Is Self Care Helping or Hurting You?

What if your self-care routine is actually draining you?

In this honest and eye-opening episode, we unpack the hidden extremes of self-care, from spa days to burnout, from meditation to emotional hiding. We share the surprising ways we’ve both mistaken “checking out” for true rejuvenation and how we discovered a more sustainable way to replenish energy while still staying in motion.

You’ll learn:

🌱 The surprising reason rest often leaves you feeling more tired
🌱 How self-care can become another job for your ego
🌱 A simple way to know what kind of care you really need
🌱 How to find energy without swinging between extremes

If you’re caught in the cycle of overworking and crashing… or chasing rest that never seems to restore you, this conversation will shift how you relate to rest, energy, and yourself. Join us! 

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Transcript

Matt: What if everything you've been told about rest is only half the story? 

Joy: And what if self-care isn't just about slowing down but waking up? 

Matt: When we work hard, we're often told burnout is normal and that taking a break just means checking out. 

Joy: But what if rest could feel different? What if it could actually replenish you instead of just pausing the pressure?

Matt: Maybe true self-care isn't about doing less. But about doing what matters with the part of you that's ready to be seen. 

Joy: If you've ever wondered why rest isn't working or why you still feel tired after doing everything right, this conversation might change how you relate to your life. 

Matt: Let's redefine what it really means to care for yourself.

Welcome to the timing 

Joy: of facts.

Matt: So let's explore a very widely misunderstood. Topic. Okay. One, we know incredibly well. Mm-hmm. And I think as we say what it is, people will lean in and go, go on. Tell me more. It's something that I know in both of our journeys, we thought we know what this is all about. In fact, I think we probably both thought we were masters of it, and then we understood its deeper meaning and.

A whole new world opened up and so that topic that I'm building up very dramatically. Mm-hmm. Is a topic of self-care. Yes. Let's talk about self-care. 

Joy: I was a professional, uh, self-care, let's see, junkie and teacher. 

Matt: Interesting. 

Joy: This is a great topic. Yeah. Especially as we sit here exhausted. 

Matt: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, we're both, we're both pretty tired.

It's been 12 hour days since March 17th. We have two young puppies. We didn't move outta spirituality and into ai, we decided no, no, no. We're gonna just stack an AI career on top of our existing career and have two careers. 

Joy: Yeah. Well just, uh, you know, go on a podcast tour and connect with a whole new group of people.

That's right. Because we love it. '

Matt: cause we love it 

Joy: because we love it 

Matt: and we love doing it together. 

Joy: Absolutely. And so we were exhausted today. 

Matt: Yes, we were. 

Joy: Honestly, we sat down to do this podcast. Yes we are. 

Matt: Yes, we're, yes, we are. We weren't, it's not like we're like, we once were exhausted. Exhaustion is in progress.

Joy: Yeah. But we, we sat down, we didn't actually sit down to do our podcast. We sat down because it was the end of the day. Right. And we thought, okay, this has been a full day. Yes. And what do we wanna do? What's in front of us for the next couple of days? Yeah. And we both looked at each other and said, you know what?

I wanna record a podcast. 

Matt: Yes. 

Joy: So tired, but excited to be here with everyone. 

Matt: Excited 

Joy: to be here with you. 

Matt: We're so excited to be here with everyone that's listening, and some people would listen and go. Now, Matt and Joy, don't overextend yourself. I don't know why I go into this voice. Don't overextend yourself.

Make sure you're resting. Make sure you're resting. Mm-hmm. You don't want to exhaust yourself. Now, you and I both know two different sides of self care. You and I both know what it's like to give ourselves the rest that we need, but we also know how easily having a right to rest can become an elusive smokescreen of avoidance and bypassing.

Mm-hmm. What was your earlier ex or earliest experience with self-care? 

Joy: Well, I think that I, I probably wouldn't have called it self-care at the time. I had, uh, an extreme life. So I had an extreme, uh, I worked 12, 14 hours. Which is different than the 12, 14 hours we work. 

Matt: That's right. 

Joy: It was nonstop. No very little breaks.

I don't know how well I hydrated myself. I was all on in the beginning. I only knew two speeds on or off, so I was either full on. Max capacity until I dropped or I was on a beach somewhere relaxing, having, having an extended vacation. And I would've, that would've been my only self-care. Hmm. I got just enough sleep every night to get back up and do it again.

Maybe not enough sleep, but self-care was always segmented, so it was either I was going or I'm, I was resting. The only idea of self-care would've been resting. Or going to the spa, right? You go to the spa and that was like, oh, that was incredible self-care, right? Even if I could, you know, sneak a massage in on the weekend, or, you know, that would've been my biggest, um, self-care treat.

And so extremes is what I knew. 

Matt: I had a very similar experience with self-care as extremes. And as you're saying, as you're reflecting on. Your life earlier. What dropped in for me was this awareness, and I think maybe a lot of people resonate with us that even though you can say, okay, I'm, I'm an extreme on, but then I have an extreme off and our, our ego thinks that's a balance.

Mm-hmm. But the nervous system in the subconscious mind that are keeping a different kind of score go extreme on and extreme off. Are actually still in the category of extreme 

Joy: right? 

Matt: So what I would experience is I would have extreme on extreme off, but because I was always in some form of extreme, the extreme off never quite gave me the nourishing rest to then feel or replenished and revitalized enough to feel rejuvenated in coming back online.

And so one thing I'm realizing now that I didn't realize back then is I thought. My extreme off will equal how extremely on I am, and I'll call that a wash, but I never knew that. My nervous system, my subconscious mind were taking notice that I'm never out of some extreme, which is why I would unplug and I would veg out and I would.

Binge my favorite shows, or I would meditate for hours, but it wouldn't actually make any kind of difference because I was always in an extreme and I didn't know at that time in my life that the rejuvenation wasn't about the extreme off. Opposite to the extreme on, but the balance is actually the middle.

Where being and doing are one. Mm-hmm. Which is actually the life that you and I live, which is how you and I can be extremely tired right now. We've been going and going and going, but because we love what we do and because it comes from a specific place, we can be exhausted and we can replenish, we can rejuvenate while in motion instead of needing this.

Okay. We've been extremely on for 12 hours now we have to be extremely on for 12 hours and. We, we both know what it's like to give yourself a lot of space and to not ever feel like you're well rested. 

Joy: Yeah. Well, you know, when I, when I first discovered meditation mm-hmm. It was from such an extreme, an anxiety place.

It was from this up and down. Right. Right. And I started to uncover what was happening within the nervous system. Yeah. Right. And that our nervous system. When we are, you know, in those extremes, we're still, even when we are, let's put resting, right? Even when we're resting, we're actually escaping. It's a form of freezing.

Matt: Sure. 

Joy: So the nervous system is still on, on guard, worried about the next time it's on, 

Matt: right? 

Joy: So because of that, we never really got rest. There really was no self-care, and a lot of people are living that way. In a place of always in fight flight, always in an an anxious nervous system, no matter what's happening.

And even in, you know, this is what was so interesting about the healing journey going into becoming a meditation teacher. Mm-hmm. So I started to learn about the nervous system, but even then, I was still doing a form of hiding inside of self-care. As a meditation teacher, I would go into meditation and I would kind of leave my body and I'd be in this state all the time.

That felt really nourishing and was there's, I mean, there's research for Miles, right? About how powerful meditation is. Yeah. And yes, those benefits are there, but at some point your body doesn't need all of that. Right? Right. And so then you're just sort of hiding in it. Right. I think that's where I ended up where self-care became another job.

Literally, I became a meditation teacher and helped people with self-care, but it also became this place where I didn't wanna push myself ever. I felt like I was actually like somehow a abandoning my role as meditation teacher if I pushed myself ever. 

Matt: Right. I 

Joy: dunno if you were, it was like, oh, I've been working for an hour on something I don't love and I'm just so much like I really, I really don't love this.

I can't wait till I can outsource this to someone. I can't wait till I'm busy enough that I can outsource this. Talk about I, right. 

Matt: I've been working for an hour. 

Joy: Yes. 

Matt: Consecutively, 

Joy: consecutively, 

Matt: consecutively. Right. That's 60 minutes in a row. 

Joy: Consecutively with tea Next to Me. Oh, mind you, 

Matt: how do you do it?

How do you do it? 

Joy: So, you know, self-care was a weird, it's been a weird journey. 

Matt: Isn't it weird that the more self-care sometimes you give yourself, the less endurance you have and the weaker you perceive yourself to be. One thing about my journey that was interesting about self-care because is before I entered my service as a spiritual teacher.

I actually really saw through the facade of self-care, and again, for everyone listening, I don't want anyone to confuse that we are saying all self-care is a facade. No. We're talking about how self-care can easily be co-opted by the ego and to a form of avoidance and be just as imbalanced of an extreme.

Right All being and no doing is just as much of an extreme as all doing without being right. Mm-hmm. Which is why people get into this place of constantly surrendering and thinking they need to surrender more, when actually what they need to do is to come back to life and take action. So before I became a spiritual teacher, I saw through the facade of my own nonsensical self-care.

So it started when I was a kid. When I was a kid. I, I learned that when I was sick, my parents' marriage dynamic became interrupted by them both working together to take care of me. Mm. All of a sudden, people were nicer in my family and I was the center of attention and so. When I would go to school and if I, if school was just too rigorous, too many days in a row or my parents had been fighting too many days in a row on some level, I didn't like think it consciously, but I'd almost watch myself, make myself sick.

And then at the first, my parents, Matthew's sick. That's it. He can't go to school. In my mind, I'm like, okay, my parents are gonna be nicer. I don't have to go to school and be around the crazy kids. I'm not really sure I really resonate with, I know my mom's gonna make me a grilled cheese sandwich, and then we're gonna go to warehouse records and we're gonna rent a movie.

Mm-hmm. And it was kind of like inventing an extra birthday, being sick. And I learned from a very early age that being sick was a way of getting my needs met. Mm-hmm. And so. Then I became a young adult. I was a personal trainer and I got injured on the job helping someone do a very easy lift. It was just an i I reached awkwardly and the next morning I was in excruciating pain.

Long story short, I had two bulging discs. You know, I was paid to stay at home 'cause I was injured at work. Mm-hmm. I'm sitting, and this is before a lot of my spiritual experiences really dropped in my awakenings. And I'm sitting there wondering, why did this happen to me? And then all of a sudden there was a part of me that went, you're being paid to stay home.

And then I kind of started to realize that thing as a kid that I loved, which is, I just want a reason to check out. And to have a day off, I now have a full-time career of having a day off. I was injured for an entire year. I didn't work for an entire year. And when you have those kinds of day offs every day for an entire year, it got to the point.

It was funny because there was a, there was a time when I was at home injured with a back injury, going to doctors, getting epidurals on pain medication. And it was very strange because I go, I have all this time off and every day I, I, I somehow don't seem to have enough space to rest. I never quite get to the rest I think I would have at this point.

So that was a weird, perplexing realization. Mm-hmm. And then it got to the point of I'm having so many days off in a row. That I don't think I can handle it anymore. Hmm. I'm doing nothing with my life and the nothing I'm doing with my life was more overwhelming than the world and the life I thought I was dreaming of checking out from.

And so make a long story short, I declared to the universe, please gimme some direction. Let me serve. I need to do something with my life. I no longer fantasize about checking out. I want to do something meaningful with my time, and that's when I started having awakenings and I started getting the call to serve spiritually.

And it all happened very radically, and it all happened very quickly and very magically. And then when I started working in the spiritual genre, doing something that I loved, all of a sudden there was no exhaustion. There was no need to check out. There was no extreme of, oh, I'm working harder than I've ever worked in my entire life.

I now need the same extreme of rest. There was none of that. It was that. It was because I was so passionate about what I was doing. I was working harder than I've ever worked in my entire life. Mm-hmm. And I needed the least amount of rest I've ever needed. And it was like I was resting and recovering and taking action at the same time.

And that's when I discovered. For me, alignment, connection, purpose. And I saw through my facade of self-care, which was extreme go and then extreme pause. Mm-hmm. And all of that was just nothing but complete extreme to my nervous system. And then I learned how to live from that middle space, the in between where I'm doing and being, I'm replenishing, I'm resting while I'm giving.

Even as we live our 12 hour days, we are tired and yet we are resting and recovering even right now. 

Joy: Absolutely. And I think that, you know, through all this journey, all of that was us. Trying to care. That's right. Right. We, we knew that we needed to do something, but we didn't know what it was. Right. So to come to the place where now we can be in the flow of caring, I think really came from knowing who we were.

Right. Who's the self we're caring for? Because I remember when I first learned about self-care, I thought that was all about the body. It was, it really, for some reason, didn't compute. Self care was about the whole self. 

Matt: Right. 

Joy: I really just, I heard massage, spa, uh, bubble baths. I, I heard all of the things that you do for your body.

To escape from work or whatever, or to, to really be kind. And these are things I love. You know, I love a good bubble bath, so I love that kind of nurturing. But it took a while for me to understand that self-care was about caring for the self. And so I love what you're talking about of, you know, when you find your purpose, you know, when you really devote yourself to your purpose, it gets easier to care for yourself.

Because you know yourself, right? You are expressing yourself as you, right? And I think that's key. I think anybody looking for a really good self care regimen, really it's, they're looking for themselves, 

Matt: right? 

Joy: Who am I? And from there, I learned to care for that self. And you know, I think there are layers to the, you know, well, who are we?

Right? What is the self? The self is this holistic aspect of our mental, emotional alignment. Like you're talking about, the alignment of what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling. The part of me that's witnessing my life, excited about my life, feeling the inspired purpose fulfilled. There's a whole being here, 

Matt: right?

Joy: So to care for that whole being. Doesn't need me to disconnect from any part of that being to do it. 

Matt: Well, it's funny because I look back at my self-care and my checking out. 

Joy: Mm-hmm. My 

Matt: unplugging, my binging, my on shows and 

Joy: yeah. 

Matt: Eating things that I, I was probably allergic to. And it was, I didn't know it at the time, but it was, it was my way of recharging the battery of my patterns.

And so I was, um. Taking care of my ego, recharging the battery of my exhausted ego 

Joy: right 

Matt: now, realizing that what actually would be a greater measurement of self-care would be to spend time doing something meaningful to the deeper part of me that was witnessing itself. Within the costume of my ego. So it's very easy for people to think they're caring for themselves.

It's very easy to think that when you have a regular practice of self-care or a ritualistic, uh, schedule of self-care, that, that, then you give yourself so much rest. That you have so little endurance so that something very little exhausts you to then justify. See, that's why I need more rest. And, and of course, you know, I say this with great compassion because there are people who are working through autoimmune deficiencies and various diagnosis.

And so I don't wanna confuse what we're saying with that, 

Joy: right? 

Matt: But what's interesting is that I found in my life the more I lived on purpose. The more I could accomplish and the less separate rest I needed or the, the less rest I needed separate from my purpose, and the more that I rested in a life that was absent of my deepest purpose, the littlest things I would do would exhaust me.

And then from that exhausted place, it would justify why I needed to crawl back in bed and give myself just a little bit more rest. And magically, the more I rested, the more tired I was. The more I rested, the less rejuvenated I became. And I developed this thing called, um, cheese stagnation in Eastern medicine.

She stagnation is actually, if you give your body. More rest than it needs. You actually deplete it in another imbalance. And so there is an interesting imbalance of more being than doing, like in our current life, when you and I both say we're tired, we often go for a nice slow walk. Mm-hmm. And so we're in motion because that's actually circulating energy through our energy field, and that's serving the needs of.

Capital S self-care in the beginning, and I think we both can agree on this, our self-care was lowercase self-care. It was recharging the batteries of our patterns so that we would then come back out and then play those patterns out again. And thankfully, that's what awakening frees you from when it really.

Opens up. 

Joy: I love that you brought up the cheese stagnation and I wanted to, I wanted to point out how we know to go for a walk and you know, for those that are listening, I think some of the questions, and I, I've read some of the questions people asking, you know, how do you know when to do or be, you know, how do you know one, what that balance is?

And I think for us. You know what, what makes it so clear is we spend a lot of our day on the computer. We're on calls, we're, you know, teaching classes or we're on calls with clients, or we're in meetings sedentary, right? We're very sedentary, and so when we feel exhausted, it's mentally and emotionally, right?

We've given so much of ourselves that the body. Wants to participate in that movement. 

Matt: Like wouldn't it be funny for the realization to be like for people that sit or they're not incredibly active all day and when they feel tired, what if that's the body saying, I'm tired of just being sedentary, right?

I'm tired of sitting in this position and so we think tired means I need rest, but what if it's, I'm tired of being in this fixed position. I would like some movement now. Right. You'd have to be incredibly in tune with your intuition to be able to get that message. 'cause most people would say, well, if I'm tired, I'm not gonna do more things Right.

I'm gonna do less things. But for you and I, we, we feel the message of, oh, we're tired of sitting in this position. We're tired of doing this fixed thing. Yeah. Or our bodies are tired of. Playing the specific role and it needs a little variety. So we go for a walk or we do some creative self-expression.

Mm-hmm. Or I go to the gym and you go on a hike or whatever. We dance in the kitchen. We dance in the kitchen, mean we cook, we create. And so what's interesting is that our self-care is not absent of movement. It's. A change of pace from the posture and activity that we've been doing for so many hours a day.

Joy: Yeah. I think it's checking in with the self, right? Right. So what parts of me have been moving, what parts of me have been slow? What parts of me feel like maybe they haven't gotten the attention that they need today? And. So you can, you can see your own patterns in that. Some people work really, um, challenging jobs where they're, you know, it's labor intensive and so rest does look different.

But it might not just be, you know, binging television, right? If you've been, you know, doing something repetitive all day, or you've been seeing some very physical, it might be your mind that wants to be stretched. Right with a conversation or reading or writing. Something that's less about entertainment and about more about stimulation, more about contribution from a mental or emotional capacity.

So there, or maybe I just wanna be heard or seen for the emotions that are moving through after that day and really catching up with myself after, you know, conversations I wish I would've had. Right? 

Matt: So if someone hears this and says, yes, my mind wants to be stimulated, so I play. Games on my phone. Video games.

Yeah. Well, I know how I would answer that. What would you say to that? 

Joy: Well, I mean, you know, we're both gonna have a, a similar take on that, but that's another escape. Right. So when we are playing a game or watching television, there's actually a hypnosis that gets triggered where we are doing the opposite of engaging the mind.

We might be engaging parts of the mind. Mm-hmm. But we shut down other parts of the mind, and so we go into more of a meditative trance type state and that. While it might be rejuvenating for the body isn't rejuvenating for the mind. 

Matt: Right. It's actually, uh, re rejuvenating for the ego. 

Joy: Right. 

Matt: Which then exhausts the mind.

Joy: Yes. 

Matt: Which then causes us to go, huh, why am I still so tired? Right. What's interesting too, and I found this when my back was injured. I thought I needed to just be completely sedentary. You know, this is back in my early twenties playing video games, paid to stay at home, taking pain medication, uh, getting epidural shots, you know, twice a week, and I kept resting like off my feet.

Doing nothing. And one, I realized that's not actually giving me any kind of rejuvenation and it's not actually helping me in any way. And then I would think, well, I'm gonna go for a walk. Then I would think Walk. That's exhausting. And so then I came up with this idea of what if I just walked really slowly and, and I found spontaneously, or by the inspiration of the universe that when I walk really slowly.

It feels like I'm resting off my feet, but instead of it making me more tired, it actually gives me more energy. Hmm. So I, I learned when I was injured, before I was healed and before I started doing this work, that if I am tired, the first thing I do when I'm tired is I go for a very short, slow walk. It's not a long walk, it's not a fast walk.

It's almost in slow motion. And I find that by taking a short, incredibly slow walk that probably looks very weird to someone on the outside, I found that that would give me a burst of energy. And then from that place, I would say, now what do I need next? And I would find that different activities done incredibly slow.

In short bursts of duration were more energetically fueling to me. Than doing nothing for extended amounts of time. 

Joy: Absolutely. I, we, you know, we do this in the house. We have stairs and there'll be some moments where I'll feel tired and I won't want to move, but then I'll go, you know what? I'm gonna go up and down the stairs.

I'm gonna go up the stairs and get something and come back down. Yeah. Because I know that it gives me a burst and it helps my muscles be in a different position and it's, it always. Feels better once I've done it. 

Matt: Absolutely. And 

Joy: so sometimes you probably know, watch me do this. Everyone stop. Be like, oh, I got it.

I'm gonna go up there and I'm gonna get it. I'm just gonna get the thing and come back down. Mm-hmm. And it's a way of moving that energy, but something else that we do that, I think that that's something that we have developed in the last several years, and it comes from. Harmonizing all of this. Mm-hmm.

Right. As you harmonize the extremes, you come to a place where you recognize what the self needs from moment to moment. So for us, while we're tired to the end of the day, and we know the body needs some movement, it becomes pretty easy to know that at the end of the day, right, we're during the day, we're still caring for the body, we're still caring for the body in the way that we schedule our day.

In between things, we have water. We eat meals, we, um, you know, check in with different things at d different places in the house. We have the puppies. They're an incredible help to the energy movement. You know, we have something to, you know, pay attention to in between sessions. That isn't our work. 

Matt: Right.

Joy: So it gives us a reason to move into a different room or to move into a different activity, but it gives us little microbursts of care. 

Matt: Right. 

Joy: And when you do that all day long, when you have little bursts of care all day long, you are yourself is being, you're being seen, you're being heard, you're being nurtured all day long.

Matt: Yes. 

Joy: Then you don't need the extremes. Right. That's why you don't need a huge walk at the end of the day. 

Matt: Right. 

Joy: I love a really great walk in the morning. 

Matt: Right. 

Joy: But in the afternoon, we just need some movement to help balance things. But we're not in such a deficit. 

Matt: Right? 

Joy: Because we've been carrying all day that that's, I mean, that I think is that that was the moment that everything changed.

I don't notice the difference between a 12 hour workday or a five hour workday. 

Matt: Absolutely. 

Joy: Yeah. 

Matt: I totally agree. And I, as you were saying that, I was just thinking back to when I was really steeped in my family pattern of codependency. I used to make everyone's problem, my problem, or I would care for people by taking on their pain and, and, and really trying to be all things to all people being a people pleaser.

And I was. Yeah, just as you were talking, remembering that my first early ideas of self-care was because I cared from such an unhealthy place. I thought self-care was a moment where I gave myself the right not to care. Mm-hmm. And if I gave myself the right not to care, I was included in the thing I didn't care about.

So, of course I ate unhealthy food, of course. I binged watching things. I played video games. I did all the things that actually. Recharged the battery of my ego and didn't even address replenishing, um, my energy field. And as I learned how to tune in, what I realized, which was. Ironic and hilarious. For me at least, it was one, my self-care is having the right not to care because the only way I know how to care is unhealthy as a people pleaser and codependent.

So that was actually a little ironic. 

Joy: Yeah. 

Matt: The other part of it was everything I'm doing for self-care, and this is my journey, was replenishing the battery of my ego, not even. Replenishing my energy field. And when I learned how to tune into my energy field, I actually found that the energy field didn't require recharging.

Only my ego did. Right? So that was a lot of irony at once. I. And so that created space for me to find my way to the kind of life that we live. Mm-hmm. Which is, we're incredibly active, we're incredibly busy by the nature of our work, we, we do have sedentary, uh, time throughout the day, but you and I are thrive on the life we live, the audience we serve, and we take, you know, great care of ourselves, giving ourselves the hydration and the nutrition that we need.

Um, and, and yet. As active as we are. We don't need days off to lie in bed. I, in fact, I'm trying to remember the last time we even did that. 

Joy: I, I think it's been years. 

Matt: Well, even March 17th when we wrote the book. Oh yeah. 

Joy: Yeah. 

Matt: We were at home with the flu on our anniversary. So we had the flu, but we were still working and we wrote two books 

Joy: we did 

Matt: while having the flu.

Joy: Yeah, 

Matt: yeah, 

Joy: yeah. I think that the la the last time we really just laid around all day was when we were first in our relationship and it was more an act of just, um, reveling in our love. Right. Really it, it wasn't, we didn't need it. It was just that, you know, that the lovey-dovey mm-hmm. Beginning of a relationship and it was incredible.

Well, even when we go 

Matt: on vacation, you and I are both the kind of people where it's like we're excited about what we can see and what we can experience. Yeah. Hey, let's go to this museum. Let's check this out. You and I don't seem to be the kind of people where we dream of going on vacations where we can just lie around and do nothing.

No. That doesn't. And and when I found that out about you, I was like, well, thank God, because that's not who I am at all. 

Joy: Yeah. 

Matt: And I love that. 

Joy: Yeah, me too. I love all the adventures we have. 

Matt: I, I do as well. So I, I wonder as, as all this is being said, and people are listening to this, and if people asked. How do I know, or how can I determine the type of self-care that I need?

What would you say to them? 

Joy: Yeah, I think that, you know, de determining the type of self-care that we need. You know, honestly, I'm gonna go back to what we were talking about first. How do you experience yourself? Right? Right. Because if we are looking at ourselves regularly, this, this question actually gets easier.

Matt: Mm-hmm. 

Joy: And then from there, how do I know, well, what have I been, um, how have I been expressing myself? Most of the time. Mm-hmm. Right. What am I doing most of the time? And, and we see this over and over again. People are, you know, they're spending a lot of time in self-care or they're spending a lot of time resting, but still feeling exhausted, thinking they need more self-care.

Right. And that's when we would say, that's an indication what you're doing most of the time do the opposite. 

Matt: Exactly. I love it. I was just thinking the same thing. 

Joy: Right. So if you're active all the time. Then maybe a little bit of rest for the body and activity for other parts of you. And then the opposite is true if you're sedentary most of the time, make it actually gets a lot simpler.

The other thing that I really love to pay attention to with self-care is that we all need the all day long self-care. Mm-hmm. And the all day long self-care, I usually use the um. Air, fire, water, nature, um, kind of guidance to look at that of, let me check in with my air. Am I breathing? Have I been breathing?

Am I holding my breath? I check in with my breath. 

Matt: Am I aware of my breath? 

Joy: Am I aware of it? Am I aware of how I'm breathing or experiencing this moment? Right? Am I bracing myself? I used to brace myself and you know, at work I'd be like, I'm trying to get some stuff done. And I'd be like, when was the last time you exhaled?

Right, right. So I love just thinking about it from that perspective. And then water, am I drinking water? Am I hydrated? Am I swollen? Am I like, what? How am I feeling related to hydration? I think that some are my eyes dry, what's happening related to water? So crucial to our wellbeing, right? To who we are.

And then if I'm thinking about like the earth element, then. Am I grounded? When was the last time I walked on the earth today? 

Matt: Mm-hmm. When 

Joy: was the last time I connected with the earth today? When was the last time I stood up and just let myself be on the earth? Right? Like really thought about it from that perspective.

When was the last time I moved on the earth, right? Mm-hmm. That movement aspect and then the fire. I think fire is a totally unrepresented aspect of self-care that you've been talking about, which is purpose. 

Matt: Yes. 

Joy: Have I, oh, inner fire. Right. Have I been lit up today? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Joy: Have I been passionate? Have I been driven?

Have I been excited about something? And if I haven't, what would excite me right now? Right. And I think all of these things, when we look at it from an elemental perspective, we start to see. All of the places where a human is looking for care. 

Matt: Right. I love how you put that. And I especially love the element of fire and the inner passion.

I've never heard it put that way, and I really, really love it. And it's so true. I was just thinking about, you know, when people really learn about the opposites, so if you sit in front of a computer for many hours and then you think, God, I'm tired. 'cause my mind has been mm-hmm. Going and my eyes are burning from me in front of a, a, a computer screen.

Then people adjourn to their couch to turn on the television. They're not really getting much care because they're still in the, they're, they're still exposing their mind to whether it's the EMFs or the blue light and the technology, and they're just basically going from baking their mind in one technology.

To diversifying it from a computer screen to a television screen, then, oh, pause the YouTube video. Someone's texting me, let me go to that. Mm-hmm. And really, people often spend all day, uh, baking their minds in technology. So when we learn that self-care is really about the balance of the opposites, if I'm in front of a computer for many hours a day.

And when, if I, if I feel tired, maybe I'm tired of being in the sedentary position, maybe I'm tired of being in front of this computer screen. Maybe I go for a walk. It doesn't have to be a long walk, doesn't have to be a quick walk. It can be very slow, but it's going to be changing the state that I'm in.

If, and, and we do this too, sometimes we don't need to rest by being sedentary. You and I do a lot of talking. We do a lot of teaching. Mm-hmm. Sometimes the greatest way we rejuvenate is by being silent. So we'll have silent days where we're together, but we don't speak, and we're really kind of recharging the qi within ourselves.

So if you're someone who's speaking all day, maybe you take the evening to be silent. If you're someone who is, uh, corresponding on email all day. Maybe when you get home, take a break from text messages and just look at, instead of it being, being, and doing, how can I give myself a day of opposite experiences?

We start to find that self-care is really about. Harmonizing a diversity of experiences that we find ourselves imbalanced and we find ourselves, um, acting from our ego and its perception of survival mode when we do too many of the same things without enough diversity or variety. 

Joy: Hmm. I 

Matt: think that's really, really interesting.

Joy: Absolutely. I love that so much. It makes me think about how, you know, as we're going into this whole new world where now technology is faster and more efficient, and with AI we've got this whole new thing we're all learning, right? And so even if we don't use AI in our businesses and during the day. A lot of people are learning, uh, learning about it.

They're using it at night. They're engaging with this technology for the first time. And so for a lot of people who are using it even more, and I love that. That's one of the things that, one of the very first things that we started to code into our internal systems with ai mm-hmm. Was how much are we using this?

Mm-hmm. Are we programming breaks into it. We actually have our, uh, GPT that our GPT is programmed to say, Hey, you wanna take a break? Right. And we will continue to integrate that into all of our technology that we develop for ourselves and for our courses. Right. To make sure that people understand this caring for ourselves is something that will continue to be paramount.

Mm-hmm. As we move through these times, 

Matt: Hey, right. Our, our GBTs say. Hey, we've been kind of, uh, engaging for a certain amount of time. Let's take a breath together. Mm-hmm. Or. I'm gonna go frozen for an hour and give you a chance to go outside and have an integration break. 

Joy: Yeah, 

Matt: and we're actually training our GPTs to be able to help remind the user to embrace self-care and embrace balance and not just rely on technology for everything.

'cause it's very easy in 2025 to sit in front of a computer screen that sit on your couch in front of a. Television screen, then you pick up your phone, then you have your iPad, then you have all, and it's 

Joy: everywhere 

Matt: and, and bef without even knowing it, the energy and technology in all these devices, you've been exposing yourself to nonstop all day.

And then you lie down to go to sleep. And then people go, God, I can't, I can't get to sleep, I can't rest. And so it's easy to live a life in 2025 and to think you have a variety of experiences. And not realizing you're spending eight to 12 hours a day without taking a break from technology or really giving your being a break from it all.

Joy: Yeah, 

Matt: it is interesting and even as we talk about it, we talk about our journey of self-care, what we used to think it is, what we now know it is for our lives. I feel like energetically it helps all of us really kind of just intuitively go, oh. I see what I've been doing. Here's what I really need. 

Joy: Yeah.

Hmm. I love that so much because in, in so many ways, this conversation is about something so much bigger. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Joy: And the willingness for us to care for ourselves and then bring that care out into everything we're doing. I think that could really make such an incredible impact on the world. Just having a different conversation about the power of self-care.

Right? And, and really demystifying what that is because we'd still be incredibly productive, creative, um, beings in this world. In fact, we'd probably be more productive with self-care, 

Matt: right? 

Joy: And, um, and it wouldn't be such a mystery to people. And so I really love that. I hope this has inspired, um, everyone to wanna go and do something really kind for you.

I know that throughout this entire conversation, it's inspired me to wanna go for a walk. 

Matt: I wanna go for a walk too. 

Joy: So I think we should go for a walk. 

Matt: I think we should go for a walk. And, and I just, you know, from the old fac, the old belief of self-care being live hard, rest, hard. I think that what we're leaving people with today is the opportunity to ask themselves what's, instead of checking out into nothingness as a break from the, everything I try to do every day, what's the most nourishing activity?

Even if I do it incredibly slowly, that speaks to my soul and can actually be the rejuvenation I've been chasing for far too long. And I would love it if everyone who's listening to this asked themselves that and took the moment to listen to see what answer arises. 

Joy: Yes. Beautiful place. I look forward to all of your responses.

We read them all when we're excited for our next conversation. 

Matt: In the meantime, we're gonna go on a nice slow walk. 

Joy: Yes, we are.