Her Next Chapters

77. Emotional Resilience Isn’t a Myth (It’s Neuroscience) with Guest Alexandra Clifton

• Christina Kohl

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Christina welcomes holistic wellness coach Alexandra Clifton to explore how busy individuals can break free from chronic stress and overwhelm with simple, sustainable lifestyle changes. Alexandra shares her journey from psychology studies to founding To Breathe Again, where she empowers people to cultivate lasting peace through neuroscience-based wellness strategies.

• Moving from survival mode to growth through personalized wellness practices
• Distinguishing between psychological counseling (past-focused) and coaching (future-oriented)
• Using "life pie" assessment to evaluate physical health, mental wellness, emotional maturity, spiritual practice, and social connection
• Understanding neuroscience principles that help strengthen brain health
• Developing emotional maturity to return to joy within 90 seconds
• Stimulating the vagus nerve through yawning exercises to calm racing thoughts
• Monthly free workshops to kickstart your holistic lifestyle journey

• Digital detox experiences for better online/offline balance


Connect with Alexandra on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest @tobreatheagain (with the E at the end of breathe) and join her monthly workshops or digital detox waitlist.

Digital Detox Free Download + Join Waitlist

Workshop Link

To Breathe Again (TBA) Social links




Grab the Free Strengths-First Resume Template - it's perfect for anyone in career transitions, whether with a long career gap, a career pivot, or just ready for a change.
Want to chat about your career goals? Schedule a free call HERE.
Send me an email ---> christina@hernextchapters.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn ---> www.linkedin.com/in/kohlchristina





Christina Kohl:

Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapter's podcast. I'm your host, Christina Kohl. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place. Friend, let's get started. Hey, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters.

Christina Kohl:

This week, we have a special guest joining us, ms Alexandra Clifton, and Alexandra is a certified wellness coach and a holistic lifestyle consultant, and as the founder of To Breathe Again. H er transformative wellness approach is designed to help busy individuals break free from chronic stress and overwhelm with simple lifestyle swaps. With a deep passion for resilience, alex empowers people to simplify their lives, cultivate lasting peace and joy and develop a sustainable wellness lifestyle that truly works for them. Using neuroscience-based strategies, she helps individuals stuck in cycles of stress shift from survival mode to a state of growth, building up capacity while transforming stress into a source of strength to prevent overwhelm from dictating life. Her work focuses on creating personalized, sustainable well-being practices that allow people to remain grounded in their joy and authentic identity.

Christina Kohl:

And if you've ever felt like stress is running your life, get ready for an insightful conversation on expanding your resilience and how to step into a more balanced way of living. Well, alex, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so glad you're here. Thanks for having me, Christina, absolutely so. I'm always curious to talk to people at the beginning, when I have people as guests on the show to talk about their careers surprise, surprise and their pivots, like you know. So if you could tell us, like, what your career started out and how, what you pursued and how that's changed and evolved over time, and then bring us up to where you are today how that came to me.

Alexandra Clifton:

Yeah, and I think going into university and whatnot, I was like I have to figure out the right path, the right career and and focus on that. But a lot of the advice I was given by mentors as well as by my mom really she was like you have to find what you really love and make sure that's incorporated. I've always had a passion for entrepreneurship, and so I would have different ideas as a child of what I wanted to do or how I wanted to help. And in fifth grade we ended up or after fifth grade, we ended up moving to Southeast Asia and my family traveled a lot where we're overseas, and so those different experiences helped me to realize how much I really did love helping people. And in high school I had learned when I I think it was probably around when they were doing the different career exploration activities but I'd learned about life coaching and I realized I want to do something like that Not exactly around, like their purpose, but how to live and so I just started calling it lifestyle coaching. And when I went to university I was like maybe I should go into communications, but psychology seems more aligned, so I switched at the very beginning and went into a psych degree later. Added business because my dad was worried was a really nice pairing, just because I do love entrepreneurship, and so the business knowledge was very helpful and my capstone project was storytelling as a skill for learning and resiliency, because I knew I didn't want to go into counseling and coaching really is helping people move forward rather than the backwards view where counseling is helping people untangle what's happened in their past but what's stopping them right now. And so after that I was trying to figure out in terms of a career what to start with, because it's really hard to just start as a coach. Being a young person and worked in retail and hospitality for a while and I really appreciate that I started there just because it helps, I think anybody who's spent time as the person behind the counter, you realize what it looks like from a new perspective and you get a certain appreciation for how diverse and different everybody's preferences and needs are.

Alexandra Clifton:

And realizing with the pandemic that a lot was shifting in that role or that industry, I changed over to digital marketing, which was actually something I never had really considered.

Alexandra Clifton:

I'd heard about marketing because of the business part of my degree and really just thought about it as the people like making slogans and designing billboards.

Alexandra Clifton:

But I have a passion for learning languages and realized that web development and coding is kind of like learning a language, and so I got a certification in full stack web development and went eventually to work at a digital marketing agency. To work at a digital marketing agency and that still felt aligned with me more than I realized at the beginning of stepping into that, because it still had this element of helping clients tell their story and so when they're being found online or trying to portray the messages that they need to get to their customers or clients, my goal was to use the fields of user experience, web development to be like that middleman of helping the client or like the business to interpret, translate what they wanted the user to see in a way that the machine understands. And last year my job ended in the spring and I was in the middle of my certification program and ended up finishing that and just continuing to do freelance digital marketing for like solopreneurs or small business owners and for like the income piece and growing my coaching business at the same time.

Christina Kohl:

Oh, thank you for that. A few things that stood out to me One I can totally relate to the psychology and business degree because that's what I did me. One I can totally relate to the psychology and business degree because that's what I did. I started the other way around, though. I started with business and realized, as my I took a psych class and like, oh, this is kind of fun. Picked it up as a minor, yeah.

Christina Kohl:

And then, when my business classes started, talking about the things I was learning in my psychology classes, I'm like, oh, there's, there's something here.

Christina Kohl:

So I wound up picking up psychology as a second major and and I love for you that you like learned about coaching at such a young age because most people, at least my age group it wasn't really a thing, um, when I was in school. And I also love how you describe the difference between coaching and counseling, and just to reiterate that counseling was looking back, like trying to untangle some of the challenges that you've may have faced and in your history, whereas coaching is more forward thinking, um, about you know what, designing your life and how you love, what you want to change and do. And, yeah, I love those descriptions. And then also how you tied in your different careers working in retail. So for me it was restaurant industry. I think everyone should have to be a waitress or waiter at some point in their career because it just gives you that insight about what customer service is about. And why is that? Why are they taking so long?

Christina Kohl:

Well, I've got four other tables I'm taking care of and I'm doing my best at the same time my face but oh my gosh, um and I'm sure retail is similar, that you're just on the go the whole time and trying to make your customers happy, and then the digital design and how that's really storytelling and you know, and the parallels, the parallels that you saw in that, and so, yeah, I think I love hearing those threads. Tell us more, though, about the coaching. So you were already sounds like already in the middle of a coaching certification program when your job change kind of came up. What is that coaching certification like, and what drew you to that particular program?

Alexandra Clifton:

Yeah, I ended up doing a holistic wellness coach certification and one of the things I really appreciated about the IAWP program was that they for each module they have a section on wellness, a section on coaching and a section on business. So you're building your practice as you go through the program and while you're still in it you're providing and how you can build on that and scale it eventually, but starting with the foundations.

Christina Kohl:

So what are some of the pillars of your coaching? We talked at the beginning in your introduction about neuroscience and wellness. Again in your introduction about neuroscience and wellness. Give us some nuggets of that. What could someone expect in working with you and learning to grow? How would they want?

Alexandra Clifton:

to grow. Yeah, so I think very big picture when I approach different things. And I picked these pillars kind of around the concept of a life pie, so you've never seen one. It's an exercise that can be printed out and it's basically a circle that has a certain number of sections and then you fill up each of those pie slices on how well you're doing in that area. So it's a way of doing kind of a life assessment and I I use physical health, mental wellness, emotional maturity, spiritual practice and social connection. And when looking at the pie and social connection and when looking at the pie, I also add work and rest and finances, just because those are some key factors that can influence the other areas of our lives. And it's good to just take a wider look because we can never work on everything all at once. But being able to see where am I doing very well and where could I focus on for this season or this month is one of the exercises I take my clients through.

Christina Kohl:

It's called, or I have a holistic lifestyle guide that has that in there um, when we talked um previously we were getting ready for today's call we mentioned like the neuroscience behind it and I'm wondering if you can touch on that a bit about how and I don't even know what question to ask, but honestly, because it's still kind of a new area for me but how does neuroscience come into play in your coaching or in just mental health wellness or just overall wellness altogether?

Alexandra Clifton:

Yeah, that's a great question.

Alexandra Clifton:

So I like to separate neuroscience from just psychology in and of itself, because neuroscience focuses more on your physical brain and how your, your brain health is, it's good.

Alexandra Clifton:

And then, um, mental wellness and emotional maturity or I've separated as two different pillars because your mental wellness. I think a lot of times when people are talking mental health, mental wellness and mental illness kind of get rolled in together and I like to separate them for people just to have this more actionable understanding. And so mental health is how healthy you are in like your thought, life, your mindset and how you're approaching the world or, um, perceiving things that are happening to you, whereas, um, your mental wellness, I would compare more to like physical fitness, in terms of your physical fitness is helping your body grow more healthy and strong, and mental wellness is helping your body grow more healthy and strong, and mental wellness is helping your brain and your mind grow stronger or more towards health, and having a practice of mental wellness or having different mental wellness practices help you to move further from illness and closer towards health, if that makes sense.

Christina Kohl:

Okay, and then the third category would be mental illness, which would be like something that's diagnosed.

Alexandra Clifton:

Yeah.

Alexandra Clifton:

So, that would definitely fall under the counseling category, where a licensed therapist, a psychiatrist or psychologist would be able to diagnose if something is basically disordered, so it's lacking or weak and I like to call it weak or missing in some areas. So there's different practices like CBT or DBT that help you strengthen those areas and change your mind going to a professional that's able to help you get out of the rut, the stuckness, or learn how to manage that. Yeah, I also wanted to talk about the emotional maturity as well and those kind of go together. So neuroscience has found that the brain is able to recover or return to a joyful or neutral state within 90 seconds if it's a well-trained brain. And so this idea of um moving from a one of the big six negative emotions, which could be sadness, anger, hopeless, despair, shame, and being able to move from that emotion back to joy or a neutral space, which could be called quieting yourself, is a key skill. So I studied the life model. It's by a group called Life Model Works and they've created practical skills that you have, exercises you can work on on building your joy capacity or your strength, and I focus on some of that in my emotional maturity pillar, because I focus on some of that in my emotional maturity pillar, because often the way we hear it in our day-to-day life would be emotional maturity. I mean emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence is a capacity that you can grow and expand, is a capacity that you can grow and expand. So there's different articles or skill sets that you might see in career blogs that help you learn how to interact with people better or in a way that's promoting a win-win situation for both you and the person you're helping or interacting with. And this idea that you're able to kind of approach a situation that might be more complex and still end with a win-win is a skill set that we can grow rather than just thinking, oh well, it's just not going to work out for me or the other person. And that brought me so much hope, because I think, the more we go through life, we realize there is so much of a blank slate that we have the power to approach, navigate with our own style or approach and yet still do it in a way that each person is able to show up as themselves and have a satisfying interaction. So that's something I work on with my clients is what does it look like to act like yourself if you haven't, if you haven't clarified that in any of the different pillars.

Alexandra Clifton:

So, in your physical health, what are some of your top values? In your mental health or mental wellness? You might focus on gratitude or how do you face the things that causes pain in different situations. I like to call them life's little stressors or life's stressors, because for me I've found the seasons where I was getting stuck in the midst of a stressor, where I couldn't get out of fear or shame back to a neutral space or a joyful place, or shame back to a neutral space or a joyful place. That was when it started to kind of balloon and and cause more dysfunction in other areas of my life. It made sense.

Christina Kohl:

When you talk about pillars, are you talking about the pieces of the pie and the circle that we, that we talked about earlier? So those are the pillars right and the circle that we talked about earlier. So those are the pillars right. So if someone is weak in one pillar, how does that impact the others?

Alexandra Clifton:

What have you seen with your clients? Let me think for a second on an example, because I think a story would be like a brief story would be helpful. So it's kind of like when something's going wrong in one area, what we could see impacted or happening for us in another area. Yeah, okay, yeah, that's a great point because it can be something as simple as your sleep routine. If your sleep is not they call it sleep hygiene If you have not created a wind down routine, let's say, and go straight from looking at a screen or doing some type of intensive task and your brain hasn't had an opportunity to kind of exhale and find what it feels like to kind of relax, let go of the tasks and responsibilities of today and transition into rest and sleep.

Alexandra Clifton:

Your quality of sleep through the night can be impacted and that is like a key element to that. I begin with clients looking at their sleep routines and their rest routines so that you have the optimal starting place when you wake up to start your day optimal starting place when you wake up to start your day.

Christina Kohl:

I'm smiling so much because last night, well, I did not sleep. Well, part of it's the time change. But I told my husband this morning like okay, I saw 11 o'clock, I saw 12 o'clock, I saw three o'clock, I saw four o'clock, I saw five o'clock, I saw seven o'clock, and it's just. I wasn't necessarily awake the entire hours, but it was so frustrating I was trying all the things I could think of to quiet my mind and my breathing and and it was just a restless night and it does. It impacts you the next day. So what are some? What are your tips and tricks to help with that sleep hygiene? Is it all like before you even get into bed, or like what about in the middle of the night, when you're awake at three or four and your mind is racing? I'm asking right now for coaching in real time here, since I just experienced it.

Alexandra Clifton:

I love that. I'll give you some tips for before the bed. So one of the things you can do is getting off screens at least two hours before you're going to be asleep. So, especially with the time change, I know that I struggle on the spring forward, where we're losing an hour, and so I push my bedtime back an extra hour just so that I have more time to wind down and I'm off screens earlier. I'll do something that brings me calm or joy, so it could be listening to music or like a soundtrack. They have the Calm app or maybe some playlists on your chosen music streaming service. I like reading a book. If I have like a candle or something that's a little bit lower light, I'll sit in my bed with a candle or a light to read. And one of the things I actually learned in my psych degree is from 10 pm to 2 am is the optimal hours to get REM sleep, which is rapid eye movement, and that's a deep, restorative type of sleep. Asleep during those hours, even if you have to wake up a little early or your normal routine is to get up at like, say, four, 30 or five, being asleep during those hours can be the most restful. And so those are two things that I try to always incorporate in my sleep wind down routine, which is like what I do before bed or before sleeping, and then if I'm waking up during the night.

Alexandra Clifton:

The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in your body and it has the power to help us control certain levels of ourself.

Alexandra Clifton:

That gets more into the polyvagal theory. But a way to help soothe there's lots of different ways, but a way to help soothe there's lots of different ways. But one way to help soothe your vagus nerve is to yawn, and it could be a forced yawn even if you don't feel a yawn coming on, and you would turn to the right and the left to also help stimulate the vagus nerve, and so you would turn to the right and just yawn. If it's not coming by the second or third yawn, you can wiggle your lower jaw back and forth so you can still be on your pillow and do I would call it repetition to the right and to the left. I would call it repetition to the right and to the left, and do that four to six times or longer if you can't feel the effect right away. But that usually helps my brain even quiet when I have thoughts racing just right before falling asleep or if I've woken up from in the middle of the night before I want to be out of bed.

Christina Kohl:

I'll have to give that a try because that is new. I've done the 4-7-8 breathing and meditating and lots of things, but I haven't heard of the young one before. So I will have to give that a try give. I will have to get that in trying. So, alex, what questions have I not asked you that? I wish that you could say what I've asked.

Christina Kohl:

So after I asked Alexandra this question, we went off on a whole tangent all around sleep and calming techniques and more about that vagus nerve and even techniques to help calm you before a job interview, and then we went into depth about the distinction between rest and sleep and how to recharge and get re-energized. So I thought that'd be good to carve that out as its own episode, its own conversation. So be sure to listen to the next week's episode where we dig into all those things and in the meantime, let's jump back into this conversation. Yeah, you have such a calming, soothing voice. Um, I can see you being like when I'm starting to meditate and it's just. You know people in the bed and guided meditation is what I want to say and you just have a calm voice of okay, now put your tongue between your teeth and put your in a good way, in a good way no, that's all great and so I know we talked.

Christina Kohl:

I kind of drove us there because I had my sleepless interrupted whatever night. But there's a lot more that you do in your coaching and I know you've got some some things coming up soon. If people want to learn more and more than just sleep habits, because you offer so much more, tell us about some of your workshops and events that you might have coming up.

Alexandra Clifton:

Yeah, so every month I host a free workshop to help you kickstart your holistic lifestyle. So that's the name of the workshop and in it it's about 45 minutes. We run through some of the key elements of what it looks like to take back your power, so being the key player in your health, figuring out who's on your health team and then looking at some of those areas of your lifestyle. So we incorporate that life pie concept with the different pillars and how to assess that. I have different prompts that we go through.

Alexandra Clifton:

I really am passionate about mental wellness, and so that's kind of where the neuroscience comes in is not only your thought, life and your mind, but also your brain, and how are you doing is really key. So I integrate different brain health tips and focus on simple swaps. You can do that. Promote simple swaps. You can do that. Promote healing in your nervous system, your brain and body.

Alexandra Clifton:

And I have a digital detox experience that I'm running later this year, and so I have a wait list on my website for that, which I'm really excited about that, and it seems a little funny that I work in digital marketing and I have a digital detox experience, but it's a big passion for me especially because my brother has dealt with digital addiction, and we talk often about what it looks like to reenter a world or be in a world where we can't get away from technology completely, and so creating not only space for your brain and body to rest when you're offline, but how to be more creative, effective and passionate about what you're doing online and productive is the whole point of the detox. It's not just to get out of it and never go back.

Christina Kohl:

Right. And so many times when we think of digital detox, I think it's natural to go, oh, that's for my kids. But as the adults, adults, as a parent of young adults I mean, my kids are all ages 19 and up and so that's something that I struggle with myself, not just like, oh, my kids need to detox digitally I catch myself like, oh, let me just scroll on facebook a little bit more, see what's going on. I scroll linkedin a lot and it's amazing how fast the time goes and how much we're missing out on our daily lives and it's just become a habit. And so I think that's a digital detox would be beneficial for anyone of all ages. It's not just the kids that are doing it or the young adults.

Alexandra Clifton:

It's all of us.

Christina Kohl:

So, um, so that's right now. You set a wait list to join that. Yes, okay, and also okay. Well, we'll be sure to include your workshop, your monthly workshops, the link there and the link to the wait list for the digital detox. And how, how can people find you?

Alexandra Clifton:

besides those events for the digital detox, and how else can people find you besides those events? Yes, so my like username is to breathe again, and I sometimes struggle with spelling, so I like to say it comes with the E at the end of breathe, and I'm on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn right now and Pinterest.

Christina Kohl:

Nice, yeah, okay. Well, alex, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your wisdom and insights, and I know I've picked up a few nuggets of new things to try, particularly when I'm trying to go to sleep tonight. So thank you for sharing all that with us and being with us today. Hey, everyone, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Alexandra as much as I did, and be sure to listen in for the next episode for that part that Alexandra and I went deep into calming techniques for focus and clarity. We really talked about that vagus nerve and rest beyond sleep, recharging and re-energizing. So that'll be in the next episode, so be sure to listen in. All right, that's it for this episode. Have a great week and we'll talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember, your story is uniquely your own and your next chapters are ready to begin.