 Well, good afternoon, everyone, live from Costa Rica today. You got not only me from Costa Rica, but one of my most favorite people in the whole wide world, Dr. Eileen Naomi Rusk, who I will introduce in a minute. Today we're gonna be talking about, for sure her favorite topic and one of my favorite topics to talk to her about is optimizing brain health and optimizing stress levels and neuroplasticity. She will explain everything. And as you can see, I am miles away. I'm trying to reduce my stress by staying for a week here in Costa Rica, doing a little work, but lots of adventure and rest and relaxation. And we'll talk about how important that is for the brain as well. Let me quick introduce my beautiful friend and colleague, Dr. Rusk, and then we'll get right in with the program. Dr. Eileen Naomi Rusk is the Director of Healthy Brain Program and the Coordinator of Cognitive Rehabilitation and Trauma Treatment Programs at the Brain and Behavioral Clinic in Boulder, Colorado. She has completed a fellowship in neuropsychology while studying new treatments and strategies for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and has authored peer-reviewed papers in the areas of psychology, neuropharmacology and neuroscience. More recently, she trained extensively with Dr. Dale Bredesen in the Institute of Functional Medicine and using an integrative approach to treat the root cause of cognitive decline and dementia. Her personalized approach to brain health coaching and incorporating lifestyle practices like meditation, trauma healing, inspires others to build emotional resilience and optimally live long, optimal longevity plans. She supports the earliest initiation of mental wellness and healthy brain and lifestyle and envisions a time where dementia is a rare occurrence. I love that. So welcome, Dr. Rusk. So glad to have you here. So glad we could have the time to connect even across the many, many miles. Me too. Yes, and as many of you know, many don't. On the outside, she's a dear, precious friend of mine. So this is a special time that we get to connect on multiple levels. So I'd love to start off with the story. And I'd love if you have any, I want to talk about stress and neuroplasticity on these topics, but tell us a little bit about why you're doing what you're doing. Like why did you get into neuroplasticity? Why did you, because the story behind the why always matters as far as motivation to do what you do. Yeah, no, I've seen you do that with other people and it's really compelling. And I think actually, as you asked me about my story, I'll have to say to everyone who's watching that as we tell our story and we understand our story, we begin to weave kind of a quilt of who we are, who we're becoming, who we were and who we really want to be. So I think that, you know, I don't even know if you actually know my story. And I don't know if I have one story, I have many stories, but integrating story is a very important part of stress reduction and trauma healing, just to say that. So a big part of my own work and my own life's journey has been weaving the pieces of my story together that have been fragmented or not incorporated into me understanding who I am. So thanks for asking, but I'm sure you ask your other speakers the same wonderful question. I was a very, very anxious child. And it was only later in life that I realized that my seemingly normal and healthy childhood was actually fraught with occurrences and a history that didn't resonate well with my nervous system. So it wasn't that I had, thank God, I had amazing parents. Again, things that happened inside my home were very stressful. And I think a lot of the people watching this will resonate with that. You know, we had wonderful loving parents, many of us hopefully, but if there's that lack of attunement or lack of resonance with our family environment or with our primary caregiver or caregivers, then our nervous system sometimes doesn't rest or develop the flexibility that it needs to develop in order to be able to face some of the adversities or challenges or stressors that we normally meet in life. We don't develop that flexibility because that kind of consistent safety experience or our ability to actually come down off of a stressor doesn't necessarily happen. And as far as my particular story goes, I was a very anxious child and I used to have a lot of panic. So I wouldn't want to eat. I remember that the doctor gave me medicine to get me to calm down, like knockout type drops that caused me to kind of really collapse into a nervous system response that settled me, but it also shut me off. Yeah. At the age of 11, I'm thinking about, I remember my father saying to me, is everything okay right before bed? And I said, daddy, it's not the way it's supposed to be. I know I'm not supposed to feel this way. Wow. I think I was, the good thing is we all know, everyone who's watching this has a sense inside of how it could be, how it should be. But sometimes that sense of what it is to be free and calm and joyful is so hidden that we forget about it. But children know it, right? Oh, I love the story and you're right. I don't know if I've ever heard so joyful though, because it also shows the qualities that make you such a great clinician and teacher is that intuition, that ability to see things that other people don't see. And you started by seeing it in yourself and being able to articulate it. I mean, even the fact that you, a lot of 11 year olds might feel that way, but then to be able to say those words in that clear of a way to your father, that to me is profound. And that shows the ability to not only sense this thing that's happening, but being able to bring it out and tell your father at that age, that's amazing. Good point. And so part of the relational success there is what you're pointing out. The other part of the relational success is that my father listened. Yes. That doesn't always happen very often growing up throughout our entire adulthood into our intimate partnerships later in life. We say something, but we don't feel the person feeling us. We don't feel the person hearing us. So he heard me and I promptly ended up with a wonderful psychiatrist. Wow. So I think I'm gonna say her name. She wouldn't mind anyways. She turned out to be a very famous Belgian psychiatrist, pediatric psychiatrist, who mentored me, sheltered me, protected me, softened every single Monday, and I would go to her office. She would really, she was a soft and very nervous system regulated person. And it turns out I really needed that relational piece because I don't remember one thing she said to me. Wow. And so many of us, as you know, need that consistent, relational, co-regulation assurance. Yes. That's consistent. Yes. Oh, I love that. So I had that. I had that for a year and you wanna hear a really beautiful story. Most people don't know this story. This year, when I returned to Montreal, I met with a clinician who said that this woman who had been my psychiatrist at 11 years old was still alive at 95, turning 96 and she'd just retired. So I found her, I met with her and we chatted. And next time I'll show, you know. Oh my goodness, I love that. Amazing, amazing, amazing. She worked as a pediatric psychiatrist until she was 95. Wow. Hatching the nervous systems of children everywhere. And so just- The thousands of lives, she impact. I mean, really, that's amazing over all those years. Wow. And I just wanna like personalize this for anyone who's watching it now. I'm imagining that there was someone or a moment in everyone's life who's watching this. That didn't have to be a parent. Yeah. It could have been a gym teacher or a guidance counselor. I've heard that from my patients. It's like it was that one person, the aunt I used to see at holiday celebrations who saw me, who heard me, who loved me unconditionally. Yeah. And sometimes the plan in your family system, the parents are lovely, wonderful, but busy with other children or other concerns. And so it's not a parent. Yeah, exactly. Wow. So just for everyone to kind of just take a moment and it can be an ancestor, it can be someone who's passed already and who's just someone who looks upon us with benevolence, kindness, and in a loving way ensues our nervous systems. Yes, so important. And I love that that changed part of your trajectory to have that experience because obviously you have always had the insight and some of the talents and gifts that you bring to your work now, but that kind of just shows that even as a child you were very insightful and thoughtful and able to even, like I said, the articulation is mind blowing to me. So let's shift just a little. One of the big topics that has been affecting, I know both your patients and mine are a stress and stress is this big vague term. It's almost overused. Talk a little about what is stress, what's the difference between good and bad stress and then we'll go into what we can do about it. Okay, good. So I wanna talk about the different subcategories of stress because stress has a really bad name. We all associate it with mental health issues now. Thank God people are starting to make that connection. We associate it with physical health issues when we work with people who have chronic illness. We know that's an important component. And indeed when we talk about stress in the common nomenclature, now we use the word stress to really mean distress. Yeah. And I wanna talk to you now about you stress. Yeah. You know, the positive stress that gets us up in the morning, we don't wanna get out of bed, but we do wanna do the things that we're meant to be doing in that day. So we get out of bed with a feeling of this is a little bit uncomfortable, but I'm motivated. So you stress is motivating. It's adaptive. It's important for building our capacity for resilience. And I guess I want us to all start to use the word stress and translate it for our own selves in a way that's more positive because I actually want stress to be reframed as motivating as well. Yeah. Oh, I love that. I feel it in our bodies, in our minds as something, okay, I'm a little bit uncomfortable. I am being stretched, which is what I like to talk to my patient. Know the difference between a stretch, a stretching of capacity and distress. No, get a sense of what that difference is for you. And the stress again, that's associated with illness and challenge is the stress cycle we actually don't come out of. Yeah. The distress cycle really. Hormesis is something I want to talk about as well. And it's a biological term that I'm sure you're familiar with in medicine. It's a conditioning, right? Our cells get conditioned with a little bit of stress. Yes. We work towards something and we build capacity for a marathon by tearing muscles and stretching them in. And I'm sure you know tons about the biology and biochemistry of that, but also know that this capacity to build capacity is an important part of developing a flexible and strong resilient nervous system as well. Yeah, we actually wouldn't be able to do what we do or live or if we didn't have stress. It's kind of like gravity being able to make the muscles work, right? And I'm reminded as you talk of a couple of months ago, maybe now six, nine months ago, I went on another climb. And it's scary stuff. Even if you've done it before, I remember walking with my guide and he said, are you nervous? And I said, well, no, I don't think so, but I'm excited. And I remember thinking, I think I chose to say that I probably was a little bit nervous, but I told myself I was excited because it feels the same. And it was a wonderful climb and I was a little nervous. But at that moment, I wasn't registering the nervousness as much as the excitement. But then I'm talking to you and just knowing the truth about it. I wonder if I was just telling my system it was other than it really was. And I think there was both, but... No, but I think it's good. I think what you're pointing out is that same, the sentence you said, I experienced it. It is indeed physiologically the same. It can be the same, but that's of course different than chronic stress, right? Right, absolutely. Right? And I think that I know that we're wired for transient stress that has a beginning, a middle and an end. And those physiologic curves that then take us down for they bring us up to a peak of, I need to take action and I need my autonomic nerve assistant to really move me out of this potential car crash or out of this being yelled at or threat experience. That keeps us safe. We want that system to be really flexible. We want the up and down. It needed, don't we? And it just reminds me, like I know you have so much that you could tell us about this, but with the pandemic, we're still somewhat in, but out of it in the most part. But what just happened to all of us was the threat to ego, sense of control, all the classical markers of Han Selie and his stress system and what causes stress, which is our nuts, novelty, unpredictability, threat to ego and sense of self. Those things happened and they were stained. So talk just a little bit about the sustained stressors like most of us just went through and the lack of an ending. So someone who's experiencing a chronic medical condition that doesn't change or someone who, that you probably have better examples than me, but I think of the pandemic because a lot of that was sustained for a long time. And even when we thought it was gonna end, it didn't quite end and then it came back and now we're living with a new normal. But to me that sustained stress is very different. What do we do in those situations or how can we have better coping mechanisms with sustained things that are changing our world? So the pandemic is particularly interesting and I happen to have done a study over the period of the pandemic with a wonderful international volunteer organization of professionals who study stress and we develop and offer stress coping strategies for children, for families and for educators. So we're working again with that very vulnerable population of young people whose nervous systems are being formed. And this is a, we ask the question, what were your best coping strategies? And everyone around the world, it was an interesting study because everyone around the world was experiencing the same components of fear. But the magnitude, right? It was so different than any of us. There's like wars and things that are not original, but to have, yeah, really like unprecedented almost, right? So there's also a beauty in it that nobody talked about. So inside of the fear, inside of the unpredictability that you're talking about, there was also a shared common humanity. And believe it or not, that was incredibly resourceful for people to know that we were all experiencing a similar type of distress. And when we share distress like that, it softens the blow for all of us. As you- It's like the classical, you're not alone. Like that simple phrase, right? That so many of us go on- Oh, right. Thinking that we're the only ones that are experiencing this painful trauma or painful illness. And when we know, now that we want anyone else to experience it, but when we just know you're not alone, that thing alone, and that's what you're saying, right? You're saying that the fact that we knew that we weren't experiencing it alone was helpful to our psyche. That's right. That's exactly right. And when people were connected to that sense of overall we're in this together, it was a buffer for that stress. But just to summarize the findings from 12 countries, we just published a very small preliminary study and we're extending our reach. We'll probably, hopefully we'll have about 1,000 subjects in the next survey. But what's beautiful is that we got information from people, participants from 12 different countries. And what you said was true. People really found that being in contact and being in connection was the primary resource. The other thing was really resourceful for people was taking a walk, people reconnected with nature all over the world in a whole different way. And I think that's partly why the climate emergency and the climate crisis has risen to the top as quickly as it had, it always had been, but I think people were more one-to-one connected with the rhythms of nature and gratitude for nature in calming their nervous systems. Wow. That was such a primary resource. That doesn't surprise you, I'm sure. No, I'm just kind of my jaws dropping because it doesn't surprise me, but I hadn't really thought about the, I mean, because climate change is clearly accelerating and the conversation is finally becoming where it should be. But I never thought about the connection to possible the pandemic and people being in nature and actually realizing this beautiful precious resource that we have, one of our most precious things is being destroyed. So I love that you make that connection because I hadn't thought about it, but it makes absolute sense that it would be that way. Yeah. People felt the stillness, people heard the waves, people listened to the trees, people saw dolphins in Venice, people saw things they had never seen before because nature became much closer as a resource for us. So hopefully that was part of the impetus, but I wanna speak a little bit about this persistent stress, which we call distress. And this consistent stress really does tax the nervous system. And I wanna name some things that people can really relate to. Consistent and persistent stress can happen in a bad work environment. Consistent and persistent stress can happen in an intimate partnership. And it's sometimes barely perceptible, sometimes it's very obvious, but I think it's good to at least, sometimes it happens with raising children who are challenged and parenting. It happens in many different contexts, but it's good to know when we're in those situations of where our nervous system doesn't ever feel. I don't wanna use the word relaxed, I wanna use the word safe. Safe. Because I often don't even know when, I think people often don't even know when they're relaxed and when they're not relaxed, when they're in this kind of just heightened above baseline, not relaxed. So funny you say that, at just case in point, I went to a Pilates class this morning and she said, what do you wanna do? And I said, well, I like to move, I don't like to slow down too much. And she said, well, that's exactly what we're gonna do then. Because you need that if you don't like to, so it's just a great point that like, then by the time the class was over, I was like, oh, that was wonderful. Best thing I could have done for my nervous system, but I didn't recognize that, the need for relaxation and that need for kind of like, I was like, let's go, let's go do something and do this. And probably those people who are kind of, usually busy moving like myself, need that thing that you're just, the calming. That's right. It's nice to picture it like we are, our nervous systems are elastic bands wanting that level of flexibility. Yeah, the flexibility, that's a great, great way to say it. Because that's a nice thing. Sometimes do you think that it's supposed to be like we're always both, but often patients misunderstand, it's like, what does it mean to have a calm nervous system? I actually don't think calm nervous systems are particularly healthy. Yeah, you're right. You're being right. That's right. Sometimes I just want to name that, a calm nervous system means that we are under stimulated. We are depressed. Yeah. We are not engaged in life, not connected, not challenged. Those are actually, since we haven't talked about brain health, those are all things that are not good for brain health. So this is actually nice. Yeah, I want to go into neuroplasticity. I mean, that is your thing. You're such an expert on that. What is, many people have heard the term, but what is neuroplasticity first? And then let's talk about like how we can, how we can keep our neuroplasticity, how we can maintain, how we can. And I want to talk about that, but if I don't mention the word going back to your other question, and I promise I'll come back to this. If I don't mention the word loneliness. Yes. You asked me about the stress of the pandemic. Yes. Then I have not honored all of the root causes of the mental health issues. Fear and loneliness were root causes of a lot of the physiologic challenges, neurologic, immune, hormonal that we're seeing now. So I want to talk about loneliness as a threat. Loneliness is physiologically, neurologically experienced as a threat to the nervous system. No wonder. It meant to belong. Yeah. So that's why people in my study and in other surveys found that this reconnection with others, whether it was a Facebook live with you, whether it was meeting with me on another platform, what doesn't matter what it was in person or not in person. Satisfied that nervous system need for belonging. So your other question, neuroplasticity. We have this incredible capacity, inherent natural endemic endogenous so deep in us, this great capacity for our nervous systems and our brains to change, to be flexible and to be, everyone hears the term neuroplasticity, everyone thinks it's a new term. I'd like to tell you all it's not a new term. When I was a neuroscientist 40 years ago, we talked about how one dose of Haldol, haloperidol, when I was working in animal models, one dose of haloperidol changed the dopamine system for a very long time. That is neuroplasticity too. Yes, true. We forget because it can be trauma cause neuroplasticity too, right? It really is neuroscientists, Kahal or Hujal, however you pronounce his name. We were talking about neuroplasticity 100 years ago. So I just wanna say it's not a new term. I know some people talk about it as new, it's not. I think what we're knowing now is that we can optimize our health, our cognition, our longevity, our happiness, our minds. Amazing. That's the best hack. A lot of people do biohacking, that's the best hack, engaging neuroplasticity optimally. I thought there's positive neuroplasticity and there's negative neuroplasticity, Dr. Jill. And I really want people to also know that there are influences internally and there are external influences too, which modify, moderate and change neuroplasticity. So let's start with negative neuroplasticity. Negative neuroplasticity, many of those factors happened during the pandemic. Yeah. The pandemic was not good for nervous system flexibility. Okay? Some of the things that are under the category of negative neuroplasticity are being solitary, being alone. Yeah. Wow. Being afraid and being stuck, you know, that frozen state we talk about in the nervous system, a collapsed state, stagnant, that means not learning, not being stimulated. So for my patients who are looking to optimize brain health, many of them slip back if they kind of just pulled back and I didn't see them regularly during the pandemic. Hey, did you see some decline with this? Oh my God. Yeah, that's the obvious, right? That's the one who stayed in that. People who didn't stay engaged to, patients who stayed with me and who were really kind of on top of it and their sleep schedule was good, they were working with their stress, they were staying connected. Connected to you or? People did really well during the pandemic. And actually, with people who weren't in fear or frozen states, they were able to kind of tap into, I found, places inside of very, very deep resource inside. I agree, I love that you're saying that because I think. It was so positive for some people. Yeah, it was really a transformational time for all of us, some negative transformations, some positive, but like, I don't know of anybody who was unchanged by it and didn't have some catalyst for the change in their life. Again, some of it very negative, a lot of it very positive, but I think you're right, I think it was. If we look at more of a, again, I don't think there was like a big divine plan with this or anything, but I do believe that there's purpose and meaning in everything and I know we share that. And it was a greater purpose and meaning, it was a catalyst, wasn't it? It was a catalyst for change. That's right, that's right. And even now, just to be able to reflect back on what did we learn, what did, and a lot of us learned about grief, a lot of us learned about fear. And I was particularly moved, it's a little tangential, but I was just particularly moved when I was working with a pediatric neuropsychologist yesterday and talking about the nervous systems of children who were kind of being formed during this pandemic and how parents related to their children around fear, around loneliness, around buffering kids. I think that's really important, even now, to be able to work with children. This is kind of a tangent with me, but it makes me curious as I hear you. Obviously we know from research around Holocaust survivors the effects of unborn children and their parents' stress and life and that. What do you think we'll see in the next generation or so of babies that were born or conceived during this pandemic? Do you think we'll see an effect on that generation in any way? There's no doubt. Yeah, there's no doubt. Rachel, who does work with Holocaust survivors show those kind of sometimes stocks, sometimes low, sometimes high cortisol. Yes. DPPA is associated with chronic stress or trauma, but I love talking about the epigenetic piece I also love talking about the ancestral trauma piece that's inherited in a way that may not yet be measurable. And I make some assumptions about the ancestral inheritance that we all have. And we may think about it as a generation, but again, I know you know more about this than I do, but clearly it can be transgenerational, multi-generational. That's the inherited piece. And so the answer is, I want to share a really beautiful piece of research that was done and has continued to be done in Montreal by some very wonderful neurophysiologists and social psychologists and neuropsychologists on the Montreal Ice Storm. Oh, wow. The studies were done. I think the Montreal Ice Storm might have been about 10 years ago in Montreal where the city was blanketed in a thick coating of ice. Wow. I don't know how many days it lasted for. I'm gonna say a month. Wow. A long time. And McGill University did a huge study looking at women who had been pregnant during the Montreal Ice Storm and found, and I'm sorry because I wasn't planning on talking about this. Okay, it's perfect. Let's look it up because I've studied it before and talked about it in other talks, found incredible changes, long-term changes in children of mothers that's cortisol levels, GHA, changes in HPA axis. If mothers were pregnant during that ice storm. So you asked me about the pandemic, were children affected? Yes, even if they were in utero. Yes. Yeah, I mean it has to have an effect and we've seen from past that it does, but it'll be interesting to see when it in the next generations of how that affects. Now the other thing is neuroplasticity means that that can change. That's right, that's right. And so like if we just name the things that parents can do, the things that we can do that we know are common to both brain health, positive neuroplasticity and stress resilience. Perfect. These are all things that we, they may seem obvious, but there's data on each of these points that we create stress resilience when we engage these aspects of positive neuroplasticity as well, which kind of makes sense. There are all things that we can do. We can insert calm into our day. And I'm not saying that we need to be calm all day. I don't think that that's healthy for a nervous system. We can move our bodies every day. We can have kind of a, even a written down ritual routine every day, which is I think important. So that these things get slotted in every day, even if it's for 10 minutes or an hour. So moving and grooving, keeping our bodies moving in a happy way. Yes. Not because we're forced to. And there's some data on when we exercise our attitude and thoughts about engaging with our muscles changes our physiology too. Oh, no surprise. I love that. So just keeping our mind, keeping our attention on why we're doing what we're doing that we're building positive neuroplasticity, nourishing our bodies, nourishing our gut. We haven't even talked about that brain access and how important and pivotal that wisdom center is in our body. Like basically tending to our wisdom center, nourishing our gut, nourishing our heart, nourishing our brain. Think about those as kind of generative wisdom centers that all engage neuroplasticity, depending upon. Yeah, we forget we think that it's all in the brain, but you've just thought about a great point because of functional medicine model, which you and I both use is about really engaging all the organs and they've connected the heart and the brain and the brain and the heart and the gut and the heart and all of this goes together. So I love that. And I love that because even for me, it's a reminder, as you well know, sometimes I work these days at the clinic and I barely stop for food, but that nourishment really is a part of the sustaining and ability for me to think clearly and do what I do. So good reminder for all of us. Right, and sometimes it's simple, right? Sometimes working with our nervous system means I'm feeling a little jittery, I'm really not clear in my thinking. We forget about something simple like hydration, ultrasonic pain. Absolutely, yeah, we do. Drinking, in fact, this place I stay, the little nightstand says drinking so many 32 ounces first thing in the morning is good. Of course, I know that, right? I teach this. And having the... Having the little reminder. Having the little reminder, that's right. It's just like, oh yeah, I know that, but I needed to hear that. And so every morning I've been drinking a very large glass of water before I get up. And so often in the work that we do, we get into the weeds around the particulars, the biochemistry or the detoxification. And sometimes we forget, just inserting ritual and routine into the day can be very soothing for the nervous system to create a ritual for the nervous system. And that includes sleep. We hadn't talked about sleep yet, but I like to talk to my patients about preparing for sleep, kind of when it's daytime. Yeah, oh yeah. Not creating a sleep ritual right before you go to bed. I'm not just talking about sleep hygiene, but actually like making sure we wake up at the same time every day and using an horror ring or some of the other devices. Yeah, it's so important. I mean, I just love that you're saying that because it's such a simple thing. And yet, so there's probably, we've both talked about with our patients, getting them to sleep well is probably the first and most important thing we could do. And we don't think about it with neuroplasticity, but clearly sleep may be the most important thing with cognition. You could probably say, right? That's right. And we also get to experience. We need to have the experience, and I won't talk about electrophysiology now, but we need to talk about the experience of our brain waves bearing, having varied brain waves throughout the day. Yeah, we can't have all deep. We can't have all REM. We need to. That's right. So being able to create flexibility in that system too, which I hadn't planned on, it just came up, but we want flexibility again and again, connection. Yes. You know, having a meaningful connection and becoming aware of who is it nourishing to be with? Who do I feel safe with? Who do I feel healed by? Yes. And who do I feel safe with? So, you know, in my road map, the brain health, and I have like a little map, which you can find actually on my website. I think I have it there. And it's all of the different functional mode of medicine components that contribute to brain health and optimized cognition. The ones we talked about today really are, you know, stress resilience. Yes. Sleep. We just touched on sleep. We touched on digestion, nutrition, nourishment and emotional resilience. Yes. But all of those other things are very important components of brain health too. Healing trauma. We really didn't talk about healing trauma, but building stress resilience gives us kind of a great baseline with which to heal trauma. It's very hard to heal. We can do a lot of our own trauma healing at home. I used to be someone who said, you have to see a trauma psychologist right away. Don't do anything else. But now we kind of want to be able to take on some of the building of stress resilience and building of resources, building allies, like we talked about right at the beginning of our conversation. Who's an ally for me? And just begin to feel what it feels like in my body to feel okay, to feel safe. That's the beginning of trauma work. It is, isn't it? Like just like you said, the safety and finding those connections and people that like our friendship is one of those places. It's a beautiful, we've talked before, but it's just an amazing place where we can go analytical or whatever places we want to go and it's a beautiful place of support and unconditional love. So our last couple of minutes or so here, I want to ask where they can find you, so in a second we'll give a website in that, but what kind of, if someone's listening and they've maybe felt distress, which we clarified what was what and they're feeling overwhelmed, they're feeling anxious. And we clearly, if you've been, unless you've been not watching the news, we know what's happening. I mean, every day there's news that is so much suffering and so unbelievable, unprecedented. What would you say to someone out there who is struggling with distress? And I mean, you've given them practical tips of what kind of one final hopeful thing might you say to them? I know we have to stop in a minute and I really feel like mind wandering and getting a hold of our minds is something we haven't talked about, but we let our minds wander and become the CEO of our lives. And we often walk through our day unaware that we're being controlled by thoughts that are anxious thoughts, that are thoughts that are memories coming back, that are trauma patterns we haven't been aware of. I really still wanna suggest to people that there are things to do at home, but it's PTSD Awareness Month I just found out. I mean, start to kind of recognize if there are patterns in your own life. Walk through every day just noticing when is there distress? Is it with a person? Is it with the job that I'm doing? Is it an activity that I'm doing? Try to find fun and creative. It might sound simple, but I think you yourself know the value of fun, pleasure, creativity, drawing, music. So engage in pleasurable activities and know what that start to recognize what it feels like to do something that's peaceful, pleasurable, calming. And notice your thoughts. Take a moment, take one minute. Take five minutes every hour during the day. What a good, yeah, they can set an alarm, right? If you want. There's so many wonderful apps. There's so many wonderful apps, like Calm or Insight Timer, that can just remind you on the hour. Or either to check in. Check in with your thoughts. Check in with your breath. I love going to breath first, because there's so much we can play with breath. We can activate a sympathetic browser response. Or we can totally settle with breath. So breath is a fun thing to play with, to create flexibility and get to know the flexibility and the nervous system that I've been talking about with you today. And so I love breath, connecting with breath and taking that minute or five minutes. To just notice, I'm letting my mind wander. I'm going to connect with breath and let my thought wander off, like a cloud in the sky, whatever visual works for you. The cloud in the sky, the I am the sky. My thought is the cloud moving by. We can get still enough. And if we had longer, I'd do a practice with your viewers right now, but we don't have long enough. But just even right now, you and I can do it together. We could just both settle and we can both get to the bottom of our breath on the exhale. We can create just a moment of space. That's lovely. And we can attend intentionally. Yeah. To a breath. What a great thing. And it takes us out of the busyness, right? And what a beautiful way to end because it's something everybody can do. You don't have to have a special training and you can practice and you can experiment. And granted there's a lot you can do with someone who's trained like you, but very, very simple, very practical. So where can people find you? Give us your website so people can look up information tonight. Yeah, sure. And it's aileennaomirusk.com. Perfect. And Instagram is Dr. Rusk. Perfect. And I think you'll probably have it on your- Yes, I will link it up to where you hear this. And I have a lot of blogs. I'd love people to learn about their nervous systems, brain health, a functional medicine approach that includes trauma healing and trauma release. I think that's really important. Senai, because it just happens to be PTSD Awareness Month. Yes, such a perfect time. That's why I said we had kind of a crazy day. Well, maybe you didn't die a little crazy day today, but I'm so glad. You both did. So good. Yeah, I know. Thank you for your time today. You're in a lot of wisdom. We will definitely come back and do this again. And thank you all listeners. Everywhere you watch this, you will find the links that we just gave out and we'll talk to you soon.