Hey guys, and welcome back to Change Wired Podcast, the podcast where we untangle growth, one smart habit, one bold idea at a time. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm an executive coach at 360 Body, mind Work, human behavior strategist, and around here we are together about making change work. Whether you are leading a team, changing careers, figuring out the next step or simply trying to live better in a world moving fast, this is your space to slow down, get clear and wire your life for change. Let's dive in and wire your life for change. Let's dive in.
Today, guys, it's our Wellness Wednesday and today I want to talk to you. I want to share with you how I got rid of this nagging lower back hip pain by using my mind. And it's not something I don't know woo-woo and some secret technique that I use or some secret meditation that allowed me to get into some superhuman state of consciousness. It's simply about paying attention and directing my body where I needed that attention and where I needed things to be fixed. I call myself 360 coach because? Well, because I got certified in health and nutrition and mindset and recovery and sleep and leadership training. But I'm passionate about 360 approach because I understand in my experience, in my experience working with hundreds of clients by now, that nothing is separate. Your body, your mind, the work that you do, the world that you live in and surround yourself with, it's all connected. And you are this open ecosystem where everything inside of you interacts to produce this complex result, and also things outside of you also influence you a lot. You are a human being and you are the most adaptable creature out there. What it means is you adapt to fit into your environment the fastest, the best, and you can shape your environment to change yourself. And compared to, let's say, plants or animals, which kind of have their instincts and, one can say, habits, and they adapt to their environment, but not so much If you put a cat in, I don't know, siberia minus 30 degrees, it's not going to be figuring its way out and unless it finds shelter, warmer, better suited for its physiology, it's going to die, whereas we humans figure out how to thrive in any condition and so we adapt to our environment and we also adapt our environment to suit us so we could thrive in it. But all of that to say, guys again, you are an open ecosystem, everything that is around you, everything that is inside of you interacts, producing the result that you see.
Speaker 1So now back to that back pain. It wasn't really back pain, it was somewhere in my hip and I got it at some point and then it was just there. I would wake up and I needed to sort of change my movement in order to accommodate it, and I would have to when I needed to pick something up. I needed to have this almost routine, so I couldn't do it in a normal way and it was bothering me. You know, when you have certain pain, it influences your mind, your mood, and you're always not exactly right, and I couldn't figure out, like, first of all of all, where I didn't have any injury that I can think of and I do yoga and exercise but there was this pain and I realized that it's probably something just in my nervous system because, objectively, there was no physical damage.
Speaker 1And I started doing my meditations and I do mindful meditations every single day, and mindful meditation basically means paying attention to whatever you choose to pay attention to. Some meditations invite you to pay attention to something external maybe a flame of a candle or noises, sounds outside, maybe movement outside, watching clouds, sometimes just looking at the wall or at the ceiling. Some meditations a lot of them require you to practice internal focus, when you focus on your breathing or you focus certain parts of your body. So what I do these days regularly, what is called body scan, or sometimes it's also called, if you use it with relaxation, yoga, nidra, non-sleep depressed protocol where you focus internally on different parts of the body and you relax those parts of the body one by one. So I've been practicing that for a while and after I decided to dedicate some time to figure this pain out, I'm like why don't I just focus on that specific area and try to really tune in and pay attention to what's happening there?
And during those meditations I started feeling that, ah, actually, my muscle there, for whichever reason, is always flexed. There is tension, it almost never relaxes. And then during my days I started noticing I would stop for a moment during my day and just feel into this area and I would notice that there was this tension all the time, whereas the other part of my body was relaxed. And I started doing this one practice of several times a day whether I was standing, sitting down or laying down doing my meditation, I would pay attention to this area, to this tension, I would consciously try to relax it Really deeply, focusing on it, and relax it throughout the whole area. And I noticed that that tension in one area, in this like hip, buttock, back pain area, I noticed that tension there actually was also causing tension all the way almost down to my feet and all the way up to my neck. And I started paying attention and I started focusing on relaxing all of these areas one by one, until I feel like nothing is tense there, until I felt that it was all relaxed. And I started doing it regularly, more and more and more. And I noticed also then, when I would lay down actually before I wouldn't be fully relaxed, there was this tension, so my back was never really relaxed, and because of that, my shoulders and again my feet. So I started working on that and after I think three, four weeks, that pain disappeared Because now my muscle was more in a relaxed position, just like the other part of my body, just like the other side. So that was on my left side and my right side was always relaxed, and so the tension disappeared and that pain disappeared with it.
Speaker 1I also think that the reason why I don't get sick even during pandemic I never got sick, and when I was a kid, guys, I would get sick. When I was a teenager as well, I would get sick every month, and it was either coughing or something else. Something else was always up, and also my digestive system. I would eat all these different foods and a lot of them just didn't work for them, and that disappeared once I started practicing more meditation. That's why, when I was a teenager, I got into meditation and yoga and I noticed that the more I did it, the less sick I got, and at that point I didn't really put things together. I thought maybe meditation just did something different. But now I realized that all the work that I was doing, it was all done with my nervous system, putting it into a state of relaxation where our nervous system actually triggers different processes in our whole body, allowing immune system to do its best work, also allowing a lot of recovery, restoring and repairing processes.
If your nervous system is in the state of tension and stress, your recovery is never fully switched on. You need to relax more and get into the state of rest and digest more often in order for recovery and your immune system to do their work consistently well. So all of that to say, I started working with my nervous system more and more and more and as I did, all of the physical results started to change and improve and these days I have no reactions to any food. My autoimmunity that was there when I was in my early teenage years that went away. What also happens the more I learn to relax my nervous system, the less pain there is. Also the more energy I have.
Speaker 1If you didn't know or we also talked about this on this podcast but when your nervous system is in a state of stress, of tension, you actually, on a cellular level, use more energy to maintain that. It's kind of like pushing gas pedal in your car and leaving it on or leaving the ignition on the engine on. Compared to off state, it's going to use a lot more energy. So the same happens with your body. When your nervous system is always on, and the more you learn how to stay in a more relaxed state and that is literally a different state of your nervous system the less energy you're going to use and the more your body is going to dedicate a lot of resources and energy to restorative processes, to repair, to helping your immune system to do its work, even repair on a DNA level. So learning how to control your nervous system will help you to eliminate a lot of pains, obviously, unless it's something physically that you damage. But a lot of pain that people experience actually happens because of this stressed, intense state of nervous system, which then triggers muscle contraction, muscle tension, and that's what would often cause this nagging pain. So learning to control your nervous system will help you again to have less pain, to have less tension. Your nervous system will help you again to have less pain, to have less tension, but also will help you to be more creative and be more of a long-term thinker. Because what a stress state of your nervous system does it causes you to go in this alarm mode when you are primed to take care of your immediate needs to survive, but not so much to thrive and invest into your long-term. Because you're basically saying to your body well, I don't know if the long-term is ever going to happen, I just need to do this right now and focus on eating, on getting energy, on resolving this quick fuss, even though long-term, that solution whether that's for your career, your work, your relationship might not actually benefit you. But because you're in the stress state, you're always going for short-term, which very often would eliminate the possibility of long-term Again. Bringing it all together With my clients, I always incorporate mindfulness practices.
Speaker 1These days I start every coaching session with some breath work Really simple, but the purpose is to get my clients into a habit of learning how to control their nervous system. We do five cycles of four counts breathe in, eight counts, breathe out. Four counts, breathe in, eight counts, breathe out. And we do it to also center ourselves and be more present. Also, in that state your nervous system is more open to change, to learning to be more open-minded and accept different ways of looking at things, different perspectives. So relaxing your nervous system has this multifaceted effect on your physiology, on the way you think and on what you do.
So during again, at the beginning of each of our sessions with clients, we start with breathwork to develop this habit, to start learning to control, to relax your nervous system, to relax your nervous system. So then you have this downstream positive effect, whether that's pain, better working immune system or more creative, more long-term thinking and managing your urges and cravings, and short-term gratification and investing more in long-term. But then also, if you are someone struggling with a lot of tension in your body and you have some pains and you always I don't know whether you injure yourself or maybe do stretches and you always end up overstretching and again injuring yourself. Learn, start practicing this in the show notes there's going to be a link to Yoga Nidra protocol Learn to regulate your nervous system through breath work and through muscle relaxation when you again lay down or you sit down and you just check in with your body, and you can even do it without dedicating a special practice. Let's say you are in the office or you work from home. Just sit down, lay back and close your eyes and just pay attention to the chicken with your body, scan your body and see where you hold tension.
Speaker 1One part of my body is always it's on the left side one part of my body is always a little bit more tense and that's where I had my pain and so a few times per day I would just consciously focus on that, close my eyes and then relax it, and you can eliminate so many downstream effects, negative effects in your health, with developing this practice of paying attention to what's happening inside of you. Again, there is going to be a link to a protocol, yoga Nidra, or a body scan practice that you can do with the guide on the video, on YouTube video, or you can also start doing it yourself, and what also, I believe, allowed me to just almost never get sick. I would get something, but I would notice it. Because of this practice of noticing and paying attention to what's happening in me. I'm like, oh, my energy is weird and then, oh, I'm sleepier than usual, and then I would act on it, so I would go to bed earlier, I would make sure I don't stress myself too much on the day or don't do anything crazy. I try to reduce my workload, maybe pay more attention to my nutrition so it supports my immune system, and this not really feeling a little bit off, that would go away.
Speaker 1So the takeaway of today's conversation, guys, is everything in you and outside of you is connected, number one and you'll avoid a lot of negative downstream negative effects in your health, whether that's pain, whether that's getting sick, whether that's some short-term gratification action canceling your long-term benefits. You can avoid a lot of that by starting practicing A paying attention and checking in with yourself. Just, maybe when you have breakfast, maybe when you have lunch and dinner, just have to close your eyes and like, okay, what am I feeling in my body, where am I tense, where am I relaxed and why is that? And then try to just purposefully relax. So that's One paying attention to those signals, checking in with yourself. Develop this practice because it will help you to prevent a lot of negative consequences long-term again, from getting sick to making stupid decisions, to eliminating pain.
Speaker 1Use the practice that I link in the show notes or other similar mindful and relaxation practices, because learning how to control your nervous system is one of the most important brain, body, life skills that you can develop as a human being and guys, animals, I don't know plants. They also have intelligence. They don't have that ability. You can't control your nervous system, whereas humans can. So use it to eliminate pain, to become more long-term thinker, to open up your creativity, to make better decisions, to eliminate pains, to improve your digestion, to boost your immune system. You can do all of that by learning how to control, how to relax the nervous system and how to pay attention to what's happening inside of you and adjusting your behavior accordingly.
Speaker 1So, without further ado, let's conclude this episode. Check out the link in the show notes, start practicing some mindfulness, some internal check-ins. If you need more guidance. We'd like to do it together. Session on mindfulness, on developing internal self-awareness there is also a link in the show notes to a trial executive coaching session. Use that as well, don't forget guys. Sharing this episode is caring and helping more people to develop their best self, to develop that inner mastery. So you get out there and master outside world. So share rate review. Hope you had a great session today and got a lot of value. If you have questions, always reach out. Until next time, stay well and keep growing.