The Ultimate Mind Diet

This conversation explores how thoughts, emotions, and actions have energetic value and affect biological and chemical reactions in the body, the impact of chronic rumination and prolonged stress hormones, and the concept of heart–brain coherence and humans as electromagnetic beings.

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Transcript

 Welcome to the Nine to Five Wellness Podcast, a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward-thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement. I'm your host, Aisha Tahir.

    Hello and welcome to the Nine to five Wellness Podcast. Today we are going to talk about a topic that has been kind of on top of my mind and. It's interesting that I was, a couple of weeks back, I was at an expo, at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia, and I met this wonderful guest of ours who's gonna talk about that topic.

So without further ado, I'm gonna actually tell you what the topic is. So we are gonna explore the most powerful nutrient you consume your own thoughts. How many times in a day do you. Think about other people, other things , things happening in your life, right? And every moment your mind is mixing a chemical cocktail based on your thoughts.

Which impacts your words coming out of your mouth, which in impacts your actions that you take during the day and you know further beyond and your perspective on things. Mm-hmm. Isn't that amazing? Right. And I know that, you know, to some extent we all know about this, like we are aware of this fact, but we probably.

Don't know how much it impacts our lives. So that's why I wanted to really talk about it, and that's why the title of this podcast is The Ultimate Mind Diet. So, so I'm not gonna be talking about it because I honestly am a learner just like you are, but today we have. The pleasure of having a wonderful, wonderful guest with us to talk about this topic because she specializes in it.

Our guest is Catherine Chadwick. She is a registered nurse and wellness strategist who works at, who works at the intersection of nervous system, health mindset, and sustainable work performance as the creator of the sunshine. Quotient. She partners with individuals and organizations to move beyond burnout prevention and into intentional human-centered wellness design.

Welcome to the podcast, Catherine. 

Thank you so much for having me today, Aisha, and it was a very fun meeting at the Pyramid Club, wasn't it? 

I always say like, people who come in your severe, there, there's a reason why universe sends people our way. And as soon as we started chatting, I'm like, oh my gosh, I wanna talk to Catherine more and.

For me, podcasting is the best way to learn about what people specialize in. And I get to learn my guests, get to learn, , and my listeners get to learn a lot. So I'm so excited about our interview today. 

Well, thank you and thank you for this opportunity to, to have this conversation with you.

What's so fascinating for all of us is I believe that our process. Each one of us has a process as we go through this journey. Our process is our curriculum, and we actually learn the most through the things that don't. It quite go so well. Right? 

Oh my gosh. You just put one of my thoughts into words today, like, seriously when I woke up, because I had a little obstacle with one of the projects I'm working on yesterday, like last night.

And you know how your brain kind of like ruminates on things, which happened right before you went to bed. So I woke up with this. Very thought like, you know, you learn the best. From the things that don't go well in your life or in your career or your work projects and stuff. So that's what I was doing.

I was like, okay, let's just put it away. It's perfectly fine. That was a good lesson for me. And then, you know how to move forward and beyond. So it's such a. Pleasure to have you with us today, and I really want to dive into your journey first. So tell us about your journey to transformation coaching. What inspired you to move from your career as a registered nurse to coaching?

It's interesting because I have been in and out of clinical work over the years, and I like going back to it because I always learn something. Absolutely. And Uhhuh, and it's good to be out there in a mix. And what's, I think, not unique to me. But what part of my process was, , right out of college, I started working, , ICU at a small hospital, and by the time I was 23, I was the charge nurse of that small ICU.

And by the time I was 25, I was in a hip to breast back brace after a major lumbar repair. And it's what I refer to as the lumbar crumble. And so I know L four had shattered. It was all in pieces. I had a beautiful repair at the Mayo Clinic,, after spending about a year walking with a walker because I couldn't use my left leg really, and it was quite a process.

So I'm back in Florida. I'm sleeping on a friend's couch because I haven't been able to work. I have a little suitcase with some clothing. Two back braces and a really fabulous teal colored bikini. And I'm about 30 pounds lighter than you see me now. And I go to the beach every day. And that bikini and that back brace.

And I don't care a bit what I look like because, and I was a bit disconnected from myself, but not so disconnected that I didn't realize that something was way off.

And so I just kept walking and walking and one day it was almost. Like a miracle, right? We were talking about people come into your sphere.

Dr. Wayne Dyer came into mind and with his book, right? And I started learning about body mind energy, and I'm like, oh my gosh, how can I be 25 years old and just learning about this now that I've been through all, all this training, you know, in nursing, four years of nursing school, life experiences.

And I'm like, well, all right. Yeah, universal laws and energy principles are really the rules of the game, and I started studying everything that I could get my hands on that. And so I've been studying aspects of body, mind, energy, body, mind, spirit from different perspectives since my twenties. And I, and what's fascinating is I don't know it all right?

Life is a, a lot of hills and valleys, right? So we have a lot of experiences and wisdom comes at a price and absolutely, yes it does. And because I have, I mean, obviously we all have things that we wish we could go back and make a different decision about.

It doesn't work that way. So what I really love about all of this is when you think about and what will lead up into the, energetic values of the words and the emotions and the actions and the chemical cocktail reactions, right? Yes.

A little side tip here when you catch yourself saying something over and over, like, I, I think I've said right about five times so far.

I do too. I think right. Is one of my go-to filler words too, so

yeah. 

When you catch yourself doing it, imagine putting a little pebble or a marble in the jar and then look at the jar at the end of the day and see how many are in there.

And that will help you cre, you know, create a different habit. 

Oh my goodness. That's such a great tip. Catherine. You are right on. Like, you know, universe has a way, has a way of. Pointing us in the right direction. And as much as we want like an uphill life throughout our lifetimes, that's not the case.

So it's always gonna be a zigzag. It's always gonna be the, highs and lows, or the hills and valleys right. We will have to go through those in order to get to our destination. I'm a long distance runner and I. I'm also a cyclist. I not such a good cyclist though, but as a long distance runner, like the races, which are totally like flat road, although they seem easy, they're not fun to be on though.

You know what I mean? Like they're super easy. Like I know I'm gonna get a pr, it's gonna be easy, I'm gonna go fast, whatnot. But I don't think so fast is always fun. So I just wanted to underscore that and I wanna, dive into something you just said that, there's a chemical cocktail and our thoughts and words, , are creating these changes within our physiology.

And as an exercise physiologist, I am interested in talking about that. So how do our thoughts and words directly alter our body chemistry? 

We're all part of what I often refer to as the universal soup. We're all part of the universal energy. When you think about it, you don't breathe yourself on your own.

You don't make your heartbeat on your own, and everything has an energetic value. Everything is vibrating , and the chair that we're sitting on. Is vibrating. We're vibrating constantly, and every thought and every emotion, every action has an energetic value to it, and every one of those influences the chemical.

Reaction, the biological reaction, the chemical reaction in the body. That's, I refer to it as a chemical cocktail reaction. Right? And so it is interesting to know that so many of the repetitive thoughts when we get into that negative loop that rumination that, and we're running on stress hormones for any great length of time.

An extended period of time. We're not designed to function well that way, and the body cannot really function as it's designed to. And that's when things start to break down. And when you think also that.

The heart brain coherence is a real thing. We're electromagnetic beings and the thoughts have a negative charge, and the heart has a positive charge that, you know, heart meaning emotion, right? And it is interesting to learn yourself energetically because we are electromagnetic and we are broadcasting constantly.

What do you want to be broadcasting? Because what you're broadcasting is also broadcasting internally. The research shows that the average lifespan of an emotion is typically less than 90 seconds and only up to about two minutes, and we can learn an awful lot in those two minutes or under 90 seconds.

Emotions are signals. Many of us have been programmed at a very young age to, uh, you know, there's no reason to cry about that. Oh, you know, you shouldn't get that angry. You know, many of us have been pushing emotions down for a very long time, and when you look at the statistics, it's heartbreaking because it shows that approximately 95% of human health conditions and illnesses are lifestyle induced.

We have much more control over how our body functions than we've been programmed or led to believe, most of us. Yeah. And, and the other, uh, heartbreaking statistic is that in the US alone. It, there are over 25 million people that have an autoimmune diagnosis, and about 80% of them are women.

And as Dr. Gabor Mate says, and I, I love his work, uh, he said, this is a cultural issue. And I say, if it's a cultural issue, let's start talking about this more.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I wanna underscore. You said that majority of these conditions are, in female patients or women because we are more connected to our emotional

being Right. I, I was just reading about it the other day in a book and they said that women are just more connected. To their body and their brain and their feelings. And I do wanna add a little bit to what you just said, that, there's a negative charge here, and then positive charge, depending on your, your thinking process. Like if you have negative thoughts. But this whole energy system, it's also creating a shift in your hormones.

And, one of the shifts is what literature suggests and research shows us is that stress hormone cortisol. It's triggered, like the release of it is triggered in our bodies when we have this. Negative charge here, positive in your heart and emotions. , But we can switch it to feel good neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin by just changing our thoughts.

So, I wanna talk a little bit more about that because cortisol is responsible for, inducing this fight or flight response, and you just touched upon this. That then we are. Really reactive. We are in this survival mode, as they say. Why is that happening with those negative thoughts? 

Well, let's go back a little bit to the negative thoughts and the positive. Right. Emotions. 



Right. The emotions. The electromagnetism, it's like a battery.

You need both for it to function properly. So regardless of whether your thought is negative or positive, feel a feel good thought or not feeling so good thought. It's still gonna have a negative charge because that's what thoughts are and the emotions. Are gonna have that positive charge, whether your heart is feeling way open or not.

You're a little closed off that's like the mechanics of the energetics. Right? And when we are reacting in regard to a, a safety issue, we want that cortisol to kick in. Because that's part of what keeps us safe. Don't step off that curve. Don't, or, I mean, don't step off the curve because that car is coming around the curve and you want to, you want that to kick in.

Yeah. You don't want to be sitting at a desk all day long with cortisol running through your body like there's a problem that is going to cause your body to break down. 

Sure. 

And so your nervous system is an essential self regulator to get to know 'em, and I like to teach people about the vagus nerve from the very beginning.

We have 12 pair of cranial nerves, and the vagus nerve is cranial nerve number 10, and if you look at a picture of it, it's very long. They call it the wandering nerve. It's connected to almost every organ in your body. When you take in that deep breath and engage the vagus nerve, you're also, that also engages the calming side of your nervous system.

The parasympathetic side, you can lower your. Heart rate. You can lower your blood pressure. You can. You just know you bring yourself back to you. It's a beautiful mindfulness tool, and I always teach people the sunshine, breathing with the sunshine quotient. That's a term that refers to lighting, gradients, and photography and radiology, and I have applied it to people because we are these beautiful light beings.

We are these wonderful, fabulous electromagnetic beings. And you can start to learn yourself energetically that way. I, I use it as a teaching tool to encourage people to practice mindfulness more, to become more in the present moment. The only power we really have is in the present moment. And our lives go from moment to moment to moment.

We, and it's good to visualize and imagine. Nothing happens without the imagination though. And it's good to reflect on the past and learn from that though, if you spend too much time in either one of those places, you're, you're missing your life. Of what's happening right now.

That is so wonderful. That is very insightful, which is true, right? We say like, Hey, live in the present. See what's happening right now around you. But we kind of can't exist without that reflection of the past and then also aspiring for the future. Right? Yeah, so, so all of that has to exist, together how can we bring that,

To be in sync with each other so that we are enjoying the present moment. But also. Able to, , bring along the lessons we learned in the past and, , applying those to future. I I wanna highlight something you just said. Vagus nerve, like, , runs through every organ system. It has the most, micro nerve endings under the diaphragm. So that's why when we do the breathing practice or deep breathing practice, , the vagus nerve gets activated and it puts us into this parasympathetic system so I do, a diaphragmatic or deep breathing practice in my workshops as well, and I teach that. So we have a parallel in our teaching system, we 

have so many parallels.

I was looking at your book and I haven't read it all yet. I haven't had time since we met. However, it's very interesting because we both teach alignment from different perspectives. 

Absolutely. Yes. Let's talk about alignment. I talk about posture a lot with people because, as you just mentioned, oh, you don't wanna be sitting at your desk all day and letting high cortisol run through your body all day long.

That is one of the reasons why we are seeing this hunch over posture. We are trying to make ourselves smaller to the world. Unconsciously, I, whenever I talk to my patients or whenever I, I'm at a workshop presenting and I'm talking to the participants, nobody's intentionally doing it. They, but then when I point it out, they're like, oh my gosh.

Yes, that this is how I'm sitting right now. I bet this is how I sit all day long. Because it's not in your awareness. So I wanna bring this to our listeners awareness. How can we align ourselves better? So that our thoughts are also aligned with our goals and intentions,

I encourage everyone to develop a relationship with their own curious observer and. In some arenas it's referred to as the witness. I didn't really like being witnessed. However, I have a fabulous relationship with my own curious observer because curiosity brings so much information with less judgment.

And I also love it that curiosity often has a little bit of mischief in. When you can, you know, observe yourself curiously from the outside and say, and for instance, in what you're talking about, how am I sitting? What do I look like while I'm sitting in this chair? Am I in alignment?

You can do that with your thoughts. You can observe your thoughts. And not really get into a whole backstory about it, because not every thought that comes into our mind is really ours. Not every thought that comes into our mind is actually true. And when you can observe that and say, oh, that's just old programming.

Next, right? 

Yes. Yes. I love that. I wanna underscore that is old programming. 

That's old 

programing. We have a program running. Yes, the operating system running in the background, which we are not aware of. Right? 

And your body is part of that. Your body gets in the habits as well. So when you understand that, that we're running on old programming.

Uh, about 95% of the time is what the research shows. Then when you take a look at that with your curious observer, and you can, after a period of time, you can ask yourself, what is my belief? About this particular thing that keeps coming around and is it actually my belief, or is it one of those beliefs that has been handed down to me through generations that I haven't even taken the time to evaluate if it's really mine or not?

Yeah, and I think that it's, and we can do this in any arena of our life as far as you know, what's my physicality right now? What am, what am I thinking about? What thought can I think to take me one step a little bit higher up, the emotional, energetic scale. And what's also interesting about the emotional energetic scale and the psychological scale, they look at emotions and energetic values from different perspectives, but they're both valuable.

And much of that comes from, uh, David Hawkins work. And if you think of his, uh, power versus force. Research and people use that in muscle testing. They use it in all sorts of trainings, and it's highly valuable to understand about, which is why I love teaching people about themselves energetically. I, I can, I can teach, I can help educate, I can inspire you, I can be a role model.

Each one of us has to empower ourselves from the inside out. 

Absolutely. Each one of us has the ability to, yes, and has to empower ourselves from within. Yeah. I wanna touch upon another. One of your work, that you actually brought to my attention and, which I thought was fascinating, which is the epigenetics and cellular changes.

So our thoughts can act as signals so what's going on in there? Tell us more. 

Well, when you think about going back to what we were talking about earlier, that every thought, emotion, and action has that energetic value and influences the chemical cocktail reaction in the body.

That is what is dictating our health, and that is also influencing our genetic makeup. And when we take the time to evaluate our environment and. How we are interacting with it and also understand that how we're reacting to it or responding to it is influencing our level of health. It's easy to see that we can change.

Or biological makeup, you can change your biology. You change your, you know, hormonal reactions by how you interact with, with your environment. And I think that much of that has been addressed in some places, though. It's, it, another heartbreaking statistic, the latest study I read on Alzheimer's was it's, it's only.

Less than 2% of the people that have an Alzheimer's diagnosis are actually genetically predisposed, and they're finding that environment is, is a high influencer of someone developing that diagnosis. 

Absolutely, especially stress. Stress in your life. Like which is, which can be environmental, the relationships you have or even relationship with your work. So Alzheimer's is less dependent on your genes, that you inherited and the changes to the genes that you make at in your life. Our thoughts. And which stress also creates negative, more negative thoughts, which we kind of don't want. They are creating these neural pathways which shape the future emotional responses that we, we have, right?

And not just those for us, but I mean, if you are of reproductive age, that's gonna impact future generations too. 

Oh, no question. No question. And what's fascinating also is I think. Getting back to just touch on the Alzheimer's a bit. When people do get a bit older, sometimes they, they run out of purpose.

Yeah. 

And, and when we don't have a mission, when we don't have a purpose, we have a tendency to wander. And wandering is great for a few days. If you're on vacation or something though, if you're right to take a break and Oh, yeah. Though, if you're just wandering and kind of, I mean, I noticed that when I was in Florida and I made the decision at that time that I was never going to retire because the trend at that time was.

People would retire, they'd get the gold watch, they sell the house, they moved to Florida. Yeah. And they're going from early bird special to early bird special. And they don't know anyone and they don't really know what they're going to be doing next. And, and you know, like a husband and a wife and one of them has the proverbial heart attack or stroke.

And if they survive, then they're typically impaired. In some fashion, at least for a period of time, and then the spouse is a widow, a widower, or a caretaker, and it didn't take long to find out to see the pattern within a few months. Yeah, the widow, the widower, or the caretaker is back in with their own catastrophe, and I thought, oh my word.

If this is how, what retirement looks, I'm never gonna do that. 

Good for you, Catherine.

I'm 70 years old and I feel like I'm just getting started again. 

I wanna underscore what you just said. We are starting all over again At every point in our life, I, I sometimes I would meet up with my patients or clients or just in general having a conversation.

I think I was having it earlier this week, in New York. I was for there for a work event. Somebody said something similar to me, oh my gosh, I'm 55, I can't do this and I'm like, but we start fresh every day. If you think about it, it's a new start. 



So maybe just switching that mindset is gonna also empower people,

no question. , The other thing that's to keep in mind too is you, when you, you mentioned the neural pathways. When we create new habits, we're creating a new neural pathway. When you think about going to the grocery store the same route every day or every week or how often you go and when you think about going that same route, and if you get up, we all live in a 360.

And when you get up and turn around and look from a different perspective, look at things from a different angle, you go, wow, I never knew that was over there. You know, all the things that we're missing out on. And it's not that you wanna go from shiny object to shiny object to shiny object.

However, it is good to have some variety in our environment. 

Yes. 

And when getting back to the alignment of people sitting at their desk and being set up properly to begin with, but get up and move, enroll those pattern interrupts to change your thought process when you find yourself in a loop and it's, there are so many things that we can do to help program ourselves in a positive direction.

Absolutely. And it's not necessarily a guarantee, it's a win. However, it's much closer to a win than if you never gave it a shot at all. 

Oh yeah. That's like the Michael Jordan quote that has like a. I missed all the shots I didn't take, or, 1000 shots that I didn't take. So yeah, taking a shot is definitely worth it. I wanna leave our listeners with some actionable steps. So how can they translate the ultimate mind diet or their thinking process into daily life? 

Engage your curious observer. 



That would, I believe is the number one thing, and to help enroll in that curious observer, do breath work.

I encourage people to actually put an alarm on their phone for a minimum of four times a day, do six or seven breaths at a time, and engage that age old concept of visualizing breathing in the light. When you imagine in through the nose and you imagine that you're just filling up with light on the inside 'cause you're already a light being, let's augment what we are.

And you can increase your radiance, you increase your level of vibration just by doing that because you're broadcasting even more. And, and if you hold at the top for a couple of counts and out through the mouth for a longer exhale, do that six or seven times at a time. Practice it, get in tune with it, say hello to your vagus nerve, and then when you start to get anxious about something, then you go, oh, I just need to take a breath to come back to the present moment.

Because you get more in tune with yourself and you get to use your body. Use that body mind connection, use that body mind energy connection, and over a period of time you become more regulated in your nervous system. You get more observant about your thoughts, what you can learn from those signals. You become calmer, you become more you, you become steadier, you become more of a participant and more, uh, an engaged experience is what you get as, as a result of that.

And I think that that is a huge. 

Yes. It's a big one. It's a big one. It sounds so simple. And I wanna say that your breathing is such an important tool at your dispense. We just don't. End up using it to our advantage, but we can, I mean, it takes only five minutes. Most of the smart watches have, breathing apps now, which, , time your breath to that six second inhale.

Six second exhale. So that's also a tool available to most of us if you wanna use that. But I love the actionable step that you gave us, that it's bringing awareness to your thinking process using breathing as a tool. To accomplish that goal. Thank you. So where can our listeners and viewers find you?

Because I'm sure everybody's oh my gosh, this was so good. You shared so many golden nuggets with us. Where can they find you? 

I am on LinkedIn. I am on most social media. I'm not on Twitter. I'm, and my website is the Art of self craftsmanship.org. And there you can find a calendar link. You can read a little bit more about the sunshine quotient and your curious observer.

All sorts of little tidbits are there. 

Very nice. I'll have all the links, uh, linked in our show notes for this podcast episode, uh, when it goes live on my nine to five wellness podcast. Mm-hmm. And, um, thank you, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing all your wisdom. 

Thank you. Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here with you, Aisha.

I look forward to more conversation with you. 

Yes, I would love to have deeper conversation around a lot of these topics that we kind of like just kind of likely touched upon. But thank you so much for making time for us, and thank you everyone for watching us on LinkedIn.

Hugs and kisses to all of you. And if you're listening on the podcast, i'm gonna be back with a fresh episode of the Nine to Five Wellness Podcast soon, and another LinkedIn live in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned. Bye guys. Bye for now. 

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