The Mindful Soul Center Podcast: Episode No. ​24 & No. ​25

​Whole Health, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) & Anxiety​ are the topics covered in an interview with Shelby John on the podcast. Shelby is a licensed clinical social worker with a private practice in Maryland in the United States. She uses EMDR to help women work through trauma, teaches others how to manage anxiety and a whole natural holistic approach to living.

EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing - is recognized by a number of health organizations has a proven treatment to heal trauma.​ EMDR was developed as a treatment for trauma by Francine Shapiro. In part one Shelby gets into EMDR and explains how it works, what the process is ​when you visit a specialist and ​delves into an increasing problem for many people in recent years - anxiety​. In part two the focus is on the things we put in and on our bodies and the impact that our choices make in our health and wellness. When we are educated and well informed we can make conscious choices.

Mentioned in this podcast interview:

Transcript: EMDR Therapy and Anxiety [Part One]

​0:05          But what's also great about EMDR is that it's not talk therapy. So some people who have had like really complex trauma and don't want to talk about it like sexual abuse or parents who have died or a lot of things people just don't want to talk about. It gives us a great opportunity because there really isn't a lot of talk. It's very ? You're just literally telling what your brain, what comes up from your past. That's all you're doing allows your brain again and do the processing for you and you can sort of feel the emotions, work through them with your body and your mind. Work with the emotions, without having to sit in a conversation though.

00:45          Welcome to the Mindful Soul Center podcast. My name is Amy Adams. I'm the host and the producer of this podcast

00:56          [music].

01:06          In today's episode I interview Shelby John. Shelby is a licensed social worker. She's also a health and wellness coach and she uses EMDR amongst other modalities to help women with anxiety and to deal with past issues. We also discuss holistic living and much, much more so stay tuned.

01:36          [music]

01:40          So there's a lot to dig into, but before we get started, I do want to ask you to visit the website and have a look. At our new magazine Mindful Soul Center. We're so excited. There's lots of regular features. There is a premiere issue out now and our next issue is landing on the 26th of November. Check that out. That's https://themindfulsoulcenter.com. Now let's get started. I asked Shelby to tell us a little bit about how she got started in this field.

02:22          I am a licensed clinical social worker here in the state of Maryland and I have been practicing for I think about almost 20 years now, in a variety of different ways. I started out in the department of social services here in our County working with foster care youth. Who were trying to transition out of foster care, so the older youth kind of helping them plan for their lives and their futures. Did a lot of programming around that and then I was home for six years raising my kids. I have three children, they're 15, 14, 11 and then I went back and started my own private practice, my company Wholistic Living about five or six years ago and kind of morphed that into a whole bunch of stuff that started out as one thing and then I guess like often happens, so it's sort of changed into something else completely, which is amazing. I love it. So now I have a private practice, small private practice in my home, which is so ideal. I get to practice in my basement, see my clients and I specialize in health and wellness and I also do EMDR, which is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing trauma therapy. And also have an online course that's incredible about healing anxiety naturally. So I'm super passionate about all those things. I love helping women and I love watching people transform their lives.

03:38          Shelby was very patient and answered so many questions for me and I was so fascinated by all of it. So much information to make it more digestible. I've created two episodes from our interview and this part of the podcast really focuses on anxiety and EMDR. The shorter episode, discusses things that we put in and on our bodies and clean living and how they impact our health.

04:12          Do you think that anxiety amongst people in general has increased because it's kind of this overwhelm too of like big issues that we face and a feeling of helplessness or do you think it's comes from somewhere else or what? What are some of your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a big question. I think that the rates of anxiety, I mean you can look at the research and they've definitely increased in part probably sometimes. I think that you have to be real careful. I think it's increased. I think there's no doubt that the anxiety levels of people, particularly young people in our, in our country have increased, although sometimes you have to look back and think, well, will did it exist and we just didn't call it that or we didn't really recognize it. Yeah. I think that's also true. That's true in my own story too.

04:53          I think that we live in an anxious world. I think that there's a lot of uncertainty. We have a ton of media and access to information that was not accessible to me when I was a young child that may be part of it. I think that, you know, I said to somebody, you know, we took our kids to Disney world. Just as an example and probably, I don't know, three years ago they were big enough and my youngest was five or six. And I remember thinking, well no wonder, kids are anxious, like these rides are scary. You know, we were on a ride in this monster came out like this monster was there and you're like, Whoa. I mean I'm thinking like people take their little kids on this, you know, like, okay, this is kind of scary. So I mean I think that there is, I don't know, I don't know the real reason.

05:31          I just know that I see a lot, I see it a ton. That's primarily what I work with in my practice. I've dealt with it with my own children. And I think it's probably many factors. I think the food situation is huge, we cannot discount that. We cannot just dismiss that as not being a factor in mental health. It is a factor. Our toxic load is incredible. Our inactivity is, is, is high and people often want to use pharmaceuticals or even over the counter things even, you know, like my oldest take, sometimes she takes allergy medicines. And even that I think like, well gosh, does anti-histamines on a regular basis possibly could be. You mean they're still a foreign object that we're putting into our body, although they're safe, you know, it's still something that doesn't really belong there. And so all of these little factors build up issues in our bodies and create anxiety and mood disorders and other mental health issues. So it's a variety of factors.

06:19          I don't really know anything other than reading a tiny, tiny bit about E M D R therapy. And I would love for you to talk about that and tell people what that is because it seems so intriguing and interesting and it's not really, it's as commonly known I would say I would think is even like acupuncture or chiropractic medicine or those kinds of things. Those are in the mainstream. Now, EMDR, this sounds like really, you know, and I know it's eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, right?

06:53          Correct. Stands for movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR it's the acronym. It was founded back in 1984 by a woman named Francine Shapiro kind of by accident. The story goes anyway that she was kind of walking in the park thinking about this disturbing things in her life or whatever was going on with her. I guess she was looking back and forth in some way. I'm not sure. She was a social worker and a researcher and she just saw her and that she started to feel a little bit better and so she sort of noticed that and was like, what's going on with this relationship between my eye movement and my now my, my ----- is feeling better. So she began to research that and a study that based on the concept of REM sleep, you don't have your eyes a little bit while you're sleeping and they call that kind of cleansing the brain, that time period of REM sleep, sometimes the day residue and things that are going on for your brain to the research to based on that philosophy and came up with this technique to heal the trauma that has affected our brain. So when we have traumatic experience, trauma is a relative word, right?

07:52          So we have capital T trauma, first responders, war veterans, major big events that happen. And then we have lower case t traumas, which are the everyday things seeing an accident on the side of the road, watching the news, divorce, your kid is having an issue, issues with your employer or somebody, a teacher who called you out in front of the class that said, man, you really messed up on this test. Those are all still traumatic and it's all very relative to you personally. So what you may have experienced in your life that seems really difficult for you. I might be like gee that's no big deal, so everybody's kind of make up and personality and history dictates how they're, how those experiences are going to come into their brains and then how your mind is going to process through them. And about 70% of the time our brains take care of it all for us.

08:35          We go through life things, we experienced them and we processed them just fine about 30% of the time they do not get processed properly. And those memories get stored in that back part of our brain, the hippocampus, which is the sort of a reptilian, irrational part of our brain. And they get stored. They're not processed properly with negative beliefs about ourselves. Like I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough. I'm not safe or I should have done more, I'm a failure. And then they get stuck. So those things then stay there and then they get threaded throughout the rest of our life. They affect our relationships and our work and our self image, all those, when we get those reprint, those memories that are sort of stuck there and that they're in that irrational state of the mind. What EMDR does is sort of allow you to create those target experiences. And then when we, when we do the actual therapy, like set it all up and then through the technique it gets brought to the front part of your brain, which is much more rational prefrontal cortex and you can, reprocess them and restore those memories with positive beliefs about yourself.

09:29          So it's like the kind of like our reactionary brain versus our responsive like higher conscience. Like I mean really the front is more like being more conscious. Right.

09:37          Right. And just more of able to like logic and sort of think things through like that difference between your head and your heart. Like sometimes we know things in our head like we know we're safe, you know, we checked the locks, our home is safe but we don't feel safe. So we don't feel like that self comes in, that irrational stuff pumped in and blood makes us anxious and fearful when really the reality is we're fine.

10:04          If I were to come to you though, and I had um, was like recently, I actually did have my very first anxiety experience. I recognize it only because I've learned so much about anxiety over the last few years. I probably would have thought I was having the hardest. Uh, I knew that I was like where I was in the situation and um, everything was fine. I was supported by people, but I still, uh, I guess it was my reptilian brain was just like, Nope, it was really interesting. But I mean I was able to overcome it pretty quickly because I did have other women with me who were very supportive and kind of struggling with it. And I think also because I recognize it instead of thinking that I was sick and had a heart attack, you know what I mean? I think that also had something to do with it. Cause I know a few people that I have, people that I know for a long time have had some anxiety and every generally thought they were having heart attacks. Right.

11:04          Scary. And if it's new to you, I mean even if it is, even if you're familiar with it, it's still scary. And the problem with anxiety is, it's a condition that breeds itself. So our brain, our brains don't know the difference between real fear and imagined fear. It just knows fear. So then it goes into that sort of reptilian like fight or flight. It's like, okay, I'm afraid I, this is going on so I need to run. Right? Like that old stuff that running from the lion. Right. But a lot of times our fear is very imagine you know, you're fine, but your brain is your, you're having those negative thoughts and those fear thoughts. And so then your brain starts to activate with the anxiety response that happens in our body starts to activate what our body activates and we start getting the chest tightening is what he calls the heavy breathing.

11:49          That our brain is like, okay, wow, we're having your wherever your response. And it just creates more anxiety because then you're like, why are you doing this? You know, I, you know, and so it just, it's a cycle of, it continues to manifest that and that's why people have panic attacks if you don't cut into it. And this is what I teach my women all the time. And that's what my whole course is about is like when you don't get in there in the beginning to sort of put a spoke in the wheel, I usually say then that's when you sort of cross over into the panic attack. But it is very scary. It can feel very, you can, everybody has a little bit different and then young people can experience things a little bit differently than adults do and some people it's all internal. They're like holding it all in. Some people, I have a young girl who becomes ill, she's vomiting in the morning. It's different for everybody.

12:30          How do you, if I come to you what happens?

12:36          When you call me I traditionally don't, do talk therapy I can do talk therapy. Of course I'm a clinician, I can, I have good clinical skills. I can support you and validate you and I don't. I advertise myself and I sell myself as an EMDR therapist because I know how powerful it is and I know how I know that it works. So when you call me, when I get a call from a new client, they say I want make an appointment. I say, okay, this is great. And I explained to them exactly what I said to you in my introduction. I specialize in health and wellness and I also do EMDR therapy. This is what it is. This is how it works and this is why I do it because it's so powerful.

13:09          It's already from the very beginning saying like, this is what we're going to do. If they don't want that, that's certainly fine. Um, I might say, you might want to, you know, find somebody else who's going to give me a little bit of the kind of support for, and most of them are pretty bad or some people are calling specifically because they want it right away, or they're fascinated. Like, Oh, that sounds interesting. Or they're like, I'll try anything. I've already done all that stuff. I don't want something new. Um, and of course I support people, you know, we use it too. If you're nervous, then we have positive things that we can do. We can very positive way to up our positive experiences, and sort of really build up a steam kind of and make people feel comfortable and competent to go into the process. If that, I'm gonna do a lot of resourcing.

13:55          So there's ways to ease into it. I generally, I don't have a lot of problems with that. People are usually excited about it and then they get results rather quickly and so then they're like, Oh okay, Oh this is great. You know, I mean I'm not going to say it's like a piece of cake I'm still dealing with emotional trauma working through it is, it's a little painful sometimes, but you're quickly getting to the end within like two sessions, two or three. And so I usually, I tell people, let them your guide, I'm here to support you. We will always close things down appropriately. We shut things down. We end the session with a guided meditation and a little container, safe place exercise to shut everything down so that you're not leaving all exposed and raw.

14:34          So this is how it works. So I take a pretty detailed psychosocial history. It takes at least one session, sometimes two and goes through your entire life, all of the areas. And we get a really detailed history, cause I don't know you, I don't know anything about you and I don't know what, sometimes people in a, in a regular history don't even remember some of their stuff. So when I start digging into like sexual health, you know, your educational experience, what was that like? Have you ever been in trouble, you know, whatever, all of the things. What were your parents like? Who's your family and you start getting all this stuff. People like, Oh gosh yeah, like I didn't realize I had all this stuff. And then so you take this detailed history and then there the protocol to do EMDR is to create a list of those disturbing events.

15:13          That's the language we use disturbing events. So we want, we are looking for eight to 10 things. So I would say to them, you go back into your mind as far back in your mind as you can remember as far back and come forward, like kind of play your life like a movie and you're looking for those things throughout your life. So I chunk it down into time. Like the elementary school, middle, high school, college, like your marriage, she's phased it out so you can sort of remember what was going on and you're looking for those things that really stand out to you. Like those memories or incidents. Like maybe you had a bully. Like I said, maybe there was a teacher or maybe your dad made a comment to you that really stuck with you, still remember it. And maybe you had an accident and there's a house fire.

15:50          Maybe there was just not a whole bunch of stuff. Like my teenager is sometimes there's not a whole lot of stuff, but the stuff they have is really significant to them. So you live with those things. Um, the scaling that happens with those disturbing events is in zero to 10. Zero is no disturbance at all. 10 is the worst ever. So each incident we scale On that scale. And we're looking for things to be on that list that are 5 and above. So that's their homework. So they come up with that list, they come back in, and then that becomes our treatment plan. That's what we worked from. Like you just stick with one thing until you're, until it's resolved. And it usually takes, like I said, two to three sessions, sometimes longer depending on the person and if you just go to the next thing, okay. And generally speaking you're going to get a bunch of relief right away because the negative beliefs that are attached to each one of those things is probably the biggest ones.

16:39          Like, well I never felt like I was good enough or I'm just a failure and it was a failure. So you're going to tackle those things to have those negative beliefs and then all of a sudden your brain is going to be healing and then the feelings are going to be decreased. It's going to affect everything else in a positive way.

16:54          Right, right. like the ripple effect, I love the ripple effect.

16:56          And I've seen all kinds of, and I've worked with people who have isolated into like very specific incidents cause sometimes people think they don't have any trauma. Wow, that's not true cause you're a human being, right? You've had something, like I said, even if you've had the picture perfect life. Even if it's even if it's an imagined feeling, if you have no, if your perspective is that you're not good enough or that you're ugly or that you're fat or you're a failure or you're, you just, you're not safe, then that's internal. Even if everything in your world told you differently, you were living with that for some reason or something happened. Something went on. It might not be this big capital T thing, so it looks a little bit different for everybody, but it's such a powerful experience and definitely destimulates people very quickly. Of course we talk about it. I usually debrief a little bit. What was also great about EMDR is it's not talk therapy, so some people who have had like really complex trauma and don't want to talk about it like sexual abuse or parents who have died or a lot of things people just don't want to talk about. It gives us a great opportunity because there really isn't a lot of talk. It's very friendly you're literally telling what your brain will comes up in in each pass that's all you're doing - it allows your brain to do the processing for you and you can sort of feel the emotions, work through them with your body and your mind. Work with the emotions without having to sit in a conversation about it. Which can be very helpful for some people.

18:18          Can you just mention your website for everyone so that they know how to find you. Like if you are on Instagram,

18:26          sure www.shelbyjohn.com and my blog is also attached to that website so you can check it out. I'm on Instagram @wholistic living therapy and I'm on Facebook as Wholistic living coaching and I have a private Facebook group that's called heal anxiety naturally. So you can join that group and get and get supported by other women who are struggling with anxiety and other ways of dealing with it versus well, what the medical world has to offer.

18:54          if you want to get in touch with, um, Shelby, you can find her at all of those things that you just mentioned, but I will be putting in the show notes, all of the details so that you'll be able to have the links. So anyone who's listening, you'll be able to just click on the show notes and you'll be able to find her in case you didn't have a pen while you're listening. So I would love if you have a recommendation that you might make.

19:18          I'm super passionate about Rachel Hollis. She's an author and her book is called girl wash her face. And it was phenomenal. It definitely did. I think it changed my life. I mean, I think it should, it hit me a good time. Um, she just basically goes through all the lies that she told herself throughout her life and each chapters a different lie. And that basically how she worked through it. And I thought it was just really well done that way cause and extremely relatable. The other person who I love right now is Emily P. Freeman. She wrote a book called [next right thing and she has a blog called I mean a podcast called next right thing. And she's fabulous her podcasts are rather short. They're 15 ish minutes or maybe a little longer. And she just tackles one little concept about staying in your moment and doing the next thing, like kind of, um, well a lot around anxiety. She doesn't necessarily call it that per se, but it really is and her voice isvery nice. It's really refreshing. So I think that's a very positive and sort of uplifting go to resource. Um, those two women I think are really fabulous. I love them both.

20:31          Great. I, I don't, I haven't heard of the second person that you mentioned. I'm going to look her up. But I did read the a girl wash your face and I loved it because I liked that it was just very personable too and relateable because we all have these things and I think, um, luckily, you know, with the internet and the way things are, you know, all the media and access we have to it, I mean non traditional media, we're able to share experiences and the different way that we weren't, you know, we don't always have to feel alone about some things and learn from one another

21:01          Shelby shared the international directory of the EMDR association called EMDRIA,

21:09          E M D R I A dot net or org. EMDRIA Is the big international organization that kind of houses EMDR and does all the training. If you go on their website? You can search in your area or any of your therpists. Oh, very cool. What is the name of your upcoming course? Um, my upcoming course is called heal your anxiety naturally from chaos to calm and it's a four week live course. Um, where I'll teach a different modules each week with Q and a after it. And there's three bonuses as well. It's pretty exciting. I'm super passionate about it. I'm really excited. I know that a lot of people are going to learn a ton of stuff and be able to heal and continue on with their healing journey. It's sort of just one jumping off place to get some really good clinical skills and then dive in a little bit deeper.

22:03          My Instagram bio, there is a link tree there with several links where people can follow me. You can get to my website from there. There's also a free guide there with five steps to reducing your anxiety naturally. It's sort of like the first step in your journey. It's just a free download. It's really nice. I'm making that available in my Instagram bio link. Um, and I think uh, anything else that's related to the courses and the dates and all will be there as well as all social media shouldn't be hard to find.

22:28          Okay, great. Well thank you very much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time and teaching us about EMDR and what you do and I wish you a lot of success with your course and always. I love that. You know, you're living this life and helping other people. It's really great. Thanks for being here.

22:46          Thank you so much for having me.

22:47          thank you for joining me today for this episode of the podcast. And please look for part two where we talk about various foods and products that affect our hormones and our health. Uh, if you'd like to contact us, please send me an email to hello at the mindful, soul center.com or to Amy at the mindful. Soul center.com. I'd love to hear from you, and please subscribe on your favorite platform and leave a review. It will help other people to, uh, find out about this podcast as well. Thank you so much. Until next time.

23:50          [imusic]

Transcript: Clean Living, what we put in and on our bodies matters [Part Two]

​00:05          This is not good for our skin. These toxins are getting into our body. They're creating a heavy toxic load. They're affecting our adrenal glands, which affects our hormones and our body views anything that comes in like that that doesn't belong as foreign. Welcome to the mindful. Soul Centre podcast. My name is Amy Adams. I'm the host and the producer of this podcast. This is part two of the interview with Shelby John, and in this section we are going to focus more on the overall holistic living

01:01          [music]

01:12          But before we get started, I'd like to ask you to support this podcast by leaving a review on Apple podcasts or whatever platform you listen on. It will really help to let other people know about the podcast and please visit our website, the mindful soul center.com

01:34          [music]

01:46          Now let's get started.

01:51          Have you always been into the kind of natural healing modalities more so, or did you transition into that? Has that kind of evolved or is that something that, cause I, I love like acupuncture and herbal teas and things like that. I mean I found them like really, really helpful. But I mean, I know that sometimes people look at you like you're a...it's a little bit better now, but in the past people when they go, you're going to acupuncture. That's not real.

02:18          I did transition. I grew up in a family that was, you know, a relatively normal American family. I mean, we are relatively healthy at that time and the 80s, you know, um, we had a garden, my dad was really into nature and backpacking, so we definitely had that part of our family. They weren't really into overly into health and so I was always an athlete.

02:39          I always valued fitness and things. Once I started having children or became wanting to become pregnant and start a family, I was definitely focused on sort of much more of the holistic way of living. How can I raise these kids to be super healthy? I started really diving into nutrition and wellness and I'm definitely not a Western medicine fan except for big things like emergency medicine. Of course, we need things like that. And I kind of began to understand a little bit more about what was really happening in our country around that. On how the pharmaceutical companies kind of kind of in our country as well as the big food companies. So anyway, in parenting my kids and my pregnancies, I was always wanting to be much more natural. I, you know, I mean my baby food, I nurse my kids for 13 months.

03:17          I mean I did all the things I didn't want them to ever be on medicines. And then actually when I had my third kid, we really, it was around that time, maybe I'm, we, we, we discovered a book called the China Study that it's a compilation of 40 years of research by Dr. Campbell and his son and um, it's pretty incredible and it became like a textbook for our lives. Um, it talks a lot about all the different disease systems and their connection to animal products and very, it was really, really eye opening and educational. So that began a huge transition for our family. That's when I really kind of jumped into learning more about food and wellness and things like that. I also do acupuncture. I have consistently done acupuncture, have a phenomenal woman in my life. I haven't been, lately I think I should make an appointment.

04:00          But she's incredible. She's telling me times and I rely on her. We do lots of chiropractic work at art. I use oils, we try to just keep things as clean as possible food and in our home and It's not perfect, you know, but we do the best that we can. I'm raising teenagers.

04:13          So did you have any kind of resistance, um more on like I probably, I think the hardest part would be the dietary stuff, especially with teenagers. Like they were raised this way. So like yeah, it's hard now when they were babies it was, it was fine cause I was in control of it. Right. So when I transitioned them, so for instance, when they stopped nursing or, well you know, when they're little, you transition them to milk cows. Milk traditionally is what normally people do. And I was not going to do that. And so I talked to my pediatrician and she was, she's phenomenal with, with me children she believes in everything I was doing, very supportive.

04:42          And she said I could transition them to soy milk as long as it was whole and not reduced fat. And so I said that was fine. So I just kept nursing them and transitioning them to soy milk. So they never had any cow's milk at that time and we just stayed that way for a long time. Now they did have some until we kind of learned more about what that was, what the harmful effects of that was. So I, we didn't have a lot of resistance then we had some resistance with the grandparents. I will say, um, that was our bigger challenge. Like sort of educating them, getting them on board and like helping them transition into, you know, why we want us to raise our kids in a certain way, but it's okay. You know, they mostly did what we, what we wanted and then as they've gotten older, the best that I can do is to keep our home relatively clean in our home.

05:21          There's really nothing, there's no cookies or, I mean occasionally we have like there's some kettle chips up there now does. That was a special treat. There's really just like pretzels and nacho chips, you know, chip tortilla chips and like a lot of them kind bars and a ton of produce and fruits and you know, healthy cereals and things. But there's really nothing else foodwise in our home. So what they do when they leave here is sort of on them and they, they have been educated, they know a lot. I'd say they do relatively okay. Where they'd make all the choices. I would like them, no, they're teenagers too. Right. And I had to just accept it, you know, like we were out at a tournament this weekend and my daughter ordered a hamburger and she's been like doing that lately at restaurants. And I'm like, really? Like, you know, like what are you doing? But I just feel say, okay, let it go. Yeah.

06:07          Well, so and then also, um, when we spoke earlier, you had mentioned something too, which I thought was interesting about like, because I know like already having a clean, you know, clean food is one thing, but then also like body products and things too. Right, right. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about that? I just, I'll just take a moment here to say to like, this is something that you teach to your clients too, right? This is something that whole kind of philosophy. So it's like you live it and breathe it and you teach it and we all do the best we can and we're all not going to be that perfect, but it's, I think it's really amazing. I love that idea to like live by example, be a model even with our own failings, even if we're not going to be perfect at it, it's really great to live, you know, live it and teach it and then help, you know, support others in that.

06:50          Right and I feel like that's the real blessing of my job. I get the, I have the opportunity to teach women about all of these things that we're talking about. And I've done that through my blog. Each week I do a different theme. Um, I've already done several things on nutrition and then we started talking a lot about, um, clean living, like in your home with your products. We talked about clothing, even at a friend of mine who has developed a, a white tee shirt that she's super proud of and it's completely sustainable, organic cotton. So I had her write a little post about, about clothing, the clothing industry and kind of how it's treated. How the clothing is treated and when we put it on our bodies, it does like anything you put on your skin, seeps into your bloodstream and then gets into your system just like a food would.

07:29          We just don't think about when we're kind of going about our regular life. So, and I'm not gonna sit here and say I'm wearing organic clothing. I'm not. But like, but when we become aware of things and it gives us the power to make choices that maybe we didn't have if we didn't have the knowledge. So that's my job is always to educate, to bring things to life. I never judge people for their choices or their, their misgivings because we all have challenges. I mean, look, I was away all weekend in this inner city. I had been working so much this past week. I didn't have time to do the preparation I would normally do for food to take with me. So I had the wing yet. It wasn't ideal, but like I had to just, yeah, get through it in the had to give myself grace on that and so you know what it was a couple of days like or get back on track and do the best I could with what I have that time and next time I'll probably try and do things a little bit better or different.

08:11          And I'd say the same thing to my clients. Like look, you know, I'm gonna teach you this stuff. I'm always about baby steps too. Like when we make a change, it's really creating sustainable change means doing it slowly and steadily so that it becomes habitual rather than jumping all into something that you're not going to be able to maintain. Like I'm going to get to the gym six days a week. That's not sustainable for most people over a long period of time. So we sort of just baby step into like, Hey, let's take a look at the products you're using on your skin, for example. So I brought that to light in the blog post and I started to talk a little bit about things that I do like I use an oil FaceWash, I make it myself. It's very easy. I had no idea about this until a few years came across in my world.

08:51          If somehow someone told me about it, I did a little research and I've it myself with a little a I put it in a pump bottle I owned. It lasts for three months or whatever. I use two different kinds of oil almond and caster. It's a ratio. And then I put in some essential oils that are designed to be really good for your skin and I and I use it every night and that's fabulous. So it feels so good. It's like a spa treatment every night. I feel really good about what's going on with my skin. It removes my makeup and other things like we stopped, I stopped buying any kind of, I wasn't really buying it, my kids have all this like bath and body works products like, and if you read the labels on those things, there's a lot of ingredients in them. And one of the biggest problems with these things in our country is and stuff, fragrance ingredient.

09:32          It often just says fragrance well fragrance is composed of a lot of ingredients, but they're just not listed in there. It goes, it all falls under fragrance. So you don't even know what that is. So that's something that's kind of coming out now, like people are starting to discover this. So I decided like, you know, I started throwing some of that stuff away. This is not good for our skin. These toxins are getting into our body, they're creating a heavy toxic load, they're affecting our adrenal glands and our body. We use anything that comes in like that, that doesn't belong as foreign and then attacks it. So our immune system is like attacking these things and it creates a lot of, it causes. It takes a lot of energy to do that. So I personally don't put my energy being used to attack foreign objects. I don't have a lot of energy, so I'm like whatever, I can do these little tiny things.

10:17          So instead of using those body washes, I put essential oils in my shower like peppermint and eucalyptus and I use a big puff, you know one of those things you buy for those, you work with some dr Bronner's Castiel so that's the kind of soap we use and I drop of a few of those drops on my puff, scrunch it all up and it gets really fragrant. It's so - peppermint is like the awakening essential oil. So you get really alive in the shower. IIt feels- when you put that on your skin it gives you like a cooling effect. I just think it's sort of chilly kind of tingley and it's fun. It's refreshing and like, okay so now I don't have to buy all these bottles of stuff with a lot of stuff in it. It's just and a lot of times they don't even smell good - cause they just smell to me they smell fake.

10:57          Like I can tell like it smells like chemicals. Yeah. When I know the area that I grew up in there was, um, I grew up right outside of Manhattan and there and not far away. Uh, sometimes when you would pass on, uh, one of the roadways, there was a factory that made, uh, artificial fragrances. Basically they were emulating, I mean they were probably making some natural ones too, but they, you know, that was their business that they were making these fragrances. So, it would smell like vanilla or something, you know, these, sometimes it was very nice, but a lot of times it wasn't. Well, there's was a really fabulous documentary too on Netflix. If anybody's interested in digging into this more, it's called stink. It's on Netflix. It's really well done. It's amazing. It's a father who's, his wife died very young from I'm not sure which type of cancer, maybe breast cancer.

11:42          It's two very young girls. And then he sort of by accident discovering that the pajamas that he had purchased for his little girls Christmas were wrapped in plastic. You know, they opened up and they smell so bad and he became enraged by this and like wanted to dive into what, what are you putting on his clothing? And no, of course nobody would tell them. And then he just kept digging and digging. It was very well done. I thought I need nothing else. If you did nothing else, now you're armed with the knowledge that there putting things on our clothing that are chemicals go into our system and maybe you'll make a different choice. Maybe not every time, but maybe sometimes. Yeah. Well I think it's interesting too because what you said earlier too by um, being educated like we and the more people that are educated about this, because I sometimes post something about plastic pollution or something on Facebook and some people will say, you know, I didn't even realize that we had these big gyres of plastic in the oceans or Thanks for sharing this because now I know.

12:34          And so even though maybe, I mean there's two parts of that though too. One of the things is when we hear about these things, we think, Oh my God, like what are we going to do are so helpless in the face of all of these things that are happening outside of us. You know, people are making these, you can't control factories, we can't control big businesses and all this. So there's part of it where we're just like freaking out and going, Oh my God. And then there's the other part of it where we're like, okay, well maybe you know, now that I know about this, I'll, I'll try to be a little more conscious. Maybe I won't buy something. But I mean eventually, hopefully there'll be more products that, or eco based and, and the prices have gone down with that. Uh, luckily, cause, uh, about 20 years ago they were pretty much out of skyrocketed out of the roof, like organic cotton and things was inaccessible.

13:14          You know, you would want to get nice sheets or something or sometimes even, uh, I think in Turkey they were making organic cotton, like beautiful sheets and things, but they didn't label it organic. So people didn't even know, you know, that you just get these sheets from. But yeah. So I think it's great to have the education aspect of this is because then if we do do every little tiny thing that we do, I mean, it could just be something small like, yeah, right. Whatever you like that dress, it's beautiful. Okay, you're going to get at this time because there's not another alternative you kno. Yeah, but you're going to try it. You know, you're going to make it up for another ways in like how you eat or what you buy and the businesses you support. Exactly. I mean, we can only make change with our dollars.

13:53          I mean, let's not kid ourselves, none of us, neither you or I are going to make the world plastic free or we're not going to change that situation. The ocean, and I'm not going to change the fact that sustainable farming is an actual real option in our factory. Farms have an amazingly humongous, um, environmental footprint, right? But when we see, when we start to educate others and we just talk about it, if a lot of people begin to change the how they spend, that's the only way we, that's the way we get the biggest change. We can speak with our dollars. And again, I'm just about finding some balance too. You know, what's ever going to work for the best for you or your family. You do the best that you can or you can buy local eggs or maybe you can support your farmers or a CSA or you can buy some of your clothing on consignment and talk about that in our house too because you know, sometimes that's a better way of being economical but also just reuse, recycle, you know, like being responsible consumer. Right? So every little change it makes a difference.

14:49          You can make a difference too. All of our actions matter. I really enjoyed my conversation with Shelby and learned so much and I hope that you will too. Now if you want to learn more about Shelby and her work and EMDR and anxiety, you can listen to part one of this interview. And I want to thank you for taking the time to share in this experience today. [music]

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