Nutritional Revolution Podcast

Turning Stress Into Fuel: Tools to Beat Burnout & Boost High Performance

• Season 6 • Episode 180

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In episode #180 we we dive into the science of stress, burnout, and nervous system regulation with Rita Ainsworth, a trauma-informed resilience coach. Rita shares practical tools and insights on how understanding and working with your nervous system can transform stress into fuel for long-term success, especially for high achievers juggling demanding careers and athletic pursuits.

In this episode:

  • The impact of cumulative stress and burnout, and recognizing the symptoms
  • Key nervous system states and how they influence energy and performance
  • Practical tools for regulating the nervous system

Rita Ainsworth is a trauma-informed human potential and resilience coach who helps high performers understand and work with their nervous system for better energy, clarity, and long-term performance. With a background in pharmacy, nervous system regulation, somatic and "parts" work, and years in high-pressure performance marketing, she bridges science and lived experience to show how stress becomes fuel, how freeze derails performance, and how self-leadership keeps high performers in their window of tolerance. Rita’s approach is grounded, practical, and deeply human, built on the belief that resilience comes from understanding your system, not fighting against it. When she’s not coaching, she loves hiking in the beautiful hills of Wales and England.

Please note that this podcast is created strictly for educational purposes and should never be used for medical diagnosis or treatment.

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Hello everybody and welcome back to the Nutritional Revolution podcast. Today we have for you guys Rita Ainsworth and she is a trauma informed human potential and resilience coach who helps high performers understand and work with their nervous system for better energy, clarity and long-term performance. With a background in pharmacy, nervous system regulation, somatic and parts work and years in high pressure performance marketing, she bridges science and lived experience to show how stress becomes fuel. how freeze derails performance, and how self leadership keeps high performers in their window of tolerance. Rita's approach is grounded, practical, and deeply human, built on the belief that resilience comes from understanding your system, not fighting against it. When she's not coaching, she loves hiking in the beautiful hills of Wales and England. This was a great episode. I got some takeaways to add to my toolkit from her. Enjoy, you guys. Welcome back everyone. We have for you guys, Rita Ainsworth. Thank you so much for joining us. I am very excited to talk to you. Rita is a good friend, an entrepreneur as well. And we get to talk about business happenings and all the things together. And she was telling me about her work and I was like, we got to have you on the podcast because what you're doing for busy, stressed, burned out corporate folks could be absolutely applicable to the athletes that I work with. and our listeners. So we're going to learn all kinds of ways how Rita can, well, how she's helping people now, but how her teachings can can help some of our listeners. But before we do that, I'm going to have you read a breakdown, your two truths and a lie or however you want to organize them. uh I had lots of fun thinking. was like, uh what can I share? The three statements. ah I once ran a half marathon without training. Okay. I hitchhiked across Europe in two days. Whoa, okay. and I walked on hot burning coals. Ooh, I feel like that's probably like a baby bath water thing. I feel like you probably did do that. Hot coals thing. I could see that happening. um They hitchhiked across Europe. That's that's a journey, but I feel like it could be done in two days. Maybe um I have heard of people just like diving into half marathon. So I think that's possible. um I'm going to go with the hitchhiked across Europe in two days because maybe that's like three days or maybe you never did. And I don't know what we will find out. But don't tell me the answer. We will reveal it at the end of the episode. um So. Diving in today, Rita, why don't you share a little bit with us about who you are, what you currently do, how you kind of got into doing what you do now. It was a very organic journey. So right now I am a stress resilience coach and I mostly work with burnt out professionals. A very good description, driven but drained, know, really A players, high achievers probably match a lot of your endurance athletes profile, but really burnt out and feeling like, you know, lost the... love for life a little bit. So I helped them to restore back that um first energy and then the excitement just for everyday life. um And my journey started in 2020. I was managing a team. really, I was wanting to be a good manager to get people to perform at their best and what I saw, um the challenges were not the professional skills, but more of energy levels and also the mindset, limiting beliefs, fears of all kinds. I I also saw that in the same thing in myself. And that took me on a journey, coach training programs, different programs. So in the last five, six years, really been doing a lot of digging, like where's that root cause? And that took me to the nervous system. And I feel like, okay, now I understand how we operate as humans and it's just much easier than to make life adjustments. Like not massive drastic changes, but daily adjustments that then make a big difference in people's lives. wow. OK, this is interesting. I'm excited. So one of the things you work on is this like burnout piece. And this is cumulative stress built up in the individual. Exactly. I experienced that. had multiple burnouts when I was working at an advertising agency where you can't really switch off. um On average, people reach that, go from stress to chronic stress and then burnout within 12, 16 months, depending on their genetics, their existing health conditions and like a... resilience level going into that. But everyone, everyone reaches that point if they are pushing past their limits, day in and day out. it was very, I mean, it was very scary when it was happening to me and I didn't know what was going on and I didn't know how long it'll last and all that. And so now I feel like I want to pay forward and really help people to understand, you know. One, try and help them not to get there, but once they're there, like, do I do? Right, yeah. And so for our listeners, what are some of those states or symptoms physically, mentally, emotionally that you see in someone or what you experienced personally too that's going through or hitting burnout? So a lot of it, um when we go into chronic stress, stress is more of anxiety. So stress is still very active state. So we will have trouble sleeping, falling asleep, waking up in the middle of the night, thinking about work or thinking about training and constantly being switched on. So, you know, very difficult for people to switch off. And then when you start going into burnout, the energy changes drastically. you really, you know, you barely get out of bed. You need coffee. Like coffee gives you adrenaline and that's basically stress. So you need stress to get you out of that shutdown state. Mm-hmm. And then you probably just going back and forth. So you exhausted you try everything to pull yourself out of that exhaustion through coffee through sugar through maybe having an argument with someone because that gives you energy and adrenaline and like So that's like that's what gets you through the day and then you go back to collapse So that's normally what a functional freeze looks like. So these people are still you know, you still get a lot done but you do it with so much effort and you really just kind of pulling your body along. Yeah. So they're kind of like thriving to live in where they need to live in the stress state to like function because they are so burned out. Interesting. This for our listeners and tying the endurance athletes parts to it is we have em something in the literature called overreaching and then overtraining syndrome. And there's kind of similar layers to that. But then there's also like blood work. and things like that that we look at and, you know, em symptoms like if you took a couple of days of rest, do you still not feel recovered? Is that something that you experienced or tested or see your clients try and do as well? Yeah, I've not seen much testing. But a lot of times when you hit burnout, it's not just going to be one night sleep. It can take weeks, sometimes months. Like for me, when I had severe burnout, it took me probably three months to get back to just not even good states, just being out of that burnout state. I was back in stress, really. And without realizing that I I started pushing again and then I ended up in the second burnout. How much quicker? It was like six months later. So yeah, like burnout is really like some people go to like almost feeling like they completely can't get out of bed. For me, it wasn't that. I could still do like hour to hours of work a day. But you know. everything felt like an effort, like watching a movie was an effort. So like visually stimulating and tiring for the brain to absorb everything's like that was yeah, that was kind of a where I was and it took me three, three months to get out of that. Goodness, this does sound very similar to the overreaching and overtraining. So I know with that in the literature, there's parts of overreaching that almost are intentional with training to drive adaptation, right? So we build up the training blocks and a little bit like progressively, and then you deload, you take a recovery week. But it sounds like the burnout in a corporate setting is like, there's not a recovery week. It's like, it's just push, push, push, push, push, push, push. And in the literature on the endurance side, it's like if you're hitting overreaching, usually the recovery for that could be one week to a couple of weeks. But if you're doing full over training, like you're saying, it could be months before you're getting back to like if you've pushed it past the overreaching consistently. So I do certainly see some overlap here. And that's why I'm like glad to have you on here and help explain some of this, too. em Tell us a little bit about like when you work with somebody like brand new, what are you assessing there initially with that person? So when we start working together with someone, we look at what state they're in. When was the last time they were in a calm, regulated state? And it's not many people who are in that state. A lot of times it's, I just get through the day. that's either they're in stress or they're in chronic stress. They've been there. A lot of times when people come, to me because they know my story, they are already on that verge of burnout. So they know that if I continue this way, I really going to mess myself up. So we look at the nervous system state. We look at what is the relationship with rest because it's not that they Mentally, they can't take break because they constantly being pushed by, we will probably talk about that, those, you know, internal voices of like, if I stop, I'll fail. If I take rest, then maybe it means I'm lazy. If I'll fall behind. So all that mind chatter is what is pushing people to keep going. And that then leads to burnout. So we look at their current state, where they're at, like what approach do we need to take? Are they already in burnout or they in stress? We look at also, I always ask, are you taking supplements? Because that's an easy part, like it's such an easy and very impactful part of the stress and resilience building. Mm-hmm. I always give my like the essential recommendations for people to start taking so they immediately start fueling the body and more energy into the system. Are you recommending like a multivitamin or what's the supplement that you recommend? I would never recommend a multivitamin because the dosage is not high enough. So I recommend high dose of magnesium, zinc, selenium from the minerals, then B complex, maybe something more specific like CoQ10 and PQQ for energy. Maybe if there is inflammation, glutathione, definitely vitamin C. If you've ever tried to buy creatine or electrolytes online and wondered, is this actually legit? We got a quick fix. We built a Fullscript dispensary for Nutritional Revolution listeners so you can shop trusted professional grade supplements that ship direct from the manufacturer, no random third party sellers, no sketchy storage. You'll find brands we use with our athletes all the time like Thorne Klean Athlete, Nordic Naturals, Pure Encapsulations, Designs for Health, Designs for Sport, et cetera, and a ton of NSF certified for sport options. Everyone gets 20 % off always, and during promos you can get up to as much as 35 % off, and it's free to create an account. If you set up AutoShip, you'll get an additional 5 % off. Just open up the show notes and tap the full script link to get started. we need higher doses for like really supporting system. probably in the US and in the UK, the recommended guidelines are like minimum dose. It's not for feeling alive and really like fully nourished. It's just like, what is the minimum? So I always recommend higher doses that within still, you know, healthy, safe range, but. Yeah, and that makes difference within like weeks Wow. Yeah, that's great. And so when you've assessed that someone has a level of burnout going on, how are you working with them and their nervous system to, we got the supplements on board. What's then next to help them regulate? Are they still working in their burnout driven job while they're working with you or how are they kind of navigating this burnout? People have no choice really, you if we could take, put up, know, press a pause button and switch off for a month, that would be amazing. But we still need to do our daily jobs. a lot of people have families and kids. And so there's work, there's family stresses. And we just work with the situation. you know, what's the minimum they can do? You know, what can they postpone? Like, can they get a cleaner instead of doing cleaning themselves? Can a partner help with preparing meals? Maybe they, you know, they cancel the social engagements with friends because that's also taxing on the system. for the body, it's a good stress or bad stress. It's all still taking the same amount of energy, really. So what can I really now put on pause while I am really in recovering when I'm focusing on my sleep, on really good nutrition and hydration and nervous system regulation. it's like asking for help is a big one. And I feel like the people who get burnt out, they're very bad at asking for help. So we work through that. It's like, is the belief of asking for help? And then as I mentioned, you what is the belief of like what if I pause, then there's all sorts of fears come up. we work through a lot of that. So physical is one side of things, but mental is another big portion of the work we do. Yeah, that's really fascinating. Do you find at a curiosity more men versus women or vice versa that reach out and work with you for help? Like talking about asking for help. Is there one gender that's better at asking for help than another? I would say they're fairly similar. I mostly work right now with performance marketers and it's kind of a 50-50, men and women. So I get both. And I think these fears are universal. All these beliefs are universal. think sometimes for men it's even harder because they've been conditioned by the society that they have to be the strong ones. So there's more in terms of identity, know, I have to provide, I have to be strong, I have to be, you know, looking after my family. yeah, I think these are universal things as much as we feel like we are different. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned kind of like finding those things too that you can cut out or delegate. I remember there was a book I read, I forget the author, and I think he called it like the three D's where it was like, you either do it, you delegate it to somebody else or you delete it. And it was like categorizing your stuff of like how you can move stuff into certain areas and take a little bit of stress off your plate. It kind of sounds a little bit like that. And certainly I think about like when I work with clients and athletes like the meal prep and the nutrition side can be a huge challenge for a lot of people to implement. Like who is doing the prepping? Who has time to do the grocery shopping? Are you ordering your groceries in? Are you going to the store and picking them out? Like what makes the most sense time wise, even financial wise, like food preference wise for the family. All of that stuff is em has to be taken into consideration. And yeah, it's just these kind of like puzzle pieces and blocks, I guess, that need to be solved there. em I think in your bio you had mentioned you trained in, is it, polyvagal theory? Yes, so basically the it came out not that actually long ago and it's around our nervous system so that we have three nervous system states. We have parasympathetic state and the state body can be present and it can do all the repair that it needs to do and digest properly and feel connected and open and creative and all the wonderful things that come with the state. And then there's two branches of vagus nerve So there's ventral vagal and dorsal vagal So they help us to either be in this regulated state So the parasympathetic status is ventral vagal, then dorsal vagal is the shutdown, the burnout we talked about. And then there's also a sympathetic nervous state. So it's a separate system. That's the stress. So there's those three nervous system states is really, I think about it as like operating system. So depending which ones in charge in that moment, Mm-hmm. It will really govern everything else in the body. So if I am in stress, ah don't have time. Stress means the body has some sort of challenge or danger that it needs to deal with. So if I have a challenge to overcome, I will not have time for digestion or creativity. I will not enjoy the view because I have more important things to do. but when we are in a ventral vagal state, because that really innovates our face, our heart. So that's where babies learn that if mom is smiling, then everything's good and safe and they mimic it. So that's our social engagement nerve. And we are more creative and we are more open to brainstorming other people's ideas. We can listen without trying to plan the answer because there's nothing to protect and defend. And then the third state is that dorsal vagal state where body decides that, okay, stress here is not really helping me anymore. If I continue being in a stress state, I really gonna exhaust all of my resources. It's better just to shut down. It's an energy conservation. So it's a very much like a protective mechanism. Yeah. And when it shuts down, is that like someone curled up on the couch just not doing anything? Like, is that a shutdown? Yeah. Yeah. And there's like a very different like, there's ranges. So it could be, I start to feel really tired by lunchtime. I was like, should I really take on this next big task? Or should I really maybe chill for 10 minutes, let myself recover and then do something easy? Like, that's like a very mild dorsal vagal response. It can look as, you know, when we're ill actually, when we're ill, then our body is in that state because everything else gets shut down because then, you know, body can rest and repair. And then it can look like, you know, I just really had a hard... deadline at work, or I had really hard training session, I know I pushed too hard. And now I know I'm gonna pay. Like, I know I'm gonna pay. Like, that's that state. Yeah. gosh. You mentioned stress in the beginning being this thing that's like they almost like strive to like function. And I know in sport to perform there's certainly benefits when our like adrenaline and cortisol are elevated when it comes to like opening up blood vessels and getting oxygen and things to these tissues so we can, you know, bike really fast that sprint finish or, you know, em Maybe there's like race nerves and all that stuff going to, is this something in like a workplace setting that people like people should be, they still need a little bit of stress, like do these important tasks or are we trying to like avoid those stresses altogether or is it more about kind of like riding that stress and then be able to come down from that stress appropriately? Yeah, more like a wave because stress is great. Like stress is oh why we are alive and why we, you know, when we don't like something and stress response kicks in, like we come up with solutions. But the reason, you know, the babies start crawling is because they have discomfort of a wet nappy on their back. I was like, okay, I need to get away from this. Like, you know, that was the motivation. It's not like they wanted something fun. Yeah. Mm. start moving. that's the same for us. Like evolution happens because of the discomfort and stress. So stress, really need it. It's like, I want to grow my business. I need energy. I can't just be chill and say, whatever. I need energy to do things, reach my goals. But it's knowing when it's time to like, Okay, I can feel like my body's my energy is getting low That means that I need to just recharge my battery It's when we think about it as just we are human battery. We we need energy and When we use it up through stress We need to just recharge it and Yeah, so stress is really helpful like when we have a big meeting, when we have a talk, when we have anything that's like, I'm, you know, even it's like, I'm really excited about this. So that's all stress. Like that really just what keeps us moving. And with that comes also dopamine and that gives us motivation. So it's just the balance of push and pause, push and pause. That's, that's the key. as opposed to just riding a cordial high into like bedtime and then trying to like crash. Yes. So how would one throughout their day go through, like you mentioned kind of like maybe someone's riding a stress high and they're like, man, I'm starting to feel like really mentally fatigued after this task or, you know, whatever they're doing, talking about a reset. What is that? What does that reset look like? How often should someone be doing that? Is it like every day, multiple times a day, so many times through a week? Like how often and what should that look like? It should be like a conversation with the body. Because when we're stress, it almost feels like the is the one that's leading and the body has to just submit and do whatever the mind says. But in reality, it's like we are one thing. So if we push our body over the edge, then It's not gonna be any helpful for the mind either. So it's understanding like I am a whole being I need to listen to my mind and the body is like, okay, I need to get things done, but I'm also feeling tired. So Where's my compromise? So it's finding like on the Hourly basis almost it's it's sensing into like okay where I'm right now Do I want to keep going or do I want to take a little break? And we have these natural rhythms, of course, you know, like I find myself in the morning, I can probably work for three hours and I'm fine. You know, I'm clear, I have energy. And then I take a break. I take really long breaks. So, you know, I take probably three hour break. wow, yeah. And then I come back in the afternoon and I was like, I know that in the afternoon I will just have to do maybe an hour there, maybe something easy, just, you know, tidying things up. So for me, it's like, I know already my patterns, but then sometimes I notice like, I just started working. I'm already tired. It's like, what's going on? There's something probably in the background and I have my water rings. So kind of I check my... heart rate or variability. Like, I'm caught something and you know, it's not full illness, but like there's something going on in the background. Or maybe just like yesterday actually worked too much. And that means like today, I don't feel as fresh. So I think we are so programmed from maybe industrial revolution days. That's like, It's like you started six, you finish at six and you are a machine and you have to produce the same output day in and day out. But our bodies are not machines and there's so many variables that just keep checking in. It's like, am I feeling? Was it good? It's like, is it bad? And so when you take a break, for example, and again, I like totally see so many overlaps with our athletes in training, right? It's like checking in with your body is like, okay, yesterday I did the longest, my biggest session of the week, or there's a bunch of really hard intervals in there. Today is supposed to be a recovery spin. I wake up, I notice my heart rate's a little bit recovered and probably not as recovered from the training session yesterday. So I like really should focus on making this day. light and easy. And I think that is something that I do see a lot of athletes have trouble with, especially new ones, like comprehending, because they think like every workout should be like super hard, super high heart rate, just like dripping in sweat to like get this change. And they're just never giving their body the time to recover. And then when they train, then their coach is like programming and like saying like, do zone one, do zone two. And they're trying, they're doing it, but they're not doing it. They're going like way over the target, doing much harder power or paces. They're just not giving their body that time to recover. Like you're saying, and come down from these stimuli. And it also doesn't allow that adaptation to occur to the coaches trying to program. So there's very much that importance of like allowing the body to reset, recover, rebuild. in that resting window. And then it also just makes me think about like people in a normal work week are just like, I've heard it from so many of my friends are just like work, they say working for the weekend, right? They're just like working, working, working so they can get to the weekend and then just like turn off their computer and like, and then probably take care of all the stuff around the house too is like the next thing, right? But yeah, I think a lot of the stuff you're saying is just, I resonate and I definitely see it. in my athletes and certainly new athletes too with their programming there. So when you take your break, what does your break consist of to help you reset before you come back and get back on the computer or get back to work? I go to the gym or I go for a walk in the park. It's my lunch break. So it's everything that is really off screen. I do find myself listening to some podcasts sometimes and then I feel like actually it's making me tired. So it's already too much information. So then maybe I'll switch to music or I got really good at doing nothing, just sitting, looking through the window. But a lot of it's moving, moving my body because I sit so much. I probably easily, you know, seven, eight hours a day, like not just at my desk, but then in the evening. So I try to have movement breaks as much as I can in my day. That's great. Yeah. I think that it's got to be so important, too, for the brain and your eyeballs. I feel like like even taking a break from, yeah, the computer. And now, too, there's like people try and find compromises with treadmill desks and all these things. They're still at their computer, but they're moving and that that balance. When you're working with somebody to are you doing any like. breath work practices or things to help activate the parasympathetic nervous system to bring them out of that. Do you ever use the fight, flight or freeze terminology as well? Yeah. And they're kind of looking at these higher stress states. We use a lot of the, I call it somatic tools. So basically body based tools and breath work is one of them. So for six breaths or any other breath that is longer out breath than in breath. that helps. It helps body, your survival part of the brain say, I had more time to, you know, to breathe out, means everything's okay, you know, I'm safe right now. So that's a great, simple practice, like even just three, four breaths like that really make a difference. We use an exercise called orienting. So because the danger and the survival gets switched on, Primarily when we get signals coming in from our eyes, our hearing, our taste, so all that sensory input tells us that there is danger. mean, it can look like an email right now, you know, in modern day, or it can look like, heard someone say this, whatever, and it really triggered me. So the sensory inputs tell us that there is... danger so we can reverse engineer that through this exercise school orienting where we deliberately really slowly look around the room, we listen and we actually scan for danger. we're told our amygdala is like, okay, right now it's all good. You know, there is no danger and you get a spontaneous deep breath or like your shoulders drop. There's like a voice sends you a signal when it feels like it came back to the regulation. Yeah, very simple. I feel like the athletes can do that. If they are cycling on the run, they can just listen to their surroundings, that specific thing in mind. Is there any danger right now? And really, there isn't. So that really calms the nervous system. that really does load on the eyes at the computer or when someone's doing maybe a long race and they really feel like I'm going into that shutdown state. A good exercise is called cardio ocular reflex. It simply like an eye support. So we do like I'm wearing my glasses, but you basically take the palms of your hands and you press in your eyes and ideally you lean forward so you're of completely in this like completely relaxed like I am know I am not so yeah I'm completely resting and through the optical nerve that really then switches off that switches you back to the parasympathetic state. And that's really good. Like, like if you do that, like, ah just feel tired. It's like, let me just do this exercise. And it's like, someone said to me, it's like a micro nap. Yeah, how long do people do you suggest people do that for? As much as you feel like. can be a couple of seconds. You can say, maybe it's like, just as long as it feels good. Yeah. So for the listeners, if you're not watching the video, we took the palms of our hands and we put them on like over, shut our eyes and put them on our eyes and then leaned our elbows on the desk in front of us and just rested our head into that and with the pressure on the eyes. And it is very relaxing. Kind of it just made me think of like when I put my eye mask on at night to go to sleep. It's like when you're turning the brain down to to rest and relax. I like that tool. That's easy and anybody can do that. And the breath work to the four. So it's breathing in for four seconds, exhaling for six seconds, right? Okay. And do you prefer out the mouth versus nose for the exhale? I'm going to my nose. Okay, in the nose, out the nose. Okay, cool. Yeah, I think those are very, I mean, they're free tools, but I think what a lot of people have a hard time with, and maybe you have a solution for this, is people are feeling stressed, they're feeling stressed, feeling stressed, and then they're not being reminded to use those tools. Is there anything, or any way, like you've seen be beneficial to actually help people, like when they're in those stressed states, actually implement these tools? So there's a couple of things. One, you really need to practice them when you're not stressed. So that becomes then almost like association. like, oh, OK, when I'm in this state, I can use this. So that's why every week I have this call that I have with people where we do these sort of things. So it's deliberate practice. It's like training, you you train before the race and here's the same, you train before the stress. And then having a post-it note, you know, simple post-it note, or you know, you can write on your hand or whatever, know, something that's like you see, and it's like there's no way that you're gonna forget. You can even say, you know, when I'm stressed and I feel like I do not have time, this is the time to take three slow breaths and then... All of a sudden the perspective changes and then you realize like, okay, it's not such a big deal. You know, it's just, I was hijacked by, by the survival. Yeah, definitely. I think the insight in mind is certainly helpful to like the post-it note, like you're saying. I see that too with, I mean, any kind of habit we're trying to help implement with a client or an athlete. You mentioned to the scanning the room piece, and that also makes me think of em we've had a few like psychologists on the podcast as well, sports psychologists, and a lot of them brought up this concept of Like when you have all this noise going on in your brain, like whether it's during a race or you're on the race start line and it's just loud and all these things going on is essentially taking your thoughts from inside your brain and like thinking about things outside. And a lot of them were, I think one of them called it like the five five five, where you like in your mind, like tell yourself five things you see and then tell yourself five things you hear. into you. yeah and five things you smell or feel or something like that and and so yeah it did it does remind me a bit of that and i think that yeah is a very helpful tool to like get you out of your head and start like you're saying scanning but now i understand why it is you're scanning for us to make your you said you make your love feel safe that there's not a threat that's so cool It is, it's like our bodies are very simple and very complicated at the same time. And it's like uh to switch the nervous system state. once, if, you practice these tools regularly, sometimes like for me, even the thought of scanning the room resets me. Like, you know, the Pavlov dogs, like the bell rings. Like I feel like I'm like that with the orienting. It's like, I start just looking around like, oh, okay, I already feel like, you know, I reset. Yeah, that's great. I do really like that. And now I've like made the connection of like why, why it makes sense and why it's helping your brain calm down. OK, so I want to be mindful of your time. Tell us a little bit about your business, what you offer. Tell us how it works. How can people sign up and work with you? All of that stuff. I do a of things. So I am hosting a weekly research circle. On Fridays, we meet for an hour and we practice. We practice these tools. We bring more awareness in our thinking patterns and the beliefs that we probably outgrown. Most of our struggles right now as adults are coming from childhood, really. Mm-hmm. it's not therapy, but it's awareness of where this could be coming from and really being in the present moment. So practicing mindfulness, practicing nervous system reset. And then I also work with people one-to-one. So who wants to delve in deeper? A lot of times if, you know, this lack of clarity or this sense of You know, it seems like on the surface everything's fine, but I'm still there's something missing, you know, or there's a sense of anxiety. the stress and anxiety is bigger than it feels like, you know, it should be where my life is right now. So then we work like just very gently with the nervous system because we are people I work with, they're very good at pushing. They're so good at, you know, just doing more and part of our work is learning to also incorporate rest because really rest is when we like with the muscle that's when we actually becoming stronger so it's the same with the nervous system we build our resilience when we instead of pushing us over the edge we We come to the edge, we want to still stretch ourselves, but we don't want to, you know, it's like a rubber band. You don't want to snap it. You want to stretch it, but you don't want to go past that. ah And it's that reminder that rest is, it's not laziness. It's not, you know, it's not gonna make you fall behind. It's like rest is really essential for, one, actually for you to achieve more. because you'll have more clarity, will have more energy, you will actually enjoy life. So it's that finding that balance. Like people, no one will work with a struggle with not doing enough. Right. Yes. Yeah, I think I can say the same for I mean my clients and athletes I mean, they're all I would describe a lot of them is all the kind of like the type a you know Go go go got to do everything right the right way at the right time, you know and Yeah, there's there's they always feel like there's more to do or to do it better to do it harder to do it faster and yes, so I think there's There's something we said from like why they're the level of athlete that they're at but then like you're saying, finding that balance and not reaching that burnout or chronic stress, I think is so important. What is your practice called? Where can people find it, sign up for it? They can find me on my website RitaAinsworthCoaching.com and there's two offerings there. They can reach out to me through the links there or they can find me on LinkedIn RitaAinsworth. Awesome. We will link all those in the show notes for the listeners so they can check you out, work with you, sign up. And then I, of course, have to jump back to your two truths and a lie before we finish up here. So let's You said you once ran a half marathon without any training, that you hitchhiked across Europe in two days, and that you've walked on hot burning coals. I thought the hitchhiked across Europe in two days was the lie. Is that correct? Nope. Oh no! Okay, which one was a lie? until I was running half marathon without training. That's probably a good thing. It's probably a good thing you didn't do that. But you have walked on hot coals. Please tell me, was that a baby bath water thing? What was that? That was my very first experience with kind of delving into personal development and that was Anthony Robbins unleashing the power within. Wow. That's so cool. Good for you. How was it? Was it like burning hot? No, I guess because it was so much about mind control. It wasn't long, it was probably four five meters. So it was a lot of preparation, breath work and that helped to put the body into the state of not feeling the pain and also not burning. Whoa. So is that a tool he's like teaching that if you're in pain in general, you can utilize to like subside from the pain? No, I think for him it was more like the mind has so much power, like physical bodies, so you can really achieve so much more if you train your mind and if you have the right mindset. Cool. Whoa, that's really neat. Awesome. And then you did hitchhike across Europe in two days. Yes, I was living in Lithuania when I was in my early twenties and I didn't have money for plane tickets so I hitchhiked to England. my gosh, that's wild. And so is this all via like cars and like not, trains obviously, right? Yeah. It was funny on the way back. It was me, luckily, and my boyfriend. I wasn't on my own. So I was brave enough. We were hitchhiking in the dark, in the night, in Belgium. And this guy was coming back from a rave He's like, come and stay in my apartment. And then tomorrow morning after work, I'll take you to the border of France. It's like, my gosh. Wow. Goodness, Rita. I'm so glad you were with your boyfriend. That went all well because I listen to too many murder podcasts and that sounds like it could have gone the wrong way. Oh, wow. Well, that's I'm glad that that there's a safe, successful journey across Europe. Very cool. Well, this has been super fascinating. mean, like I said, I wanted to have you on here because I see so much overlap with what we were talking about and. the athlete population I work with and utilizing these tools. And there's certainly becoming like a space for sports psychologists. But and I think that there's a great purpose for that for the athletes at a very high level. But also a lot of my clients are competitive athletes, but they work full time jobs and they have families and they're trying to do all these things. And yeah, so I think it's important for. for other people to hear this and be able to utilize your resources and help, help like prevent that burnout. So we're not like, I think the other thing too easy, sorry to keep going on you, but like I have clients where they, they say they love their jobs, which I believe them, but, they just work, work, work, work, work, but then they need like a week or two vacation or they have to like, you know, take off a good chunk of time for work because their body needs to like reset and. Yeah, so I think there's certainly some balance I think a lot of people need to find there, which is why we have you here. I think what I find is that people, there is a fear, like successful people fear that if I stop that I will never want to start again. So instead of, you know, pausing and seeing how it's gonna work out, they just keep pushing. like the enjoyment of work and life comes from... rest and those intense moments. For me, think the older I get, the more I want to enjoy my life because I realize how actually short it is. Yes, yes, yeah, 100%. I think you are spot on. em Well, this has been so fascinating, Rita. Again, thank you so much for your time and sharing all this with me and my listeners. Now I have some tools in my toolbox that I can use and to pay attention and listen to those signs and signals from the body. And like I said, for our listeners, we will link all this in the show notes so they can come check you out and find you, follow you. And thank you again so much for your time, Rita. Yeah, thank you so much. And yeah, if anyone has questions, just please reach out. And I love talking about this. I love helping people. So I'd be more than happy. Perfect, we will do that.

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Kyla Channell, MS

Host