Lifestyle and Community as Medicine: Darren Moore on Balancing Well-Being and Overcoming Grief

Body Aware Living guest Darren Moore and Margo Rose, both fitness trainers, offer practical wellness tools for healing even during loss and overwhelm. Darren shares about his struggle to balance his work inspiring others while managing the loss of multiple family members. He explains how he used simple techniques from Margo's book Body Aware Grieving to stay focused and hopeful. Darren also encourages other men to harness the power of community to regain health and wellness.

Guest Bio/contact info:
Darren Moore
Health and Wellness Coach, Certified Personal Trainer

Website: BetweenTheEars.net
Email: Darren@BetweenTheEars.net
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DarrenLMooreCHWC

Margo Bio/contact info:

Would you like more practical wellness ideas?

Margo Rose has been a personal trainer for over 20 years specializing in functional fitness. She has also written a book called

Body Aware Grieving; A Fitness Trainer's Guide To Caring For Your Health During Sad Times.

Body Aware Living is a new blend of these two systems of healing and self-care. On this website you will find: the Body Aware Living podcast, articles and videos about wellness in Margo Media section and description of her coaching services

Website: www.BodyAwareLiving.com

Body Aware Grieving has been created to help you, or someone you care about, adjust to a loss or big life change. This link is one way to get the book quickly:

https://www.amazon.com/Body-Aware-Grieving-Fitness-Trainers/dp/0692459189

Also available from other vendors including this independent Bookshop organization:

https://bookshop.org/books/body-aware-grieving-a-fitness-trainer-s-guide-to-caring-for-your-health-during-sad-times/9780692459188

Follow Body Aware Living on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/BodyAwareLiving

Transcript

Margo Rose: 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Body Aware Living podcast. I'm Margo Rose, author of Body Aware Grieving, a fitness trainer's guide to caring for your health during sad times, and we are here with kind and wise people from around the world. We're looking for practical ways to get through difficult times and to celebrate our accomplishments. It's important to remember that none of the ideas discussed by myself or my guests are meant to replace any personal health wellness legal advice you might need from professionals. All right, here we go. Today's guest is amazing it's Darren Moore. Darren Moore is a national board certified health and wellness coach. He's also a group and personal fitness trainer and I wanna ask you to describe anything you wanna add to that intro, darren.

Darren Moore: 0:53

Yes, I empower middle-aged professional men and women and seniors to take control of their health so they lead a high quality life as they age, and I do this by helping them set realistic goals within their unique situation. I provide education, recommendations and accountability.

Margo Rose: 1:13

Okay, cause people are busy. Right, people are usually super busy and you know, so you're gonna try to figure out what's gonna work within their own circumstances. It sounds like it's part of your approach Correct.

Darren Moore: 1:27

in addition to that, there's other life. You know life be life in sometimes, and you know with lots of things that people are juggling. It's a lot of people, but they wanna you know wanna take some steps towards improving their health and wellbeing and that's what I co-create with them, are creating some strategies how to make that happen.

Margo Rose: 1:45

You were describing lifestyle as medicine and you were describing community as medicine, and I got so curious, cause those both sound like not our traditional advice. So can you explain what you mean by lifestyle as medicine and community as medicine?

Darren Moore: 2:04

Yeah, so I'm gonna clarify. So the first part, lifestyle medicine. What lifestyle medicine is is? I have the philosophy and the belief, along with others like me who are members of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. We believe that our health and wellbeing rests on pillars Right, and so these six pillars, which include things like physical exercise, nutrition, stress management, sleep, healthy relationships or positive social connections that's gonna be key when I answer the next question Avoidance or minimization of risky substances. What that looks like are people trying to stop smoking or reduce excessive alcohol, and so these pillars and the strength the health of these pillars are will determine your health and wellbeing, and that is important to look at all of those pillars when trying to make a change in your life, and that to just focus on one is kind of short-sighted, and so part of my approach when working with clients is to get them to look at all aspects of their health and wellbeing, and so that's what lifestyle medicine means it's behaviors in those pillars that will get you the outcomes you desire.

Darren Moore: 3:24

Now, community as medicine that ties into the piece around healthy relationships, slash, positive social connections. We are humans and humans are wired for connection. We have lasted this long because of our ability to connect, need each other, cooperate, love we need it and people who are highly resilient and who are living in alignment with their values and their purpose in the world. You ask them what are some of the tools you've used? And it's about support. They've got support. They've got community, people together. And so community as medicine. What that speaks to is asking you to look in your life, in your world, and who around you do you have? Have you surrounded yourself with people who are affirming supportive, or are they toxic? We've all heard the term. I work in a toxic environment, I'm in a toxic relationship. Well, that's the other side of that. So that's what community as medicine, and I think again, I don't say one pillar is more important than the other, but it's one that I think people don't look at that healthy relationship or their positive social connections as a pillar to be considered when they're trying to make a change in their life.

Darren Moore: 4:46

And one last thing I'll add to that is the blue zones. I'm not sure if you've heard of the blue zones, and there's actually a documentary right now that I recommend, if you have your audience has Netflix to watch, and it talks about these certain parts of the world. There's like five or six, I can't remember exactly, so I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but the bottom line is it's these parts of the world where people live to be over a hundred, right the most centurions, and one of the pillars that supports that living to 100, and I mean these are people who living a high quality life all the way up to 100 is community. They all have community. People care about each other in the community supportive.

Darren Moore: 5:30

When you feel cared about and supported, you feel energized. You don't feel depressed or lonely or feelings of, you know, isolation, isolation, loneliness right now is one of the biggest things. It's a pandemic here in the US. So there see the connection. It's about community. We need community, and so that's part of where the lifestyle medicine. But that peace, that pillar and that's what I'm in the business of reminding people about, whether I'm delivering personal training, group fitness or just coaching, and most people don't do that that's what makes me unique. I bring that up. I at least spark that idea or concept into my clients mind so they can think about that, so they can go back after we've had a great workout or whatever and think about who am I similar? Do I have community. Do I have support? Maybe that's what's getting in the way of me getting the outcomes I desire. Whatever that outcomes, you fill in the rest.

Margo Rose: 6:29

Can I hop in here Because I just get really curious, because it sounds like you've known a lot of different kinds of people and you've worked with a lot of different kinds of people. So is it potentially harder, as you've seen or experienced, for men versus women to develop the intensity of the bright kind of uplifting supporting there for you when you need me, kind of community and personal relationships Would you speak to? Like there's gender, there's age, there's race, there's all these different directions we could go, and if you could speak to what you've seen and what you've seen and what you would recommend as an improvement style, Well, I will definitely focus on the gender piece, because you started off with men.

Darren Moore: 7:15

Absolutely, men are struggling with that capacity to be vulnerable and connected and that's just this kind of almost I don't want to say kind of it's hardwired into our culture here in the US around men and masculinity and that gets into topics of toxic masculinity and what it means to be a man and all those definitions that have been passed on from generation. And it's evident in the fact that recent the research has still affirmed that men are living less than women. Women are out living men. Their health, their more active women are more proactive with their health than men. So we've got the data, it's a fact and it's because of our culture, but it's shifting. It's actually shifting.

Darren Moore: 8:04

We are starting to allow men and boys and the important point is boys. So if you have a male child in your life, it's incumbent on you to help us all as a society break the cycle of trying to speed up their manhood. Let them be boys, teach them vulnerability. And if you're a man now and you want to break the cycle, it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to be vulnerable and express your emotions.

Margo Rose: 8:36

Because of your experience with fitness, wellness and coming from like the opportunity of discussing a male perspective and it's really interesting how we met. Do you want to mention how we met, because it's sort of very sweet.

Darren Moore: 8:49

I've experienced great loss and grief over the past three years, starting at the beginning of the pandemic. So let's first put that out there. I'm still recovering from the shock of that, as many of us are.

Margo Rose: 9:04

Do you feel okay mentioning I mean, we talked about it personally, but do you feel okay mentioning a tiny bit of what's just even just the headline of your own personal summary of the past two, three years, the way you mentioned it to me?

Darren Moore: 9:18

Yeah, absolutely so. I lost my mother, first at the beginning of the pandemic and then, less than a year later, my brother, and then a year later, my father, and then, earlier this year, my sister and I, with the surviving children, we sold our family home. I'm from Chicago, so the home is in Chicago. We sold our family home and that, finally, was the shock that has been reverberated in me. That is really like. So I've been processing a lot of that grief and loss and because I am trying to practice what I preach around being vulnerable and telling people how I'm feeling and not trying to mask it because I'm a man and I have to I share with one of my clients that I'm struggling. She asked me how I'm doing and, instead of just saying oh, I'm okay, and putting a smile on that particular day a few months ago, I was vulnerable and honest and told her I'm struggling today and that I have been struggling. Now I've been also. I've been also struggling at that time with what I mean.

Darren Moore: 10:27

I'm a health wellness coach, I'm a personal trainer and don't I know some tools and strategies to help move through, but I've later and I can share this with some other strategies I've used to help me move through it. But she recommended your book and I said, sure, hey, at this point I'll take anything, because I am paralyzed right now by all this grief and loss. And so she gifted me, and that's another thing I'm so grateful for she gifted me the book. I just went on Amazon and bought it this book over here, right?

Margo Rose: 11:04

Yes, that wonderful little book that is nice Body to Wear, grieving a fitness trainer's guide to caring for your health during sad times. And the fact that you had said that your nickname it's on your website as well was SunnyD, like part of your persona, was like what we're seeing right now, which is cheerful and huge, gorgeous smile and uplifting and inspiring other people. And that's part of why I was so glad to meet you, because the same beautiful, beautiful client who had been my client previously I mean, she was my client when I was writing the book and so she knows what I was going through in my life trying to do that same dance that you're talking about Like well, how much do I share? Because I didn't just write about grief for fun. I wrote about grief because I was trying to figure out how to get through my own and how much you got to make money as a personal trainer. And this is why I was so glad to talk to another personal trainer, because it's like people don't pay us to be depressed. You know Right, we're not bringing people down business. Exactly, it's hard to know how to like, so I wanted to find out.

Margo Rose: 12:16

I was so honored that she that I'd actually finally eventually finished the book, because it took a long time and a lot of effort to make things sound that simple. You know the book is short, it's simple, the font is really big, it's easy to read. It's one page at a time is plenty. And the fact that it had actually finally been finished and somebody could recommend it and put it in the hands of somebody else was just like exciting. And I'm wondering how? What did you learn from it? What did you learn from the book and the system of healing a body where grieving? What did you use? What did you learn, or if anything was helpful to you.

Darren Moore: 12:54

Yeah, there were so many things more than we'd have time for in this podcast, but I will share with you some of the highlights. You know I said a few minutes ago that, because of the amount of loss that I endured in such a short period of time in addition to a global pandemic that's important happening at the same time, my nervous system was hijacked. And when your nervous system is hijacked, you either go into fight, flight or freeze, and I was in freeze mode and what that looked like was I just had no capacity to anything, to just yeah, to turn on whatever the. So I know what strategies to do, I just was in freeze mode. I was paralyzed by all the loss and the grief, not only my own, but the collective of the people I live around. Because I'm very, I'm highly empathic and sensitive, so I'm picking up on the energies of my community and the world Just pound it on me.

Darren Moore: 14:07

And so one of the concepts that was brought up in the book well, first of all, the fact that the book itself and having it created some space for me to read it back it's almost akin to. I'm very. I support people who journal as well. This is another way how you kind of. You need something to kind of break, to kind of shift, to give you a spark to let, oh, so you can step away. I needed something to step away from myself, because one of the things you wrote in your book and I'm going to, I have you have your copy there too.

Darren Moore: 14:43

I keep it with you. Oh my goodness, did you do?

Margo Rose: 14:46

the writing part, because the whole last third of the book is designed to have people help create their own healing action plan and I. There's all that space for writing and when we met in person and you showed me that you'd actually written in your book the way I'd hoped people would, I was just like really like actually did that. I was hoping it would be useful transparency.

Darren Moore: 15:09

I didn't fill out the back part, although there was tools in the back that I actually I do already I was doing. But again remind you, I was paralyzed by the fear. So that piece, but the writing that I was doing in the book with were the writings in the in, between the lines and the circle. I'm I'm a big highlighter and I write right where the information is that the author has written to pull me out and I start my journaling literally. So it's almost a lazy thing instead of writing in the back of your book, I mean I was doing it, I just did it in the pages of the pages themselves.

Margo Rose: 15:48

So just what's one of the things that you were like writing, either circling or writing. What's one of the things that jumped out for? You as being like this is going to help me get through my day. You know, I just want people to get through their day better.

Darren Moore: 16:01

So what I think was important, the big, the big takeaway, was when I talked about you meaning you have to step away from myself what I needed and what your book provided, one of the many wonderful things, was reminding me that what I'm experiencing is okay. I'm just writing my what with my experience. Right, so you talked about at the end of this huge and difficult marathon of activities. Right, because the plant, you know, trying to lay your parents or all the stuff that you have to do, but there's still life that needs to be happening, and so what can happen is I am paraphrasing is we get when we try to get back to our own lives. If, and remind you, I was in the middle of trying to, I'm in the middle of building my business. I'm helping support, raise a little boy who, this was a year ago, is three years old.

Darren Moore: 16:59

In 1557, I left corporate America and text something that I've known for 35 years to launch my own business. There's a lot of anxiety and I have all these like you mentioned your book we have all these responsibility, got to pay the bill, got to do all that. The transition from that didn't even give myself time or space to greed. Right, and I needed to see it in your book because that affirmed to me I'm not alone. I understood that obviously that's what can happen and that's what put started the process of pulling me out because I was all right. And then I was like that's right, I have been.

Darren Moore: 17:36

I went right into just doing because all these responsibilities and that's important and that's why I want to make sure I started with that first, to tell you how that benefited me, because as humans, we need to know that what we're doing is okay and that it's okay that you're okay in how you're handling it. Because what can happen? If you think that it's not, then that part of you will start to. You'll get into thinking that you're bad and feeling a bit of perfection, which I'm moving past that, all those other things, when it's known what you're experiencing is normal, all of that awaits the ease of a person's nervous system when you realize, oh, this is normal, it's just not me. I'm not bad, I'm not doing anything wrong, I was just trying to live life. At the same time, I had experiencing loss and I needed to give some space for that. I wanted to make sure that that was the big thing. Then does that make sense?

Margo Rose: 18:42

Yeah, it seems like some periods of life are going down this huge, fast, crazy river, river rapids or whatever. If you can just keep your raft or your kayak off the rocks, then that's an accomplishment. Some things aren't fixable right now and some things aren't doable right now. It's not that we're not trying hard enough, it's not that we don't have enough talent, it's not that even we don't have enough support. Some stuff's just really really, really hard. It is natural and absolutely not our fault that we can't. If we don't feel like we can't handle it all right now, it's because we can't handle it all right now Part of that, just realizing it's not me failing at something.

Margo Rose: 19:29

what I'm trying to accomplish isn't possible the way I have my expectations set up.

Darren Moore: 19:37

Absolutely yeah. And so then from there, what was also very, very helpful in your book, once I was able to realize that that's what was happening and because I was neglecting and here's another point of power not allowing myself the space to just grieve because I jumped right into life, back into life, because I flew back from Chicago, came back here to the Bay Area to resume all the life things that I had to do.

Margo Rose: 20:07

The life things.

Darren Moore: 20:08

That part of me that needed the space and to be acknowledged that I'm hurting, the inner child in me, the inner child in me that lost their family home. We moved into that home when I was three years old. We had the home for 50 years. That's what I considered home. I have a home here, but that's home I didn't give it. I did not acknowledge that it needed to be curtailed and cuddled and all the things. And so how it was showing up. That's why I was. Then it was showing up in other areas of my life emotionally, because this piece of me I wasn't allowing myself to grieve. And so the book that was one of the things that it made me make aware, awareness of that Right. So I came out of that shock.

Darren Moore: 21:00

Then other parts of your book where you suggested because you give tips of some things to do it reminded me then to ask for help. Now this speaks to an earlier question about men and not asking for help, men not wanting to go to therapy as a possible strategy for that. So I engaged and I found a grief counselor so that I could start to process. I've been in that process. Right now I'm also part of a spiritual community and I have reached out to practitioners at my spiritual community to help with that piece, in addition to some other steps in your book that I oh, another huge one, another huge one that was so helpful was to look at like the birth dates or special occasions that were associated with my family those times and create a new celebration. And guess what, through one of our discussions after the book and after I met you when we talked about that, my father transitioned in August. Amiri was born in August. They were. That date was only a day apart.

Margo Rose: 22:08

Amiri is the young person. You're the child that you're helping raise. Okay, Correct.

Darren Moore: 22:13

Correct. Yeah, I'm part of a community helping you raise. So the first one.

Margo Rose: 22:16

The death happened in the same month.

Darren Moore: 22:21

And you invited me in a conversation to then create a new celebration. That's also. It was a wonderful piece of nugget of of, of, of, of Jim, of an idea, a spark to do that, and that shifted me then, because now next August and every August because he's four, I got a whole bunch of, I have a whole, a lot of Augusts to come because I plan to, I plan to do that and then I'm going to be doing a high quality life and the way I'm living with life and using lifestyle medicine in my life. I intend to live a high quality of life, Hopefully like the centarians in the blue zones. So I got some decades to go Right, it looks it looks like it.

Margo Rose: 23:05

I mean, you look like you're about 30 years younger than you just voted your age, I was like what. Thank you. You look like you're 30 years younger than that.

Darren Moore: 23:11

Thank you so, yeah, that I'll be able to have new celebrations and that, oh, that just lifted that. That's been helpful. So so many wonderful tools in the book. I'm, yeah, and all of that happened because of my vulnerability breaking cycles, right, sharing Cause, like I said, I'm a man and I'm society. I was taught this as a young male to be not vulnerable, to be armored up, right. So all these it ties all together around yeah.

Margo Rose: 23:43

I mean this is so beautiful and I know that was one of our discussions because I'm working on my second book now, which is 30. Thank you, yeah, 30 practical healing techniques that I've been using for myself and with my clients. It's called the PhT program practical healing technique program and it's the 30 practical healing techniques. So it wasn't in this exact book, but it was when we were talking and and you were talking about a whole bunch of things happening in a similar part of the year, and that's I think I would you're referring to, as I was I was talking about body calendar. Like these important dates, even if we may or may not acknowledge them, are in our bodies, our bodies. If, like the, the, the, the day that we received the phone call about some terrible news that affected us, like that day is imprinted on our bodies and we might not consciously realize it. But then something about the passing of time. You know whether, if something really traumatic, I have a client who had a bunch of loss and terrible news happen in October, so it might be for her. She might not even realize it. Well, now, because she's my client and we talk about it really consciously, we're like this is happening, let's use it in a willful and powered way. Like you keep using this great word power. You know it might be like the smell of all of that autumn, autumn spice stuff happening, or pumpkin spice being advertised. There might be things you might not realize, but when something is hinting or showing you that October is coming and coming, you might not know well. Why am I feeling so anxious? Why did I just have so little patience and yell at this person at work? I was so spaced out when I was driving through that intersection it's terrifying, I nearly had an accident. Why was I driving so poorly and spaced out? Like my purpose is that if we're really actively saying, oh, this part of August, I'm going to be careful with August because August is a big month for me, so it also gives a place. We get so busy.

Margo Rose: 25:38

This goes back to the multitasking and the responsibilities and the bills and the celebrations and the good things. People don't want it. Why would I want to grieve? I feel better now, you know, if people don't want to. But then it's like well, where in our year, where in our time, where in our life do we ever want to go back to? Actually, we don't choose to go back to those feelings, necessarily, but those feelings are often in our body and they're going to find the time and the place that they want to come out and we're either going to invite it and do something conscious that helps us feel better with it. That's kind of what I call skillful grieving the ability to approach a painful topic or situation in a way that helps us feel better and not worse afterwards.

Margo Rose: 26:19

So you coming up with some new rituals for your Augusts. August is, and looking ahead, you're excited. You're like I've got all these Augusts, I don't have to have one be perfect. This goes back to what do we expect ourselves to perform as, or heal during loss, like I've got the rest of my Augusts to play around with. That you know, each August will be different. Each decade it'll be different, it'll feel different.

Margo Rose: 26:42

To me, I might want to celebrate and commemorate, you know, what you learned and were with your father in different ways, and I guess I'm curious if you felt like sharing, and then we can move on to some other other interesting stuff and eventually sort of sum up here oh, my goodness, it's been almost, almost half hour, like how did you know? You asked this question sometimes. What? How did you know you needed more help than you were getting? How did you know that it was getting harder to function in your day? Where were those? Where were those? You know broken parts of the day or broken parts of activities showing up if you, if you're willing to share something because people don't know they need help.

Margo Rose: 27:23

Yeah, it might not show up as crying, for example, especially if you're talking about gender stuff.

Darren Moore: 27:28

It showed up for me at night at around nine o'clock, because I got to know it is something about right around eight or nine o'clock at night where I'm all done with my day and normally I have rituals that I do at night and one of the rituals that it doesn't include is, you know, eating, because certain types of eating patterns, drinking patterns or binge watching, distractions I started engaging in a lot of distractionary behaviors at night and a big one of that was like this eating. That's the. That was a big one and I know that I that maybe our audience members might share in that. That stress eating at well, stress with that comforting comfort food right, that's what comfort food got the name from. So was that it was showing up in like that at night? Because there at night, when I was all alone, home, feeling feelings of loneliness, loss and not wanting to and, like I said earlier, not honoring that part of me, the inner child and me that needed some space to grieve. So I was distracting myself from that pain with excessive eating, late night eating, and our list is long. That's how it was showing up.

Darren Moore: 28:52

But then another part of me who knows you don't do that. That's not who you are. You don't do that Not all the time. I do it sometimes, right, I do it sometimes so like I don't need late at night, but that's not my habit, that's not my usual mode of upper on upper on die, so that's how it showed up and then I was okay, something's got to stop you. If I keep doing this, it's going to become a habit again and I'll start doing these behaviors that I did 30 something years ago before I lost 70 pounds.

Margo Rose: 29:21

How do we stay healthier longer? Because we're not having setbacks that are as big during the hard time. So, like as a person who knows what it's like to weigh 70 pounds more, and you held it at a weight that you're enjoying for 35 years you I can imagine that was a little you were like oh no, oh no, I'm not you. You stepped up. You were like what do I need to do differently? Because if the previous coping habit wasn't something I was going to want to get back into, is that?

Darren Moore: 29:53

absolutely Absolutely. That was part of it and I want to also share with you real quick. I sometimes let the word weight maintenance come in, but actually what was more important to me was my body composition, that I've maintained my body composition, so I want our audience. Another takeaway is looking at our bodies, weight can go up and down scales. It's our body composition which was more important to me.

Margo Rose: 30:18

So body composition, you're talking about the ratio of muscle mass to fact correct, just so everyone kind of knows what you're saying, because that's really valuable.

Darren Moore: 30:26

Correct? Yeah, absolutely. And also the fact that muscle weighs more than fat. And so, therefore, if I use the scale, if I think of weight and the way we just normally talk about it and how it's talked about in the doctor's office, which is where it starts which the whole BMI index I know we're not talking about that, but just want to throw that in there.

Margo Rose: 30:42

That makes people that can throw body mass index right, Because I'm considered the ratio of fat cells to muscle mass.

Darren Moore: 30:49

Okay, correct, and it's a very flawed system. And that system tells me that right now I'm obese, and that was a system that told me that years ago, so that's a whole another thing. So, anyway, I just want to make sure, clarify that I was concerned that my body composition would change if I started engaging in behaviors that I let go 30 something years ago, right, and also I was starting to not go to the jitmas regularly because it was all the things that I have done over the 35 years to maintain this. We're starting to slip slightly, ever so because of what I was saying, the how it was showing up in my life, that grief and that loss. And it was showing up, yeah, and predominantly at night, with stress, eating and doing distracting behaviors, bingeing, watching, not getting good sleep because I was staying up a little late.

Margo Rose: 31:41

We're gonna be finishing out, but that's part of why I tried to. I hadn't seen my own book in a really long time, so I had a review. But we have the 10 actions of healing. Because people are like, well, I don't know what grief is. I don't know. I just know I feel lousy. I don't know what grief is. How would I even begin to figure out, when I'm this dizzy and I have all these responsibilities, what's gonna fit into my current life and what am I attracted to as a possible? You know, you can't hit all those pillars at once. You can't hit all the healing.

Margo Rose: 32:09

So I came up with the 10 actions of healing, of hibernate, because that sleep going wrong is gonna make everything else in your day harder. So the number one of the 10 actions of healing and I did this on purpose is hibernate. Hibernate, hydrate, commemorate, create, liberate, donate, celebrate, relate, contemplate, fate and rejuvenate. And so I wanted to leave a whole bunch of options where someone could be like I'm foggy, I'm not thinking very well, but like one of those might be attractive and that, if you can do, you know, choose whichever little activities might make one of those things feel a little bit better in as little as five to 15 minutes because people are busy. So that was that helping people not feel like overwhelmed and stuck, like oh, if I do one thing to make my sleep better, for example, that that's a huge accomplishment, and maybe that's you know, some days that's one huge one accomplishment per day is plenty when we're going through hard times.

Darren Moore: 33:19

So absolutely, absolutely. And interesting how those steps a few of them there correlate to lifestyle medicine pillars. So you, you can, which are the areas of that I help move people through and start to create strategies to do in their lives. So that's part of that coaching piece. So, yeah, there's a lot of synergy there.

Margo Rose: 33:44

How can people communicate with you, stay in touch if they want to work with you and what's happening? Maybe coming up for people?

Darren Moore: 33:52

that aren't local.

Margo Rose: 33:53

Like how are people gonna get their help that they want from you now that they're so impressed? The website name is yeah, betweentheearsnet.

Darren Moore: 34:03

Between the ears All one word betweentheearsnet. They can email me at darren at betweentheearsnet. That can be reached that way, and also there's links to those socials if they go to my website. Also, if you can sign up for my monthly newsletter and that's probably the best way to be informed about well, not only you'll be informed about some future things, services and promotions that I'll be doing in 2024, such as some group coaching. Right now I just provide private one-on-one coaching and or personal training services, but I'm wanting to expand that so I can be more accessible to more people. So that's coming in 2024.

Margo Rose: 34:47

All right body and we're a living community. We are gonna thank Darren Moore for being with us today and as many days as we feel like listening to this, the more we can. We're gonna have to call this just podcast number one, because we're gonna get back together whenever we want, but let's just call this podcast number one.

Darren Moore: 35:01

We gotta end it at some point.

Margo Rose: 35:03

That's two sort of right around now and let's please ask people to share this. Share this with people who are struggling, whether it's loss, whether it's weight loss, whether it's inspiration that you're seeing in him, darren model, and you're hearing he's got these specific pathways to do some of these inspiring things that he's done to make himself radiant and happy, even though things haven't always been easy. So I wanna thank you very much. I hope people will share this with people they care about and be in contact with you, and many best wishes. One final wish that you have for a community, darren. One final thing that you, a blessing or something kind that you wanna say to them.

Darren Moore: 35:47

Yeah, I want to first wanna thank you so much for having me, margo, and again, I'm extremely grateful that you've invited me here and that our paths have crossed, that you wrote this fantastic book and that you're writing another one. It's gonna be a help, inspiration, to others who are grieving, so that and then I'll just end with you know, community is medicine, with that concept, you know, find your tribe together where you can find hope and inspiration together. Don't go it alone. We're not meant to go it alone. So community is meant to find your tribe of support, if nothing else. And, yeah, we'll leave your listeners with that. Community is medicine.

Margo Rose: 36:29

All right. Thank you so much, Darren. This is Margo Rose, Body Aware Living. Many best wishes to all of you until next time. Take care, All right.