because even as a parent, I mean, I get it,
sometimes there's so much going on, they're just like, Okay,
here's the tablet, or here, just go play your video game.
Oh you ran out of time on that. Here's your
Nintendo switch, because we have time limits on everything. But
(26:55):
then if the timeline runs out on one, we just
moved the next just to survive the day. And everybody's
doing that. And it's not you're not a bad parent
now you're doing those things. You're just doing the best
that you can. But it's just being aware of what
that is. Um people that come in with sleep problems,
I'll tell them no blue lights, no computers, no phones,
(27:16):
no anything. A half hour before you go to bed.
It just gives your brain time to desensitize from what's
going on. Um, sleep with your phone six ft away
from you, because there is radiation coming off of that
that is effective. Obviously it's small, but it's still there.
I have my phone completely silenced. I think that starts
(27:37):
it around eight PM for me, maybe even seven, so
I don't have any notifications lighting up my phone in
any way. And then, yes, I started sleeping with it
in the bathroom, which the way my room is set up,
that works for me, but it's helped just having it
out of the way so I don't even think about it.
And then I got one of those amber light bulbs
(28:00):
and I put that in the nightstand lamp and that
is what I turn on. I'm still trying to find
my groove because it's very difficult to not be around
any light thirty minutes before bed, but I try at
least to do my best. And I'll turn off all
my lights and I'll turn my lamp on, and then
I'll get into bed and read or do whatever I'm
(28:22):
going to do to try to or some breathing exercises
to try to wind down. What about breathing huge oxygen
into the into the body and where you don't breathe enough.
If you look and see when you take a good
deep breath and take it in for four seconds, hold
for four seconds and let it out, it feels so good.
(28:43):
I work with people with a lot of anxiety, and
we'll talk about doing that five times before you make
a decision, before you let that anxiety run away from you,
and in that time period, the brain just settles back
down again. Amazing. Tell me a food that I for
sure need to be eating for my brain. Cold water fish,
cold water fish, Omega is amazing. Omega three's are amazing
(29:06):
for your brain. So I'm taking in Omega three capsule
every day. Is that that's certainly helping. That's but you
ask for food. But if I had to do something
specific for my brain, it's a Mega three. Get a
good Omega three in your brain. So salmon, yes, and
salmon um, any of the antioxidants are really important for
your brain. This is a really interesting fact about the brain.
(29:26):
It doesn't have a filter like your kidneys or your liver.
So what happens when you go to sleep. It washes
itself with a synovial fluid. It goes in and washes
it and takes all the toxins from the day and
puts it into your bloodstream and takes it out. If
you don't get a minimum of six to eight hours
of sleep, that never finishes the cycle. So it's like
(29:48):
a dishwasher that doesn't finish the cycle and you've still
got little bits of things on the forks. That's what
happens when you're not getting a significant amount of sleep
and water. So you need that to be able to
function well to get rid of those toxins. Okay, and
since you mentioned sleep, we'll go back to that. You
say six to eight hours minimum minimum. So as an adult,
(30:10):
you know, sometimes I think we may if it's a
Saturday and we slept ten or eleven hours, we might
wake up and be like, ah, I've I'm so behind,
or I've wasted the day or what you know, But actually,
is that good for your brain? So it's permission to
sleep in. Yes, every once in a while you can ever,
well that how does our brain? So because for me
(30:32):
on a Saturday and Sunday, I'm not going to wake
up and my weekday hours like I do for work.
It's just not going to happen. I have zero desire
to do that. But you hear that it's good to
stay on the same routine and get your body into
rhythm and try to wake up at the same time
every single day. And I'm like, well, it's not happening
Saturday and Sunday. You don't want to get up at
four am? No, I do not. Is that okay? It
(30:54):
is okay, Okay, it's okay. Now, a lot of times
people will think, well, I'm only going to get four
hours of sleep or five hours for the next three
or four days, but I'll catch it up on the weekend.
Catching it up takes a lot longer. For every hour
that you're deficit on that six to eight hours, it
takes three to four hours to catch out. Okay, So
that's not gonna happen. There's no catch up. I'm just
(31:16):
thinking of questions that people might have in their head
about lens therapy, and one popped in that somebody would
be like, do you feel it? Does it hurt? And
I mean I can say as a client, no, Now, um,
all I'm doing is sending in a radio wave at
one and a half hurts that's about six hundred times
less than your cell phone, so you're not going to
feel it. I do have some people that will say, oh,
(31:38):
I feel a little tingle or I just felt something happening.
That's the actual brain waves moving shifting around. But that's energy.
There's no possible way for us to hurt you with
one and a half hurts. That can't happen. Most people
will leave feeling really really chill. Some people will leave
feeling excited. Like you said, it's either wired or tired.
Kids typically will leave really sleepy. They'll sleep in the
(32:01):
car all the way home, and parents are always thanks,
thank you um. But for adults, you just might feel
just really chill for a little bit. Usually that first
night you sleep really well, and then it takes about
forty eight hours for the brain to find that new
pathway and then it'll stay there until I see you again. Well,
I have enjoyed coming to you, and again, multiple people
(32:22):
had talked about harmonized brain center. Like I said, you
hear about it, and my friend Bobo had texted me
your number months before I ever reached out to you,
and I had taken a break from my other type
of neurofeedback and that was no longer going to fit
my schedule. Anyways, I adored her, that was great, but
I thought, okay, well, I'm just gonna shift and go
(32:43):
ahead and give this a try. And it's funny how
many people I run into in your waiting room that
I know or that I you know, I don't come
up in conversation and they'll be like you go there too,
and I'm like, yep. And then actually, my friend Kelly
just texted me today and said, I'm still wanting to
get in with Sherry, hopefully she'll see me, and I said,
I'm actually seeing her today, so I'll connect y'all again.
(33:05):
So you've got uh, you're highly sought after in town,
but you do have others practitioners therapists that do it
for you as well, or that administer the lens therapy.
So Harmonized Brain Centers dot com is the website that's
where you can get all of the information. But again
you could look up if there's lens therapists in your area.
(33:28):
And what was that website again, OAKS Labs o c
h S Labs dot com. And I'm actually Harmonized Brain
Swenters t N dot com. And my brother has the
Harmonized Brain Center in Colorado and he's Harmonized Brain Centers
dot com. So that's his website. Okay, I'm done, Tienne
at the end. Okay, So t N. I love that
you and your brother are both in this and I
know he started it first. Got ten years ago his
(33:52):
son was hit in the head with a baseball, went
into a coma for a few months, and when he
came out out of the coma, had to relearn everything.
They put him in rehab where he had to learn
how to walk and talk and eat and do it all.
And then they handed him back to my brother and
his wife and they were like, now what do we do?
So they spent years trying different therapies, looking for the
(34:13):
best that they could do for their son. And he
did amazing. He graduated from high school, he holds down
a full time job. But they were always on the
quest for how much more can we do for him?
Eight years post coma, which is a long time, the
longer time you're away from a head injury. They heard
about Lens and Austin made huge, huge strives was able
to actually start speaking really well where you could understand
(34:35):
him easily. Huge change for the family, so much so
that my brother decided that's what he was going to do.
So he went out to Colorado from Florida and he
started him and I his brain centers out there. I
was a school principal in Florida. I owned a school
down there, loved kids, loved working with kids, and so
when we moved up here to Tennessee, after listening to
(34:56):
the stories that he was telling me and the successes,
I just fell like this is where God wanted me
to be so happy to be here and passionate about
what I do and look forward to seeing lots and
lots of people because I really love it. We're definitely
helping so many people and like I said again, so
many people that I I know. So if you're curious
about it, look into it and have the day that
(35:20):
you need to have, breakwater and don't forget look for
the joy, and then you practice gratitude because it's definitely
good for your brain. And four things dot com is
where you can find our four Things Gratitude Journal. Thank
you Sherry for joining me. Samy, it was such a
fun time. Thank you and then again Sherry will be
on with me this Saturday, on our way
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