Village Chiropractic & Wellness Podcast
Welcome to the Village Chiropractic & Wellness Podcast with your host, Dr. Matt Green! Join us as we explore health, wellness, and the power of chiropractic care to help you live your best life
Village Chiropractic & Wellness Podcast
EP# 6: Self-Care Habits for a Healthier You with Guest Nate Peabody
In this episode of the Village Chiropractic and Wellness Podcast join Dr. Matt Green as he and guest, Nate Peabody, explore the essential role that self-care plays in our overall health. Together, they unpack the value of forming sustainable habits that can help carry us through both good days and the tougher ones, where motivation may be lacking. Don’t miss this enlightening conversation filled with actionable insights!
Join Dr. Matt Green of Village Chiropractic & Wellness Center for practical advice designed to keep your neck in top form and your life pain-free.
Visit villagechiropracticoakland.com to learn more.
Visit villagechiropracticoakland.com to learn more.
Even when you have all of the habits that I have, there's moments where I don't want to do it, and so the nice thing about having good habits is that when you have a day where you want to do nothing, where you just want to be a vegetable, or you just don't care, or it's rainy and you're depressed and you're achy, you can just you know, just hang out for the day. So I like to create habits so that when I have down days, they're fine and I don't worry about them or beat up on myself.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Village Chiropractic and Wellness Podcast with your host, dr Matt Green. Join us as we explore health, wellness and the power of chiropractic care to help you live your best life. Let's dive into today's episode.
Speaker 3:Welcome back visitors, welcome back listeners and viewers. I'm Dr Matt Green and I'm the host of this podcast, as well as the owner of Village Chiropractic and Wellness Center, located in Oakland, in a cozy little neighborhood of Montclair Village. And today we are going to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is self-care and all the benefits of it and all the challenges. And today I have invited a very special guest, someone who I think we're going to have a great conversation with. This is a friend of mine as well as a member of Village Chiropractic and Wellness Center, as well as the science tutor of my children, Nate Peabody. Hey, nate, how you doing? Hi, nice to meet you yeah the public.
Speaker 3:So I want to let the listeners know who they're listening to and I want to introduce you, and I want to let people know that you are a bio science professor at Merritt College. You have a lifelong passion for science and the body and discovering how it all works, and your expertise is in microbiology as well as neuro biology, so you know a thing or two about how the body works. Yep, now I've asked you on here because I really see you as a master of self-care. Uh, you not only are fascinated with how nature and the body works, you also put it to in action and in practice with your own regular and consistent involvement in your active care, in how you exercise and your stretch, as well as your passive care and how you ask others like myself and physical therapists and acupuncturists to help you along the way.
Speaker 3:So today our emphasis is on chiropractic, obviously, but we're going to talk about it all here. So here we go right. So our goal for the listeners, for you listeners out there, is we want you to have insight into your own level of your self-care and to be inspired to take it to the next level here. So let's get it started here, nate, I'd love to hear and I'd love for you to tell listeners about your history and tell us a little bit about your health history and what originally brought you to chiropractic in general and as well as Village Chiropractic and Wellness Center.
Speaker 1:Sure I'd love to. So the immediate history for how I came to your clinic was it was nearby and recommended by people on Yelp and people on other websites and and I went in to see you and I had a lingering issue with plantar fasciitis that was sort of okay at the time but wasn't really getting better. I felt stuck. I felt like I couldn't get my plantar fasciitis, which is when your feet really really hurt. You can't run anymore, walking is miserable. It's a very debilitating issue, especially for a lifelong athlete like me which wants to run and bike and hike. I couldn't do those things and so I came up and found you and you had a very hands-on approach.
Speaker 1:I liked your background of being a massage therapist, because in my experience, people that have you know had a whole lifelong commitment to caring for other people, help let their hands, figure out what's going on in somebody's body and figure out how to make it better for their clients.
Speaker 1:And you also had some extra techniques which turned out to be very useful, which was ART, which really seemed to help get the last little bits of my plantar fasciitis and sent them into remission. So, being in general self-care, I was trying to find someone that would help me get that last step, and so, basically, you helped get rid of those last little bits so that I could start enjoying hiking again and running and doing all the things I like to do. Because, even though I'm getting older, as I age, I still don't want to just let the body collapse, and you have to start spending more and more time for self-care the older you get. So, and my general idea is you don't use it, you're going to lose it. So if you want to sit on the couch, your body will adapt to just sitting on the couch and so but as much as I like couch surfing, I also like going out into the world, so self-care really helps. You keep doing that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, boy, getting right at the heart of the matter here right away. What about chiropractic in general? How'd you come to chiropractic of the matter here?
Speaker 1:right away. Uh, what about chiropractic in general? How'd you come to chiropractic? Well, I came to chiropractic early on in life. I think my dad I was thinking about this for this podcast probably when I was 13 or 14, my dad sent me to a chiropractor, so that would be the late 70s, early 80s, um. So I was really brought into that realm of alternate medicine. I don't think we had an acupuncturist at the time, but my dad was seeing one so I knew about them and he was very. My dad was very into organic food and being aware of what was your food and what's in your body. And then I was also an athlete in high school and doing all sorts of things soccer, tennis, running, biking so it was early on that I was chiropractic and then it's been pretty much since then. I've always tried to see chiropractors and alternate medicines, medical doctors, acupuncturists, nutritionists, naturopaths, also western medicine. So I basically it's sometimes I feel like Humpty Dumpty. I need a whole village of people to keep the body from falling apart. Right, yeah, it's a running.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. What was the reason why your dad took you? Do you remember? Do you remember what he said?
Speaker 1:I don't remember so much as it was. Oh, I really can't remember, but I may. I mean, since I was playing soccer all the time, maybe I had injured something or maybe I was. He saw something like I wasn't moving quite uniformly, I can't quite remember what the issue was, but and I broke, I was breaking bones all the time. You know, break this ankle, sprain that wrist, do this, do that. So maybe he said, after you've had all these casts and everything all over your body, you should go see a chiropractor and get all the bones in place. So I think he probably knew more about why I should than I did. I just, you know, I didn't, I didn't mind going and it felt good and I like the doctor, so I was happy to go and it felt good and I liked the doctor, so I was happy to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, what was the? Was there a time where you felt like you shifted from your parents leading you in that direction, and then you had some kind of insight as an adult. Today, as like, oh, I'm not going to do it because my parents are taking me, I'm going to do it for my own choice.
Speaker 1:That was probably late 20s and I was in Hawaii in grad school and there was this wonderful chiropractor out there who was a friend of mine and I don't know if I'd been maybe a chiropractor in a few years, but I was training in martial arts and doing other things and being active and he was a good friend of mine and had his own chiropractic business going and trusted him and so I was happy to go in and start that up. I mean, chiropractor is definitely trust because when someone's working on your neck you really want to be calm and relaxed and trust them to do it. Well. I mean it's, if you don't trust someone working on your neck you get all tensed up and it's really hard to adjust your neck. If you're all tensed up, you know it's no problem on my lower back or adjusting other things.
Speaker 1:But so I knew enough about having my neck adjusted that I knew I wanted someone that I trusted. So that was more of going in with him. And then I was starting to research just more alternative medicines on my own and more diet and more I was doing Qigong and Tai Chi, which is sort of energy work and getting exposed to that, and doing more meditation and yoga. So I think I was generally as a hobby just exploring all the different types of modalities for the body and then so probably late twenties is when that kicked in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so interesting, like what's the Hmm.
Speaker 1:What's the?
Speaker 3:experience that it gives you, like I'm looking for, like what's the? What's the underlying I mean, it might be obvious of the things that you said you get to do, the things that you get to do and such, but I'll just ask it again, because what's the what's the underlying motivation to do these things that you're talking about?
Speaker 1:You mean the self-care and different modalities. I would say it really, since I'm an athlete and I like to go do things and you know, I'm in my late 50s and I like to be on a mountain bike and I like to go down a mountain trail I don't do the dangerous ones, but pounding down a mountain and you're bouncing on your hips and your arms and your shoulders and your joints and everything. And I like knowing that I have a chiropractic appointment on Friday and whatever gets whacked out by the bike will be fine, cause when I get to Friday they'll be able to, you'll be able to put it back in place. A massage therapist will also help with any issues, like if you're really sore from overexerting, and I like to have exercises in which I really push myself and muscles get sore things. If a muscle gets sore, it pulls on a joint, so you don't necessarily injure a joint, but if you're wanting to go for a run or do something, go for a really long hike and really push yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now I feel like I like having self-care on the books. Knowing that I'm going to get self-care this week, I'll be fine. They'll fix whatever problems I have because in my mind, the more I push myself and the more I do exercises slightly outside of my comfort zone, the stronger the muscles will get and the more I maintain it. I just need to make sure that nothing gets injured, and so that's the motivation, is that allows me to keep pushing myself and, you know, keeping my heart rate up and doing fun things and not worrying that it's going to injure something. That then I can't fix and I'll be out, you know, lying on my back for a couple of weeks with an injury. So Nate.
Speaker 3:It just seems like such a straight, easy line to connect between those two. You want to do those things, and so, therefore, you know the things you need to do in order to have them, and then you do them, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's a luxury to be able to afford it and to have the time to do it, but then it's also easy because I just put myself in your care, like trying to eat organic food and really healthy and not have late night munchies and not eat a bunch of sugary food and not drink alcohol. That all takes a lot of self-control and self-effort and really, you know, as someone that's always been able to eat whatever I wanted, because I would burn through it, and now when you're older you don't burn through it and your metabolism is lower, you have to eat less and less every day. That is hard, but I do it anyway because I want to do all those things. But when I go to you and I go to a massage therapist or an acupuncturist, I can relax and let someone else take over, and so it's sort of nice.
Speaker 1:It's relaxing. It's also it's ease of mind. It's just I like knowing that it's on the books. I like knowing if I get on a plane and I'm gone for three weeks and I get back, I'll see you the next week. So if I sleep in a weird position on a plane and my neck hurts, it'll be okay. So it really you know, you guys allow me to have this sort of ease of mind and I don't have to do it, it's not very hard.
Speaker 3:You just have to show up and plan for it yeah, I, you know, I would say um very similar things. Like I want to wake up in the morning and my first thought is I feel good I'm gonna get out of bed.
Speaker 3:Um, I feel, um, as if I I want to be able to be in a good mood, be around other people. I want to. Yeah. When people say, hey, I need some help moving this box, I need some help reorganizing this, or we're going to go do this for the whole day, I want my answer to be an uninhibited yes, I can do that. Inhibited yes, I can do that. Yeah, what, what, what do you? What would you have? What would you say to listeners right now that I could imagine saying well, that's great and all, and you've had, you have these benefits or you've had this history, but it's a real challenge for me to take care of myself. What words would you have for them?
Speaker 1:I would say, even when you have all of the habits that I have, there's moments where I don't want to do it. And so the nice thing about having good habits is that when you have a day where you want to do nothing, or you just want to be a vegetable, or you just don't care, or it's rainy and you're depressed and you're achy, you can just, you know, just hang out for the day. So I like to create habits so that when I have down days they're fine and I don't worry about them or beat up on myself, and the habits also can be really self-sustaining. So can you develop a habit is really, and the reality is, everybody has a habit already. So if you develop a habit and the reality is, everybody has a habit already. So if you are always on the phone, that's a habit. If you're always watching TV, that's a habit. So what can you do with that habit? The television one? I like to watch sports. Those are my favorite time to just lie on the ground in front of the TV and do all the stretches I need to do, you know, lie on my back, do abdominal core exercises, while I'm watching the TV out of the corner of my eye. So I've created that habit, whereas if I sit on the couch or the chair for too long, the habit part of my brain kicks in and wants me to get on the floor and stretch. Yeah, you know, and so I think that's the thing. That's nice when you just push yourself to do it.
Speaker 1:After a couple months you start missing something when you don't do it, and so stretching and these things, I would say it takes energy in the beginning, but then the habit helps you. Yeah, and you know. Same thing with I don't do a personal trainer, although I do pilates, so, um, so that's a personal trainer in a different way. But if you can afford somebody that's going to pay attention to you like it could be a yoga class, it can be a pilates class, it could just be an online class where it's not even that expensive but something that makes you do it. You've already paid for it and you don't want to waste your money Then that is a big help of just signing up for something helps me motivate myself to get the habits going.
Speaker 1:So I would say, if things aren't working and you're being frustrated is the number one motivator for me. I'm frustrated with my body or I'm frustrated the way things are going. It motivates me to fix it and not give up. The hardest is when everything's working great. I'm like, yeah, everything's great, I don't got to do anything. And then, you know, then I'll go run longer than I should run and then everything hurts, although in that scenario I would be fine in a week. However, yeah, create habits that then will be. Self-sustaining is the way.
Speaker 3:That's the corner. Just to underline that sentence to create habits that are self-sustaining. There's a book called atomicomic Habits by James Clear. Have you heard of that book? No, he really he's a.
Speaker 3:In my mind, he's a social scientist and he has broken down how to create a habit and as well as how to break a habit. It's a great book and I got a lot from it, and I think the thing for me to add to this conversation in terms of creating a habit that I got from him was one of his techniques was to imagine a new habit as 100% If you're doing that habit the way you want it as 100%, what's 1%? And to break it all the way down to its smallest chunks and to start at the 1%. And I think that that has been really valuable for me, and I want to pass that along to the listeners too that sometimes it can be a little overwhelming to listen or to watch somebody as a role model who has really developed great habits, that it can be a little overwhelming, and that I think that the conversations that I've had with others about this that have been most beneficial are the ones where can you imagine what 1% is, and I think, from my feedback, most people, when they come back they started at about 20 or 30% I'm like no, no, no, no, no, what's 10? What's half of that? What's half of that? What's half of that? And to start very small and very easy.
Speaker 3:I think we all get a little excited about creating a new habit and jumping in. And when I'm hearing from what you're saying and from my own experience too, the number one thing that needs to happen is we need to trust ourselves to do it first. Right. And once we trust ourselves to do it and once we start to create that pattern, it almost doesn't matter how much we're doing. It's what's most important is that we're doing it. And there's Monday, there's Wednesday, there's Friday. One week there's Monday, there's Wednesday, there's Friday, there's two Monday, wednesday, friday, and then the tickle starts to happen inside of like I want, do it on tuesday and thursday too. Then monday, tuesday, wednesday, friday, and starting that that slow process to to bring those habits in, um, but uh yeah, slow build is very important, you know.
Speaker 1:I guess one thing depends on where is your starting point. If you're starting from a point where you've never really had fun exercising and you've never really been an athlete, and I know friends that are now in their 50s all of a sudden started running and doing things and then it turned out they really liked it and the irony is they didn't have 50 years of running on their knees and then they're running better than maybe some people that have run their whole life and worn things down. So, if you don't assume it's going to be like it was when you were a kid and you know if you weren't an athletic kid and you didn't like it, because it might be better, and then, along those lines, what you just said of the day to day, start one today is find the thing that you like to do, because that's what will motivate you. I did martial arts and I did Kung Fu for a while and people go what's better, what's the best martial arts, or what's the best Kung Fu or karate better or this, and I would always say the best martial arts is the one that makes you want to go three times a week because you got to go three times a week, maybe only two.
Speaker 1:So what instructor do you like? What is the convenient place to go? Three times a week, maybe only two, so what? What? Where's? What instructor do you like? What is the convenient place to go? What has good parking? Where are all the people in the room? Somebody, people that you want to work out with? Yeah, so it's really. That is what motivates you to do it, and what do you like to do, because that'll keep you coming back.
Speaker 1:So if you go to your friend's favorite gym and you don't like the gym, then don't go find something else and so it can be anything but just movement, keeping moving, keeping something going. That is the like you said day to day. Do it one day or the next day, and then eventually it'll build.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So finding the thing that we love to do, old yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So finding the thing that we love to do, realizing that if you don't want, to do it that's okay and that's that can be a fairly common denominator there, and you got to do it anyway. And then to start into realizing realizing that creating a habit is most important first to trust ourselves. And then, once we start to greet that habit and trust ourselves to do it, then you can put that foot on the gas pedal a little bit and rev the engine a little bit more. But when that habit is already established, yeah, yeah, what else do you think is in the way of people starting a regimen of self-care or or upping, upping it to the next level?
Speaker 1:I mean one is doing it all by yourself is very hard, yeah. So if you have friends that are into it, cook with your friends to cook healthy food. Go with your friends to do something. You know, when I go on bike rides with a friend, the time flies by. So do things with friends, do make new friends. That is a huge impetus. Your down days will be a day and you don't want to do anything, but then your friend calls you and says well, we're supposed to go for a nice hike today and I don't want to go, and then, but they, they drag you along and then you're happy after an hour, right? So? So it's really great to have friends. Um, that'll motivate you.
Speaker 1:I would also say one key thing that I think maybe a lot of people don't know if they're not an athlete, is what's the difference between good pain and bad pain, and that's a very like stretching should be.
Speaker 1:Something might hurt in the stretch, but a good pain means that the stretch is going to help and the pain immediately dissolves or, within 30 seconds, go away, whereas bad pain is you start stretching something and it starts getting sharp within five seconds and it starts getting worse, and then immediately you should stop the stretch. So where what is going on? Like when I go for a run now, because I've just started trying to run again I have a whole bunch of new muscles hurt. You know the muscles in the hips and the legs that are like what are you doing? But then I'm sitting there at home. I'm like nothing sharp, that's just all muscle fatigue pain and I was happy about it. So that made me happy that I was in the muscle pain, because I knew that those muscles were just angry or upset, that they hadn't been used in a while.
Speaker 3:That's a great distinction. It's a great distinction to pass on to others and, from my perspective, when people come in and ask me hey, is it okay for me to start to exercise, or when is it okay for me to start to exercise? When is it okay for me to start to exercise, from my perspective, when I can feel that their joints and their muscles are fairly even from right to left. That means that that structure is strong and that it's able to withstand those stresses. And so getting the feedback from me in terms of, or a health practitioner, that your body is working in a fairly balanced and symmetrical way and you're aware of what good pain and bad pain is, those are two great things. I think those are two great things to start to start a new exercise regimen yeah, and if you're unsure.
Speaker 1:Just stop, like nothing's wrong, like like when you're jogging on a trail, you'll never see those people again. If you're jogging and you're all dressed up and then you just walk because that's what I've been doing is I jog, I walk, I jog, I walk.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No one's going to care and it's all about like, soon as my foot hurts, I start walking and then I rub it and stretch and then I start jogging again, like if you're in a yoga class and it's too hard, just stop, you know. Ask for help, but don't be afraid to back off when you're in pain. Don't just push through the pain. Figure out what kind of pain is this, you know, and then can I just stretch it and make it go away, or what's going on.
Speaker 3:When I was up yeah, I hear you, yeah, I hear you. When I was up against a low back injury a while ago, a friend of mine said, hey, how much longer are you going to be exercising for? And I kind of paused for a second and he asked me again he's like, you have a nice long life If you take a month, two months, three, oh my God, what if you took six months to come back slowly and build a base? That's six months against the background of the rest of your life is a snap. And it shifted me from wanting to be going full bore like yesterday to, okay, I'm going to.
Speaker 3:If I'm on that trail and I'm running and something hurts a little bit, hey, I got time. I got time to slow down and just walk and allow myself to come back real slowly and to give myself lots of time to build that base. Because it's a real common denominator conversation, I think of all folks that come to see me that, hey, this is taking longer than I expect, either for it to get better or to start an exercise program. So compassion I would say there's. There's a good key right.
Speaker 1:Compassion for ourselves. Love yourself and have it be okay to not be the way you want and still be happy with it anyway.
Speaker 3:I like it. Nate, I know I got to let you know any kind of benefit that they can get from your words to their ears in terms of their own self-care.
Speaker 1:I would say the I can't overemphasize diet. You know, not eating inflammatory foods or, you know, cutting back on alcohol and sugar and things that make your body more inflamed like getting on a really good diet. It pays dividends because you can do all the chiropractic in the world but if you don't have a good diet you'll be. You know you may never get the results you want, but a diet really helps. You'll sleep better, you'll recover better. It makes it's literally the foundation of everything else. So you know, and people have different diets that work for them. Everyone's a little different, so you kind of got to experiment on yourself. But you know that's what you can do to help the doctors is have a good diet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, certainly, I can feel that underneath my hands those folks that eat well and the ones that don't it really makes a significant difference. Nate, thank you so much. I really I appreciate you. Obviously. That's why I asked you to be here and to have this conversation and to really spread the word of that.
Speaker 3:It's possible, that it's possible for us to have a good mix of active care as well as passive care, and chiropractic is such a strong component for me. I just got adjusted yesterday and it just every time almost every time just restores my sense of self and I feel my center and I feel grounded and I feel I feel good. I feel good about myself and it gives me a good sense of that. Hey, I am taking care of myself, I'm doing the things that I'm building a good future, because I want to. You know one of my goals I want to be in the best shape of my life when I retire. Hopefully it's not going to retire for a little while here, but it's one of my long-term goals here, and so getting regular chiropractic care is part of that as well.
Speaker 1:I agree, every time I walk out of your office, I am standing straight and feeling happy. So, yeah, I love it. I love my weekly appointments at your office. They're great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, it's all. It's always great to see you. It's always great to see you. Ok, well, I think we're good. Is there anything that I didn't ask you before? But like anything that you want to promote or anything that you want to let people know? Just about Nate Peabody or anything that you want to let people know, just about Nate Peabody.
Speaker 1:No, that's nothing to promote for me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:All right, all right, sure. So for me, if anybody wants to and lives in the Oakland area and would like to come in to try chiropractic care, we're at Village Chiropractic and Wellness Center. Chiropractic care. We're at Village Chiropractic and Wellness Center. We're located in Oakland in a cute little village, montclair Village, and if you would like to contact us, you can do it with the website villagechiropracticoaklandcom. It's very easy to make your first appointment there, and or you can call at 510-281-1708. All right, thanks, nate. Thanks everybody.
Speaker 3:We'll see you for the next podcast. Bye-bye.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning in to the Village Chiropractic and Wellness Podcast with Dr Matt Green. For more information or to schedule an appointment, visit our website at villagechiropracticoplincom or call us at 510-281-1708. Stay well and we'll see you next time.