EP. 27: Is your body's energy system running like a finely tuned engine or like its stuck in rush hour traffic?

Our mission is to give you tools and strategies that will help you move from being stressed to feeling your best.

In this episode we explore the body's energy system and heart brain communication. 

Co -hosts Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher, are certified HeartMath® Trainers, and certified stress educators, who are skilled at helping people discover the power of living form the heart.  To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in Canada, click here. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in the US, click here. 

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Website: LessStressinLife.com/podcast/

Stay tuned for more conversations with Deb, Susie, and Lindsay as they empower you to live well, manage stress, and build a thriving, healthy life!

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Barb Fletcher, Deb Timmerman

Deb Timmerman  00:00

You're listening to the Less Stress in Life podcast. Your hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are on a mission to help individuals and organizations manage stress and change. Together, they bring you real conversations, inspirational stories, and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best. Hello, everybody. I'm Deb Timmerman, welcome to our series of 52 Practical Tools for Less Stress in Life. This is episode 27.

Barb Fletcher  00:32

I'm Barb Fletcher, our goal is to give you tools and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best. Today, we're going to talk about the body's energy system. Many cultures, health and well-being perspectives mentioned energy systems. We've talked about  energy from the Chinese perspective, in our episode about Tai Chi. In acupuncture and Chinese medicine, there is a meridian system, a set of pathways in the body along with vital energy is said to flow. Each pathway is associated with a specific organ, and that energy flow can be influenced by needling and pressure. (Acupuncture, if you've had it.)

Deb Timmerman  01:18

Another system that you might have heard about is called the chakra system, that in Sanskrit means wheel, and that refers to energy points in your body, which are thought to be spinning wheels or discs of energy that should stay open and aligned. They correspond to bundles of nerves, organs, and all kinds of different spaces in our body, which affect our emotional and physical wellbeing. You may be most familiar with that system if you've done yoga, or you've had some kind of energy work modality.

Barb Fletcher  01:52

So, the ancient practitioners all use some form of energy work, or practices in their health maintenance. They didn't have the systems that we have today, but as we move to the more modern world, we stepped away from that. And now we hear more and more about the shift back to those practices, and the reason for that is because they actually work. Today, we're going to talk about the energy system from the perspective of research that was conducted by the HeartMath Institute. Their research identified the communication or the energetic relationship between the heart and the brain. It's a dynamic, ongoing, two-way dialogue with each organ, continuously influencing the function of the other. This is a little bit different than how I understood the heart and the brain. I guess in the beginning, I wouldn't have thought that they had a symbiotic relationship. Can you talk a little bit about that Deb, the heart, and the brain communication?

Deb Timmerman  02:58

The research shows that there's actually four ways that the heart and the brain communicate. One is neurologically, so that's through the transmission of nerve impulses. So, we feel something in our fingertips through those sensory nerves, and they send that message up to the brain. (The brain processes and sends it back.) And then biochemically by hormones and neurotransmitters. So, when there's a message, our body senses something that's happening, the brain sorts it out, and it releases chemicals, or neurotransmitters and hormones to help process that. We've talked a lot about biochemistry in our podcast, as we talked about stress hormones, and regenerative hormones, and that we have a choice in those. And then the other way is biophysically through pressure waves. So those are waves that get to the brain in a way that is either in a coherent pattern nice and smooth, or they're chaotic. And I think we've mentioned that before, but we maybe didn't name that is a biophysical component. And then last, but not least, is energetically um, that's through electromagnetic field interactions. So, each of us have a field that communicates to each other. And I think we've talked about that as we sense energy when we walk into a room, and sometimes feel overwhelmed by energy, or like someone sucking the life out of us in a room. That's that energetic connection, that communication along all those different conduits affect the brain's activity and the ability for it to process.

Barb Fletcher  04:33

So, the research has showed that there are more messages that go from the heart of the brain than the brain into the heart. Those messages and the transmission of those messages affect our performance. We talked about how emotions affect our heart and brain messaging, and we've introduced the concept that we can influence our biology by shifting those emotions. 

Deb Timmerman  04:59

The system of Communication is really more complex, but the solutions to maintaining optical messaging are really simple and really vital to saving energy. Because our energy balance is dynamic as well. When our heart brain communication is disrupted or unbalanced, we're at risk for energy drains. And Barb, you always talk about this wonderful highway example, can you share that with us?

Barb Fletcher  05:23

I think about the way the signals are moving back and forth between the heart and the brain as if we're on a four-lane highway. And let's decide to travel in the morning, before its peak traffic time. So maybe we can put our car on cruise, maybe we have an optimal speed. And there's just we feel like we're in the flow, we keep a nice steady rhythm. Now, let's think about we start at 430 in the afternoon, which is a very busy time, and we find ourselves having our foot on the brake a little bit, then we have to stop, we proceed. And then we have to stop. And then we proceed. And we have to stop. And we know that that erratic movement, actually create, wear and tear on a car, perhaps we've gone to the mechanic, and they said, Oh, your brakes are worn out. It may be from all the stopping and starting. And so that's a similar experience that can happen in our body. So, if we are finding ourselves, stopping and starting a lot, that wear and tear will occur.

Deb Timmerman  06:39

Barb, what are the benefits of maintaining the body's energy system?

Barb Fletcher  06:43

I was speaking with someone just yesterday about the benefits of planning. So, if you think about that car, and going on a trip, we don't take it for granted, we plan when we're actually moving through the system. And so, the same thing can happen for us, if we're spending time in a more challenging circumstance, we do some prepping for that. Nobody likes that rush hour feeling. So, it's really about getting out in front of it. The benefits of this are really, we can do this by ourselves, we don't necessarily need a professional, there's no cost to maintaining our energy system, you just need to have a bit of an understanding of what you need to do. And I think for me, it's really about taking that personal power back. It's about that daily practice of ridding myself for the day. One of the other benefits is, there's no equipment necessary. You can practice these tools in places where you can't take out your yoga mat, or, and not discriminate against some of those other practices. It just, this is a very flexible kind of experience. So, when our body systems are aligned directly in that optimal performance, we're in that flow that we talked about, and being on the four lane, the best thing is it takes us from that space of access to the medical system, to putting the power back in our own hands. You know, you and I often talk about taking it from pills to skills.

Deb Timmerman  08:30

Yeah, that's true. And when I first entered the medical field, I didn't understand that the energy system was part of the body systems. It's not something that they taught in my nursing career, and I joined nursing, I would say relatively late. So, 20 years ago, I've been a nurse for 20 years. And I fell into it by experience. I think we both shared that we've had issues with our own stress management. And I started to take a course and heard about the energy system. And as a brand-new person coming into it, I found it really hard to figure out how do you get started on that? How do you learn about that, which is part of the reason that we keep our skills, very basic, because sometimes it's new for people. But for both of us, it took a catastrophic event or a hitting of the wall for us to seek out and look at other ways to keep ourselves healthy. So, it was a bit of a unplanned a thing, but such a wonderful turn on the journey.

Barb Fletcher  09:35

I think we probably could have made other choices when we were faced with those situations. But you're absolutely right. Having access to these tools, and as I mentioned, being able to use those tools at a moment's notice is really what's so important about it and I think for me when I was faced with a potential surgery or taking some of my personal power back. You know, I was, I guess blessed in many ways that I made that choice to figure out what it was that I could actually do. And we're all at different stages of resiliency and can see those things a bit differently. And in those circumstances, but my mission is to help people create that spark and them about what might be possible, we talked about how we're able to do this ourselves and never needing help of a professional. Is there something that contributes to that? 

Deb Timmerman  10:36

I think that, for me, personally, I do use a professional periodically, but I do the daily maintenance in between one of the reasons that I shifted more to doing training versus doing a healing practice. So as a healing touch practitioner, what I would see is that people would come in and want to be fixed, fix the problem, take away the stress, make me feel better, and healing touch works great for that. But in order for people to get the most benefit, they have to do a little bit of homework in between those sessions, to keep that. And what I felt was that the mentality was fix me fix me, no responsibility on my own. And as a practitioner, to me, that felt heavy on like a lot of responsibility. So HeartMath, and teaching those other tools is really a way that you can extend the life of your budget, extend your health, extend your energy, by learning to do those small, little things every day, they keep you in a better space, you're right, it gives you back your personal power. And I don't think I've been as healthy ever, as I am at this point in my life. And I do think it's because of that daily maintenance that I do that keeps me tuned up.

Barb Fletcher  11:58

You're absolutely right, that, that practice that personal practice. And you know, I probably spent at least an hour this morning before I started my day, doing a number of techniques to ready myself for the day. And I know that for some people, that's that may be considered a luxury. And what I would say to that is the good news is an hour maybe a luxury, but 10 minutes will make a huge difference in how you're able to start your day. And that personal power, I think, is really important for people to have these days. Because when things are outside of our control, when life is changing around us, the one thing that we get to take control over is what's actually happening inside of us and how we respond to all of that change. And some of these practices will really influence what that looks like for you and the journey.

Deb Timmerman  13:03

Yeah, it's the difference between getting your system all gummed up and getting stuck in that 24/7 Traffic jam or being able to recover after there's maybe an accident on the side of the road. That slows that energy down for a tiny bit. But to get back on track and keep that system running. So, here's our call to action for you. Take the first step to learn more, we offer our we add heart meetings once a month, on the last Wednesday of every month. So, in that gathering, we share some of these tools absolutely free, you show up you don't even have to turn your camera on. You just listen and participate. And then we have group masterclasses from September to May. We have all kinds of training programs that are both free and paid. You can find those on our Facebook page, so watch that for announcements. And then Barbara and I are always available for personal consultations, happy to have a conversation and to share more with you about the human energy system. So, for now, that's it. We will see you next week. Less stress in life is possible. If you're new to this kind of thinking and would like to explore what's possible for you. We'd love to connect. You can reach us through our website at less stress in life.com. That's less stress in life.com