 Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of likeable science here on Think Tech Hawaii. Likeable science is all about how science is a vital and interesting part of our lives, how we all should embrace science, love the evidence-based nature of it, and take home lessons using our daily lives. I've got a really great guest today, Makana Research Chai. Welcome Makana. Thank you. And she has written a wonderful book called Be Fit in No Time, and we're going to talk about this book. It is filled with great information. That is, when I read it, it was just like it fits so well with the show's theme. It's good science-based advice, but it's very accessible. It's very applicable. People can use it, pick it up, and just, boom, run with it right away. I hope so, yeah. That's the point. Let's just jump in right away to your sort of a central idea on this, what you call mindful multitasking. Now, multitasking has sort of deservedly a really a bad rep, right? Exactly, right. Yeah, when we think of multitasking, we usually think about texting while driving or listening to a meeting while you're doing your email at the same time. But that's not really multitasking because both of those activities require you to think, and you can't think about two things at once. So what you're really doing is task switching from the meeting to the email, meeting to email. With mindful multitasking, I'm not asking you to think about two things at once. Right, you're doing one on sort of almost a subconscious level. Exactly. Thinking about the other, and whether the exercise is in the foreground or the exercise is in the background, you can do it either way, right? Yes, exactly. Yeah, the other multitasking, the way it's commonly used, of course, as you say, you're involved in task switching, which is terribly inefficient, right? You spend a lot of time sort of mentally letting go of one thing, mentally getting up to speed on the other. Exactly. You know, we don't think of that as taking up time, it does take time, it takes energy and it takes concentration. Right. And then when you're doing the one thing, because you are doing it, you're not, you know, you're losing track of the other. Right, right. So it really is, you're doing two things, poorly, instead of one thing well. But this is very different. Right, so an example is actually two types of micro multitasking. So one is, we're not actually doing anything anyway, you're waiting for the microwave, the toaster, the coffee maker. So while you're waiting, you can do squats or push-ups or balance on one foot, because balance is so important as we get older. So that's one category. Another category is where you do have to pay attention. For example, you're driving, but what I'm asking you to do doesn't take your attention away from the driving. So for example, you can sing upbeat songs, or you can listen to comedy. Do deep breathing. Do deep breathing. Yeah, there's all kinds of things. There's so many things you can do in the car. It's amazing. Yeah, you have what, 34 different exercises in here, divided into ones for physical fitness, for sort of mental health, emotional well-being, and even a whole category on spiritual uplifting, right? Yeah, because you know, the medical research shows that all four of those are important to have a long, healthy and happy life. So we, a lot of people think of physical exercise is just to lose weight, but that's like its least important aspect. And then mental wellness is about keeping our minds active and not getting depressed or negative. The emotional is about connecting to others, because emotional connection actually is the biggest indicator for a long life. Right. And then connecting to the divine has also been correlated with longer, healthier, happier lives. Yeah, this ties in neatly to the Blue Zones projects. Yes. You know, where they find in these communities around the world where people live long, healthy lives, they've got all these things going for them. They're typically physically active. They are mentally active. They're connected into their communities with a sense of purpose, drive. I mean, it really fits these same categories rather neatly. Right. And you know, there's I think there's so much science and research and projects being done. And it gets kind of overwhelming. So what I wanted to do was create a really small book, a narrow book that just has 34 techniques in it that are very accessible, very easy to do. And you can just kind of go one by one. One of my readers said that she puts it on our kitchen table. And she just opens it at random every morning, and does that thing that day. Great. What I thought was great is some of these things resonated with me and rang a bell because there are things I'm already doing. And so it's like, Oh, well, cool, I'm already sort of, you know, I'm halfway through it here, or whatever, I've gotten a start on it. So picking up new parts of it is just like adding on to the repertoire of things I'm already doing. It's not starting a whole new program in a sense. And so I found I found that a very appealing aspect. Oh, good. But here's my question for you. This this is really odd, because you are an attorney by training, you spent years in the corporate world, you were a consultant, you wrote, you wrote a book on stay out of court, the manager's guide to presenting employee lawsuits. This is this is very different. So something happened here to shift you from one course in life to another. Oh, well, yes, I ended up in the hospital because of my stressful lifestyle. And the doctor said, change your life, or you will die. So from that, I decided to go to massage school, become a certified stress and wellness consultant with the Canadian Institute of Stress, and also moved to Hawaii, because I'd always wanted to live in Hawaii. So I thought if I'm going to die, might as well die here. But it's been almost 20 years, I'm still here. So and then I became a certified instructor in Pilates and yoga. So I've been pursuing fitness for quite a while. No, that's great. And it's a wonderful for a testament to saying you've got credentials for this, right? I do have some credentials become fit, you know, and that's that's really, that's nice to see you're living it out, you know. So maybe you talk to the audience just a little bit about sort of what how you might start some of these start getting into this routine, or one of these routines. Okay, well, I think one good way to do it is to start with asking yourself, what is your area that you want to work on because there's a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. And I think most of us have most of these things more or less under control most of the time. But there's usually one that's an issue. For me, many, many years, it was the physical that I just didn't exercise. And I know I just said that I taught Pilates and yoga for eight years. But the reason I taught that was because I would not have done the exercises by myself, you know, I had to force myself to be there. But if physical exercises, the issue then, you know, start with physical and just look at what's in there. And pick one, maybe that appeals to you and try that. And then maybe that will lead to another one or another one. Or another way of looking at physical is do you have an issue? For example, a lot of people have low back pain. And part of the reason for that is because we don't have strong abs. So an exercise anybody can do anytime sitting, standing, lying in bed is working their abs. And in Pilates, what we teach is that you imagine there's a fish hook behind your navel. And it's pulling towards your spine and down towards the floor. So you're pulling towards the your back and towards the floor. And then at the same time, squeezing your kegel muscles, pelvic floor muscles. And then you release. So you squeeze and release. And I just ran into Tahitian dancer a couple days ago, and she was telling me that from the time that she started dancing, she's been doing that, the squeezing and releasing squeeze all the time she's on her feet at her job. And she just practices doing that to keep her abs tight. Yeah, it's, it's valuable stuff. And again, the way you've outlined it here is somewhat different from the sort of standard exercise program, right? Standard exercise program you're asked to set aside 20 minutes or 40 minutes or some big chunk of time. But you're saying just slide these in slide it in just these 1000 times each day when you have a spare 20 seconds, 30 seconds or not even spare. So for example, under emotional, one of my favorite exercises in the book is smiling. Because research shows that even fake smiling increases the amount of happy hormones in your body. So I will smile at work in my cubicle while I'm working on a spreadsheet, or I'll smile while I'm cooking, or while I'm doing laundry or cleaning the house. And there's two effects of that. One is that I feel better, and it seems to go faster, whatever chore I'm doing. And it just, you know, makes your day better. Yeah, and plus exercise is an exercise is your face to lift everything. So yeah, so a lot of these things you do while you're doing something else. So it doesn't take any extra time. Right. And there is that whole relationship, as you say, we sort of think we smile when we're happy, but actually smiling actually makes us happy to right, right. And you know, smiling is so great, because if you do it a lot, as I try to do, when I first moved to Hawaii, I smiled all the time, right? Because I was excited. And everyone around me smiled. And then somewhere along the line, I stopped smiling. And everyone around me stopped smiling. So since I've been smiling again, I catch people's eyes, and they smile back. And then sometimes you even have a greater connection. I was in this grocery store. And I had kind of stopped at the end of the aisle. And this local man came around the corner. And I smiled and said hello to him. And I said, Oh, let me get out of your way. And he said, No, no, you go first. And I said, No, I can't go. I have to think. He said, Oh, you cannot think and walk at the same time. No. So we both laughed. And he went on. So now I've got even more happy hormones because I've laughed. Right. Yeah, exactly. And that's the nice thing. This stuff for a snowball is exactly a bunch of these things. You start doing them more, they become easier to do. So do them more. And they then have these spin-off effects that the smiling leads to laughing. Then I go home, tell my husband about it. So then I'm laughing with him that deepens our relationship. So yeah, there is a real ripple effect. That's really wonderful stuff. And the they're really very diverse, the kinds of things we talk about here, but they're all appealingly simple, right? There's nothing very complicated about any of them. Yeah. And which is true for I think, the research is showing us that it's not that hard. Like you say, the Blue Zones Project, these are people who are their country people really, you know, who just live their lives. And you know, I think all of us have it in our genes, right? Because our grandparents or their grandparents live this way too. And we've kind of gotten distance from it. But another way people can approach it, some people have told me that they have a lot of time that they spend driving you know, the average commute time in the United States is 25 minutes each way. And it's longer in Hawaii. And so people can say, Okay, I'm going to drive. So then they can look at all of the techniques that they can use while driving. So one, for example, one of my favorites while I'm driving is a spiritual technique, which is to experience awe. There's research on how important it is to enjoy nature. So as we're driving, if we savor the color of the sky, the shape of the clouds or the play of the light, or rainbows, and go, Ah, it's engaging the same part of our brain that's engaged when we pray. So it's giving us a spiritual experience. Doesn't take any extra time. And way better than listening to news or talk radio, or sitting there a few of the other drivers in the road who are the idiots, right? Right. Now, the thing you can do is pray for them. Right. That takes a lot of enlightenment, though. Right. Or be grateful for them. They didn't run you off the road this time. Exactly. Or forgive them. Forgiveness is one of the techniques that's really important. Yeah, all these things that they really tie and they cross those boundaries a lot. I think when you you're doing things that are improving your emotional well-being and they're also helping you mentally. Yeah, and just starts the day off better. I love to sing. I mostly sing to Beatles or, you know, oldies. And I went into work one day, and I was just really bopping, you know, I was so energetic. And one of my co workers said, Why are you so happy? But I was happy because of that, you know, and so it just spills over into the rest of the day. And then that that tends to have good impacts on people around you too, right? Exactly. Yeah. Well, this is amazing. We're going to we're going to take a little break. And then we're going to come back. McConaughey research is with me today. I'm Ethan Allen. You're here with us on likeable science and we'll be back in just a moment. All the better to see you with my dear. What are you doing? Okay, research says reading from birth accelerates the baby's brain development. And you're doing that now. Oh, yeah. This is the starting line. This is over. Read aloud 15 minutes, every child, every parent, every day. And you're back here on likeable science. I'm Ethan Allen, your host here. And with me today in the think tech studios is McConaughey research I the author of be fit in no time, wonderful new book filled with good advice on how to improve your mind, your body and your spirit, make you emotionally more fit, more balanced, wonderful, simple, accessible exercises that be easily integrated into your daily life and help basically create better habits for you, and make you a better person. So how would you come to write this book? I mean, I understand you were you were being a Pilates coach and a yoga coach and those kinds of things. What really drove you to pull this together? Well, I've been teaching stress management courses. And I was teaching one one night for busy people. And I was telling them, you need to take time to exercise. You need to take time to relax. You need to take time to meditate. And they started laughing at me. They said, we don't have time. We have jobs. We have families. We were caregivers. So I started thinking that night as I drove home, you know, how can I help them? And the idea came to me while I was driving. Well, you can meditate while you're driving. Now don't close your eyes. But but meditation is really just breathing and focusing your mind either on the breath on a mantra or on the moment. So that was the seed. And then as time went on, I started thinking of more and more things that you could do while you're doing something else. So from the moment that I had the idea to the moment that it was published, it was just nine months. Wow. I know, I've never written a book that quickly. But I just got so excited with the idea, you know, because I wanted to help people who say we don't have time and give them a way to have time to make a difference. Yeah, I think I think that's a really critical issue. Because people don't feel they have time. We all have the same 24 hours every day. But people are finding they're doing more and more and more these days, particularly here in Hawaii, where lots of people work two or three jobs just sort of survive. And yes, more people are now finding those caring for older parents or caring for kids or whatever it may be, and sort of on top of their two or three jobs. And they feel they just simply don't have any time. So I think you hit a really beautiful niche here. And you can be taking care of your kids and be doing some of these at the same time. I'm a part time caregiver. And I know sometimes it's very easy to get impatient with an elder who keeps repeating the same thing over and over again. But if I can repeat to myself positive affirmations, then it doesn't get to me, you know, I don't get impatient or annoyed. Right. I've been doing a little bit of gratitude journaling, not quite as consistent as I should be. But my wife and I started that a while ago at her urging and found it to be a very good thing. We sort of dropped it off now. I want to get back into it. Are you on Facebook? We are. So I do mine on Facebook. So every night, I write down three things that I'm grateful for on Facebook. And I'm not doing it for anybody necessarily to see, but I'm already there. So it's not a different thing. And I the gratitude practice I learned is that it has to be three different things every single day, because otherwise the sunset would be there and sunrise would be there every day. So you have to really think sometimes. But after I've been doing it for maybe about six months, one day I was cleaning the house. And I had a deep clean. So this was like four hours into it. All of a sudden the thought popped into my head, I'm grateful I have a house to clean. And so it's that kind of thing where you really start looking or just today driving here. I saw some pink blossoms on the road that were dancing across the road in the wind, you know, and they reminded me of fairies. You know, so that'll go on my list tonight. No, it's great. It's great. And once you start paying attention to these positive things, you see more of them around you then, right? Your attention becomes more focused on that kind of thing. And therefore, you see more of it, you have more reasons to be happy to be grateful. Yeah, you are less distracted by the bad news or the news. Yes. Yeah. In fact, one of the things that in the back of the book, there are some ideas for getting more time. And one of them is to do less news. Because it's there's nothing we can do about it, you know, when I lived in Chicago for a number of years, I would get the morning paper. And eventually I had to stop because it was sort of like each day was it was a contest to see what new Logan human beings think to you know, what more disgusting, awful, wretched thing can they do? And I found it was just it was just terrible. It was for ruining my day each day to pick up the newspaper and see some other appalling human act. Yes, I too. Watch read the paper every day. And when I moved here, I stopped. And now as part of my job, I need to look at headlines. But that's all I do is look at headlines. And if there's something related to my job, then I pull it out. But otherwise, I'm like, Okay, you know, I got the overview took me 10 minutes, you know, instead of an hour. I mean, there is a very interesting tension here because we live in really interesting political time, shall we say, and not normal political times. And a lot of people feel with some justification that we can't ignore this stuff and pretend it's all normal. We all have some obligation to pay some attention to it and be sure we're reacting appropriately to whatever crisis is occurring. Yeah, it's very how do you deal with that? My philosophy is rather than focusing on, you know, what's going on out there is to work really close to home. So I've been volunteering with IHS, the Institute for Human Services that works with people who are homeless. And all I'm doing is really nothing but it's something is they have a jobs program. And so I write resumes for people who are homeless who are looking for jobs. And I do usually two or three a month. But it's my way of helping. And and then I give donations to various local charities, because I think that's important too. Well, that's good. Yeah. Again, I'm sure that kind of stuff has good input impacts on people. I suspect you get a certain amount of good feedback from the people who yeah, and it's and the jobs program is actually really good they get they place between 15 and 20 people a month in jobs. So it and it puts a face to people who are homeless. So again, that's an emotional connection, you know that I can see people who are homeless on the street. And I see them more as human beings who've fallen on hard times. Sure, it's all too easy to set those barriers up with particular people who, for whatever reason, you feel some distance from, right? Exactly. But even just other people in a store, it's all too easy just to get into sort of zoning them out, putting them behind some sort of psychic fence, right? Right, right. Yeah, we just get we put blinders on I think. And so connecting I think connecting with people emotionally, you know, the clerk in the store, getting to know their names, and, you know, finding out a little bit about them or at least just saying hi and try to make their their day a little bit better. I remember years ago, I heard this speaker talk about how are you going to be remembered when you die? And I thought, you know, I think what's more important is how am I going to be remembered today? Like, is someone going to go home and tell their family? Oh, I met this horrible person today. You know, are you going to be the horror story of somebody's day? Or are you going to be the happy story of somebody's day? No, and that connection is it's an amazing to watch. My wife, Thea has this ability to connect very quickly with people. And I've seen this countless times in will be standing in line in a grocery store or something. And the person in front of us will just turn around and just start talking to her. And she responds and within sometimes 30 seconds, this person will open up and start telling her amazingly deep things about themselves, you know, telling her things about the life that she may not even want. But it's really that ability to establish that I'm always sort of in awe of that when I see it. So yeah, just thinking about we had talked earlier about commuting and driving and you know, so much of us spend so much of our time driving. And so a couple of the things I wanted to share, because they're easy to do. And again, don't take any time. One thing we can do while we're driving is facial yoga. Actually, you can do that almost any time in your cubicle, in the bathroom, taking a shower. So facial yoga is just trying to open up and use the face. So there's all different techniques in the book. But one is just to go through the vowels. So you say a, a, e, a, i, i, o, u. And that just kind of opens up. Sure. Or another one is go surprise. Yeah, and all those things, push your facial muscles out of a normal sort of fixed position, right, right, really help. I mean, one, it is burning small amounts of calories. It's keeping you active. It's getting more blood circulation going. It's keeping those muscles more combed up. So and then you know, using, you can stretch your arms, you know, instead of I don't know about you, but I have this tendency to really hang on. And actually, I learned as part of my research is, I don't know about you, but I learned you're supposed to keep your hands at 10 and three on the two was a classic. And now they're saying nine and three. So already, you're having your shoulders reduced or relaxed more. But if at the same time, especially if you're just sitting there, if you can stretch out one and stretch out the other, or you can bring your elbow up one side and up the other, then you're, you know, you're stretching. Right, right. And you're keeping again, that kind of movement keeps you from sort of zoning out and getting right sort of lost, which is and then we did mention breathing. But I wanted to mention this science, you know, because people think deep breathing, that's so new age. But it's there's research, the research shows that deep breathing reduces blood pressure. It normalizes blood sugar levels. It decreases stress. And it helps you think better, because you've got more oxygen in your brain. So just three deep breaths are enough to start that process going right. And actually stretches your abdomen and again, sort of works on the whole core. And then you can actually combine that with your abdomen exercise. So when you breathe in, you relax your abdomen. And then when you exhale, you pull your belly in and down towards the floor, and then breathe in and relax. So now you're doing two things at once. Yeah, this is wonderful. This has been great. This is wonderful. I highly, highly, highly recommend this book. Be fit in no time, McConnell Research Try available on Amazon. I'm probably elsewhere. But and it's an astounding book. I think you've done a real service for getting science out in the community. And it's been a been a real pleasure having you here on likeable science. I thank you very much. And I wish you the best of luck going forward. And hope you sell a million copies of it. Because if I do that means a million people got helped. Well, thank you so much, McConnell. Thank you, Ethan. Take care. This is Ethan Allen signing off another episode of likeable science. McConnell Research I has been with me today here at Think Tech CoI. See you next week.