Hey, Don here with a helpful hint. One of my favorite ways to listen to podcast is by speeding them up. It gives me the opportunity to listen to more of them and to re-listen to my favorite ones. So, if you find that this podcast goes a little bit slow for your taste. By all means, turn up the speed. I listened and overcast personally because I like the control. It gives me over the speed of the podcast, all right? Onto the goodies.
Hello, beautiful humans and welcome to the mental Wellness. Wake up, show a weekly podcast where growth minded creative people, come to learn, best practices from both spirituality and psychology that create lasting well-being. I am your host mental Wellness, expert improvised acting teacher therapist and Coach, Don McMillan. Let's get to it. I'm so glad you are here and the first thing I want to do is I want to thank you for your patience and tolerance. I know the sound quality of this
podcast, varies a lot. I don't have a bona fide studio. So I sometimes have to get very creative in order to find both peace and quiet and I rarely ever actually succeed, but I do do my best to not have too much overwhelming background noise. And that can be a challenge. So thank you for bearing with me with that. The other thing I want to thank you for is for the feedback in the comments that I get.
I love hearing from you so much, so please continue to reach out to me. I am at the dawn McMillan on the socials. Some of my friends have teased me about being the dawn McMillan but hey there are more of us than just one. Can you believe it? It's insane that in a planet of seven and a half billion people. So Of them would have the same name.
There was this woman, many, many years ago, who did something called The Grace Lee Project, her name is Grace Lee, and she went out and tried to meet a bunch of other Grace Lee's. I think there's some conventions of people who have the same name. Like, I think there's a convention for people whose names are Stephen with a pH, and it's all very much silliness, but all of that to say, thank you for listening. Thank you for coming back.
Thank you for reaching out to me and to speak about being rejected. Reached out to I did get some questions and comments about the burnout episode distress episode. So what I want to do is I want to share with you some more practical techniques about how to deal with stress. There's a great book by the n'gaa ski sisters called burnout the secret to unlocking, this dress code. It's really good.
They assembled a decent array of research and put it together in a bite-sized easily accessible format. So, I'm going to lean on Framing, because they put it together in a way that makes it easier for me to just dip in and share with you. But for your own edification, you can go out and get the book yourself before are. Now, I really want to talk about, don't dunk completing the
stress cycle. So when we have more, stimuli more things coming in and across Ting, or nervous system, then we can process at the time, it gets stored in Are in our bodies. It gets stored in our muscle, tissue gets stored in her nervous response. So it's kind of like, if you want to think about the alcohol analogy, right? I believe your liver can process one ounce of alcohol per hour.
So if you limit the amount of alcohol that you were consuming to one ounce of alcohol per hour, you're not going to get drunk. But when you consume more than that, you're going to start to feel Tipsy. You're going to start to be inebriated or impaired. It's kind of the same thing with stress, if stress is Get us in little bite-size, tiny morsels, our nervous system can handle it. Our coping skills can handle it and we are fine. Modern Life doesn't work that
way. We are pretty much inundated with stress, from the time we wake up to the time you go to bed. So completing the stress cycle becomes important. It also becomes helpful in regards to completing the stress cycle of the traumas that we had in the past and had no way to complete at the time. We're not going to go into specifics about what that might
look like. You know, your trauma and if you don't Run, don't walk to go into therapy and figure out ways that you can unlock those and heal them. And but for now, let's talk about completing the stress cycle and one of the best ways to do a tip. Number one is to shake to literally Shake. I've talked about this before, and I'm just going to keep revisiting this because repetition is the mother of learning and there's really only so many Tools in our toolbox as
biological organisms. So put on Dance music and just literally Shake It Out animals in the wild do that? You see a gazelle that gets narrowly escapes Alliance? Oh, because I was running because I was like, well, I am I in chases the gazelle because they'll play is dead in order to escape the clutches of a lion. Eventually the lion goes way the
gazelle literally shakes out. All of those stress hormones that were produced in having their fight flight or freeze system activated They complete the cycle. If the gazelle had outrun the lion instead that stress cycle would have been completed by the running. If the gazelle had fought off the lion, much of that stress cycle would have been completed through the fighting. So the stress hormones, flood your body for fight or flight.
And if circumstances mean that your other option is to freeze, it just gets stuck in your body. And even if you do fight or flight, you still often have more stress stored. Then you you expelled through, whatever it was that you chose to do. So, we're all looking around with cumulative, stress, and literally shaking as one of the best ways to deal with it. I was at a conference.
And it was just so fantastic because the speaker had put just put on a set of drums, and it was just, boom, booked tut-tut like, just as drum beat, and then you just get the drum in your body. And just said, just shake, like, literally just bounce and shake, shake your arms. Shake your hands and just bounce.
Like, you know how little kids at little kid dance, where they bend their knees and just bought their butts up and down, that's it just literally shake your body for 2 to 5 minutes will do wonders for extra credit. You want to have a full-on dance party. Put on your favorite music and just bounce around your living room and you will get a sense of when you're complete. There's a feeling you'll be able
to name it when it happens. But you come home from the end of the day and you have all the stress if you accumulated from that day and you have all the stress of you accumulated for your whole life because you didn't know about this technique and what can you do? You can dance, you can literally shake it out. Oh, So let's revisit shaking it out, that's number one. And then it's also just talk about again about exercise one of the reasons why exercises so
good for you is this? Yes, it's cardiovascular. Yes. That helps to, you know, get your immune system flowing which is so important. So your muscles Contracting is how the fluid of your immune system. Your lymph fluid gets moved through your body. Opening and closing closing your joints, Contracting and relaxing your muscles. That's the pump through which lymph gets distributed through your body so that your glands can expel it and do all of their
processing. So, yes exercise is good for you, because it gets your heart rate up, it increases your cardiovascular capabilities, it is the pump. Your muscles are the pump for your, your immune system. But and also, it helps you complete the stress. Cool. There's a whole lot of a lot of therapies based on this. Absolute complete the stress cycle. So, if you don't want to exercise, can you rethink that? And it doesn't have to be pumping, pumping pumping. You don't have to pumping
anything. It doesn't have to be exercised, right? It doesn't have to be some sort of competitive sport where you're trying to impress. People doesn't have to be about weight loss. It doesn't have to be about bulking up. It doesn't have to be about anything. It has to be your choice and one of the motivations for it really is To get the stress that you have been accumulating out of your body. So walk run, Shake dance box.
Lift tap dance, this will kind of dancing the row swim move your body just do it, do your half an hour a day 10 minutes at a time if you want put a timer on your phone I use a stand-up app and if once an hour you got up and you shook it out for 2 minutes, you would do wonders to discharge the stress that you just Accumulated. So, completing the stress cycle is important because you're going to get more. If you don't complete the stress cycle, you're going to have more
added on to that pile. We've all heard at least in American English, there's a phrase about the straw straw that broke the camel's back. It's what happens when, you know, you give someone a 7-Up instead of a Sprite and they
just chop your head off. Yeah, that's someone that was the straw that broke the camel's back because the all of the daily stresses have been piling on moving your body removes the straw off, your back, takes the monkey off your back, the straw off the camel, fill in your analogy. So if you're not moving your body on a daily basis, please reconsider. So for people who have certain Mobility concerns, there is an option for you. You don't have to be the one move.
Your body, someone else can shake you. Someone else can move you around. You can even use like a vibrating device to stimulate muscle, contractions like a TENS unit, like people use for shin splints, it's this little muscle thing. Chiropractors use editing some massage therapists use it so since he's little electric shock in your muscles and it causes them to Twitch, you can use that. You don't have to move your body under your own power.
Its preferred but not necessary. So if you have certain Cooler or joint issues that make it hard for you to flop yourself around. You can get a TENS unit and get your muscles to contract with that. You can use a vibrating machine to vibrate your body in some way and I know what you're thinking, stop it. Or you can also get some massage
that moves your body around. There's a modality that I was trained in and I really love and I don't know why, I don't do called sensory rip patterning, and it really Is a sense where your massage therapist or protect practitioner, like, lift your joints and just oscillate them and you oscillate the body. So you have someone else's just gently oscillating. You and that's another way to get this stress cycle completed.
And I'm sorry for being so repetitive, but you got to move your body or you got to get someone else to Move Your Body, Move Your Body. The stress is stored in your body. Your body is the key to getting it out. And if you don't want to do that or you can't, that's not available to you. Progressive muscle, tensing is a miracle. So the idea is to contract and release your muscles. You can do that manually. So, if you know or sense or imagine or intend to, for example, tense, your right arm
as hard as you can. And just hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. And then release it. You can complete the stress cycle in that way. So you can just start with your scalp, your toes, whatever. And just clench clench, clench clench, clench, clench, clench clench clench hold. Hold hold hold hold. And the relax them, and you're going to be completing the stress cycle. So stress is not bigger than you
are. Not really, you are more powerful than your stress, and it is so important to complete your stress cycle. Stress is making us sick, stress is making as cranky. Stress is ruining our relationships because if you are stressed out, are you the most patient person on the planet? Are you giving people the benefit of the doubt? Are you cheerful and easy to be around? You are not stress, is making us eat. My most listened to podcast is the one called how to stop overeating.
Okay, there's a lot to that, but I think one of it is one piece of that. Is that we a lot of us especially since the pandemic had no place to put all of this stress and food gives you. Pleasure gives your body something to do and it's one way of kind of completing the stress cycle. It doesn't work as well as these other things but there's a natural reason why we would seek out comfort and food is comforting so stress. That is not managed is because it's bad for you stress.
That is not managed, is bad for you. So my invitation is to complete the stress. Cycle dance, Shake, move oscillate. Do Progressive tension, but your body is the key. The stress is in your body. Your body is the key to release it. Yes. I believe in the power of the mind. Yes, I believe in the spirit. Yes, there are other techniques that help but and also Let's use the tools available to us because your body is the one, having the stress more than your
mind, your mind does plenty. Don't get me wrong. You know, this But ultimately, all of that freezing, all of that fight that doesn't get completed all of that. I couldn't run away is locked into your nervous system. So, there you go. Complete the stress cycle. Move your body every day. Yeah. Yeah. That doesn't mean you have to go, you know, get on the StairMaster every day but it does mean. You know, just give yourself
that gift. Maybe even be like ridiculous and you get out of the car and before you make it all the way into the house. You have a little dance party in the garage to people parking garages. Most people don't most people. I know their garage For the stuff you get my point. I know I'm just hammering this home and now I'm repeating myself. Complete the stress cycle, Your Body Mind and Spirit will, thank
you. So, right now, just to give a little sample of that, I'm going to invite you to do, just a little tiny version of that. So with me right now, I want you to squeeze your shoulders, towards your ears, as hard as it will go, and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze squeeze, put as much tension in your shoulders as you. Oblique and we're squeezing squeezing we're squeezing we're
squeezing. Oh my goodness this is uncomfortable I don't like it it hurts keep squeezing squeezing squeezing squeezing squeezing squeezing squeezing squeezing and drop it just allow gravity to drop your shoulders as far away from your ears as it wants to go. Tada, we took a step toward completing and releasing the stress cycle for today. Alright. You gorgeous human you. I hope that answers some of the questions you asked, and I adore you. Thank you for listening. Do you adore?
You, you kind of should because you're amazing. You really are. You're darn right. Fabulous and do you right here right now. You are whole. You are perfect. You are complete. You are worthy and deserving of all the good things. Until next time. I am so honored that you share time with me. If you've listened this far, then something here was a value to you. Would you please be a friend of the podcast and share it with at least one other person?
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