 Yeah, I'm so excited to talk to you. So if everybody out there, first of all, just thank you for joining us. Please share if you find it interesting. And of course later, the recording will be available. So if you don't hear us or you jump in midway, no big deal. But we are so excited to talk about the virus, the pandemic, and more importantly, like what are you doing and what we're doing to relieve stress and to keep our immune systems healthy. We know that stress is probably one of the biggest factors to suppress immunity. And we'll talk a little about that tonight too. But we just want to give you some really practical tools. And you know, we just decided it's kind of like we have coffee and sometimes we color together and we have the best conversations, Dr. Nicole and I. And so what we wanted to do tonight is just like let you in on our little coffee chat session. So nothing informal here. But if you guys have any questions or things, comments, feel free to put them in because I'll try to be watching and we'll try to answer those at the end. So welcome, Dr. Nicole. I want to introduce you really quickly. Yeah, I remember we had a colleague who I was at a seminar and he came up to me and said, you have to meet Dr. Nicole. And I was looking to expand services in the office. And I really wanted someone who had a different skill set than me that had things that I couldn't do. And I always thought it would be really cool to have a talented naturopath like you. And especially because again, I wanted people to know what you do. So in a minute, I'll give you a chance to explain. But I remember this guy being like, oh, you just love Dr. Nicole and she's moving to Colorado. And I have to tell you, I think you know this, but like I had, I had interviewed PAs, nurse practitioners, other naturopaths and never really felt like a really good connection. And when we met, I just remember being like, I love this girl. We totally and I just felt like a really cool connection. Like you're just easy going and you get it and you it's been such a joy to work with you. So welcome. Thank you. What an intro. Remember that? I do. I know I like, I remember I had been to, you were the first clinic I stopped in, but I went and interviewed 11 other clinics. I just hope Dr. Jill decides that she wants me to work at her place. Oh, and I'm so low. It was so mutual. Like, I don't know what it is to me. It's just like, you're down to earth, you're practical, you're intuitive like me, like we have that approach to how we see our patients. But I wanted our office, there's a lot of women, there's a lot of sub-leaders. And I think some environments like that can get real catty and clickish. I wanted just to have a person who was just going to fit in and you've been so that and so much more. And you know, we've been colleagues, but what I love more than anything is we've been friends and we had coffee chats over men and over other things in our life and over situations and health issues. And it's been so refreshing to have not only you as a colleague who I respect, but just a friend. Well, I mean, I completely agree. I feel the exact same. So that's so mutual. And we're both doing virtual consults, but I want to be sure you all know we'll link to Dr. Nicole's website and how to schedule because if you are wanting to connect, I want to have you next tell what you do. But if you want someone who's an expert in these areas, she's available and she's taking on new patients. And she's very, very skilled. I don't say that about a lot of my colleagues, but I really feel strongly that she talented and able if you guys need some help in this time, she's a great resource. I'd love to hear first, like how you got into naturopathic medicine, and then a little bit tell everybody a little bit about what you do. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you again. It's like such a nice, so complimentary. Um, so I got into naturopathic medicine. I think we all get into our fields of medicine because of our own stuff that we go through. And so for me, I had had really bad asthma as a kid. I had really bad allergies. I was having some thyroid trouble, although we didn't know that's what it was, right? Just like felt really puffy was gaining weight. But really it was like, I mean, I have two dogs now and that would have been unheard of. I was the kid who had lizards growing up. And so it was like anything that didn't have any sort of allergen. And so I think just through my own realizing how powerful food was, I mean, I was able to get rid of gluten and saw so many transformations. And, and then I got into doing some of the emotional work and I accidentally while I was a strength coach started reading my clients labs and figuring out the different ways of helping them with supplements and lifestyle was actually healing their bodies, which I thought like, gosh, I'm not even using anything that's super invasive. And so I just had to know more. And I just everything kept leading me back to naturopathic medicine. And a lot of my colleagues at the time who were, you know, we're all in fitness and doing a lot of nutrition were like, you're sure you want to go back to med school. And I was like, it's like I have to I don't know how else to describe it. Like, I need to know more, I need to understand the foundation because I felt like I kind of missed that part. And so it's just been, it's just been a love affair sense. I mean, I love naturopathic medicine. I feel like I truly do walk what I talk because I see how profound it is in my own life and in my family's lives. And so then to see it in my patients too is is pretty cool. So that's sort of how I got into it. What I do now is just I use muscle testing. And I also use a lot of naturopathic principles, which is just that the body can heal itself given the right combination of lifestyle or nutrients or homeopathy or herbs and sometimes medications in order to kind of remove any obstruction to allow the body's innate healing capacity. And what I treat a lot in my patients is I feel like most things come to three main things. And it's some sort of emotional stuff that needs to be cleared, some sort of chronic infection and toxic burden. And I feel like if we're able to kind of clear out those, we just see miraculous results. And so that that's sort of what I do with my patients. Gosh, I love that. And again, getting to know you and what you do. It's such a neat complementary thing. Because I'll do this one thing. And then we might see the same patient, but you might do the emotional clearing. And then I'll do very specific meds and work with detox. But it's so and you do the same. So very, yeah, totally does. So and I know some of my patients who've seen you, they love that. And they kind of have that both what I love. Tell me just a little bit more about the emotional clearing. Because for me, as an alabaca doc, that's, it's so powerful. And yet I don't do it. So I'm always amazed at what you do and how you get results with patients. And I'd love to people to know more about that. Absolutely. I just feel like the emotional piece. And I'd like to say the word stress, because I feel like emotional sometimes really turns people off. But we all can relate to stress. And we know that there's so much unresolved stress that hides in our body. And we know now from research that anytime something stressful happens, it actually creates proteins and those proteins store in the body. And what I like about the modality I use to treat unresolved stress is called NET. So it's neuro emotional technique. And what it does is it just using muscle testing and other various techniques, it allows us to find out where are those proteins hiding what unresolved stress is still wreaking havoc on our body. Because I feel like so much, you know, I mean, it's just, I had this one patient and it was, it was something that will stay with me forever. She couldn't turn her head further than that for eight years. Wow. And we did one emotional clearing on her and her head turned all the way. And she's like, what'd you do? And I was just surprised because I had it was newer for me. And it's just it was just showing for her how much emotional trauma was preventing her musculature from working her nervous system from working accurately. And so it is being studied more. And I'm just so grateful because it it kind of looks a little bit like a magic show, but it works. Yeah, I mean, I think we all have to have kind of our own profound experiences to use certain tools that we use. And I used emotional work and it completely got rid of my seasonal allergies. And after that, I was like, I will use this on every patient if if it tests, right? Not everybody open is open to it. And that's okay. But there are a lot of people who are and I feel like it just helps so much. I love that. And I would say like in my career, 20 years, I started functional medicine and I love like diving into the biochemistry and the science and that. But what I would find the last probably five to seven years is I would have a lot of first of all, I see a people that are super complex, they've been ill for a while, they have mold related toxicity, or they have auto immunity, or lots of other multiple chronic conditions, chronic fatigue. And what I see is, I can do all this great functional work with them. But at some point, they've got to do the emotional work. And even for myself personally, after my divorce three years ago, I realized, Oh, my gosh, I have to do the work and I have to go emotionally deep and see what other things are blocking me. And I've worked with you, I've done NLP, I've done thought field therapy, I've done EMDR, I've done brain spotting, so lots of somatic work. And what's interesting is all of these things are like different ways of looking at an elephant and describing the tail and the foot and the head. But they all work like I've done a ton of this work. And it each different method really has a unique way of approaching it. And so if one method isn't right for you, you might find like any T really, really works for you. And what I think Dr. Nicole is this really simple and straightforward. It's not super time intensive, usually it's amazing. And the change is pretty instantaneous. Sometimes it can take a little while for the body to assimilate. But especially for those of you out there who you know, follow me for mold toxicity and mold related issues. For some reason, the mold particularly likes the amygdala. And the amygdala is our fight or flight and stress response. And so what I see with our mold patients and Lyme patients and chronic illness, and especially mold, there's something about that that really triggers old trauma and fight or flight. And I would actually postulate to say that I don't think most patients can get well until they deal with that old trauma and how it kind of comes up. And again, I can't tell you the exact mechanism except that right now, mold is this physiological trigger that tends to trigger old trauma and the amygdala and the amygdala is related to fight or flight. So it's like this pattern kind of comes up. And in order to get over that, you almost have to find a way to deal with that. Or you're going to be stuck in that pattern. Because the mold, even if you're consciously like, I'm good, I'm going to be fine, mold's not dangerous, I'm getting well, you can say that to yourself, but your subconscious body feels that threat as a much bigger threat psychologically. And so even subconsciously, even if you're consciously aware you have no mental illness or anything around it, you almost have to clear those things, whether it's with someone like Dr. Nicole, or otherwise in order to get well. Have you seen that? I think the way you put it was so succinct. And yes, I do see that. And I don't know, I feel like life has a way of bringing up stuff that we haven't dealt with that we need to deal with. And so for some people, I definitely see that with mold. But I can I feel like you have to kind of go at it at the same time, right? Like you're doing the chemical piece. And that's what I love about, you know, my medicine and your medicine, too, because functional medicine, naturopathic medicine are so, so similar. I mean, you're basically just going after the root cause. And so you have to be that root cause can also be that emotional part, as well as that chemical toxicity and binding up all those mycotoxins, right? Yeah, and you and I both have had experiences with mold and like trying to even figure it out for ourselves. I know five years ago, my office had mold and I had no idea about mold back then. It was the universe for God's way of kind of pushing me to say, you need to learn this and teach others and kind of so I didn't choose mold, it chose me. And even recently, we were talking before we got on live here and we both had little tiny things in our places that we've had to deal with. I have had a washer dryer that leaked in my laundry room in this safe, wonderful condo. And I think I have a little bit of an issue. It's minor compared to historically, but it's like, gosh, this stuff just it affects so many people. And I don't know if you want to share anything about your experience, but it's great to know. It affects us all. Well, I feel like what was interesting is I did treat some mold for sure in California, but I didn't know the extent of it until I really started working with you and realized all these ways of testing and remediating and and this this like ongoing joke with my husband. I'm like, I feel like we have mold in their house, mold in their house. And then last year, I started getting like some of those heat brashy kind of things on my skin. And I'm not a skin person. Like I don't really get stuff on my skin. So we noticed that was weird. My husband is a very productive person, like up in the morning, like what? And I noticed he was tired a lot, like sleeping in later. And I was like, good for him. Maybe he needs extra sleep. I mean, I don't know. But it was it was kind of strange and he wasn't sleeping great at night. And I, you know, none of these symptoms are debilitating, but we live a really healthy lifestyle. So I can't imagine for somebody who isn't doing like the crazy amount of health stuff that I that I have us do and is, you know, in a moldy environment, how much it affects them. And lo and behold, we finally did the early tests in the beginning, a couple months ago, right? It wasn't even that long ago, and got those really high levels of ketonium coming from our basement and one spot upstairs. And so, you know, we've been working out ever since, which is why I'm to you from my kitchen today and not in my office, because that's being remediated just in case. And, you know, I just, I think it's opened my eyes so much more to how much it affects you emotionally to and just your motivation level or just feeling so exhausted. And I would have never, I think, like you said, mold chose me, I didn't choose it. But I think I understand it so much more now for my patients who have been going through it and are going through it. Yeah, that's a sad thing. But the blessing is like, oh my gosh, we have to learn when we paste it. I know. And I remember, I mean, just for those of you listening, if you are, especially all of us are all of a sudden home a lot more. So if there is an issue in your house, you might feel, I totally agree with you, Dr. Nicole. For me, when I get exposed, I get like this fogginess where I feel like I'm slugging through mud. And normally, what takes me an hour to finish a blog, writing or whatever, it might take me two or three hours, it's a lot harder. I can start processing as I'm reading, it's harder for me to, like I might reread more than I normally would. And then I noticed, yeah, emotionally it's hilarious because normally I'm not, I'm pretty even, but I will be much more volatile with like, I'll cry or I'll be overwhelmed easily or I'll be just a lot more almost like if it's prior to my period or something, that kind of emotionality, right? And then sometimes I'm a very happy optimistic person. Praise God, I've never suffered with depression or anxiety, but with mold exposures, I've had times where I feel really like sad and like the world's going to end and everything's bad. And it's like not me. And I kind of know that it's not me, but it's the effect of mold on the brain and the emotions is profound. And so it's always one of those differentials. When I look at any sort of mood disorder or sleep disorder, it can cause insomnia, it can cause anxiety, definitely. And for me, there's also like the catomium you mentioned, I call that the narcoleptic mold, because a lot of these molds have personalities and my exposures to catomium, they make me like want to lay down and go to sleep immediately. It's like sleeping beauty just boom, I'm out. But kind of like you talk about your husband, you know, it's that feeling of like, oh my gosh, I'm really sleepy or so I'm grateful that we both have had the experience, even though it's been kind of difficult, because it really does help us to understand patients. It does for sure. And honestly, Joe, like I am so grateful for all the work that you've done in the mold field to because I have seen some patients who have come in and been like, none of my doctors will even acknowledge that it's a possibility that mold is an issue. But I've been, you know, looking at Dr. Jill's blogs or I've been watching her videos on YouTube. And I finally know that like, I'm validated. And so, I mean, it's really awesome that you have so much information out there for people, because I know they find it so validating in so many ways. So thank you to you for that. You're welcome. When you know how it is, it's like some of the symptoms is like, am I crazy? Like there is a piece of experience that like before I understood, I'm like, what is wrong? I'm not myself. You just don't feel like yourself and you don't feel like as productive or as clear or so many things. And even like you said, the skin stuff, I had lots of that too. Yeah, we're going to shift a little bit then just to stress and like, that's a huge topic. But let's start with just what are you doing in this time to help deal with the stresses? And even, I think more than just our personal stress, there's this collective consciousness. And there's other words for that. That's the way I like to think about it. This, this feeling pervasive of fear and of anxiety and of overwhelm. And those of us who are very sensitive, like you and I, that can be in any of you listening, you can feel that collective nature. And it does affect us, even if you're feeling strong yourself. So what do you personally do to protect yourself against that to keep positive and then also just to reduce stress? Sure, definitely. I would say that collective consciousness thing is so real. And some people can't describe it. They're just like, I just can feel everybody else's stress. And I think there is a lot of stress going on right now. And the best thing I like to tell my patients that they can do is to at least get themselves as aligned as possible. And that can be in whatever way works for you. So for me, it's actually, I used to work out really intensely for stress. And I feel like the more I've learned about my hormones, that's like, probably the opposite of what I should be doing. So I found like some great online yoga stuff. And I've been actually doing a lot of yoga classes at home. I feel like that type of workout lowers my stress more than anything. Meditation has always been a really strong point for me. There's a app actually called Beatfulness, and it's binaural beats. And there's a bunch of them that are free. And so even just listening to those, because it affects your brainwaves, it can actually help calm you down. Another one is I just, I'm very selective about what it is that I'm feeding myself. And food is one thing, sure, but I mean, I mean knowledge, I mean information. I think when this first started happening, I watched the news a lot. And that's not something I do normally. So I didn't really understand where I was doing that. And for me, it's like, the news is not my source of information. I have places that I love to get information from. You're a great information source. There's other great information sources. And so for me, when I want to see like really what's going on with the world, I'll choose that instead of the news just because I feel for me, it really affects my body. And I can tell that it instantaneously affects my mood. And so just being really careful about that. And then I'll always just, I always bring in the lifestyle piece, just food and nutrition in general. I know for me, even though sometimes the thought of a glass of wine would be really calming for me. I know that it actually doesn't really make my sleep very good. I don't wake up feeling great the next day. So I'm a lot more selective about things that are going to inhibit my physical body in any way and my mood. That's really what I've been doing. Gosh, I love it. We're so I could say yes, yes, yes to all. So I totally agree. Like, and it's funny because you and I sounds like both of us. I was like an avid high intensity intervals and really pushing myself. And I've been joking lately because I've like, I've gotten the best shape in my life in my 40s by stopping working out. Now, that's not quite true because I actually walk every day and I hike once or twice a week and I do some free weights. I have a pull up bar back there. Yeah, I love it. But what I try to do is like what I've been doing, Dr. Nicole is I'll like when I walk through the door, I'll do a couple of pull ups or when I do my brush my teeth, I'll do calf raises or when I between interviews, I'll go do push ups. And I like I love tagging this today, today activity. So it's like part of my routine and I really never work out, right? And it's so fun for me because I used to always have that you could say compulsion, but I loved it. It was never like obsessive. It was just I love to work out and I get up super early five or 530 and be out there doing an intense workout. And what it was doing is we talk about stress response from my body. It was all these years raising cortisol. And so when I really stopped that and like instead of going to work out at 530, I sat in my chair and read and prayed and meditated and like was still it changed everything because my cortisol went down. I lost percent body felt like amazing things happen when I stopped working out. So our stress response like whatever works for you, you've got to find what you might be the one who does need the high intensity and you need to that that actually helps motivate you if you're tired. So everybody's different. But for me personally, it sounds like you too, Dr. Nicole, I realized I was raising my cortisol and keeping that up. And that was actually a stressor. So I was basically overtraining and I didn't even know it. So that was huge when I learned that. And I'm so it's so relieving to not have to go and do an intense workout and to still fill the benefits of strength and energy and all that. I want to mention some practical resources for you guys out there. So you mentioned some of the biurinal is it biurinal beats, right? Yeah, where they go back. So in spotting EMDR, a lot of the therapists will use that because it gets you in kind of a different state. And I think those are super helpful. You can use them any time, meditation, some of the red light head stimulators. I have a via light back there and that can really turn on your brain. There's an alpha and a gamma. They're kind of pricey. But I find that to be incredibly helpful because it basically takes your brain right into an alpha wave state. And then apps like Headspace is a great, simple app. If you've never done meditation and you wanted something to try, that was one of my first introductions because I always had trouble sitting still and meditating. And then insight timer is just a repertoire of thousands of you. So you could do a Buddhist, Christian, kind of whatever is your thing or a 10 minute or five minute, you can choose length. And I love insight timer, love Headspace for that. Love the Bayernal beats because a lot of times the music really can put us into a good state too. I had mentioned this on another interview but the other day I'm out with my headphones walking and listening to music. And I just kind of wanted to skip for dance. And I remember it was a really kind of heavy time. And I was like, is this okay that I'm happy? Like I looked around thinking and then I realized like, you can actually have joy and suffering at the same time. And just because people around you are suffering and you have joy at times doesn't take away their suffering. And it was a real cool realization for me because I felt guilty initially about having that joy. And then I was like, no, it's okay. I can be joyful even though there is great suffering and I have great compassion for those who are suffering right now. And it was neat to just hold those. And I just wanna encourage you out there, this heaviness and stuff, you can actually have compassion for the suffering of the world and what's happening and have the seriousness of what's going on. But also at the same time, keep your joy and like do things to make sure that you are refreshed and excited about life. And I would encourage you now's a time to take stock. Like think about what is no longer serving you. What I realized is I had travel plans every other weekend. I had a trip to Australia plan to teach and all of a sudden, boom, COVID hit and I'm travels gone, done. And I had this like, wow, like this relief because on my own I would have never canceled all those things I felt committed. And all of a sudden the universe gave me this gift to just say, guess what? We're gonna give you a pause. And so going forward, I don't know how it's gonna look because I love to teach but I know things are gonna be different. And I bet those of you listening out there are feeling some of that too because this is this opportunity to pause. I've done a lot more journaling and a lot of it's around what am I not gonna take with me going forward? What am I gonna eliminate? What is no longer serving me? And then some of the things that maybe I'm coloring more or taking more walks with my puppies or having more time on Zoom with friends. And some of those things, I'm like, I want those things in my life. And you guys who have your families, you might be having dinners together for the first time. You might be with your children a lot more than you're used to. And some of those things are blessings and they're beautiful. And I just encourage you to really find what's working and what's not working and let this be a time of reset for you. I love that. I was listening to almost 30 podcasts the other day. They're great. And they were calling it a life edit. So like going through different parts of your life and quite literally editing them. Like how do I wanna show up when I'm online? How am I showing up online? How am I showing up to my family and my friends and my work? And I just thought like, what a perfect time to do that. And then just to piggy off what you said, piggy back off what you said about being able to hold joy. It kind of goes back to what you said about the collective consciousness and fear. That if none of us are allowed to feel joy, then we're not raising any of that collective consciousness too. So of course there's times where you're not gonna feel that but if you are feeling that, it's also, it's like, it's okay. And I love that you gave, it's almost like you gave people permission to feel that way. And I think people need that. Yeah, we do because I mean, any types, joy, sorrow, anger, sadness, any of these emotions, they're this, I get part of my work, I'll just share with you. I didn't know how to feel anger, sadness for many, many years. I just suppressed that part. I was like, that's not okay. I'm just happy, which is so unhealthy, right? Like I had autoimmune diseases and I realized in myself and my patients, a lot of that develops from suppressing anger. So because anger was never allowed, I thought, okay, that's not an okay motion. So stuff it down, put it away and it hurts your own body. So as I learned to express these things and sad in the same way, I would just go to happy bubble Jill and like ignore the sadness. And as I learned to process it was scary because all of a sudden I had like, many, many years and decades of sadness that came up and it was tough. But what I realized is whether it's joy or sadness or anger or any of these emotions, they come through like a wave and it feels like you're gonna be overwhelmed and you're gonna drown. But if you hang in there and you get in touch with yourself and you have compassion on the fact that you're feeling like a normal human being and you let you ride that wave. I learned to ride it just like a surfer. So I'm surfing emotions now and it's so beautiful because as that sadness comes or as the anger comes, you recognize it and you have compassion for your humanness and it passes and you actually feel way, way, way better than if you tried to stuff it and put it away. So even with stress response, I think this is a really great tool that we can teach people listening is that let those emotions, you're gonna have anger, you're gonna have sadness, you're gonna have joy and all of those are okay. And there's nothing wrong with you and if the sadness is more intense right now because you have some loss you're dealing with like financial or otherwise, it's okay. The biggest thing I could tell you about this, this is gonna pass. We are gonna get through this and even if it feels like insurmountable or it's extending on, it's gonna pass and we're gonna come out stronger on the other side. And I just, I love being an encourager in that way because I'm no different than you and I have my days. But I'd love to hear any comments. You have duck and a colon. Yeah, no, I think everything you said is beautiful. I think it's the, what's interesting when I do NET on patients, the things that come up are the things that people didn't sit with, right? It's the stuff that you couldn't process or you couldn't go through. And so a lot of times it's as a child, right? Because we don't know how to really process emotion but it's interesting that even as we get older in our 20s or 30s and now into adulthood, we still don't always wanna process things because it's easier. I mean, just like you used to suppress anger, like I used to just decide to feel nothing. Like, oh, I could just become numb real quick and not go through any of it. And so I think being able to process, truly process what's going on for you right now is just, it helps your health so much. Oh, so true. And you mentioned earlier, like, oh, if a glass of wine you might, so one of the things we do is we suppress emotions. And another thing we do is self-soothe. And that's a really sweet way of saying addictions. And I love talking about this because I was someone who grew up and I really haven't had any issues with alcohol or drugs. I have never been part of my life. So I had this like self-righteous kind of thing like, oh, I'm not an addict and I don't deal with those things. And like, that's so wrong because we all have our ways of dealing with those emotions that are painful. And when I started to realize like work, that can be an addiction. And here I am like, I love my work. I can pour myself into it when I'm feeling pain or sadness or overwhelmed and I feel good because I'm producing and I'm helping people. And so, but that's an addiction like any other if we're not able to deal with the emotions. So work can be that online shopping or eating or having these food kind of addictions because that raises our serotonin and makes us feel for the temporary time being. And of course drugs and alcohol, but it's so much bigger than that. Did you know even relationships and sex for some people can be addictions? I've been doing a lot of study on relationships and I'm just realizing all of these things, when someone doesn't wanna be alone and they're continually going relationship to relationship to relationship, these things are all basically ways of dealing with that. And we're all human. So I believe we all have some form of dealing with it. And they're not all bad because a lot of times like work we make, we're productive, we're helping the world. But it's like when that becomes our way of coping instead of actually being with ourselves, that's when it becomes an issue. And I'm just learning all about this and sharing with you because it's some of my own struggles, but it's so important, especially this time because you're isolated in your home with your family or yourself or your dogs. And there's a lot of emotion and there's a lot of loss and there's a lot of fear. So if now more than ever, you're feeling the tendency to wanna cope with an addiction, any tips for that, Dr. Nicole, like what do you recommend for people to do if they're like dealing with those emotions and they wanna go to alcohol or drugs or shopping or relationships or all the types of things. It's tough, right? Because some addictions are really quite literally diseases, right? And we do see that and there's sometimes, there's like things we do to balance the neurotransmitters which obviously you do in your work too to actually help them deal with this because it's really hard to do solo. And then there are other ones that we're really aware of like keeping ourselves busy or just making plans all the time or like maybe I've decided I have more time but I'm just gonna create a million Zoom meetings so I'm still busy all the time, right? I mean, I think- Are you talking about me? Cause I- No. No, definitely not. Are you doing that? Well, I do like to keep myself busy and I totally agree with part of it. Well, it's interesting. It's like Marianne Williamson called this a collective pause. So it's like, if this is a pause, how, why do we need to fill that space? What happens if we sit with that? And you know, I'm a talker. So I like to talk it out with Matt or a best friend of mine or my sister. You know, like this is what I'm feeling or this is what's hard for me. I'm also a journaler. I feel like writing is really helpful for me to be like, what is it that I'm trying to escape right now? Or why do I want to be busy? Why is it hard for me just to like work on a puzzle or hang out or read for a little bit? So I think it's just, if anything just becoming aware of it is so helpful. Like that's the first step, right? Like, yeah, I'm more aware that this is something I'm trying to do to create busyness, to keep me away from maybe just sitting or being with myself. I'm not sure what it is. So I think awareness and then self discovery. And then if it's something that you want to go deeper in than to find somebody who can kind of guide you through that. I mean, I like doing it with NET. Other people like doing it with NLP, right? But it's a good time to go into that right now. I think it's a great time for self discovery. Oh, I do too. It's like, we can take this opportunity. And you guys know, I mean, both Dr. Nicole and I are available online, but there's all kinds of therapists for any of these modalities. If something else works better for you. I mentioned a few. I will just clarify, there's cognitive behavioral therapy, which is typical talk therapy. And that's great. But I'll tell you my experience, I'm in my head all the time. I'm very analytical. So talk therapy actually makes it worse because I get more in my head and more out of my body. And for some people, they need that. For me, I needed to go below the neck and actually get into my body and start to feel again. And so when we talk about that, that's trauma-based therapy or somatic therapy. And we say trauma-based therapy doesn't mean you have to have had a horrible abuse of childhood. I didn't, but I still had trauma. And I believe we all have these things that are traumatic. And because we're five or six or eight, we don't know how to process them. And we don't have the emotional capacity. But if they get stuck in our tissues and we never deal with them, they come out as disease and they come out as inability to adapt to stress and they come out as addictions and maybe come out as behavioral issues or difficulty with relationships is a common one. And so we actually have to go back and deal with them. And so if you're looking for someone, you could look for somatic types of therapies or trauma-based therapies. Some of those include, and this is not exclusive, but brain-spotting, EMDR, NETI I would assume is kind of in that basket too. It is, it's absolutely. And then there's things like NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. And there's more. Those are just a few, but those are super helpful. And most of the practitioners are available online. So if you're struggling, now is a great time to reach out. And I've done a lot of work through Zoom calls. One of my first NLP therapists was in San Francisco. So I went out to visit her and then I did Zoom calls, but it can be so powerful and I feel like it's just as effective to do it virtually. So if you're feeling stressed, reach out and get some help. Even if it's a coffee with a friend, you can start there, but professional help is available. And if you need more friends, we can both share a people that we know or see Dr. Cole. Yeah. Well, I'm just gonna say like, I've been doing a lot of emotional work on Zoom and I think people are finding it really just the same as if they were sitting on my table. So thank goodness. I mean, I have my fellow NET practitioners or other practitioners that do emotional work who, you know, if I'm like, I'll call them up and give them a little second, right? Because I feel like it's the time to do it. And I was just gonna piggyback off one other thing you said, I think it was Woody Allen who said, I don't get angry, I just grow a tumor, right? And so it's like, but it's that same idea of like, whatever you're repressing has to express itself in some form, because it's energy. Like whether you look at it as like quantum physics, which is way too hard for me to explain, but it is everything can create matter and just like emotions and stress can too, which is crazy to think about, but it's so documented now. It is. I remember looking at the data, like I grew up on a farm and I had exposures like Atrazine that were endocrine disruptors probably in utero, I had breast cancer at 25. So I know that those real chemical toxicities and stress and things affected me. But when I learned that there was a connection psychologically to this nurturing, it's breast cancer. So it's kind of like what the organ that we used to nurture the children that we birth. When I realized that there was actually a connection to breast cancer and like over nurturing and not taking care of your own needs. Again, I had to do some work around that, but I think a lot of women with breast cancer have a tendency to be that type and they're kind of ignoring some of their own needs at the expense of their own body. So it's so fascinating. So it's so fascinating too, like you were just saying the nurturing aspect where like how, where different cancer decides to show up or not cancer, but even just like dis-ease and imbalances. There's this great book called Your Body Speaks Your Mind. And I love it because it explains so much about like different emotional correlations or stress or trauma that like shows up in different parts of our body. It's like mind blowing. I've seen those two and I'm like, wow, this is associated with this and it kind of often makes sense. It's on a metaphysical level, but it's interesting. It is interesting. I want to talk a little bit about sleep because I know we both, are you wearing your aura ring? Yeah. We're not associated with the company anyway, but I would tell you like one of my favorite things ever and all my favorite people have them. I would go around a coffee like, yeah. So in order, I mean, there's tons of other devices out there, but we love our aura rings. So one of the things I find to be so key with stress is sleep. And it's one of the things that if someone comes in and they're not sleeping, I really can't do much with their health until we get that sleeping down. Oh, absolutely. I'm going to talk a little about that and like tips for sleep because, so the aura ring, what it is is a tracking device to track your deep sleep, your REM sleep and attracts your activity and your temperature and your heart rate. It's a really cool device. There's a lot of them out there. You don't need the ring, but I know we both love to like wake up in the morning and check our sleep still. I'm always competitive with myself like is it enough up to 90% or not. But I found it to be super helpful because I find when I have more stressful nights or for me, I get all of my deep sleep in the first like half of my night like the first four hours and then my REM in the morning. So if I go to bed really late, I usually am lacking in deep sleep or if I wake up super early to catch a flight, I usually miss the REM and it's so fascinating to kind of, and then my body compensates. So if I go like three nights with not enough deep, the fourth night my body is like woo and it gets three hours of deep sleep. It's like really cool to track. And you can track like alcohol intake or the foods that you eat or the stresses that you do or a fever. So it's fascinating. Have you found that to be helpful? Oh, I love it. I mean, Matt used to say like, he's like, how about you decide how you feel about your sleep before you look at your ring? Because you can't like keep looking at that to decide. I'd be like, oh, I slept great and I'd be like, I slept terrible. But I mean, but yes, definitely I've noticed that like different supplements that I've been using for sleep like magnesium glycinate or a nocetal or like phosphatidyl serine, I can tell which ones like really helped get me into that deep sleep. Like you said with like, if I drink wine, I drink dry farm, like you try to go as clean as possible. And I can't tell you the last time I had like more than two glasses, I don't know at a time, but I will see my heart rate variability go down for sure the next morning. And it's annoying that I'm that sensitive to it. But I mean, it's also powerful to have that information. So that if you have a big day or you have an early morning, you just can tell like, well, I know if I do this, it's gonna be lower. And what I thought was really interesting is I was interviewing, oh, Dr. Anna Cabeca. And she was saying how we, she used to check baby's heart rate variability all the time, like that's just what they do for babies. And somehow we stopped doing that. And it's such a powerful tool to see how well you're managing stress and just how, you know, how well your health is in general. And so I like that aspect too, because when you meditate, it will track your heart rate variability too. So you can see or when you rest, how deep you're able to actually get into it, you know, a de-stressful state. I love that. And I just wanna explain if you're listening, you don't know what heart rate variability is. So these devices track that. There's also an app called HeartMath that's been one of the most famous ones. You can get it on a phone or computer. There's others out there. But heart rate variability is your beat-to-beat variability. So if we have a nice sinusoidal curve and it's real even and it's like a 74, 68 and kind of this nice sinusoidal wave, that shows that we have a parasympathetic tone, which means we have the lack of the high-stress environment in our body, like lack of cortisol and adrenaline and noradrenaline. If we have a stress response, it'll go to more of a sympathetic overtone. And that creates this jagged pattern. So it goes 80 and then 60 and then so real jagged beat-to-beat variability. So it's kind of hard to explain, but the bottom line is when your heart rate variability is smooth, it indicates you have a higher parasympathetic. So it indicates you have a higher de-stressed tone. If your heart rate variability is very jagged and low, it's gonna indicate a more sympathetic tone. And what Dr. Nicole was describing is if you've ever been pregnant and you have a heart rate monitor on your baby, that is heart rate variability. So again, we've done this for years. And what happens is when that baby's heart rate variability goes very jagged and there's a sympathetic overtone, that's a sign, oh, we might need a C-section. We might need to save this baby because he's under stress. So it's literally how we monitor in utero, the baby's stress. And we can do it as adults, we just don't do it. But it's a great tracking way. If you wanna know what stress, how your system is stressed right now and how to reduce stress and you wanna know how do I figure that out? That would be the number one thing I would say for you to find as a heart rate variability tracking device because you can actually do meditation or be a light or therapy or all of these things we've talked about, go for a walk and you can see the changes in your heart rate variability. I love it. It's such a good explanation of it because it's like one of those things where it's like if we find it so powerful for babies, which of course it's like such a precious time, like we should definitely, we are able to track it now as adults just to get another like piece of data for yourself. It makes a lot of sense. So I just loved as we end, if you have any last parting words of wisdom or comments to people to reduce stress, what would you say to our listeners? Oh gosh, I think parting wisdom. I mean, I feel like everybody just to keep in mind that everybody is doing the very best they can. I think sometimes it's easy to judge how somebody else is experiencing this time. And I think just to know that everybody's gonna experience this according to their own patterns and their own belief systems. And I think just to give, as you're giving yourself grace, like give grace to other people too, and just to be kind. I feel like it's such a powerful time for kindness. I love that, Nicole. You and I are like on the same way. Like as you're talking, my word was just grace, grace. And you said it, you said it, but I love leaving our listeners with that because grace means undeserved merit, undeserved kindness. And right now there's people that might get on your nerves or you might see a post that you totally disagree with. What I find though is the environment is so hostile. And I just wanna leave you have grace because people are doing the best they can. And they might say something to really irritate you, but before you respond, take a deep breath, check in with yourself and find out if it's necessary. It might be, but I would love to leave you with that thought of kindness and grace will go a long way to spreading that and to helping other people decrease their stressors. I love it. It's beautiful. Awesome. Thank you guys for listening. Feel free to share this around if you found it helpful and we will talk to you soon. Bye-bye.