I'll get a team, Greg, Anthony Harper, Anna from Anna Movement, Tiffany and Cook over there in the top left hand corner, and my bloody, my bloody page. Anyway, we'll start with tip Hi, TIF, high Hearts.
How are you?
Oh so good?
Well?
Not so good? Right now? I've got a piercing headache because ninety minutes ago you haven't even mentioned it. Can you see the top of my forehead?
I can, but when you put your head up it's barely visible.
Yeah. Yeah, So ninety minutes ago, I had a bloke just cutting into my head for the second time in two weeks. I also got this one, which is not very good for but you can just see that. So I had two big skin cancers cut off ninety minutes ago.
Looks like wrestling sharks and.
The bloody the bloody anesthetic is just starting to wear off. So if I start wearing my slurds and I start being even more incomprehensible and delusional and ridiculous than normal, you two might have to take over, do that. Anna Galtsworthy from On a Movement Wearing The Daily Talk Show, which is a now redundant but one time great podcast here in the Thriving Metropolis that Tommy et Ol featured on for a long time. Hi, how are you.
I've got my friend Craig. Well, he featured on it daily, didn't he? That was his thing, Like I'm going to do.
No, no, no, no, no, I'm Craig Tommy. I mean I'm talking about speaking speaking of cognitive decline, there's some right now. Well there you.
Go, because I didn't know that I skipped a beat there. I thought that was pretty clear. Still referring to Tommy, Yes, daily he did.
It was the daily talk show.
That was his goal. Was was it one hundred days in a row? No?
A thousand? They did a thousand episodes and then they then the boys pulled the pin, which is I mean, I was going to say, that's a fucking lot, but we're well past that before we go on, as I mentioned before, TIF otherwise Melissa will literally sack me from my own organization, which I do not want. Hey, everyone, guess what coming up on? Hang on? EA scrolls to the appropriate bit of the thing coming up on September
nine online. That's right online, fuck no shit, yep online Between seven September nine in November eleventh, I am doing an exclusive. It's kind of exclusive because there's only fifteen people ten week mentorship me and fifteen people, it ain't cheap. So if you're looking for a bargain, this is not it. If you're looking, well, it depends on how you perceive it,
I guess, but I think it's not that value. Mean, fifteen people a weekly thing between like I said, September nine and November eleven, it's a Monday night, it's ninety minutes. Knowing me, it'll go for close to hours as well as everyone who signs up for the program gets a one on one with me for forty five minutes, which also knowing me, will be an hour. And it is
not for everyone. It is for people who obviously can afford it, but also for people who are ready to like have a have a crack, people who are a little bit sick and tired of being sick and tired, people who have been standing at the starting line but not really getting much beyond that for a long time.
It is really kind of an amalgamation and a culmination of a lot of the stuff that I've done for the last forty years, working with bodies, working with minds, working with businesses, and organizations helping individuals and organizations and groups that think better, do better, and produce better. So that's kicking off very soon. If you want to know more, I know, go to the bloody website craigharp dot net
and you'll find it. There you go sales, pitch over, take a side of fucking, take a breath whatever.
There you go to si as Silk.
Do you know what I do? It's clear I hate selling things, and I'm not. It's why I say it's not for everyone.
That is for some.
Well, actually it actually is a bargain if you ask me. The price point is magnificent.
Well, a couple of people booked in and said this is not dear at all, and I went, I hate you know me, I hate selling shit. Right, I'm much more enthusiastic to talk about something that I'm doing for free, but apparently I have to pay the bills and Melissa and you which is you know, that's always a challenge. But anyway, that's what we're doing. So if you're interested, come along. Anna. How have you been? How have you been? Yeah? Have you been on Planet Anna?
Planet Anna? Planet? So if we zoom right out and we look at planet Anna, she's fitter than she's ever been, Like in a really constructive, thoughtful way. She's you know, her family is as happy as she's ever been, referring to the family as she got a house, got a happy dog behind me. But zoomed in internal, Ana, she's struggling.
Let's lean into that a little bit. We like Tiff and I like these conversations. We like it where there's a problem. No, well, do you know what we like? I think, I mean, I can't speak on behalf of Tiff, but I think I'm right when I say this, but myself definitely, I like it when we don't have a bloody, superficial let's get fucking amazing, let's pump the air and let's all think better and do better, and let's let's
just it. Come on. It's like, I mean, we need those moments and we need a bit of encouragement and hyperbole and fucking rah rah and fire walking and fist pumping. But sometimes I think it's good for because you're a high performia an ex those physiologist, you stand in front of groups, you're a bit of a winner, you're super smart, so as Tiff. But I think it's nice when you know, not that we want to get on here and be
fucking depressed every episode and talk about our bullshit. But I think periodically it's good for people to hear, you know, what's going on that's not awesome. So what do you think that's about? Why the internal malaise the malaise?
So I'm quite confident, quite quite confident I've bruised into the second stage of perimenopause.
Oh wow.
When we've chatted before on this topic from a clinical point of view, we've talked about how forty to fifty five percent of women experience mental health challenges in that time because it's a neurological change, i e. It's a brain change. Experience, yes, and I was quite spontaneous. It was like one day feeling like me and then actually no longer episode, longer series. Probably about four months ago I started getting something that I would call was more
similar to PMDD. Like so, PMDD is a unique condition where your mental health and your concept of yourself becomes completely thrown at a particular time of your menstrual cycle and you hit the pause button.
Tiff, can you look up that episode I did with Nicky? Remember we did a whole episode on that and just tell us what that number is, just because someone's going to go I want to know more about that. Yep, sorry could come.
And that was happening for me, like I would hit ovulation so I hear it still have a normal menstrual cycle. It was at that stage about thirty five days, so I'd hit ovulation and that would be you know, a point where you're typically kicking goals and you're feeling quite connected and all that kind of stuff. And I started noticing that my internal dialogue did not match who I am and what I'm pursuing and how I would normally think.
So I'm so happy at the level of my own of awareness because I was able to go, hang a second, who's in my head? Because that's not how I think, That's not how I go about my day. That's not what I carry around when I'm trying to relate with other people, and it's not the energy to bring to it as well. And just on a body put a front, I required much more recovery in that part, you know,
that's the second half of your cycle exercise. I was much agier, took a lot longer to recover anyway, that started happening for maybe about last three or four months, and I was like, oh, yeah, that's cool. This is
just a predictable pattern. And I did a few things to sort myself out, and there's a few changes and a few positives, and then all of a sudden one day woke up and the darkest cloud I've well, I can't say that I've ever been in, but the darkest cloud in the last twenty years at least was what was in my head. Wow, it wasn't it as I said. It was spontaneous. It had a low grade anxiety to it. So there was like sometimes I describe it as that
you're sitting in your car. You're a neutral and you're just gently reavy, so there's a buzz in the system that's distracting. But the thoughts were more depressive, more dark. It was more like, what the heck are you doing? Are you not good enough to be doing this? It was all the self doubt and sabotage stuff that normally I could catch and go that's not how you think, and use my strategies and shift it around. But this was louder. It was more radio doom, gloom constantly in
the in the Norgin and I reckon. It's been going on for about two weeks now and pretty heavy, so I shared it with my partner. I hate there's some pretty heavy stuff going on for me. We've figured out what that looks like in terms of us, and you know, when I'm waving the flag or maybe when I'm not waving the flag but need support to some degree, sort of open about it with my kids in appropriate ways. But it's an interesting one because I actually I'm starting
to feel a little better. I've put another few more things into play for myself, but the energy is still really there. It's a weird thing, and I think this is where a lot of people operate in depression, is that it's just gently there with you. It's not overtly big all the time, but it just gently follows you around.
Or wow, that's funny. Do you relate to this, like what what's coming up for you as you're hearing this.
Yeah, I've turned a bit of a corner the last two to three weeks, but my most of my earlier this year has been that in a very physically, very physical fatigue as well, but that not recovering and not Yeah, one hundred percent relate to everything you're saying, Anna.
Would you explain Anna to me the dumbest, dumbest member of the panel and.
That wound's coming through.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Well I probably I am literally the dumbest, dumbest. See I clearly prove my points to me and the other I'm being presumptuous when I say males. I'm sure some males are more all over this than I am. I'm a little bit over it because I trained women for forty years going through similar stuff, so I'm a little bit more educated and aware,
but not on the same page as you. Two. When you go second stage of perimenopause, could you kind of without doing a two hour workshop in a in it or to break down first stage, second stage, like what is what's how do we define that? What is the difference? How many stages are there and what's happening?
So the stages that I'm referring to are the ones that because I think there's two models that people talk about, so this is the model that Professor Pryor talks about. So four stages. Stage one is you know, there's subtle changes where progesterone is starting to drop down there's no overt real changes anywhere else in life. But you might notice your skincare routine doesn't work the same. You know,
you need to switch to you odor it. Like there's just you know, there's a little bit more fatigue on board. So there's just all these really subtle changes, Like you're going about life in normal and there's just all these little subtle changes going on. But in all, in all, most things are the same. From a body point of view.
Some people might start changing body shape a little bit, their exercise might to start to not suit them a little bit if they're tending to exercise well, I'd say people that are overtraining will have more overt in sort of messages from their body at that point. But all in all, Stage one is pretty masked, and that for some very early can start within sort of late thirties, but definitely at the start of the forties most scales
are kicking into there. Stage two, you might start to see changes in the actual menstrual cycle, you know, day one today, whatever, in terms of the menstrual bleed. And then it also can be like your cycle starts changing length a little bit. The total so it might go from twenty eight to forty or forty to thirty. You know, there's just these really subtle changes, and then you zoom along.
Stage three is okay, we're skipping some stage with some cycle, and at that stage you're probably having some pretty dramatic jumps in estrogen and drops in estrogen, and slowly in the background, progesteron is just becoming lower and lower and lower. So all the time the ratios are a bit different. And our body is a prediction system, right brain and body, so it's used to this predictable rhythm that you're in before.
So that starts turning up in lots of spaces because hormone receptors are pretty much on every organ in your body. And then four is where it's technically the year from the last menstrual cycle, that one day when you click over, and that's assuming that you don't have stress changing a menstrual cycle and all these other things going out fire or in all the other stuff. And then there's a one day that's stage that's part of stage four, and
then you clock over into post menopause. So menopause itself is one day.
Really, yeah, I did not know that. So when people say I'm going through the menopause, which they my mum and her friend. Oh I've got the menopause. So who is my mum's girlfriends? I've got the menopause. I'm in the you know. Okay, that's see live and learn, fellas and some ladies, I'm sure. And so like the thing with all of these things, you know, like with guys go through obviously nothing nearly as difficult guys go through
what is clinically called antipause. We have testosterone drops and a whole bunch of things happen, but not as nearly debilitating on any level. But I guess I'm asking, But I guess with menopause, like with a lot of other physiological changes that happen to both men and women over the lifespan, that it affects women, you know, obviously in
different ways to different levels. For some people they kind of sail through it with a few minor speed but nothing overly dramatic, and for other people it's almost you know, or it is debilitating for periods of time. Right, And so is that is that primarily a genetic thing or is that a lifestyle thing, a behavioral thing, or a bit of everything.
I think it's like we're kind of describing with my experience, there might be a genetic factor in it. So sometimes you can look at what was my experience in puberty one and you can get a pretty similar.
Alright, we're all going, what's puberty one?
Puberty one?
You know, we're not a clinician, right, We're just some fucks listening to you. What's puberty one? Craig with a headache, Just Craig with a bandage.
Puberty one. So puity one's just puberty for everyone. Yeah, but if we look at it through that female physiology lens and then carry it through the other title you could give, perimenopause is puberty two, right, Yeah, so there
can be kind of genetic biases in there. So there's a genic bias in my family for depression, right as well as like Chucky, my grandfather went to war and he was suicidal and returning for war and all, you know, all those complications, and then you go ahead and look at, you know, the epigenetic change in my nervous system that was part of my story as a teenager, and how that kind of comes into what I've carried through. So that could potentially make it a little bit more extreme
for me in puberty two or perimenopause. But usually there's there's a trend within your own body that when you get to this critical window of puberty one and critical window of puberty two. From a genetics point of view, where things are recalibrating as inevitable and programmed by our bodies, that has a level of genetics to it. But absolutely the stress levels, lifestyle, all of that comes into it. So when I'm working with corporates or people within my programs,
stress management is a huge part of us. Stress management as in you know, emotional stress, psychological stress, mental stress is in workloads, life stresses, but then also exercises stress as well. So we want to look at what is stress. We want to take away that it's a bad thing and look where it is you stress.
Or where it is distress.
Distress, that's it, and you know that harmetic thing. It's a good version of stress until here, and that's very much.
I think let's just clear that up for everyone. So when we talk, yeah, you stress is good, distress is bad. So going to the gym and working out as something as you do it the right way as a form of EU stress, you stress and distress is when Anna's screaming at me for doing a bad job and I'm getting stressed. Heytiff, while we've got the clinician on the show, do you have a do you want to be selfish
and ask a question? No charge, absolutely free, like fuck it, get a console while she's here, I mean, nobody's listening.
How do I just make it stop? Anna?
You cannot? My friends? And I think that's a really nice question, tif because it is how we relate to it can be a massive and massive thing in terms of emotional and mental stress on it, and that can be you know, this is a relating to it as it's almost like a type of grief like I'm losing my youth or you know, I'm not seen in the workplace the same and actually putting a title on that and being mindful about how that does drive your decisions
and stresses in terms of views and things. I think it's important for women to understand that when it gets to a certain point and you've run out of strategies within the lifestyle box, that you really should be or at any stage checking in with your GP as well, who's fully informed on hormone replacement therapy. Because it is shown in some things around sleep for example. There there's
some good research and backing on it. There's it's relating to bone health, which can also relate to anxiety, demineralization and osteo I can't even think of the name now you're giving me blanks osteocoalcon which relates to anxiety levels from in a bit of a loop between the bone
and the brain and that. Yeah, you just I think ultimately just having a conversation and starting a relationship with a GP that understands perimenopausal transition, because there's a bit of a yucky stat that that's upwards of ten visits for women before they get their symptoms taken seriously.
Wow, Yeah, what what is that about it? Like, why do you think that is?
There's some pretty strong data in across lots of medical medical spaces that women are not taken as seriously when fronted up in medical spaces. So pain, for example, we have to be in much much much more pain and we have to have come multiple times giving evidence of pain to be then have our pain taken seriously and medicated for whereas comparably, when they look at the studies a male coming with the same complaint would be medicated a lot earlier and a lot quicker.
Wow.
So that's just one example of how there's some quite big gaps gender gaps in how medicine is approached between female and male physiology.
Have you been to an ED lately, either of you? Emergency department?
Yeah, I'm trying to think of the last time. After a run of a couple of years where I was in MD. It was a bit weird. I thought I had a curse or something.
I was in that story. Well, I was in there last week when I was doing a circus trick in the gym that didn't end well. And let's just say, you know, I injured myself and I ended up. But the interesting thing is when you go in there, and this is a really interesting question, the triarche nurse or supervisor and the triarche person is the one that basically decides how hurt you are or how important you know,
where you should be on the priority list. You know, So if you come in and you know your head's falling off, you'd be number one, right. But if you come in and you go, no, I tweaked ma looa back, You're going to be number forty six, and then the triage nurse asked me one to ten, how much pain are you in? And I know the system, right, and I knew if I said ten, I'm going to get bumped up. But I didn't want to say because I wasn't in ten pain. But I also wasn't in one pain.
I was in like significant pain for a while, so I think I said five or six, you know. But it's funny how they there's this subjective evaluation that obviously, you know, like there could be a dude in the exact same pain as a lady and he goes nine and a half and she goes four, and they're experiencing or vice versa. It doesn't have to be gender based, but it's just it's just funny where you go in and you literally give them this score, and that will
that will definitely influence how quickly you get seen. But pain is a really interesting science. If you look like you're going to say something.
We just think that's reflective of most symptoms of perimenopause and menopause is it's an evaluation of circumstantial things and opinions. You're going and you say I'm not sleeping well, I'm feeling anxious. People get put on antidepressants and anti anxiety meds for this year. I have gone, I've been going. Am I perimenopausal? Or do I have I been bringing up some trauma and is that coming out in my
body and mind? Or I am I just under long term burnout and this is the end of the road, Like or is the intermittent fasting that I was doing is that really not good for me and raising my cordinal levels? Or like how do you answer that one question of what is this cluster of symptoms all about?
Or is this cat making me mental?
That's very beautiful. You saw how lovely she used in that video I shared, you think very much.
Let's not open the cat door again. I got it cat defense. I got in trouble. But it's true because like your stress response or your level of anxiety could be a specific thing, or it could be a combination of things, right, and it's hard to know exactly what is the main contributor or cause.
It can be a real kickut and there's like there's multiple things in what you just said. Then well we could do a consolet on.
It is.
It's this gentle recalibration in your brain about what neurotransmitters are available for me from a prediction system that my body is used to.
What does that mean in English?
Because so we've got hormone receptors in our brain, estrogen, progesterone, and they have partnerships with different neurotransmitters, so they're kind of related to what drives us, what gives us particular feelings. We don't fully underne I don't want to say wheeze if I'm involved, but when we look at you know, the scientists that are looking and talking about that, we
still don't fully understand where emotions come from. And there's a fantastic book by Lisa Feldman Barrett where emotions come from.
She's been on the show Get Out.
I have to go back, Jiff, get us the number. So this is it's an interesting thing in what you're talking about, right, Tiff, because if we go all of those things could be part of what's going on for you. And we just need to figure out where the hierarchy of decision needs to be. But that ultimately, as someone coming to their forties, am I correct?
Yeah? Forty one?
She wishes, she wishes fucking bodies in the rearview mirror.
Bro And by the way, here went randomly curly two years ago from dead straight to curly.
That you know boiling away under there is that it's not a perimenopause, isn't a switch. It doesn't just got kind of get switched on. It's this gentle transition that happens, like some people are still having babies through this time, so it gets masked into that process. To your point, you're potentially having a level of burnout, which would then exacerbate the experience of perimenopause because stress drives and sort of snatches progesterone, which is our calming foremone. So we've
got this. It's interesting, right, because it could be all of those things. But which is the most powerful thing for us to look at and put our attention towards. Which is going to flick a switch in your physiology? And that's sort of less of a cookie cutter thing, but more about knowing what's happened for tiff all the way through a physiology from day zero to now, even potentially previous generations. And you know, then, how is that map out? It's and really commonly is at this point
which is definitely my story as well. I'm at kind of the peak of my career. I'm really clear at what i want to do, and I'm pushing hard, and often we're climbing the ladder and there's you know, kids rocking around. Potentially there's definitely parents rocking around having troubles with their health as well. This is a heap on the plate as well from just a general stress point
of view. But you trucking a little bit of burnout, and burnout and perimenopause symptoms mimic each other really similar, do.
You think, Anna, So you've been kind of for all of your career until now working When you would work with women with menopause or in perimenopause, it's more even though you're trained and qualified and knowledgeable and researched, it's
more theoretical. But now you've got this experiential understanding, right Like now you're like, oh, this is actually like there's a big difference between you know, I've written a million programs for people to run a marathon, but when I ran my first marathon, I went, oh, fuck, oh this is bullshit. The fuck wants this fucking marathon running? Like I reckon, I'd written a hundred programs accident as an exercise scientist for people to train for and run a marathon,
and then I ran one. I went, why the fuck would anyone do? This is ridiculous right one and out. And yes, I'm comparing marathon running to menopause. I don't know why.
It's a ten year thing.
Well yeah, but for you, you're sitting in the middle of it, having all this knowledge and having had all this experience coaching and you know, prescribing and caring for people going through what you're now going through. How do you manage you? Because not everybody has your knowledge or skills or awareness. So like for you to go like for you to share how you feel and to describe with absolute clarity you know your hormones and your emotions
and your even your psychological state. Is that an interesting albeit not fun, but an interesting process?
Yes, is the short answer. And then from it, like I looped the two concepts together from a business point of view and from a like a me point of view, is when I first form directly started speaking to perimenopause rather than just people rocking in and checking where they were at, you know, within a group or program format.
I was.
I was taking a Chinese medicine approach to perimenopause, and they say, if you come to me with symptoms, you're seven years late. I think that's what they say. So I was recovering from my second pregnancy and a huge burnout nod to tip, huge burnout, and I was just starting to put body weight back on, and I was getting my head clear and thinking about starting another business, and I was hanging a second, I really need to be more thoughtful with my health. So I started seeing
a Chinese med practitioner. And it's probably one of my proudest health things in the last four years, is because I've gone consistently and I've done that, and I've been lucky enough to have the cash to be able to do that, and that's the most consistent I've been with
something outside of me making decisions for my health. So I've done that consistently for like two or three years with my amazing practitioner, and that was these teeny tiny check ins with my health every month that I would not have done before.
What is the continued on, sorry, what is the divergence between your very Western training as an exercise scientist and exercise physiologist where we're all about, you know, like medicine, Western medicine and drugs and anatomy and physiology and understanding the body through a very Western science kind of lens. Like what led you to and this is not this is a curiosity, not a criticism. What led you to open the door on going and seeing a Chinese practitioner?
What did you learn? Why did you do it? And what's the space between you know, what you knew in the past and what you know now having worked with that person.
I just had to pause and I don't actually know if I can answer with like clarity. There's a clear feeling coming up in my body at the moment, which is like it's a warmth and it's a comfort, and it's a trust and it's not a trust. It's weird because it's not a trust because I understand what they do. It's a trust because it's just trust in maybe the deep long history of it as a medicine practice. And also this vary for me because you know, I'm a thinker.
I like problem solving and you know, being I need to be thoughtful that I'm not creating problems because I am a problem solver. Yes, is that I like being able to go and trust the process but not know the process.
That's called faith, that's called faith handover.
So completely handover and trust the practitioner has got. I've got to click personally with the practitioner. Definitely. Still that doesn't go away, but there's there's an intrigue and also just an ability. It's a need and ability and to want to be able to let go of being the decision make it completely for my own body.
So there's seven people leaning forward on their seats now going harps ask her what the fuck happens when she goes like what is the treatment? What is the medicine? Like? What do they do? What do you do?
So what I can say what I do? So they work on meridians and acupuncture channels, and you know they live in the organs and they're looking for different flows in the body based on symptoms. So what I would do was come with symptoms and then how they relate to them is different to how the medicine system would relate to it. And they still treat illnesses, but ultimately what they're doing is a wellness system, so they're looking for health before it goes wrong.
Yes, we're proactive, not reactive.
Yeah, whereas Western medicine is inherently something's gone wrong, here's our drugs to control it, fix it, all that kind of stuff.
Have I ever told you my story about I've told this two or three times, so I apologize listeners if you've heard it, Tiff, you might have heard it. But I did one hundred years ago, when I was running track side sports in Hampton down the road, I did an Advanced Diploma of Tactile Therapy, which is essentially an eighteen month course in massage, shiatsu aka pressure, reflexology, all this stuff. Right, it's kind of halfway between a cert
for and a degree or something. It was. It was quite hard, right, but for me because I wasn't particularly you know, clever. Anyway, nothing's changed, but one day we did this thing. Where so, reflexology is basically in simple terms like points in the feet where they poke bits of your foot and that corresponds to a spot in
your body. Right, And so in Eastern medicine, as you said, pressure points, there's like three hundred and sixty one pressure points and fourteen what they call energy meridians or meridians, and they have this you know, iridology years using the eyes to kind of treat the body or recognize things, and reflexology is the foot, right, And I really thought at this point, like I remember my teacher his name was Maurice Copeland, and I remember thinking this is bullshit.
But I didn't say it. I just I just doubted, right. I thought, there's no way that you can fuck around with my foot and then diagnose something in my body, because it essentially you know. And so he had this. So we did night one and there's like twenty thirty students and he goes, Craig, can you come up the front.
I'm like sure, So me and my magnificent feet go up the front and then he's got these two charts behind us, these a frames left foot, right foot, and all the parts of the left and right foot which correspond to different parts of the body. And he goes, he didn't say it, but this is essentially what he said, let me just fuck around with your feet. Don't tell me if you've got any issues, any pain, any anything. Let me just fuck around with your feet, which he
didn't talk like that. I do. So anyway, he started on one foot and he's going through it and he's like this, this is the fucking spleen, and this represents the lungs and this is the you know, like corresponding, I'm like whatever, and then he gets onto my nothing. Then he gets onto my other foot and he touches this spot and I nearly go through the fucking roof.
I didn't even know. And he goes, oh, you've got a problem with your back, and I'm like, and I actually had between my shoulder blades like heaps of pain and he goes, oh, and it's thoracic right like, and he goes hmm. He goes, well, while I'm here, do you want me to fix it? And I'm like, well, So then he fucks around with my foot for five minutes, and I'm not bullshitting, the pain that i'd had for three or four days in the middle of my back went away. And I'm like, you're a fucking wizard. I'm
a little bit scared and I'm a lot impressed. But he literally diagnosed. And I'm the most skeptical person. So if I'm saying everyone, it's well, in my case, it's true that's what actually happened. But yeah, so I have at the very least I have a very open mind about Eastern medicine.
Yeah, And I think for me, like when you're saying what people want to know, what it's like, I think for me, the first time I came to it was when I was pregnant, and I used it as an induction, so you know, the end of your pregnancy, when you're trying to encourage the body to naturally go into the birthing process. And I guess at that point it was if I think back on it and try and give it a title, it was me trying to connect with my body. It's classically the history with my body is
I'm the boss of you body. I'll tell you what to do, I'll tell you what shape you meant to be, and I will absolutely go to the ends of earth to make you present in the way that makes me feel mentally and emotionally. Okay. So I never really connected to my body in this kind of way, which is I think pregnancy gave me that gift, which you know all of us are lucky to have that. But that's I think initially what brought me to it, and I
didn't stay in that at all. I went out and then had my next version of burnout and was a mother and da da da da da, and then coming back to it again after my second trial was born, which was like six years later, and that was me needing to return to my body again by guidance by someone else. And you go into a session, you talk about you know what's brought you here. They guide your questions as well based on their world and if you
are okay with needles, akaid, needles get put in. I had a couple of kind of whack versions of that actually where needles were put in and then I'm laying there and I felt like I was spinning. Wow, no ACU, no Chinese med or accub person has been able to answer to me what that was. So anyone that knows the answer, please contact Craig on me. But yeah, you get your needles on and often there's a little cute little term that they call it. They call it an
acu nap. So often when you're in there, your you know, your energy channels are being aligned and the things that's being treated allows you to come into a state of recovery and relaxation. So yeah, I would meditate on the table and you know, do my little breathwork practice there and tell my brain to stop trying to fix it, let you know, trust the process and yeah, but it was also very caring because the practitioner I had, I would come in every time. It was interesting too. Sorry
I'm layering, I'm jumping backwards. I would have said I'm a pretty healthy person, but having going to her monthly, I would come back and go, oh, no, you know I had a cold or no, no, this happened. No, no, this happened. No. And it was amazing how much of what was going on in my body essentially got denied because I was on the autopilot of life, was cruising along, not actually fully attending to my wellness particularly well. So having her there as a check in was really, really quite powerful.
I want to lean into this idea of connecting with the body. I feel like that's a really that's probably another episode. But I feel like a lot of us are disconnected from our body, or completely identified by our body, but disconnected from what it's telling us. Disconnected from you know, we talk a lot about the body being a biofeedback system. It's always talking, it's always sending signs and signals and messages,
it's always communicating. But sometimes because we're so either so unaware, so disconnected, so focused on something else, we don't listen. And I know there's no three step plan, and this is open to both of you. How do we connect with our body? I feel like I'll shut up after this. I feel like for most of humanity, most of the evolutionary time line of human kind, you know, three hundred thousand years or so, we haven't had all the shit
that we have now. We haven't been so distracted, so sidetracked, so obsessed with other bullshit, and we've lived a much more natural life and been much more naturally connected. Is there is there a path back to connection? What might it look like? What might an ingredient be.
We've just passed the law today where employees are allowed to know not engage in work outside of work hours. Lawfully, that's a step, but I think, yeah, I don't. From an exercise point of view, I think we really need to completely change the role of exercise. So exercise now is marketed and delivered to people as a way of controlling their body. It is not delivered to them as a way of feeling the discomfort and the resilience of
a marathon run. How that relates to me as the person I would like to be and leaning into what matters in my life. It's going slowly, so slowing down. So for some people, laying still on an acupuncture table would sound like a version of hell versus you know, can we go fast and can we go slow? So for most people it's learning how to go slow, I think,
or at least in my world. But also for other people, feeling discomfort and knowing what version of discomfort is appropriate for the body to feel, and trusting the body in that way. That also leans into pain as well. Pain as a signal from the body, not something to be controlled or gotten rid of, which is a fair paradigm shift. Is what is this pain trying to tell me?
En?
If I inquisitively say to my body, what what do you need? Rather than medicating it? And you know, I'm not denying the requirement of that for people to function, But for most of us who just have intermittent pain, what is this pain telling me about what I'm doing in my life that then therefore needs to be attended to in a different way, so I think, And also just returning to our body in the sense that when we have an emotion or a habit or a stimulus.
The following response is that actually helpful? And if I actually tap in with what does that stimulus from a brain to body experience do to me? Where does it land? And then what choices do I habitually make because of that sensation that we could be way more tuned into the sensation. I've been sitting in this chair for two my bum is numb. That means I haven't had a break for me to then reboot my brain. So therefore I'm delivering this work or talking to this person and
I'm not fully available. If my bom is not my brain is definitely And.
I think also just recognizing that the average person and this is bro science and this is not research, but I would guess the average person in twenty twenty four, just in terms of general movement and energy expenditure, moves way less than the average Aussie in nineteen twenty four.
Like you know, life just used to be more effort, more energy expenditure, more movement, more incidental exercise, more occupational exercise, you know, whereas now you if you want to build a life that involves fucking next to no movement, you can do it. You know you can, you can work from home and spend your life. You know, I mean having this conversation with my dad and you know, trying to get him too, because his life right now, because
he's been crooked the last month. And I understand he's eighty five and he's been crooked, but he's literally spending twenty three and a half hours a day in a chair or in bed because he doesn't have to move much. And I'm going, I understand that's comfortable, Dad, but it's going to fucking kill you, because even though you're eighty five, you still need movement, you still need strength, you still need balance and function, and we don't need to turn
you into an olympian. But for fox sake, get out of the chair. You know, it's like, it is so easy to do not much with our current lifestyle.
Hey, we've got choosing now, isn't it?
Oh? It is it is. I just looked at the thing. Tip's got to go. I've got to go, You've got to go. Let's continue your version of this conversation very soon, your ace. How do people find you, follow you and pay you an enormous amount of money to come and work with their organization.
I am available at un a movement on Instagram, on goldswe he is my personal page on LinkedIn and a movement as well on LinkedIn as well on my website is on a movement dot com and there's a little contact me page like everyone has in you can reach out, we can have a conversation, beautiful Tiff.
Yes, if anyone would like to learn more about pmd D. It was episode fifteen twenty four with Nicki Morrison and Lisa Feldman Barrett get your pen out, Anna was episode one oh seven, O.
Chiff You I mean Joe Rogan has Jamie, I have you.
I'm here for you.
Bro Us three will say goodbye affair, but for now, thank you Anna, Thank you, Tiff, Thank you everyone, Thanks you too,