Mamas, we’re stressed more than usual these days. The “coronacoaster is emotionally and physically draining rollercoaster. It’s draining to balance helping our kids stay busy, working from home, financial worries, babies crying, fear of infections, and more. What are you doing to keep your cup full so you can keep caring for your kids and family the best you can? Dr. Elyssa shares 5 holistic tips to help you keep your cup full so you can keep you and your families body in balance. Listen to more episodes from Balancing Holistic Mamas.
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Transcript
Dr. Elyssa:
Hi, mamas. Welcome to Balancing Holistic Mamas Podcast. My name is Dr. Elyssa Wright, and I am so excited to be here with you today. I work with moms, babies, and mamas to be-covering all types of topics to help make raising a family easier. Whether it be fertility, pregnancy, questions about pediatric fevers, or just trying to figure out how to live more holistically. We will cover that and more here on this podcast. I’m a chiropractor and functional medicine practitioner, and I’ve spent the past decade of my life dedicated to helping families live healthy, happy lives. So I can’t wait to get started. Hi mamas and welcome to episode two of Balancing Holistic Mamas Podcast. I am Dr. Elyssa and today we are going to talk about the five things that I encourage all of my patients and myself to do to fill up your cup. So I don’t know where you guys are at, but these past few weeks have been pretty heavy. Maybe you haven’t been out of your house in six weeks. Maybe you have siblings that are trying to tear their hair out of their other sibling. Maybe you’re trying to balance work. Plus all of a sudden you became a homeschooling mom. Plus you have the newborn that’s crying and needs a ton of attention. Plus maybe you’re scared you’re not going to keep your job and you don’t know if your next paycheck is stable. Maybe you are feeling down on yourself and your personal image. And all of this sitting at the desk is hurting your back. And now you have headaches and neck pain on top of all of the emotional stressors of trying to keep you and your family together. Sound familiar? This is a really, really common thing, and you are not alone. So many people I know are trying to figure out how to weave in these additional stresses with the other stressors that are always around us. So, first and foremost, let’s take a quick chat about chiropractic care. How does a chiropractor help me figure out all of this? I feel like this is something I should talk to a therapist about not a chiropractor. Well, remember our nervous system controls everything. So one, if you are having pain, reach out to your local chiropractor, that’s a good place to start getting your system out of pain is going to make you clearer and make you more able to show up for yourself and for your family. The other thing chiropractic care does is it helps to reset your system into more of a rest and digest place and takes you away from the fight or flight or fright. And that just that freezing sensation that I know so many of us are feeling right now. On top of that, chiropractic care is a form of holistic wellness care. So the other part that I’m going to share with you today is what I share with a lot of my patients. And it’s five steps to work towards that health and wellness and happiness. And just vibrant life that I know we are all looking for. So we’re going to take a few moments here, step away from all the stress, step away from all the anxiety and retune our energy towards the five things that you can do each and every day to help refill your cup and get back to feeling better. Are you zoning out? Are you even aware that you’re breathing? Is it fast? Is it slow? Are you having a hard time breathing? Cause maybe you have your mask on, or maybe you’re out in the heat, just check in, figure out where you are in your system. The next one to check in with is where are you breathing? So this one can be a little bit trickier because feeling into your body can be really hard when you don’t have a lot of things running through your head. So some of the areas where a lot of us breathe are in your shoulders or your shoulders going up and down, as you inhale and exhale, maybe you’re breathing into your eyeballs and you’re really focused on something in the future. And every time you breathe, you go into a little bit of a state of shock and very few of us regularly breathe into our bellies. But if you are congratulations, that is one of the deepest breaths you can do is when the breath fills the lungs all the way up from the tippy top down to the bottom of your lungs, which live right around the bottom of your rib cage. So just take a second and figure out where you’re at. No judgment, no bad, no good. No. Okay. No, no judgment at all. Just where are you at today in this moment? And once you can kind of figure that out, we’re going to do a little quick breathing exercise. So I call this the three, three, three breath. It is good for when you are standing in line doing your grocery shopping. It’s good when you’re waiting to pick your kids up from school. It’s good when your little one is screaming at the top of their lungs and you are just trying to find calm to get them to go to bed. It’s good when you don’t know what else to do. So three, three, three breath is inhaling for three, holding at the top of your breath for a count of three and then exhaling for three. So take a deep inhale. One, two , three, hold one, two , three, exhale, one, two , three, and check in, figure out where you’re feeling after just that one breath. So that’s something that is with you all of the time. You’re never without it. And so whenever you need a moment, it’s less than 10 seconds and you can help to reset your energy. Number two is putting good fuel into your body. So this one’s always a tricky one. My patients say things like I don’t have time to put good food in my system. I don’t have time to prep the food to eat. I don’t like vegetables. It’s too much work. I’m spending all the time, preparing the food for my kids, making homemade baby food or whatever else you might be doing. And I’m here to tell you that you also need that good fuel that you’re putting into your family. So my favorite tips and tricks are to one, if you are a smoothie drinker or a juicer, get a ton of nutrients in first thing in the morning, and that boost will get you through the day. So if you Google green juice, recipes, green smoothies, there are a ton of really, really great recipes out there. And you can make a huge batch and take care of the whole family with a one and done first thing in the morning. The second thing is to have snacks available. So I like to pick a list of three vegetables for the week and two types of nuts for the week. And that way I know that I have something that I can grab and go, no matter what. Key to success with this one is when you get home with your vegetables, wash them, cut them, put them into little baggies, have them all ready to roll. So if you are running to soccer practice, you can grab a snack for yourself. If you are up in the middle of the night, working at breastfeeding and going, man, I just need something to keep me going, you have a snack ready to go. So no matter where you are in your day, you always have some type of good fuel to help get you to that next level. All right , onward, number three, this one is a fun one. It is moving! So we have this stigma, especially in the States, that the only way you move, the only way that you exercise is if you go to the gym and I don’t about you, but for me going to the gym is this huge ordeal. I have to plan ahead of time of what I need to pack. I need to find energy after work to make sure that I get there. It’s a half hour commute to get there a half hour commute to get home. When I go through all of that trouble, then I feel like I need to stay there for an hour. And so now this is a two or three hour chunk of my day that those are hours that I’m not with my family. Those are hours that I am stressed about not being with my family. So my thing with movement is we need to change the narrative around it and look at all of the ways we can add movement into our life. And my favorite places to add movement is in the kitchen. When you are prepping food, providing nourishment, there’s always some downtime where you’re waiting for water to boil, or maybe you throw something in the oven or waiting for that to cook, or you have to walk to and from the pantry. So I challenge you to add a few different things to that instead of just walking to and from the pantry, why not do five squats and then go, instead of just standing at the stove, staring at the w
ater, why not throw in 15 jumping jacks when you go to that pantry and get your can of beans to make whatever you’re making, why not do some bicep curls with them or tricep curls while you’re walking to and from. Or you can use movement as a reward system. Maybe you want a little bowl of ice cream at the end of your night. All right , 10 lunges, 10 jumping jacks, and 10 tricep curls before you can eat it. Maybe you park your car at the back of the parking lot when you’re going grocery shopping, doing your Target run. And instead of walking the shortest distance walk the longest distance. Maybe at the end of the night, the way that you and your partner reconnect and the way that you get the kids out of the house is to circle the block and do a 10 minute walk. So think of creative ways to add in 30 minutes of movement a day, whether it be three, 10 minute chunks or 10, three minute chunks. And if you come with something, that’s super awesome comment on this episode, share it with others. So that way we can all increase our movement together. The last two come at the end of your day. So number four is sleep and I don’t have any littles in my house right now, but I can tell you, I have worked with moms who have newborns who have six months old, two years, four years, 16 years doesn’t matter. Every age group has a different struggle with letting moms go to sleep. So whether you’re not you’re about them eating enough, if they’re going to sleep through the night or worried, if they’re out with their friends, going to the movies alone for the first time and stressing about when they’re coming back, all mamas have stress, no matter what age and right now, with everything going on in our world, that stress is a little bit higher. So the goal for sleep is eight hours a night. And I realized that that might be really unrealistic for some of you. So my challenge to you is to focus on how you set yourself up to go to sleep and set the same patterns every night. Maybe it’s a cup of chamomile tea. Maybe it is spraying your pillow with a lavender essential oil spray. Maybe it’s doing that three, three, three breath , and just telling your system it’s time to shut down. The biggest thing you can do for yourself is one hour before you’re ready to shut down, turning off all electronics: TVs, cell phones, iPads, all of the things that have what’s called blue light coming off of them. I don’t know if you’ve ever driven by a house at night and noticed that their TV was on their blinds were shut, but you could see the flickering of light through those blinds. Imagine that being your iPad, six inches away from your face and all that activity that you are sending to your brain, same thing with your littles . All of that activity going to the brain is going to wake everything up and make falling asleep that much harder. So I challenge you to find eight hours if you can, but if not, at least take the step to turn off all blue lights one hour before, and to make sure that you do something that’s signals your body it’s time to shut down and it’s okay to rest for a little bit. And the final thing is the hardest for some of my moms and the easiest for others, but treat yourself! So I can only imagine the list running through all of my mama’s heads, whether it be backpacks packed, is the homework done is the food ready? Are the bottles clean? Do we have the daycare pack set and on and on and on and on and on that next thing, you know, it’s 11, 12 o’clock at night and you haven’t done a single thing for yourself during that entire day. And when that happens day in and day out and day in a day in and day out, you start to get depleted. And so my goal is to fill you up because when you have more energy, when you have more excitement, you can show up for your friends, your family, your kids, your coworkers. So treat yourself step one, five minutes a day. And that five minutes a day is going to look different for every single one of you. And maybe that five minutes a day is taking some time to write down the three things that you’re grateful for that happened that day. And I realized that there’s some days that maybe that thing you’re grateful for is that the day is over and that’s okay. And sometimes the thing you’re grateful for is a beautiful sunshine-y day where you got to spend outside swimming and playing and laughing. So think gratitude, maybe it’s taking a bath. Maybe it’s shutting yourself in a closet to just be quiet in the dark. There’s just different things that fill us up. So find what fills you up and start at five minutes a day. And as you get used to that five minutes a day, you’ll start to notice that 10 minutes is okay, and then 20 minutes is okay, and then 30 minutes is okay. So take it piece by piece and build your way up to a number that feels good for you. The great thing with all of these is there is no right or wrong. It’s what’s best for you to make you feel better in that moment. All right . I know that was a ton of information. So let’s do a quick recap. Number one, breathe, check in with your breath. Number two, good fuel food for your system. Number three, move throughout your day. Number four, focus on the quality of your sleep, turn off electronics an hour ahead of time. And number five, treat yourself, find five minutes a day just for you. So as always, if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at www.bodyandbalancechiropractic.com/podcast. If you loved a special piece of this episode, take a screenshot and share it with your friends and your family. And if you know of somebody who you want to have me interview a guest speaker, just reach out. We have a form for that too. I can’t wait to chat with you guys again next week and until then stay. Well, I .
