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Heal Yourself Podcast
A podcast diving into all aspects of healing; from nurturing your relationship with yourself, to functional medicine insights, to transforming your money story, we're here to empower you with the knowledge and tools to create lasting change.
Heal Yourself Podcast
Episode 64: Conquering Insomnia with Naturopathic Wisdom
What if emotional stress is behind your sleepless nights? In this episode, Dr. Tonia Winchester, naturopathic doctor and mind-body healing coach, shares her journey from traditional medicine to embracing the mind-body connection. She explains how emotional stress, unresolved feelings, and negative thought patterns can disrupt sleep and overall wellness, and how tools like NLP help shift unconscious narratives.
We break down the insomnia cycle, the role of stress, and how deficiencies or hormonal imbalances can affect rest. Dr. Tonia highlights the importance of nourishing your body on physical, emotional, and mental levels to support true healing.
You’ll also learn the “Thinking Kindly” system, a simple method for replacing negative thoughts, improving mindset, and boosting overall health. Dr. Tonia shares powerful insights, resources, and a free hypnosis audio to help you reset, restore, and unlock your body’s natural healing power. Tune in and transform your nights—and your life.
About Dr Tonia:
Dr. Tonia Winchester has been a Naturopathic Doctor since 2007. Now as a mind-body healing coach she helps people release the pain of the past, overcome stress, anxiety, burnout, and insomnia so they calm their minds and allow their bodies to go back into healing mode. Ultimately so they have the vitality to make a positive impact in the world. She is the author of two books: Break Through The Insomnia Cycle and Thinking Kindly. Dr. Tonia also hosts the Wonder With Me Podcast, the place to leverage the healing power of the unconscious mind.
Find Dr Tonia:
https://facebook.com/coachtonia/
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https://www.tiktok.com/@coachtonia
Free Gift from Dr. Tonia
https://coach.toniawinchester.com/listeners
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Welcome to the Heal Yourself Podcast, where we dive deep into all things healing. I'm Denise, a speech-language pathologist and a self-love coach for adults and teens.
Speaker 2:And I'm Kira, a traditional naturopath and functional nutritionist, and we are here to guide you through the transformative process of healing your body, mind and soul.
Speaker 1:From the latest in functional medicine to nurturing your relationship with yourself, healing trauma and even transforming your money story. We're here to empower you with the knowledge and tools to create lasting change.
Speaker 2:So, whether you're looking to heal physically, emotionally or spiritually, join us as we explore the many paths to wholeness and wellness. Hello everyone, Welcome back to another episode of Heal Yourself Podcast. You have Kira today and I am joined by a special guest. We have Dr Tanya Winchester here today, so welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. I'm really excited for our conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let me tell you guys a little bit about her. She has been a naturopathic doctor since 2007. Now, as a mind-body healing coach, she helps people release the pain of the past, overcome stress, anxiety, burnout and insomnia so they can calm their minds and allow their bodies to go back into healing mode. Ultimately, so they have the vitality to make a positive impact in the world. She's the author of two books Breakthrough the Insomnia Cycle and Thinking Kindly. Dr Tanya also hosts the Wonder With Me podcast, the place to leverage the healing power of the unconscious mind. I love that we're chatting today because I have so many questions.
Speaker 3:Yay, I'm excited to share what I can and be helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, tell us how you got into this. Maybe not even becoming a naturopathic doctor, unless you've got a cool story behind that. But looking at the mind-body aspect, because I feel like you and I were briefly chatting before this but a lot of people get into the naturopathic medicine, functional medicine space and it's very much okay. Let's look at labs, but we're looking through a different lens, which is what makes us so unique. And then we're suggesting supplements and dietary shifts. We're not talking about medications, but you and I know it goes much deeper than that. So do you have any story for us?
Speaker 3:I mean, I do have a really cool origin story for becoming a naturopathic doctor, but let's go into, yeah, how I went from naturopathic medicine into more of a mind-body approach. One thing that I remember, actually early in my career, was that I was having a really hard time as a practitioner, as a clinician, being present with people's emotions. And we know I mean, science has showed us time and time again the effects of stress and the emotions on our health and our wellbeing. And so I would be going through an intake form with someone and I would say you know, what sources of stress do you have going on in your life? And they'd be like well, my dad just died and I, without the skills and the tools to be there in that moment, would just skip right ahead to so tell me about how your bowel movements are.
Speaker 3:And like I, just couldn't be there. And so that was one place where I was like I need to actually develop some skillsets to start to have have the capacity to to be empathetic and and caring in those moments, cause I would just avoid and skip over it even though I knew how important it was. Uh, so I, so I did that. I developed some skills to be able to be present and really, you know, bring my heart into the space. And one thing that started happening about 10 years into practice, maybe about halfway into my career so far, is that I meet with someone and we'd have a really good conversation about what they wanted in their health, what they were struggling with, what some of their obstacles were, so what some of those emotional challenges were, what some of their lifestyle challenges were, uh, and we would send them away with a great plan and they'd come back to me and they'd tell me how hard the plan was and I'd be like, yeah, but also, what do you mean? How is eating your broccoli hard? How is drinking enough water hard? How is getting to bed on time hard? Like I didn't comprehend. So I was kind of bumping up this another sort of obstacle in my own ability to help people in their journeys. And I became so interested in this place within us where we decide to take care of ourselves, because I really recognize it's not the act of doing these things that's hard. It's not the act of having enough water, it's not the act of eating the broccoli or whatever the thing is that they know is going to help them do better in their physical wellbeing, but it's the decision to do that every day. That is the hard part. And I just became obsessed with this moment in human psychology Like what is it that drives certain people to wake up and say today's the day that I'm going to take care of myself and I'm going to eat well, I'm going to set boundaries, I'm going to hydrate, I'm going to move, I'm going to rest, like I'm going to do all the things that we need in our physical wellness, versus other people who are like, yeah, nevermind, and I like what was so? What was behind this decision-making process? And so I started seeking you know what is? How can I bridge this gap?
Speaker 3:And I, I'm going to say I stumbled into the world of neuro-linguistic programming. It kind of, you know, sometimes things just arrive at the right moment and I thought NLP, was this really sleazy approach to sales and marketing, which it certainly can be like? There is a dark side to NLP, for sure. And also I was so delighted to discover it's this potent healing modality. And also I was so delighted to discover this is potent healing modality. And what it does is it changes our unconscious internal story, tape narrative, so that we are no longer unconsciously, of course, thinking things like I don't deserve to take care of myself, I'm not valuable enough to take care of myself, I'm not worthy enough to take care of myself, I'm not worthy enough to take care of myself, and instead changes those internal stories so that we are worthy, valuable enough, lovable enough to you know, do the things that we need to do for our own physical wellness. So it's this sort of top down approach mind, body medicine, love it.
Speaker 2:Well I'm curious how much do you use NLP in your practice?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so in my naturopathic day to day it's trickier just because of some of the regulations around it.
Speaker 3:But then I have a sort of a separate arm in my, in my helping business, where I coach people and and take people through this process called a breakthrough, which is this beautiful time oriented way of releasing the negative pain out of the past, so old traumas we haven't integrated or healed from old, unresolved negative emotions things like anger, fear, sadness, hurt, guilt, shame is a big one and reorienting them into the positive of the present and whatever they want to experience now joy, confidence, energy.
Speaker 3:And we can use these neuro-linguistic programming tools to actually rewire how the unconscious mind is primed to respond to our environment, to the people that we're around, to our own internal filters, so that we get we get this ability to go back into healing mode, which you said in the introduction and my my, my hypothesis here is that the stress from the past or the current stress that we're experiencing in our lives, it blocks our ability to heal.
Speaker 3:In naturopathic medicine, one, one of the main tenets is that every single organism on the planet is self-healing, it knows how to heal, it can, it wants to, and these old stresses, these current stresses actually block that from being the case, and we can look at physiology and see this. We know that the parasympathetic mode of the nervous system is when we heal, when we rest, when we digest excuse me and you know, conversely, the sympathetic, or the fight or flight, is when we are really primed to survive. And I think, as human beings, we need to do more than just survive. We need to be thriving in our lives, which is what the calm part of the nervous system helps us do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't think I mean, yeah, we can be surviving, but that doesn't look like optimal health either.
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And we've got so many stuck in fight or flight or freeze and don't know how to get out of it or don't even recognize it. Don't recognize that they're stuck in old patterns that emotions are hindering. There's so many layers to this, absolutely so. I mentioned it in your bio. But insomnia where does that play a role? Like, did a passion arise of oh, I love to talk about sleep issues or sleep disorders. Oh, that was my Okay, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was that person laying awake at three in the morning, staring at the ceiling, listening to my husband have a great sleep, snoring away happily, and me just being like one sheep, two sheep what am?
Speaker 3:I supposed to do tomorrow. I can't believe she said that holy crap, what a mess, what am I gonna? And just like these spiraling thoughts and my body and mind could not calm to a place where sleep was easy. And I realize now that I had all sorts of trauma from the past that I didn't even know was bogging me down in this way. And when I was able to go through this process that I take people through now as as a healing coach and it's called a breakthrough, and when I went through that for the first time as a client, suddenly it was like, oh, go to bed at 1030. And then the alarm's going at six or 630. And I'm just like, oh, like that was just eight, eight hours.
Speaker 3:Like did that just what happened.
Speaker 3:Who drugged me? Was this a one-off? And I'm like, oh gosh. And then, and then the pattern changed, like it. The pattern just changed because of my unconscious mind no longer needing to spend time trying to figure out these old things. They had just been dealt with, dealt with in a way that was just easy, gentle.
Speaker 3:And so, yes, insomnia was definitely part of my personal passion project because of my own journey there, and I realized that there's this really common cycle that people get into and I call it both the insomnia cycle and the burnout cycle, and people can enter this cycle from many different points, but essentially there's daytime stress that can, in some people, ramp up to anxiety, sometimes even panic, and that state of the nervous system is going to create the restless, disturbed, insomniac type patterns. Of course, in the person's waking up tired, they're less able to deal with the stresses of their day and the cycle continues. So this is a road to burnout and, like I say, people can kind of enter that cycle from different points, but they just get, get in this, this loop of of not being able to get traction. You, you know, make progress, really change the scenario. So we have to, we have to interrupt that pattern.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to go so many different places right here. That's why I'm stumbling. Usually, I'm not at a loss for words, trust me. If you listen to the podcast, you're like she doesn't shut up. But there's just so many things, because I'm actually thinking about my mother with this, who has dealt with insomnia all her life, and I know there's something deeper and I really hope she's not listening to this episode. Um, for someone that is dealing with insomnia and I'm going to say this because I know we have many listeners dealing with that would you say that all of the time, there's some underlying trauma or emotions that have not been resolved? Or could it literally be as simple as oh, you're just really stressed out right now?
Speaker 3:Yes and yes. I'm going to flesh this answer out with what I call the formula for health and to say're releasing carbon dioxide, which, of course, of course, we breathe out. Now, the truth is, we need to do this on all the different levels of health. So we need this biochemically. That's where our supplements, our vitamins, our minerals, our amino acids come in right. We need to do this physically, and I consider this to be our habits. This is the getting out in nature, getting movement, getting rest, nourishing your body with good, wholesome foods. And we also need to do this emotionally, where we need positive emotions in to our system and we need to release emotions that are unwarranted, inappropriate, negative, unresolved. And also we need to do this at the level of our thinking. So we need nutrients in in terms of nutritious, positive, affirming thoughts, and we need toxic thoughts out. Now, any or all of these can be a root cause for someone's symptom, and one of the cool things about being a naturopathic doctor and another tenant of our philosophy is treating the whole person is I can look at all these levels and say where are the gaps, what is the thing that is missing, that we need to neutrify, and what is the thing that they have too much of that. We need to detoxify and we can do this, like I say, and when we work from the top down, so when we work mentally, there's generally this really lovely downstream effect impacting all of the other levels.
Speaker 3:But yeah, someone could just have a magnesium deficiency, that's true. Yeah, someone could have a hormone imbalance, right? Especially I'm working a lot with perimenopausal women these days like there could be an imbalance there. And then I'm always kind of in the back of my mind wondering, like, is there a deeper cause to this? Like why let's take the magnesium example and let's run with this little rabbit hole. So why is the person magnesium deficient? Okay, so that could be a exposure. Maybe they're not getting enough in their diet, maybe they're not absorbing it, maybe this is a digestive problem they're not absorbing it. Maybe their cells aren't utilizing it, or maybe something's going on that they need to use more of it and so the demand is higher.
Speaker 3:Now, two of those things lead me back to a mental or emotional cause. Why is the gut not functioning well? Okay, well, we know. First thing that happens when we're stressed acutely or chronically is the gut shuts down. Right, digesting our food is no longer a priority. Surviving is the second thing that I said. Is there a demand that is requiring more magnesium? Stress is going to do that right. Requiring more magnesium stress is going to do that Right. So I mean, while chemistry and and biology is important, um, often there's things that are also chemically and biologically affecting those micronutrients that we need. So, in answer to your question, yes, all that, they're all relevant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it was a wonderful answer and I appreciate it because I think you know I ask these two in thinking of our listeners and what they probably need to hear, because it's so easy to get stuck in. Oh yeah, I'm just magnesium deficient and it's the same thing. I'm always telling my clients okay, but we need to be asking why. Yes, same thing. I'm always telling my clients okay, but we need to be asking why. Be that annoying child that just keeps asking why until you can no longer ask why and because I'm deficient in magnesium, doesn't answer why, okay, but why, yeah?
Speaker 3:exactly, exactly why, and this is a really good, important point. So when we ask the question why, exactly like what you said, we're going to get to a deep place where there is some sort of root cause. We, so the question why? Will help us understand how we got to where we are Now.
Speaker 3:One of the beautiful beliefs that comes out of neuro linguistic programming is that every single behavior, every single symptom, every single reaction is trying to meet some sort of need. It's trying to have a purpose be met. And so I can now take these why questions, why, why, why, why, why, okay, we get to this place. That is, you know, the root of, of the, let's say, the magnesium deficiency. And now I can ask well, for what purpose? The, the, the behavior around, like, if there's a behavior around maybe not getting enough green vegetables, not getting enough, you know, um, nuts, seeds, some of these sources, so there's a behavior around not nourishing ourselves, what is the purpose of that behavior? So, for, for what purpose gives us the solution out? The why gets us to the cause. And then, for what purpose gets us the reason out?
Speaker 3:So, and what I mean by that is so say, we get like, okay, maybe eating a lot of junk food. For what purpose? To numb, to escape, to feel comforted, to feel good. Okay. For what purpose? To actually feel connected, because when I eat the foods that I'm being offered, that's an exchange of love. That's how I was brought up. Okay, for what purpose? I just want to be connected. Okay, cool, now we've got something. That's something that we can work towards. So now we both know the reason and the for what purpose, which means we can put that on something else. We can reverse, engineer that and get that in a different way. That's maybe more health promoting and more health affirming. Does that, does that make sense? It does.
Speaker 2:It makes total sense and this is something that people can start to do on their own too, and I want people to recognize that that's a big purpose of the podcast is we do have this self-healing capability and we're not saying don't go see a practitioner.
Speaker 3:Many times you do need a guide, but you can start to do some of this stuff on your own and start to ask why or for what purpose when you're noticing patterns in your life homework assignment and take a piece of paper and write toxicity, and so you're gonna have three columns three columns toxicity in the top of one column, nutrient deficiency at the top of another column, and then do this for each of these levels. So, mentally, what are the toxins, mentally, that you're being exposed to? And write them all down. What are the nutrient deficiencies? So what are the things that are lacking mentally? Write them all down and then move on to emotionally. So what are the emotional toxins that you're being exposed to? What are the emotions that you're lacking, that you're wanting more of? Write them down, and now you can start to actually build your own personalized formula for health. Do this on the physical level too. So what are the positive habits that you need to start embodying? What are the things that you need to be letting go of? You know the popcorn, watching the show every night maybe that's something that you know or the half a bottle of wine, whatever it is and then doing this biochemically too. So this is a way to start to kind of map out your own formula for health. And and this is not, by the way, a sprint this is, you know, taking care of ourselves and being well is an endurance race until the moment that we pass.
Speaker 3:And every time that we make a choice with regard to any of these behaviors, we have the opportunity to really just stack the deck in our favor. But we can't isolate things. So just take vitamin D every day and you're going to be fine. Like that's, that's part of it. It we can't isolate things. So just take vitamin D every day and you're going to be fine. That's part of it. It's a part of it. So when we have this kind of graph, you know this own personalized map, our own formula for health pick one thing that is accessible and easy and start there. So maybe it is just getting outside every day on your lunch break and either taking a walk or forest bathing such as being in nature, somehow, some way and just start with something and over time, that's going to become more normal and habituated, and then you can layer in something else. Right? This isn't, this isn't a mad dash. This is a slow, ongoing evolution that we can, um, can, really respect and care for ourselves over time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is why Denise and I always say healing is a journey, it's not a destination. So, whether we're looking at emotional, spiritual growth or even the physical body, sure you can eliminate symptoms, but life is going to happen, stressors are going to pop up. We're always working towards how can I better my life, how can I better my wellness? It's not just oh, I got rid of these chronic headaches and I'm done, I don't have to worry about it ever again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly Exactly, and I think there's this element too, where, um, a lot of things around health are cosmetic and and we want to be beautiful and I get that and it's, of course, important. And also there's this place where we can just function well and just feel so good, and that's, I think, something to strive for too, sort of reframing what health actually means for us as an individual. I think that's a worthy question to ask yourself. What is health to me? Because that's going to be different for everyone. I often hear when I first meet people, whether they're clients or patients you know what is health? Because I'll just say I want to be healthy. What does that mean?
Speaker 2:What does that mean?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think health is something really interesting. It's kind of like money in a way, like we don't want money for the sake of having money. We want money because money gets us other things that we want, and health is the same.
Speaker 3:Like health is this vehicle that drives us to the things in life that light us up. And so when I start to challenge people with that idea, the things that they say back are just absolutely beautiful and make me want to cry all the time. Like I want to, you know, be able to tumble on the ground with my grandkids. Or I want to, like, hike my dog up big, challenging peaks I want to explore with my bestie. I want to be ready inside and whole for when the perfect person shows up. Like there's these really gorgeous reasons that people want to be ready inside and whole for when the perfect person shows up. Like there's these really gorgeous reasons that people want to be healthy, and I think that's worth exploring to. You know, write out your map of your formula for health, but what? For what purpose? Like, why do you even want that? What does that get you? What does being well get you? Yeah, well, and you've got.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we talked about your book insomnia, but you've got okay. So we talked about your book Insomnia, but you've got another book, correct Thinking.
Speaker 3:Kindly. Yes. Where does that come in with all this? The mental level? So our thinking, our and this is our day-to-day thinking that it has this downstream effect affecting our physical, our emotions, for our physical and then our biochemical. We know that people who think more positively, more regularly, have lower incidences of heart disease, cardiovascular events, cancer, osteoporosis, al, alzheimer's, on and on, all the kind of chronic degenerative diseases that exist in our modern society. They all relate back to how we're thinking about ourselves every day. We are having about 6000 ish thoughts a day. It's about one every 14 seconds. I think I did the math on that.
Speaker 3:I'm just the intro chapter of the book and so and and. Most of those are repetitive and automated and habituated, and most of them are from old tapes from when we were young, took things on that weren't ours and have integrated as belief systems. It's like being thwomped on the back of the head with a book every 14 seconds. Like you, you wouldn't. You wouldn't put up with that if that was happening. It's almost like hitting you, you know.
Speaker 3:But yet our thoughts are just berating us with like I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm never going to get that, I can't have that Like that's not for me. I'm X, y, z, incapable, whatever it is, and I'm getting very passionate and this is impacting our wellness. So thinking kindly kind of came out of this passion of we need to be changing the tape inside so that we can be positively priming ourselves for whatever we want in our lives. My slant is health and wellness, but of course that filters into relationships, career, the impact that we want in our lives. My slant is health and wellness, but of course that filters into relationships, career, the impact that we want to make. And so I had sort of created over time, working with people, this formula. It's a seven step system to change your negative thoughts into positive ones and have the beautiful results that come as a consequence of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so needed because, yeah, we have a ton of thoughts every day. I've actually had clients keep thought journals. I don't do this for everyone, but it can be really powerful when people are like I don't know what I'm thinking and I'm like, well, write it down. Anytime a thought comes in your head, write it down and let's just see how negative you get. Because when we're talking physical wellness, if you're constantly thinking negative thoughts all day, how do you think your body's going to respond?
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely. I'm a big fan of the placebo, which everyone knows about. Right, this is a positive intention that will affect a system in a positive, anticipated way. But also, what exists is the nocebo and this is the negative intention will have an impact on people. These both exist. These are scientific truths and we can leverage them. So we don't need to be noceboing ourselves into ill health. We can actually be placeboing ourselves into beautiful, vibrant vitality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've given us so much today. Is there anything else you feel like you need to share that you didn't?
Speaker 3:I want to reiterate that the body knows how to heal. It's what it's designed to do, it can, it wants to, and you just need to put the right circumstances in place for that to happen. So, again, those two questions what's missing that you need to neutrify? What's what is there too much of that? You need to detoxify and release.
Speaker 2:I love that one. I really do, because I think it can be such a powerful activity for people to really get real with themselves, you know to have that yeah, to have that look inside that maybe you haven't had before.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, I will always put information in the show notes, but if someone wants to find you, um, grab a book, what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 3:Yes, so tanyawinchestercom T-O-N-I-A it's sort of a hub site for all of these things the books, coaching, naturopathic medicine. I have smartly created this cool survey that people can just click some buttons and then, oh, this is your best avenue, because I know I have a lot of channels that I can help people you know. Go down. So this is the best avenue that's going to work for you. So there's a little survey that people can take there too, and also actually on that website there's an audio that's free to download. It's a hypnosis audio track that invites people to release some of these negative emotions that we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2:So Perfect, I'll make sure that that's in the show notes, guys, so go check it out. Wonderful Well, thank you again, so much.
Speaker 3:Oh, my absolute pleasure. It was a great chat.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, guys, you know what to do. Leave us a review, share it with a friend, hit us up on Instagram and let us know what you want to hear about next.
